Entries by emptywheel

Put Your Own–I Mean, Your Very Own–House in Order First

Yet another old-school journalist calls on the Toobz to clean up its acts and adopt the “ethics” of old journalism that have already failed our society. But I’m most amused by the humorous error in his own op-ed calling for accuracy and fairness. Apparently, Professor Helzinki believes that journalists are leading the fight to debunk the “Obama in the madrassa rumor,” rather than propagate it themselves.

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When All EOs Are Pixie Dust, It Means Dick Can Declassify Anything He Wants

The discovery that Bush can turn his own Executive Orders into Pixie Dust provides an explanation for one of the lingering mysteries of the Plame outing: the EO governing declassification authority doesn’t explicitly give the Vice President the authority to declassify information that he has not, himself, classified. But because the President always intended the Vice President to be treated as the President is in that Executive Order, it means Cheney has that authority contrary to the plan text meaning of the EO.

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Bam!!! CIA Scores Direct Hit on the Unitary Executive!

At least that’s what I take from this quote:

In the e-mail version of the Politico Playbook this morning, Mike Allen quotes “a senior administration official” lamenting that “they should have burned the NIE and kept the tapes.” The official was referring to the administration’s debacles with the intelligence community since the new NIE on Iran was released and the CIA revealed that it had destroyed videotaped interrogations.

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Intelligence Oversight and Partisanship

David Ignatius complains that partisanship has ruined our intelligence oversight. Well, perhaps he should blame Cheney, who turned the Senate Intelligence Committee into his own personal plaything to hide the Administration’s complicity in the bad intelligence leading to war.

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All Your Data Belong to George

Guess what? ODNI has told Congress it doesn’t want minimization procedures to be codified in statute because it would make it too hard to change those procedures. That, plus a continued emphasis on Executive Orders that George Bush can turn into pixie dust, suggests they really don’t want to be held responsible for protecting US persons’ privacy when conducting wiretaps.

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Phone Slip

One thing about the EFF document dump is immediately apparent. There is one trace–a phone slip–of any conversations between ODNI personnel and the phone companies.

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