Two MI Counties File Class Action Suit against MERS and Banks for Being Tax Cheats
Two MI County Registers of Deeds--Curtis Hertel of Ingham (Lansing's county) and Nancy Hutchins of Branch--have filed a class action suit against MERS, seeking the taxes the banks should have been paying to counties and the state every time…
This FOIA Request Will Self-Destruct in 10 Seconds
National Security Archive has an update on DOJ's efforts to limit FOIA in the guise of transparency (or, potentially, simply admit what they've been doing for some time). It describes some of the other crummy things DOJ is trying to do (including…
Pakistani Bounty Claims: Adnan Farhan Abd Al Latif and TD-314/00684-02
Benjamin Wittes has been complaining that no one besides Lawfare's writers is looking closely at the DC Circuit decision in Latif.
Why has there been virtually no press coverage of the Latif decision? Other than this article on CNN’s web…
Bibi, Albright (and Warrick) on Iran Nuke Report: "But Wait, There's More!"
Because there hasn't been an immediate, multinational hue and cry to bomb Iran over the leaked IAEA report, both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and David Albright, the designated point person for fomenting fears over Iran's nuclear…
Drowning Government in Antibiotic Tainted Chinese Honey
Marion Nestle describes that the USDA is cutting back on basic research.
This decision, Neuman reports, “reflects a cold-blooded assessment of the economic usefulness”—translation: lack of political clout in the affected industry—of…
Jets, Pats & Other Pro Trash
I promised new Trash for the NFL Sunday slate, and dammit I'm gonna deliver. Plus a certain Ms. Wheel is just dying to predict the Jets, Jets, Jets are gonna whup up all over the Patsies. And who am I to deny the forum for that? So buckle up…
How Did Investigators Find the Victims?
There's one more thing I've been trying to understand from the Sandusky presentment: How did the grand jury find the victims described in the presentment?
For some of the victims, the answer is clear. The mother of Victim 1 (the boy who Sandusky…
Carrier Classic, Veterans, Lions and Huskers Trash Talk
Alright, as you may have heard, there has been a bit of excitement in college sports this week. We first hit on it last Saturday as we slid into another seemingly routine weekend of trash talk. But it has indeed mushroomed into an oxygen consuming…
Penn State's Evil Game of Telephone: Joe Paterno Is Crucial Witness against PSU
Let me avoid any confusion by stating that what follows is not meant to excuse Joe Paterno of any moral or legal duty. He could have stopped an alleged child predator and did not do so and he bears great moral responsibility for his inaction.
With…
Florida Joining Re-awakening? GOP Voters Against SS-Medicare Cuts, Tea Party Chides Scott Over Ethics
The elections from earlier this week may well go down in history as a watershed event in which voters finally began to understand, and then to overwhelmingly reject, the most extreme elements of Republican views that take the "pro-life" movement…
A Terrorist Goes to Prison for 33 Years
On Wednesday, DOJ announced the sentencing of Carlos Mario Jimenez-Naranjo, one of the key leaders in Colombia's AUC terrorist group, to 33 years in prison.
Carlos Mario Jimenez-Naranjo, aka “Macaco,” a paramilitary leader and one of Colombia’s…
ODNI's Response on Intelligence Oversight Board Shows Lack of Intelligence
In September, I wrote about EFF's efforts to find out whether Obama had an Intelligence Oversight Board--the board that's supposed to provide some outside review over potential problems and abuses in the intelligence community.
ODNI has finally…
Iraq Redux? Media Parroting Dubious IAEA Iran Claims
In a remarkable column in the Guardian, Brian Whitaker points out both the uncritical way in which most of the press is merely parroting the accusations in the IAEA report on Iran's nuclear technology and how this process feels very much like…
William Welch Appears to Commit Prosecutorial Misconduct. Again.
DOJ has submitted its statement of issues it plans to appeal in the Jeff Sterling case. They are:
(1) Whether the district court erred in finding that author James Risen was protected by a "reporter's privilege" and, therefore, could not be…
John Rizzo Latest Target for DOJ Probe into Leaking
It pains me to defend John Rizzo. After all, his willful dumbness--or more likely, outright deceit--played a key role in our country's approval of torture.
Still, I have mixed feelings about investigating--and probably reprimanding, but not…
On JoePa
I was born in 1968. At that point, my grandfather was still a Penn State professor. My mom and her 3 siblings were all Penn State grads. Joe Paterno had been head coach at that point already for a year and a half. My entire life, this football…
As the Next Phase of the Crash Accelerates, Watch for More Looting
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The earth avoided getting hit by an asteroid last night. Then today, FEMA tested its catastrophic communications system, only to discover some problems. In my own case, the warning signal started skipping, dadadadadadada,…
Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri Delays His Own Trial until after Presidential Election
As Muna Shikaki and Carol Rosenberg just tweeted, Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri requested--and the military judge granted--that his trial not start until November 9, 2012. Which would put it several days after the Presidential election.
The logic…
SCOTUS and GPS Tracking: US v. Jones and Secret PATRIOT
As I read the transcript of the SCOTUS hearing in the US v. Jones yesterday, I was most interested in what the comments suggest about the government's secret use of the PATRIOT Act to--presumably--use phone geolocation to track people. (Here's…
Did the US Authorize Albright and Sanger to Publish the IAEA Iran Report?
Major media organizations around the world are reacting to the IAEA's report on Iran's nuclear technology.
Okay, anyone who reads my posts knows that the sentence above should include a link to the IAEA's website and its posting of the…
