PG&E's Profitable Threat to Our Critical Infrastructure
Back when PA's Department of Homeland Security was investigating anti-fracking activists as potential terrorist threats to critical infrastructure, I noted that the bigger threat to critical infrastructure pipelines was corporations that pocket…
Mitt's Welfare-Driven Vulture Capitalism
When I hosted Steve Rattner at FDL Book Salon, I noted how blind he was to problems of other private equity firms--in the context of the auto bailout, Cerberus. So I was interested in Rattner's attempt to defend Mitt's tenure at Bain.
Bain…
After Trading Jobs, Petraeus and Panetta Have Traded Sides in Military vs. Intelligence Differences
What a difference a year makes.
Here is the New York Times with some of the fallout from the Afghanistan National Intelligence Estimate prepared in December, 2010, in an article published about a week after the report was supplied to…
Pissing on the Peace Process(es)
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I hope to get around to saying more about the latest assassinated Iranian scientist, but in the meantime, I wanted to point out a coincidence of timing.
Jim Lobe argues convincingly that the assassination of…
Who Will Redact Our Next Big Constitutional Debate?
In her Gitmo anniversary piece, Dahlia Lithwick, piggybacking on Adam Liptak's earlier report, used the extensive redactions in the DC Circuit Opinion overturning Adnan Latif's habeas petition to illustrate how little the courts are telling…
The OLC Opinion on Obama's Recess Appointments
Out of the blue this morning, the Obama Administration has released the OLC opinion it relied on in making last weeks recess appointments of Richard Cordray to the CFPB and others to the NLRB. Several legal analysts and pundits have lobbied…
Torturing the Truth Vigilantes
"WHAT ELSE ARE WE ON THIS EARTH TO DO???," Dan Froomkin tweeted as he contemplated the NYT's Public Editor, Arthur Brisbane, asking for reader input on whether or not its reporters should correct false statements made by those they report on.
I’m…
Zardari Flees to Dubai Again Under Cover of "One Day" Trip: Is He Finished?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfqrl17tZCw[/youtube]
Events continue to unfold at a very rapid pace in Pakistan. On Tuesday, I had noted, in comments to my post on the constitutional crisis facing the country over implementing the…
Santa's Elves Just Got Fired
Remember the "good" jobs report last week? As Dean Baker explained, many of the new jobs were actually the "couriers" who delivered your holiday presents.
The sharp drop in the unemployment rate over the last four months (from 9.1 percent to…
Why Won't the FAA Tell EFF Who's Flying the Drones in US Airspace?
According to this October 2010 report, these are all the locations at which someone--DOD, DHS, and NASA are publicly admitted users; "Other Government Agencies" (spooks) are always included in the discussion though not detailed--got waivers…
Associate Attorney General Thomas Perrelli to Leave DOJ in March
The guy in charge of--among other things--the elusive foreclosure fraud settlement with the banksters just told NPR's Carrie Johnson he'll be leaving in March.
Associate Attorney General Tom Perrelli will leave the third highest-ranking post…
The Mafia Bank
In his book, McMafia, Misha Glenny describes how mobsters filled the vacuum left by communism in Eastern Europe and Russia.
The new circumstances bewildered old international institutions. All had to improvise and no party quite understood…
"Creative Destruction" as Catchall
Matt Yglesias has responded to my post on the destruction wrought by some capitalism with a fairly narrow complaint about my sarcastic comment about what I still maintain his original post entailed: an apology for the kind of destruction that…
This Gitmo Anniversary Needs to Be about Bagram, Too
On a near daily basis in the last week or so, Jason Leopold has tweeted some quote from the daily White House press briefing in which a journalist asks Jay Carney a question about detention, to which Carney responds by insisting the Administration…
Iran Begins Uranium Enrichment at Qom Tuesday, Enrichment Scientist at Natanz Assassinated Wednesday
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton railed Tuesday against Iran's beginning of operations at its Qom uranium enrichment facility, which is buried deep within a mountain to protect it from bunker-buster bombs. Less than 24 hours later,…
The Greatness of America: "Ashes of Doomed Factories, Pink-Slipped Workers, and Towns Laid to Waste"
I'm utterly delighted with this paragraph:
But as is so often the case, the reality is more complicated. Almost every successful business career is built on the ashes of doomed factories, pink-slipped workers, and towns laid to waste.
Not…
Our New Teachers about Rule of Law
The Gray Lady is dedicating space this week to reflections on Gitmo. In addition to a debate on it (more on that tomorrow), it offered Lakhdar Boumediene and Murat Kurnaz space to tell their stories, albeit in the opinion section.
Both men…
Fast and Furious Money Laundering
Every time I read Treasury's updates of sanctions designations, I'm reminded that two of our three new trade partners--Colombia and Panama--are really centers for corruption, money laundering, and crime. One of three new kingpins added to the…
Commodity Bubbles and the Resource Curse
The FT links to this Oxford Policy Management study showing that 15 low and medium income countries have become newly dependent primarily on some commodity--fuel or minerals--for export income in the last 14 years.
The number of low- and middle-income…
In Constitutional Showdown, Pakistan Supreme Court Cites Quaint Olmstead v. US on Rule of Law
The precarious hold that Pakistan's civilian government has on power took another severe blow today, as the Supreme Court handed down a decision (pdf) which threatens to find Prime Minister Yousuf Reza Gilani unfit to hold office. At issue…
