Robert Mueller Once Again Claims Anna Chapman a Bigger Threat to US than Lloyd Blankfein
Robert Mueller addressed the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco today. He repeated a familiar theme: the biggest threats to the United States are terrorists (even aspirational ones), spies, and cyber attacks.
Terrorism, espionage, and cyber…
California Supreme Court Rules There Is Standing For Prop 8 Intervenors
When the Ninth Circuit initially referred the issue of standing for the Defendant-Intervenors in the Perry v. Schwarzenegger/Brown back at the start of the year, I wrote this:
I still look for the California Supreme Court to certify this…
Obama Issues Veto Threat to Revised Detainee Language
The Administration just released its position on the Defense Authorization, including a long passage on the new detainee language SASC devised the other day. That section reads:
Detainee Matters: The Administration objects to and has serious…
Rogin Obtains Proof Mullen Received Ijaz Memo, Pakistan Ambassador Recalled, Offers Resignation
Back on October 10, Mansoor Ijaz, an American from a Pakistani family, published a remarkable column in Financial Times in which he claimed to have been involved in the passing last May of a memo purportedly from Pakistan's President Asif…
More FOIA Refusals Hiding DOJ's Informant Practices
The Center for Constitutional Rights is helping former Black Panther, community activist, and Common Ground founder Malik Rahim sue to get the FBI's records on FBI informant Brandon Darby's infiltration of Common Ground.
Today, the Center for…
The More You Look for Terrorists, the Fewer Banksters You Have to Prosecute
This report--or rather the HuffPo piece on it--has gotten a lot of attention. It shows the government as a whole has prosecuted 57.7% fewer financial fraud crimes than they did 10 years ago, when 9/11 changed everything.
The report on our…
Night Raids, Drones and Raymond Davis Still in Af-Pak News
A vitally important loya jirga, or grand gathering, is underway in Afghanistan with leaders from all over the country converging to share their views on the future of the Afghanistan-US relationship. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has announced…
Senate Armed Service Committee Celebrates Agreement to Spend 32 Times More on Detainees
As Josh Gerstein and Adam Serwer lay out, the Senate Armed Services Committee just passed a new version of the Defense Authorization mandating military detention for terrorists. The language on detention includes the following two paragraphs:
Except…
The Gray Lady Calls the GOP Candidates Gray
The NYT had a hysterical editorial calling out the GOP candidates for claiming that waterboarding is not torture.
As hard as it is to believe, the Republican candidates for president seem to have learned very little from the moral calamities…
IAEA Iran Report Fallout Continues: France Leads Militancy, MEK Rumors, Iran Reconsiders Cooperation
Reaction to the leaked IAEA report on Iran's nuclear technology continues. In a remarkable article in the New York Times that reads more like an Op-Ed (h/t MadDog), we see the writer urging the US to join the more militant posturing coming…
Two MI Counties File Class Action Suit against MERS and Banks for Being Tax Cheats
Two MI County Registers of Deeds--Curtis Hertel of Ingham (Lansing's county) and Nancy Hutchins of Branch--have filed a class action suit against MERS, seeking the taxes the banks should have been paying to counties and the state every time…
This FOIA Request Will Self-Destruct in 10 Seconds
National Security Archive has an update on DOJ's efforts to limit FOIA in the guise of transparency (or, potentially, simply admit what they've been doing for some time). It describes some of the other crummy things DOJ is trying to do (including…
Pakistani Bounty Claims: Adnan Farhan Abd Al Latif and TD-314/00684-02
Benjamin Wittes has been complaining that no one besides Lawfare's writers is looking closely at the DC Circuit decision in Latif.
Why has there been virtually no press coverage of the Latif decision? Other than this article on CNN’s web…
Bibi, Albright (and Warrick) on Iran Nuke Report: "But Wait, There's More!"
Because there hasn't been an immediate, multinational hue and cry to bomb Iran over the leaked IAEA report, both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and David Albright, the designated point person for fomenting fears over Iran's nuclear…
Drowning Government in Antibiotic Tainted Chinese Honey
Marion Nestle describes that the USDA is cutting back on basic research.
This decision, Neuman reports, “reflects a cold-blooded assessment of the economic usefulness”—translation: lack of political clout in the affected industry—of…
Jets, Pats & Other Pro Trash
I promised new Trash for the NFL Sunday slate, and dammit I'm gonna deliver. Plus a certain Ms. Wheel is just dying to predict the Jets, Jets, Jets are gonna whup up all over the Patsies. And who am I to deny the forum for that? So buckle up…
How Did Investigators Find the Victims?
There's one more thing I've been trying to understand from the Sandusky presentment: How did the grand jury find the victims described in the presentment?
For some of the victims, the answer is clear. The mother of Victim 1 (the boy who Sandusky…
Carrier Classic, Veterans, Lions and Huskers Trash Talk
Alright, as you may have heard, there has been a bit of excitement in college sports this week. We first hit on it last Saturday as we slid into another seemingly routine weekend of trash talk. But it has indeed mushroomed into an oxygen consuming…
Penn State's Evil Game of Telephone: Joe Paterno Is Crucial Witness against PSU
Let me avoid any confusion by stating that what follows is not meant to excuse Joe Paterno of any moral or legal duty. He could have stopped an alleged child predator and did not do so and he bears great moral responsibility for his inaction.
With…
Florida Joining Re-awakening? GOP Voters Against SS-Medicare Cuts, Tea Party Chides Scott Over Ethics
The elections from earlier this week may well go down in history as a watershed event in which voters finally began to understand, and then to overwhelmingly reject, the most extreme elements of Republican views that take the "pro-life" movement…
