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?
John Rizzo: DOD Engaged in Cyberwarfare with Limited Oversight
I've done two posts on John Rizzo's recent address to ABA's Standing Committee on Law and National Security. But I wanted to call attention to a few more things he said in his talk.
Slightly more than halfway through his talk, he talks about…
Maria Cantwell Tries to Get BP to Define "Legitimate Claims"
One of the highlights of the first of several Deepwater Horizon hearings in Congress this week came when Maria Cantwell tried to get BP American President Lamar McKay to commit to what BP would pay as "legitimate claims." She asked about:
Long…
Walter Pincus' Chummy Torture Apology
This is the kind of lede you'd expect from a dirty hippie blogger, not from a septuagenarian TradMed journalist.
Who other than the acerbic John A. Rizzo, who served a long tenure as the CIA's acting general counsel, would use his first talk…
Judge Rules Torture Doesn't Violate Due Process
In a ruling that anticipates how the government will ignore torture as it tries alleged detainees in civilian court, Judge Lewis Kaplan rejected Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani's efforts to get his indictment for contributing to the 1998 embassy bombings…
The Questions I Should Have Asked
When you live in flyover country and have the opportunity to appear on cable, it lacks some of the niceties of the big city: no green room, no professional makeup artist, and sometimes you have to drive yourself to the studio through Detroit's…
State Secrets Non-Compromise Compromise Architect to Replace Kagan
The great news just keeps coming.
Remember the "new" state secrets policy DOJ announced last year? It basically amounted to a promise that the Attorney General would review any invocation of state secrets to make sure such an invocation was…
Elena Kagan Will Be The Most Unqualified Justice In History
Elena Kagan is a poor selection to replace Justice John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court.
Look on the Bright Side!!!
I've thought of some bright sides regarding the news that Elana Kagan is Obama's pick to replace Stevens:
If ever SCOTUS needs money, Elana Kagan is a great fundrasier!
Imagine how it'll make Republican heads explode when they realize Hamdan…
What's It Take for Holder to Be Allowed to Do a Sunday Show? Kill Miranda!
The White House press made a bit of a todo over the fact that Eric Holder was finally allowed to go on a Sunday show today (he's appearing on both ABC and NBC). Given all the somewhat bizarre claims from people like Rahm that Holder botches…
Joshua Claus: The Rape Threat and the Dead Detainees
Jim White catalogued some of the hesitancy among the traditional media (and, frankly, the blogosphere) to highlight the precise piece of news that DOD banned four reporters from Gitmo over: the name of the witness dubbed Interrogator #1 who…
Pew: 70% Experienced Significant Financial Issue
Jeebus. Found these numbers via Susie.
70% of those surveyed by Pew have either had someone in their household looking for work, had their hours/wages cut, or had problems paying significant bills.
70%.
I'm writing this from the Clusterfuck…
Trash Talk: Viva Los Suns!!
Talk some trash and rip this joint.
EU Won't Hand Over Their Data
Last year and in February, we watched as the EU balked at US demands for data-sharing under the SWIFT program. The Belgian cooperative in charge of the international money transfer database moved its servers to the EU, but the US still wanted…
Cancer, Chemicals, and Corporations
As you might know, my family is a walking cancer cluster: three out of five of us had some form of cancer. What has frustrated me as I've lived through three bouts of cancer in my family was the cancer industry's focus on "curing cancer," with…
DOD Kicks Out Gitmo Reporters for Reporting Publicly Available Information
Spencer just tweeted:
Pentagon BANS Michelle Shephard, Paul Koring, Steven Edwards & @carolrosenberg from #GTMO for reporting Interrogator #1's name #solidarity
And Al Arabiya's Muna Shikaki tweeted:
Office of Sec of Defense issues statement…
"It’d be easier to launch a Hellfire missile at a non-citizen than a citizen"
The whole point of Joe Lieberman's tea-bagger bait Terrorist Expatriation Act, according to his Republican House co-sponsor Charlie Dent, is to make it easier to launch Hellfire missiles at people. And Lieberman, too, ties his citizenship-stripping…
They Used Threat of Prison Rape to Scare Omar Khadr
As Spencer reports from Gitmo, the first interrogator to question Omar Khadr at Bagram told him a story suggesting that if he lied, he'd be sent to an American prison where he'd be likely to get raped.
“I told him a fictitious story we had…
