DIA Failed to Protect Jose Padilla's Welfare
On June 11, SCOTUS denied cert in Jose Padilla's suit against Donald Rumsfeld, former DIA Director Lowell Jacoby, and others at DOD for his denial of habeas corpus and abusive detention. On June 28, DOD responded to a FOIA Jeff Kaye submitted…
Fat Al Gore Colludes with Banksters in the Midwest
There's an ominous storm brewing in flyover country that may amount to little more than higher food and fuel prices, or may amount to something else.
First there's the drought. Last week's heat wave and the last month's dry weather hit just…
Rehman: Drones in Pakistan "Radicalize Footsoldiers, Tribes and Entire Villages"
I had missed Christiane Amanpour's Monday evening interview with Pakistan's Ambassador Sherry Rehman, but an article in today's Express Tribune alerted me to it. Video from the interview is embedded above. Putting aside the ridiculous crap…
First They Came for WikiLeaks ... Then They Came for Pot Dispensaries ... Then Online Sharing
Remember when Visa and PayPal cut off services to WikiLeaks as a result of what was clearly Administration pressure? The Administration never explicitly revealed it had pressured the financial services companies to cut off WikiLeaks. It never…
NYPD's Counterterrorism Strengths: Bigfooting, Entrapping, and Overselling
Justin Elliott takes the debunking I did here one step further: a claim by claim debunking of the NYPD's claims to have thwarted 14 attacks against the city. He helpfully groups his debunkery into three groups:
Real attacks the NYPD had no…
Security Clearance Tyranny
Let's review three data points on security clearances. They'll show that our system of security clearances are increasingly becoming an arbitrary system of control that does more to foster cowed national security employees than to foster actual…
McClatchy Exposes NATO Lies on Afghan Force Capability
Back in April, I noted that it appeared that NATO was engaged in an effort to bolster the image of Afghan forces by overstating their role in repelling insurgent attacks, assigning capabilities to them that seemed suddenly much higher than…
The Banksters Know They're Banksters
The headline news from this survey is that almost a quarter of 500 bankster executives surveyed responded they need to engage in ethical or legal wrongdoing to succeed, and a sixth said they'd definitely engage in insider trading to make $10M…
The Sevenfold Increase in Emergencies at AT&T
In its response to Ed Markey's questions about law enforcement requests for cellphone data, AT&T attributed the growing number of requests it gets to its expanding customer base.
To keep these numbers in perspective, AT&T serves over…
Our "Cooperation" with Yemen
Since we killed Anwar al-Awlaki and especially since Abed Rabu Mansour Hadi has taken over as President of Yemen, anonymous counterterrorism officials have repeatedly boasted how good our counterterrorism cooperation with Yemen is.
But this…
The Tracking Device in Your Pocket
Eric Lichtblau has a story summarizing what Ed Markey discovered after he asked cellphone companies to tell him how many law enforcement requests they respond to every year. And while some of the companies (AT&T and Cricket, at least) claim…
Deadly Fallout from Reopening of Pakistan Border Crossings: Taliban IED's, US Drone Strikes on First Responders
Last week, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton apologized to Pakistan over the November attack on a Pakistan border post in which the US killed 24 Pakistani troops. The apology was delivered on Tuesday and the first supply trucks passed through…
Withholding the Tax Decision: SCOTUSblog on the ObamaCare Decision
Having served as the liveblog link to a widely-anticipated court decision myself, I probably read Tom Goldstein's tick-tock of how the decision got reported differently than others. Most interesting for me?
SCOTUSblog is not credentialed…
Rupert Murdoch and the Invisible Hand Job of Capitalism
Someone let Rupert Murdoch free on Twitter again.
Libor " scandal" very suspicious. 2008/9 huge crisis and Brown should defend pressure to keep rates down and prevent meltdown.
Don't know, but suspect Diamond scapegoat used by old establishment…
The Wonderful Wet At Wimbledon and Silverstone
While we in the States deal with sweltering heat across the country, our "special friends", the Brits, are having a run of wet weather over one of the most compelling fortnights in recent history across the pond. You see, not only has Wimbledon…
Failed Overseers Prepare to Legislate Away Successful Oversight
Before I talk about the Gang of Four's proposed ideas to crack down on leaks, let's review what a crop of oversight failures these folks are.
The only one of the Gang of Four who has stayed out of the media of late--Dutch Ruppersberger--has…
The Incidental Anti-Drug Spying on a White SUV
I hinted at this earlier, but it's worth making explicit. In his reporting from Holloman Air Force Base, Mark Mazzetti revealed that the Air Force practices drone targeting on civilian traffic driving close to the base.
Holloman sits on almost…
Manned Flights Kill Civilians Too
NPR's Kelly McEvers just released a story with some on-the-ground reporting on attacks in Yemen attributed to the US. She focuses closely on an attack on Jaar I've discussed before in the context of reports on Obama's embrace of signature strikes…
Umar Patek: Indonesia's 20 Year Sentence Versus One Errant Drone Strike
Mark Mazzetti has a fascinating collection of details on drones. In addition to showing drone pilots training in New Mexico practicing by tracking (and therefore incidentally collecting intelligence on) US civilian cars and displaying a real…
Selective Prosecution from CIA's US Attorney
In its response to John Kiriakou's claim he is being selectively prosecuted, the government cites this passage from US v. Armstrong.
A selective prosecution claim asks a court to exercise judicial power over a special province of the Executive.…
