Where Will Brennan Land in Rahm v. DOJ Spat?
As Jason notes, David Axelrod has already taped a CSPAN response to Jane Mayer's piece on Rahm's spat about distractions like "the law" and "human rights" with Eric Holder and Greg Craig. In it, Axe appears to try to distance the White House…
Mayer on Rahm
I first teased out Rahm Emanuel's role in reversing Obama's early efforts to reclaim our country from torture last July. In August, my comments at Netroots Nation focused on Rahm's role in preventing accountability for torture. I kept tracking…
BAE Settles US and British Anti-Fraud Investigations
Speaking of improper influence in defense contracting, BAE just settled the British and American fraud investigations against it.
BAE Systems will admit two criminal charges and pay fines of £286m to settle US and UK probes into the firm.
It…
Republicans Prepare to Kill Jobs; Democrats Angle for Majority Leader
Brian Beutler reports that the Republicans are prepping to make sure no additional support for jobs gets passed next week.
Senate Democrats want to vote on the first installment of a jobs package as early as Monday, amping up the pressure on…
Hopey Changey Bipartisany Bush!
I've been puzzling all week since this happened last Saturday (January 30, from the pool report).
President Bush 41, with former Fla. Gov. Jeb Bush rolled up to the White House at 9:35 for a meeting with POTUS. At 10:09, the two emerged to…
Shelby Tries to Shut Down US Senate to Benefit Foreign Company
There has been a lot of discussion of how foreign companies will be able to influence elections and politics given the Citizens United deal. But foreign companies are already dominating our politics.
Consider Richard Shelby's decision to…
Obama Had 60 Votes For Dawn Johnsen's Confirmation Last Year; Johnsen Stalled Again This Year
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bmazThe failure of the Obama Administration to support the Dawn Johnsen nomination, a far less than good faith effort that finally resulted in Johnsen's nomination being killed by operation of Senate Rule, was not due to a lack of 60 votes for cloture on the nomination, but instead was to permit the abuse of the OLC, just as the Bush Administration before them, in order to cover up governmental illegality.
ZOMG! A Congressperson Accuses CIA of Lying to Congress
Just take a look at these traitorous accusations a certain Congressperson made about the CIA yesterday:
misleading and some might say lying to Congress by the intel community
The [intelligence] community covered it up,
this committee…
Assassination Permission Slips and Hall Passes
Yesterday, Dennis Blair gave the House Intelligence Committee an explanation of the "specially permission" that the Government grants itself before it places a US citizen on its kill list.
The U.S. intelligence community policy on killing American…
Google Boondoggle With No Such Agency
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bmazGoogle is entering a partnership with the NSA.
Holder to Republicans: Stop Being Such WATBs about Miranda Warnings and Mukasey's Decisions
Eric Holder just sent the following letter to a bunch of whiny Republican Senators trying to make an issue about Americans respecting the rule of law. (I'm posting the whole thing bc there's a lot of excellent smack down in it.)
Dear Senator…
Frank Luntz's Ideal Small Businessperson: Democratic Congressman Mark Schauer
You know that Frank Luntz memo telling Republicans how to kill Wall Street reform?
Republican message guru Frank Luntz has put together a playbook to help derail financial regulatory reform.
In a 17-page memo titled, "The Language of…
Breaking! A Month of Interrogation Works Better than Waterboarding Someone 183 Times
As Admiral Mullen just testified to Congress, Underwear Bomber Umar Abdulmutallab has been cooperating with the FBI.
The blood-thirsty right, of course, has been screaming all month that Abdulmutallab wasn't taken immediately to a military…
The House Will Vote to Eliminate Health Insurance's Anti-Trust Exemption Next Week
I just got off a conference call with Speaker Pelosi. While she had a lot of optimistic things to say about the passage of a Senate plus sidecar bill, the big piece of news is that the House will pass (meaning, I presume she has the votes) a…
The Republican Base Rejects Prop 8 Family Vision, but not Prop 8
Fresh off the Prop 8 trial, I was interested in what Markos' latest poll--of 2003 Republicans--says about equal rights for gay men and women in this country.
First, the poll shows that Republicans think gays should be allowed or not allowed…
The Jobs Bills: The Battle for COBRA
Congress has not yet seen fit to give Americans health care. But there's a new health care battle heating up right in the middle of the jobs bills that will be the next focus of Congress.
The jobs bill the House passed in December extended…
TeaBugger Victimology
Oh, this is rich. Chief TeaBugger, James O'Keefe is preparing to argue that, the whole time he was sitting in jail with the son of the acting US Attorney for Shreveport, the US Attorney for New Orleans was abusing his rights.
Interviewed on…
OPR Report Timeline
In response to the news that David Margolis spiked the misconduct conclusion in the OPR Report on OLC justifications for torture, I wanted to put together a timeline of its construction. Two things stick out. First, the role of Mary Patrice…
What Glenn Greenwald Said On American Terrorism Cowardice
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bmazJust go read it. Because every word Glenn Greenwald wrote in his post today, entitled Nostalgia for Bush/Cheney Radicalism, the gospel truth. It is rare that you will see a post here just pointing you somewhere else because the other source says it all. This is one of those times.
Revisiting the al-Harithi/Derwish Assassination
I wanted to expand on this comment, because the discussion of whether Anwar al-Awlaki is on both the JSOC and CIA kill lists or not has focused new attention on the assassination, on November 3, 2002, of Abu Ali al-Harithi and Kamal Derwish.
Greg…
