Once Again, Obama Empowers State Department to Lecture Others
Almost a year ago, Obama celebrated the anniversary of the Convention against Torture by promising to have the Department of State look at other countries' use of torture.
My administration is committed to taking concrete actions against torture…
Search and Replace: Sexually Dangerous Person, Terrorist
Just as a little thought experiment, let's look how some passages from SCOTUS nominee Elena Kagan's successful argument in U.S. v. Comstock--in which SCOTUS just voted 7-2 to affirm the federal government's authority to indefinitely detain sex…
Abu Zubaydah's Habeas Doodle
I want to make one more point about the interview Jason Leopold did with Jon Kiriakou last week. Jason asks Kiriakou about Dan Coleman's judgment that Abu Zubaydah's diaries reveal him to be mentally ill. Kiriakou agrees with Coleman that the…
First Arab-American, Rima Fakih, Wins Miss USA
In what has been billed locally as the first Arab-American to win, Michigan's Rima Fakih won the Miss USA pageant tonight.
The 24-year-old brunette from Michigan beat out four blondes and 46 other women for the 2010 Miss USA title after nearly…
When Kagan Defenders Hurt Her Case
Greg Craig, who was ousted from the Obama Administration because he's too much of a purist on archaic things like the Constitution, reassures us that Elena Kagan is largely a "progressive" in the mold of the guy who ousted him.
Spy Contractor v. Spy Contractor
Mark Mazzetti has a follow-up story to his previous expose of a DOD-funded contractor network conducting spying in Pakistan. In an article providing many new details about complaints from CIA about the DOD contractor, he comes pretty close to…
Faisal Shahzad's "Waiver" of His Rights
Faisal Shahzad was arrested just before midnight on May 3.
On May 5, the Pakistani newspaper Dawn reported that one of Shahzad's friends and his father-in-law, Iftikhar Mian (elsewhere named as Mohammad Asif Mian), had been detained by Pakistani…
Does the Right to a Lawyer Disappear with Miranda?
Charlie Savage has a story explaining what the Administration means when it says it wants to "modernize" Miranda warnings. As he explains, it's not just or even primarily Miranda warnings that are the problem (according to the Administration),…
Elena Kagan and Maher Arar
Remember how I suggested one of the bright sides of Elena Kagen's nomination to SCOTUS would make Republican heads explode when they realize Hamdan lawyer Neal Katyal may be Acting Solicitor General?
Well, keep your eye out for splattered…
DOD's Latest Black Site
Fresh off of the ICRC's confirmation that DOD has a black site in Bagram, Marc Ambinder has a long piece on it, describing it as run by part of the DIA, the Defense Counterintelligence and Human Intelligence Center, and downplaying, somewhat,…
Eric Holder Visits HJC
You can watch along at CSPAN3 or the Committee Stream. Republican talking point of the day seems to be that Obama's Counterterrorism approach is to have incompetent terrorists.
Nadler wastes no time to pitch his State Secrets bill. Go Nadler!…
Betty Sutton on the Coerced Transocean Statements
As you may have read, Transocean (the company that owns the Deepwater Horizon rig) made everyone rescued from the rig sign statements laying out whether they were involved in the incident, and whether they had gotten hurt.
Lawyers for the oil…
Banned Gitmo Reporters Appeal
McClatchy provides details of the appeal the outlets for four reporters banned from Gitmo for publishing the name of Joshua Claus have made to the Pentagon.
Arguing that a Pentagon order banning four journalists from covering military commissions…
The House Always Wins
Why hasn't there been more discussion about this article?
It is the Wall Street equivalent of a perfect game of baseball — 27 up, 27 down, the final score measured in millions of dollars a day.
Despite the running unease in world markets,…
That Iraq Withdrawal We Elected in 2008?
Not gonna happen.
I have sent the enclosed notice to the Federal Register for publication, continuing the national emergency with respect to the stabilization of Iraq. This notice states that the national emergency with respect to the stabilization…
Lois Capps: Booms Will Only Collect 15% of Spilled Oil
The eye-popping part of this exchange is the news that all the efforts to protect the Gulf Coast are only going to collect a fraction of it from reaching the shore.
But the whole comment is worthwhile, because Capps expresses so well the…
Jon Kiriakou: Libby Knew Plame Was Covert
Jason Leopold has a long article and videotape of an interview with Jon Kiriakou that you should check out in full. I'll discuss their conversation about Abu Zubaydah's torture (and, more interestingly, Kiriakou's knowledge about who Abu Zubaydah…
CEO Mud Wrestling
One of the key moments of yesterday's Environment and Public Works hearing on the BP Disaster came when Tom Udall tried to pin the CEOs down on whether, as reported by WSJ, at BP's direction, Halliburton swapped out the drilling mud for seawater…
A More Revealing BP Hearing?
The House Commerce Committee is holding the third hearing into what went wrong on the BP Deepwater Horizon rig (CSPAN is showing it on CSPAN3). As is typical for a Waxman/Stupak hearing, the Committee has done its homework, advancing the understanding…
The Flaming Hypocrisy Of US Terrorist Designation
Is the US government prone to using their prohibited terrorist designations in some kind of shell game for political expediency?