Crackers and Castor Beans: FBI Busts Wannabe Ricin WMD "Terrorists" in Georgia
Almost as if in response to Marcy's noting less than two weeks ago that at least in Detroit the FBI overlooks white terrorists when profiling, the FBI yesterday announced the arrests of four individuals in Georgia accused of planning attacks…
Afghanistan Exit Strategy: "Fight, Talk, Build" Working (for Fight, Anyway)
As the US stumbles around, trying to find its way out of a country it has occupied for over ten years, the path "forward" remains as murky as ever. Just under two weeks ago, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was chosen as the point person…
Blind American Concern Troll Finds Nut
You may not be able to say this every day, but hats off to the Washington Post's Richard Cohen. In an op-ed for Tuesday's print edition that first hit the online version late Monday, Cohen analogizes the Masters of the Universe on Wall Street…
It's A Great Football Weekend Charlie Brown
The St. Louis Cardinals are your 2011 World Series Champs, and man game 7 sure was a big letdown after the scintillating game 6. But now it is on to football and Formula One, where the heart of this blog truly lies. And Charlie Brown has more…
JSOC Denial of Ignoring Torture in Afghan Prisons Not Credible--They Trained Afghan Military Police
Yesterday, the Washington Post finally caught up to where Marcy was over two weeks ago and discussed the UN report "Treatment of Conflict-Related Detainees in Afghan Custody" (pdf). I'd like to move beyond the primary findings of the report,…
The FBI: Now, with 48% More Domestic Surveillance ... but No Banksters
The FBI produced a self-congratulatory report of the changes they've made since 9/11. It describes the FBI's new intelligence focus. It boasts that it has a functional computer system (which for the FBI is an accomplishment) and 10,200 SCI work…
A Rancid Foreclosure Fraud Settlement Trial Balloon, Herbert Obamavilles, What Digby Said & The Import of the Occupy Movement
I do not usually just post simply to repeat what another somewhat similarly situated blogger has said. But late this afternoon/early this evening, I was struck by two things almost simultaneously. Right as I read Gretchen Morgenson's latest…
The Scandal Is that Jonathan Alter Doesn't See the Scandal
[Sorry for my unannounced absence. I'm on a road trip visiting Mr. EW's family. Thanks to Jim White and bmaz for guarding the likker cabinet! I know they'll keep it safe!]
I once got in trouble for mocking people who thought that blowjobs…
A Great World Series Arises From The Ashes
So, I fully apologize for letting one and all down in the heavy Tebow content department last weekend. It was inexcusable, and I do know how important it is to you all to get THE FULL TEBOW. Well, I am here to make amends. There is one hitch…
The Coordinated Leaky Drips In The White House
As I've noted previously, there has been a hue and cry against the critical and untenable use, and abuse, of secrecy by the United States government. There has always been some abuse of the government's classified evidence for political gain…
The "Good Faith" Dodge: Moving From Torture to Business?
One short phrase in an article bmaz alerted me to yesterday set my blood to boiling. I fumed about it off and on through the rest of the day and even found myself going back to thinking about it when I should have been drifting off to sleep.
The…
Commercializing Campaign Ads: California Roll For Mayor
We have an interesting phenomenon underway here in Phoenix - the outright commercialization of political campaign ads. It is the handiwork of a Scottsdale sushi restaurant, Stingray Sushi. In short, a corporation is using a political race as…
BBC Documentary Exposes ISI Training, Equipping of Taliban Militants
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wf3KgUoBJno[/youtube]
For just over a month, the US and Pakistan have been struggling to deal with tensions created by former Joint Chiefs Chairman Michael Mullen's testimony to the Senate Armed Services…
DOJ's "New" FOIA Rule Just Attempt to Formalize Practice They've Been Following for Years
As you no doubt have read, the government wants to issue a rule that says they can lie when people request FOIA information. The language reads,
(1) In the event that a component identifies records that may be subject to exclusion from the…
"The Patriot Act, which the president signed into law on October 2001"
I only noticed two things that might generously be considered typos (as opposed to outright falsehoods or lies of omission) in Dick Cheney's entire infernal tome. There's this reference to an October 10, 2002 speech from Jello Jay Rockefeller…
Ten Years Ago, Anthrax Attacks--and Judy Miller--Had Huge Effect on Passage of Patriot Act
Ten years ago today, George W. Bush signed the Patriot Act into law in what many consider to be the single biggest blow to civil liberties our country has seen. I will leave it to others to detail the damage done to our rights, but a quick…
Confirmed: the Government Hid--and Is Still Hiding--Manssor Arbabsiar's First Docket
I first raised questions of why the government had charged Manssor Arbabsiar--the Scary Iran Plotter--with an amended complaint almost two weeks ago. As I noted then, the obvious existence of an earlier sealed complaint might suggest the possibility…
The Informant Racket and the Scary Iran Plot
Jeralyn Merritt has been focusing closely on the DEA's use of informants of late. And as part of a discussion of how much the DEA informant in the Viktor Bout case, Carlos Sagastume, has made off his lucrative informant career ($8 million and…
Feigned Ignorance Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry
After the US killed AQAP propagandist Samir Khan in a drone strike, the State Department made two calls to his family to express condolences. Doing so was probably the only way they could maintain the fiction his death was an accident, while…
Why Isn't the Federal Government Treating the Maine OWS Attack as WMD Terrorism?
Mohamed Osman Mohamud's alleged terrorist act was to take an inert bomb constructed by the FBI and attempt to detonate it in Portland, OR's Courthouse Square; had he succeeded, a bomb would have gone off in a public space full of people and,…
