Entries by emptywheel

4 Days on the Job and Already Mukasey Has Lapped Gonzales

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I guess this offers at least a trickle of hope that those that made up reasons to torture and wiretap and ignore the Constitution might be held to account?

The Justice Department has reopened a long-dormant inquiry into thegovernment’s warrantless wiretapping program, a major policy shift onlydays into the tenure of new Attorney General Michael Mukasey.

The investigation by the department’s Office of ProfessionalResponsibility was shut down after the previous attorney general,Alberto Gonzales,

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AGAG’s Clique Didn’t Even Know Tribal Crimes Were Part of the Job

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Today’s installment in the Denver Post’s series on justice on tribal lands is absolutely devastating to the Bush DOJ, starting with the anecdote from Paul Charlton describing a “high-level DOJ official” who had no clue that tribal justice was part of the US government’s obligation.

Talking with superiors about a gruesomedouble murder on the Navajo reservation, Charlton was stoppedmidsentence and asked by a high-level Justice Department official whyhe was involved in a

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The FISA Amendment Will Legalize Data Mining, Part One

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I’ve been puzzling over something since the temporary FISA amendment passed in August. The Administration has claimed they needed on easy fix: to allow NSA to wiretap electronic communication that starts and finishes on foreign soil, whether or not that communication passes through the US between sender and recipient. Yet both times when Congress sets about providing that easy fix to FISA, the Administration demands much more.

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Dick DeVos Is a Welfare Queen

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I pointed out a few weeks ago that the ginormous King Ranch is a welfare queen recipient of cotton subsidies. Well, wouldn’t you know it, billionaire and GOP sugar daddy Dick DeVos is a welfare queen recipient of corn subsidies (perhaps we should call him the “High Fructose Corn Syrup Daddy”).

Consider Dick DeVos.

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What Is It with GOPers and Their Email?

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CREW and the National Security Archive won the first part of their fight with the White House–getting a court order requiring the White House to preserve their emails and the back-ups (h/t PJ Evans).

A federal judge Monday ordered the White House to preserve copies ofall its e-mails, a move that Bush administration lawyers had arguedstrongly against.

U.S.

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Margaret Chiara and the Ongoing Problem of Justice on Reservations

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Buried in an excellent article on the difficulties Native Americans have getting someone in USA offices to prosecute serious crime is this Margaret Chiara quote:

“I’ve had (assistant U.S. attorneys)look right at me and say, ‘I did not sign up for this,”‘ said MargaretChiara, who until March was the U.S. attorney for western Michigan,with jurisdiction over several reservations.

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CIA Contractor Fired for Stating Waterboarding Is Torture

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My post on Armitage forced me to wade through the archives, where I saw this post.

On July 13, Christine Axsmith posted this on her blog on the CIA’s confidential intranet, Intelink.

Waterboarding is torture, and torture is wrong.

Not to mention ineffective. Econo-Girl has serious doubts as to whether European lives were saved.

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Armitage, a Review

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About 6,204 people have emailed me news of Armitage’s mea kinda culpa on Blitzer. The admission of stupidity is really nothing new–Armitage said something similar when he came forward to speak with David Martin last fall.

Since a lot of people have asked what memo he learned of Plame’s identity from–here it is.

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“This problem will not be discussed in public”

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I do intend to return to my planned series on Matt Bai and the Serious People. But for now, David Sanger asks a question that really needs to be asked: what is going to happen to Pakistan’s nukes? Before I look at the answer Sanger offers, let me point to this one line in the story.

“It’s a very professional military,” said a senior American officialwho is trying to manage the crisis

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Richard Mellon Scaife, “With Michael Isikoff”?

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I found this article on Richard Mellon Scaife’s newfound admiration for the Clinton’s via tristero. It’s a remarkable article, in that it frames Scaife’s purported admiration for the Clinton’s against the background of Scaife’s smear factory from the nineties, all told in a pseudo-objective omniscient third person voice.

Scaife was no run-of-the-mill Clinton hater.

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