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Will Amy Berman Jackson Finally Break the Spell of OLC Feeding Bullshit FOIA Claims to DC District Judges?

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emptywheel
In her opinion ruling that DOJ has to release a memo that Bill Barr used to pretend his basis for claiming Trump had been exonerated by the Mueller Report was legally sound, she judged that several career DOJ attorneys had misrepresented the memo in question. Will this lead to more scrutiny of such DOJ claims in the future?
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Bad Habits Of Thinking Make It Hard To Form Community

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Ed Walker
Posts In This Series Chapter 5 of John Dewey’s The Public And Its Problems addresses the role of community in moving from the theory of democracy (the subject of the first 3 chapters) to a working form of democracy. Dewey says that democracy…
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DOJ Got All the Proud Boy Telegram Texts from Ethan Nordean's Phone

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emptywheel
According to a status hearing in the Proud Boys Leadership conspiracy case, the very damning Telegraph chats used in the conspiracy case all came from Ethan Nordean's phone. That means contrary to speculation, they don't have a high level person flipped in that case yet.
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January 6: On the Track of the Missing Laptops

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emptywheel
While the FBI appears to have interviewed the wrong woman in their attempt to figure out who has the laptop stolen from Nancy Pelosi during the January 6 insurrection, discovery correspondence in another case suggests they have a lead on who stole Jeff Merkley's laptop.
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When No Means Yes: The Flynn and McFarland Response to Information to Paul Manafort

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emptywheel
A KT McFarland email released last night really demonstrates how the Mueller Report put fairly damning communications in favorable light.
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Seth Rich Conspiracists Liberate Records Showing DOJ Believes They're Conspiracists

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emptywheel
Some Seth Rich conspirators liberated some FBI documents on Seth Rich that explain that one of their conspiracies arises out of the way FOIA and time work.
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Will the GOP Demand Ron Johnson Be Stripped of Committee Assignments for Ignoring a Defensive Briefing?

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emptywheel
According to the GOP, Eric Swalwell should be stripped of his committee assignment because he received an FBI briefing that he was being recruited by a Chinese spy. They argue that even though after the warning, Swalwell cooperated with the FBI and had nothing to do with her again. But by Ron Johnson's own admission, when he got a similar briefing, he blew it off.
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The Crossroads of Insurrection: The Senate Chamber Insurrection Defendants

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emptywheel
QAnon may have been more important in and successful at breaching the Senate itself than either the Proud Boys or the Oath Keepers.
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Ethan Nordean's Funny Idea of Exculpatory

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emptywheel
The Proud Boys seem to think it's exculpatory that they started recruiting people to come to DC in December to not attend Trump's rally.
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The George Nader Problem: NSA Removes the Child Exploitation Content from Its Servers

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emptywheel
Among the more baffling details in the recently released Section 702 reauthorization is the description of the approach NSA has chosen to take evidence of child exploitation off its servers.
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The NFL Draft 2021 and Portuguese GP

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bmaz
Down to the stretch in the NBA, and a week from now the order will be pretty fascinating. Some fun stuff in MLB, what with the Cubs Rizzo striking out MVP Frederick Freeman. Both were incredible sports about the encounter, and it was great.…
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The Rickety 702 System: Why It Continues to Fail

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emptywheel
Since the beginning, the yearly review of FISA 702 has separated the abstract legal analysis from the actual state of the implementation. And that has allowed one after another FISA judge to approve 702 with no real evidence it complies with the Fourth Amendment.
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Where Were They Radicalized? Two Mike Flynn Supporters Guilty of Threatening Assassination

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emptywheel
One Flynn supporter who threatened to kill Emmet Sullivan and another Flynn interlocutor who rejected Flynn's call for responsibility with a call for guns were both found guilty yesterday.
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FISC Suspects John Ratcliffe of Relaxing Rules for Unmasking of FISA Material

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emptywheel
In addition to the problems regarding still unresolved problems with FBI back door searches, the recently released FISA opinion suggests that as Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe approved a step that might make it easier to unmask US person identities in FISA reports.
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India's COVID Surge: The Curious Facets of U.S. Response

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Rayne
Angry ranting at the U.S. and Big Pharma never let up this past weekend while the U.S. formulated a response to India's explosive COVID surge. While complaints received ample air, news media didn't address several curious facets.
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Is a Disorganized Militia January 6 Conspiracy in the Offing?

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emptywheel
Thus far, the conspiracy charges have been focused on organized militias -- the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers. That may be about to change.
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Soft-Handed Academic Dudes and Minimum Wage Fast Food: What Could Go Wrong?

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Rayne
Why would any food service or retail employer think for a moment that minimum wage workers would be beating down the doors to come back to more of the same if their health and their lives had been and could be again at risk, for an absurdly low wage?
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Former Presiding FISA Judge John Bates' Curious Treatment of White Person Terrorism

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emptywheel
By chance of logistics, the same judges who presided over the two decade war on Islamic terror are presiding over the cases of more than 60 January 6 defendants. That has already
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In Adding Matthew Greene to a Conspiracy with Dominic Pezzola, DOJ Formally Alleges the Proud Boys Committed a Crime of Terrorism

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emptywheel
Yesterday, the government unrolled the latest Proud Boy defendant, Matthew Greene, in a supserseding Dominic Pezzola indictment. But in doing so, the government did something more importantly, legally: it formally aligned all the Proud Boy indictments, including Pezzola's destruction of government property in a way that implicates all the Proud Boy conspiracists in a crime of terrorism.
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