Entries by emptywheel

Oh, THAT’S Who We Get to Kick Around

Larry Craig, that’s who.

Shortly after a state judge denied his request to withdraw the Augustplea admitting to disorderly conduct, Mr. Craig said he had reversedhis previously announced decision to leave the Senate if he could notget the plea thrown out and would instead serve out his third term,which expires at the end of 2008.

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Waterboarding Is Fair Game

I’m pooped so will have to return to this article. It explains how, after DOJ under Jack Goldsmith threw out John Yoo’s torture policies, Steven Bradbury came in and replaced them with still worse opinions.

When the Justice Department publicly declared torture “abhorrent” ina legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared tohave abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authorityto order brutal interrogations.

But soon after Alberto R.

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Who Do We Have to Kick Around Anymore?

We already lost Abu Gonzales, Karl Rove, Monica Goodling, Kyle Sampson, Brad Schlozman, and Michael Elston. And now we’re losing Pete Domenici.

Veteran Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) is expected to announce tomorrowthat he will retire from the Senate in 2008, according to severalinformed sources, a decision that further complicates an alreadydifficult playing field for Republicans next November.

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About Those Emails? The Contractor Did It

I guess if you make sure your contractors can’t reveal what they’ve done in your name, it becomes harder for others to discover what it is that you, personally, have done. But not impossible. The IT companies for the White House are denying that their the company that missed 5 million missing emails in their daily audits.

When Congress asked about 5 million executive branch e-mails that wentmissing, a White House lawyer

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A Game of Telephone

So AT&T says they’ll cut off your broadband if you say anything mean about them. But they say they don’t really mean that.

However, an AT&T spokesperson tells Ars Technica that thecompany has no interest in engaging in censorship but stopped short ofsaying that AT&T could not in fact exercise its ability to do so.

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In Govt We Do Not Trust

I’m still following up on the question of the way in which the Rather complaint invokes the debate on Hamdi. I wanted to draw extended attention to this article. In it, Tim Grieve susses out precisely what seems to be the reason Rather included the Abu Ghraib details in his complaint.

Did Clement know he was misleading the justices, or was he kept out ofthe loop so that he could avoid revealing

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Abu Ghraib, Hamdi, and Rather

I’ve been meaning to go back to compare the chronology laid out by Dan Rather in his complaint as it pertains to Abu Ghraib with the chronology of the Taguba investigation and the Hamdi case. Two things stick out. First, Myers pretended to be ignorant of the details of the abuse on May 6, several weeks after he called Dan Rather personally to spike–or delay–the story.

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How to Spend $57 Million on Cocktail Weenies

Larry Johnson does the math, so I don’t have to. Fitzgerald’s total costs to investigate the deliberate outing of a CIA spy, through March 31, amount to $2,396,283. Ken Starr’s total costs, to investigate a failed land deal and a blow job, amount to $59,463,703. I guess all those cocktail weenies Starr bought for the press really add up, huh?

Now that Larry pulled all these numbers together, though, I’d like to

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Wilkes Is On His Own

Via chrisc, Judge Burns has severed the trials of Brent Wilkes and John Michael, on account of the health problems of the latter.

Ajudge Monday severed the trials of ex-defense contractor Brent Wilkesand banker John Michael, who are charged in connection with thecorruption scandal that sent former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham toprison.

U.S.District Judge Larry Burns postponed Michael’s trial indefinitely afterattorney Raymond Granger said his client had been diagnosed with viralmeningitis.Pretrialmotions are scheduled

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One Small Victory for Oversight

One lingering suspicion that they’re just moving this off the books:

After several requests from the Homeland Security Committee callingfor a moratorium on the controversial use of spy satellite imagery fordomestic purposes, the Department has heeded the call and delayed itsplanned October 1st launch of its new National Applications Office(NAO). The Department has cited the need to address unanswered privacyand civil liberties questions from Congress – as addressed in theCommittee’s September 6th

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