Helicopter Ben Invented Tax Evasion Vehicles for the Real Housewives of Wall Street
Matt Taibbi is out with his take on the Fed's bailout lending revealed last month. He focuses on how two rich housewives with no apparent business experience got almost a quarter of a billion dollars in the TALF program.
In August 2009, John…
PJ Crowley's Acting Replacement Can't Differentiate Us from China on Human Rights and Transparency
Josh Gerstein provides the entirety of an exchange between former State Department spokesperson PJ Crowley's acting replacement, Mark Toner, AP reporter Matthew Lee, and Reuters reporter Arshad Mohammed. At issue is how State can still claim…
Ongoing Fallout from Raymond Davis Affairs Reveals Extent of Our Activities in Pakistan
When the US detained the Kuwaiti-Pakistani Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and interrogated him for years (including at least a month of harsh torture), he revealed a handful of al Qaeda operatives in the US. When Pakistan held the American contractor,…
DC Mayor Gray Arrested: Finally a Leader In Washington DC Finds His Shoes
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bmazWashington DC Mayor Gray and several other DC City Council members have been arrested protesting in the streets over the shabby treatment of the District and its women in the "budget compromise" passed last Friday night. If only other leaders in Washington DC had the guts to stand up for their citizens.
US Willing to Bomb Libya to Maintain UN Credibility, But Not Allow an "Official" Visit to Bradley Manning
By my count, the OLC memo retroactively authorizing the bombing of Libya mentions the importance of UN or UN Security Council credibility nine times, including these two extended discussions.
In prior opinions, this Office has identified a…
Democracy and Now Capitalism Are Failing Ideologically; But What Comes Next?
As I was prepping for my panel on Saturday, I was thinking a lot about PJ Crowley. Crowley is, as you'll recall, the State Department spokesperson who was ousted after he called the treatment of Bradley Manning "ridiculous and counterproductive…
Administration Continues to Cling to Precedent of Slavery, Genocide, and Illegal Belligerency to Legitimize Its Actions
It has increasingly become clear that the Obama Administration treats the category of "terrorist" more flexibly than the Bush Administration did. With the introduction of the term "countering violent extremism," for example, the Administration…
Obama's Would-Be "Rule of Law" Counselor Calls Bradley Manning's Treatment Unconstitutional
In Charlie Savage's story from last year on the sidelining of Laurence Tribe as head of an "Access to Justice" program at DOJ, he reported that Tribe originally believed he would serve as counselor for "rule of law" issues in Obama's Administration.
There…
The Fog of Obamawar In Hi-Def 1080p
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bmazToday, David Cloud portrays the vignette of the cold, detached remote killing in the Afghanistan countryside. Tomorrow it will be open ground in the vicinity of Nogales, Ciudad Juarez, Tijuana or Key West. Hammers like this, once set in motion and cravenly unrestrained by the men in American political leadership and White House, always find more nails. Stay tuned, drone life and remote enforcement is coming to a city and town near you.
Formula One Trash Talk: Malaysian Grand Prix
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bmazWell, this weekend is round two in this year's F1 Circus, the Malaysian Grand Prix. The field is set and Vettel is on pole.
William Welch and DOJ's Mojo Is Not Risen
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bmazDOJ and Willilam Welch have a problem in their case against ex CIA spook Jeffrey Feldman for his alleged leaks to Jim Risen of the New York Times.
OLC Memo as Time Machine
I'm going to have more to say about the Libya memo the Administration released yesterday. But I just wanted to point out something about the structure of it.
Here's the first paragraph:
This memorandum memorializes advice this Office provided…
Solicitor General Email FOIA Shows White House Stunt Fail
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bmazIn all the government shutdown, nuclear meltdown and Libya war of choice news dominating the media landscape the last couple of weeks, a completely juicy little tidbit was pried out of the Obama Administration by a right wing news outfit - and…
Terror Trials, Ray Kelly and the FBI Director Job
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bmazThere is a report today that the Obama White House is ready to offer the FBI Director's job to NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly; if it does, it would be a profoundly negative comment on the Administration's craven handling of the civilian trials in Article III courts issue.
Another Two-Tier Justice System: for "Unauthorized" Leaks
I'm traveling to Boston today for the National Conference on Media Reform (if you're in Boston, come see my panel on "Independent Journalism and International Crisis" on Saturday!). So blogging will be light today.
But I wanted to point to…
Intelligence Community Will Close Gaping Hole that Allegedly Led to WikiLeaks Disclosure ... in 2013
I did a long post yesterday describing how embarrassingly, pathetically bad DOD's information security was and remains 3 years after a malware attack and a full year after the alleged WikiLeaks leak. Along with DOD's gaping security problems,…
One Way to Make Sending Frank Wisner to "Negotiate" with Mubarak Look Smart
CNN is reporting that Curt Weldon, the ethically and legally challenged former Congressman with ties to Manucher Ghorbanifar, has gone to Libya to try to negotiate with Muammar Qaddafi. In a NYT op-ed, Weldon makes the case for why he's the…
The Charismatic Blonde Women and the Consent Decree
DDay reported on OCC's attempt to preempt a foreclosure settlement on Monday. Today, Yves Smith has a long post giving the consent decrees the banks are trying to roll out in lieu of a real foreclosure settlement the disdain they deserve.
Wow,…
Chasing Humanitarian Organizations Out of Afghanistan
At first, when I read this story describing how Hamid Karzai's government is insisting that a bunch of security contractors pay back taxes before he'll recertify them to work in Afghanistan, I though it was just out of a desire to get rid of…
How Many Other Journalists Does the FBI Consider Informants?
Yesterday, the Center for Public Integrity revealed the contents of a secret FBI memo treating a top ABC journalist--who turned out to be Christopher Isham (currently CBS' DC bureau chief)--as a confidential source for a claim that Iraq's intelligence…