Posts

BushCo says that--since they haven't seen Petraeus in a week--they clearly couldn't have given him a script for today's hearing. The White House and its allies on Capitol Hill have pushed back hard atthis critique. Administration officials said they are not directing orreviewing the testimony of Petraeus and Crocker. A senior militaryofficial close to Petraeus said the general's congressional testimonyhas not been provided to the White House or the Pentagon "and the

Does it surprise you that the first company to sign an oil deal with Iraqi Kurds is Hunt Oil, a company with very close ties to Bush and our country's intelligence infrastructure? Texas' Hunt Oil Co. and Kurdistan's regional government saidSaturday they've signed a production-sharing contract for petroleumexploration in northern Iraq, the first such deal since the Kurdspassed their own oil and gas law in August.A Hunt subsidiary,Hunt Oil Co.

WTF is the Administration doing, claiming it has briefed members of Congress on the warrantless wiretap program when it hasn't? After the domestic surveillance program was revealed in 2005, formerSenate Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob Graham (D-FL) said thatWhite House briefings that he attended in the Vice President’s office failed to disclose that the administration was spying on Americans: There was no reference made to the fact that we weregoing to…begin unwarranted, illegal —

Mcjoan has a post on how the DOJ intervened all of a sudden into the FCC's consideration of Net Neutrality. As she points out, there's something unusual about DOJ's intervention: it came after the comment period had closed. It was a curious filing, as IP Democracy's Cynthia Brumfield describes: What’s curious about the filing is that, first, it’s an ex parte, orlate, submission in the FCC’s Inquiry on Broadband Practices, mostcommonly known

I have little wisdom to add to this Abu Aardvark post, but I wanted to make sure people saw it: It's kind of lost in the shuffle of the coming battle over thevarious Iraq reports, but I find myself morbidly fascinated by thephotos and reports which have circulated in the Iraqi press aboutBush's meeting in Anbar with the controversial head of the AnbarSalvation Council Sattar Abu Risha.

Marty Lederman points to this excerpt from Jack Goldsmith's book at Slate. Goldsmith explains he only saw Alberto Gonzales disagree with David Addington once--and that Bush ended up siding with Addington. Addington's hard-line nonaccommodation stance always prevailed when thelawyers met to discuss legal policy issues in Alberto Gonzales' office.During these meetings, Gonzales himself would sit quietly in his wingchair, occasionally asking questions but mostly listening as thequerulous Addington did battle with whomever

If you haven't given to the ACLU in a while, here's the donate button. The ACLU (with some help) has scored some important wins this week, starting with today's decision that National Security Letters are unconstitutional. The ACLU said it was improper to issue so-called national securityletters, or NSLs -- investigative tools used by the FBI to compelbusinesses to turn over customer information -- without a judge's orderor grand jury subpoena.

No, seriously. The GAO's report on DHS is really important evidence that Bush has done very little to make this country more safe. But I'm most struck by the fact that the DHS people quoted are making exactly the same complaint the military did last week, when GAO reported that Iraq has met few of its benchmarks (for the record, DHS seems to be doing somewhat better than Iraq, making at

There are a number of details that make Sidney Blumenthal's latest appear to be a happy coincidence of timing. Just after Bush biographer Robert Draper reports that Bush still claims to have believed--in April 2006--that Iraq had WMD, Blumenthal comes out with an article tying up a lot of loose ends on Saddam Hussein's Foreign Minister, Naji al-Sabri, proving Bush was briefed that Saddam did not have WMD. On Sept.