Entries by emptywheel

Blackwater Guards Given Immunity from Prosecution

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I pointed out the other day that several of the Blackwater guards involved in the September 16 shooting have left Iraq. Now bmaz points to this AP story revealing that all the guards have been given immunity from prosecution.

The State Department promised Blackwater USA bodyguards immunityfrom prosecution in its investigation of last month’s deadly shootingof 17 Iraqi civilians, The Associated Press has learned.

[snip]

Three senior law enforcement officials said all the Blackwaterbodyguards

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Exxon Would Like to be Excused

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Back when I taught, at the beginning of the school year each year the school would hand professors a description of the incoming freshman class so the professors could understand what world their students were coming from. It usually read something like:

2007: This year’s incoming freshmen were born in 1989.

The top TV series for most of these students’ teen years was American Idol.

These students matured after the first big judgments against

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We’ve Seen This Before

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Kagro X has a post focusing, again, on Michael Mukasey’s evasions about the Constitution. Kagro focuses not on Mukasey’s confusion about whether water-boarding is torture, but whether the President can ignore existing laws.

Any president — and I mean any president — ought to beable to depend on a certain amount of deference from his or herAttorney General, of course.

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McConnell’s Earmarks

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I’m less interested in the local angle on Mitch McConnell’s placement of earmarks to benefit BAE in this year’s defense appropriations bill than what it says about our military industrial complex.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is pushing $25 million in earmarkedfederal funds for a British defense contractor that is under criminalinvestigation by the U.S.

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Patrick Philbin

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SJC will meet on Wednesday to take up SSCI’s FISA Amendment. We’ll get to see whether the Administration has sufficiently satisfied Scottish Haggis and Patrick Leahy to get the bill through committee with the telecom immunity still attached.

But there may be other reason to tune in, something I noticed on Selise’s weekly Congressional hearing schedule:

Panel I:

Kenneth L.

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Funny Money

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Atrios provides some crack former econ professor analysis on the dollar …

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Dollar sinking.Thedollar fell as low as $1.4426 per euro, the weakest since theintroduction of the 13-nation common currency in 1999, before tradingat $1.4420 as of 6:29 a.m. in Tokyo from $1.4393 in late New York onOct. 26.

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Update on Gaming Intelligence to Justify War

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I wasn’t so disturbed by the news that DNI Mike McConnell had decided to reverse the recent practice of producing unclassified Key Judgments from an NIE … until I read Scott Horton’s take on it.

Michael McConnell started his first two months on the job with asolid record for candor and accuracy.

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The Dodge on Retroactive Immunity

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Okay. This will serve as a summary of my analysis of the SSCI report on their FISA bill and to show how the SSCI managed to convince themselves to give retroactive immunity to the telecoms. Thus far, I have shown that:This report suggests that the Authorization to Use Military Force was central to the enactment of Bush’s illegal warrantless wiretap program.The report claims they need to give telecoms immunity because, since

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Minimization, the Whitehouse Way

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Back from my pancake and sausage-inducted coma! Mmm pancakes. I’ve got just two more points about this SSCI report, then I’ll let it drop and go clean the house.

A lot of people have been asking why Sheldon Whitehouse voted for the SSCI bill on FISA, even though it offers the telecoms retroactive immunity.

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Why Do They Need to Spy on Americans Overseas without a Warrant?

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Mr. emptywheel has started on the pancakes, finally, but I’ve got time for one more post.

According to public reports, Bush has threatened to veto SSCI’s FISA bill as written. That’s because of an amendment submitted by Ron Wyden which requires the Administration to obtain a FISA warrant if they want to wiretap an American overseas.

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