In Last Two Years, FBI Developed Intrusive Files on 77,100 Innocent Americans
Charlie Savage has a story reporting on the number of assessments the FBI opened in the last two years that turned into preliminary investigations. It shows that over the period, the FBI has conducted assessments of 77,100 Americans whom they…
IA AG Tom Miller: Playing "Survivor" with Homeowners' Futures
You may have heard that the Obama Administration and IA Attorney General are playing a giant game of Survivor with the homes of struggling Americans as the grand prize: they've kicked NY AG Eric Schneiderman off the island.
The New York Attorney…
CantorQuake: Trembling at the Heart of GOP Claims We Don't Need Government
Back in March, after the Japanese earthquake, Eric Cantor defended Republican plans to cut funding from the USGS and warning systems to help in case of a disaster.
This is the epicenter of the freak 5.9 Richter earthquake that just hit Virginia.
Here's…
The FBI's File on Antiwar.com
As I reported yesterday, the FBI conducted a threat assessment into Antiwar.com in April 2004 in conjunction (apparently) with a terrorist watch list posted on the site. I briefly reviewed what they found, but I wanted to look in more detail…
The Other Auto Bailout: Ford, Toyota, ... and Harley Davidson?
As I noted yesterday, Bloomberg has made some really cool visual tools showing the lending the Fed did over the years.
So I wanted to use it to show the other auto bailout: lending to Ford and Toyota at a time when the auto market was fragile…
FBI Conducts Threat Assessment on Antiwar.Com Journalists for Linking to Publicly Available Document
Antiwar.com has a troubling story detailing how what appears to be either an FBI counterintelligence investigation of suspected Israeli spies or an attempt to track down everyone who had posted terrorist watch lists online led to the FBI to…
Fed Lending: Bailing Out Banks over People
Bloomberg has a good summary and even better visual database of the various forms of Fed lending that have been revealed over the years since the bailout.
I encourage you to go play around in the database. For example, check out this summary…
The Global Crisis of SOME Institutional Legitimacy
Felix Salmon has a worthwhile (but, IMO, partly mistaken) post on what he deems "the global crisis of institutional legitimacy." I think he's right to see this as a significant challenge to our current political economy.
While watching another…
2 Funny Things about Obama Administration's Effort to Pressure Eric Schneiderman
The NYT has an article about efforts to strong-arm Attorney General Schneiderman to get him to put rule of law aside for yet another bank bailout.
First, it quotes HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan as saying,
The disagreement is around whether…
Is this Why DOJ Is Sheltering Colombian Terrorists?
Karen DeYoung has an important article reporting that the Colombian intelligence agency implicated in political crimes, Department of Administrative Security, had support from the CIA.
American cash, equipment and training, supplied to elite…
Tony Fratto's Post Office Field Trip
Ex-Bush flack Tony Fratto set me off on a rant this morning when he tweeted this:
Over the past 10 yrs I might have visited a post office 10 times, total.
(FWIW, Ed Henry also doesn't frequent post offices, he mused from the luxury of Martha's…
Trash Talk: I'm Still Mad In Memphis West Edition
For any that carelessly stumble in here without having read the earlier Emptywheel blog ice pick into the temple of southern comfort regarding the West Memphis Three and the obliteration of fundamental fairness occurring in an American court…
Raining On The West Memphis Parade: Fundamental Fairness Denied
The West Memphis 3 are free!! Yea!
Three men convicted in the 1993 murders of three boys in West Memphis, Arkansas, were ordered released after entering new pleas following a court hearing, prosecutor Scott Ellington said Friday.
Damien…
Jeff Immelt: EPA Should Say Fracking, Gulf Drilling, and Trans-Candian Pipeline Are Safe in One Week
[youtube]Df_XSkDz418[/youtube]
I wanted to return to Jeff Immelt's Dartmouth talk to focus on what he means by regulatory reform. It's newsworthy not just for the way Immelt creates straw men to try to claim the energy industry is overregulated.…
Jeff Immelt Claims Government Can't Make Him Invest--Ignoring It Already Did
[youtube]Df_XSkDz418[/youtube]
Jeff "China China China" Immelt spoke at Dartmouth yesterday, ostensibly about energy. But as it happens, he had the opportunity (in question period) to pressure SuperCongress to "reform" taxes rather than raise…
Links, 8/17/11
I guess it takes a lot of smart kids from other countries to show us what assholes Hershey is--and to teach us about solidarity.
I assume you've already read the Matt Taibbi piece revealing that the SEC has been destroying records of…
Consensus that America Should Be Like Sweden
A number of people are circulating this video, graphically showing that Americans don't know how unequal our society has become.
But I wanted to point to a few details about the underlying study, which not only shows that most Americans…
The New Ag Bubble and Climate Change
The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago is worried enough about rising farm land values in the MidWest it is holding a conference to discuss it. Here in the MidWest, prices have gone up 17% in the last year.
And Bloomberg has a piece describing…
Register of Deeds Curtis Hertel: "If you or I committed this kind of fraud, we'd go to jail."
In Lansing today, Ingham County (Lansing Area) Register of Deeds, Curtis Hertel and State Rep Jim Ananich presented a bill to introduce judicial foreclosure in MI.
As part of the press conference, homeowner Bill Donahue described how…
Why Oh Why Can't We Have Better Political Journalism, University of Miami Edition
Free prostitutes ... luxury yachts ... big cash payments ... free Cadillacs. All to influence a bunch of powerful men.
It reads just like the Jack Abramoff scandal, or the Duke Cunningham scandal. Or the tales of similar influence peddling…