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,…
America's Privatized Repression
Corey Robin has an important post on America's privatized repression. He starts by describing how, after watching a panel on Occupy Wall Street in which she appeared, the freelancer who got arrested while she was covering the Brooklyn Bridge…
Pakistan Update: 18,000 Flee Khyber Area, Haqqani Insist Taliban Must Lead Talks
Last week's visit by a delegation of high-ranking US officials to Pakistan featured the ironic use of the US Secretary of State to deliver a newly militarized message to the Pakistanis regarding the way forward, with the introduction of…
How the Fed Helped Qaddafi Keep His $200B in Loot
I suggested yesterday that the West will be playing dumb about the extent to which Qaddafi looted the Libyan people becomes known.
But what about how Qaddafi looted us--or, at least, the Fed?
As this article laid out, one of the means…
Why Does Duqu Matter?
The short answer is that if your PC got infected by Stuxnet last year, you were just collateral damage, unless you were operating a very specific set of uranium enrichment centrifuges. If you get Duqu this year, your network is under attack…
The West Is Shocked--Shocked!--to Find Qaddafi's Loot in their Casinos!
[youtube]-Gf8NK1WAOc[/youtube]
Now that they're dancing on Moammar Qaddafi's grave (or would be, if the rebels would end the trophy show of his body so he can be buried), they're no doubt faced with a dilemma.
How to get all the money…
Now That Training in Iraq is a Failure, Petraeus No Longer Mentioned
A remarkable story in this morning's Washington Post addresses a report released today from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. The report details that the training of police forces in Iraq has been a failure:
Over…
MoDo's Camels and Ponies
Having MoDo vouch for the "sangfroid" of Saudi Ambassador Adel al-Jubeir (who, she notes, once saved her from being punished by Saudi religious police for dressing inappropriately) is about as amusing as having David Ignatius announce the Scary…
