Entries by emptywheel

What Is It with GOPers and Their Email?

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

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

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

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”

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”?

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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The Axis of False Intelligence Claims

Fill in the blanks:

[ISIS President David] Albright said yesterday that the tubes acquired by ___________ neededto be cut in half and shaped in order to be used as the outer casingsof centrifuges. If ___________ proves that the tubes were untouched, hesaid, it could “shatter the argument” that they were meant for auranium program.

Let’s see, WMD expert David Albright describing doubts about claims that a country was using aluminum tubes to build

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No News Is Bad News

I’m going to be a panelist on a conference in Boston a week from tomorrow (Saturday). The conference is:

No News Is Bad News

A freeand independent press is essential for democracy. The press has aresponsibility to inform citizens about both the policies and theactions of the government and about credible challenges to thosepolicies and actions, to report on conditions that may require new ordifferent government initiatives, and to raise timely questions

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If Ever You Needed Proof that Pseudonymity Anonymity Hysteria Is Bunk

DBJ at DKos, relating Karl Rove’s speech about “Citizen 2.0” in DC yesterday, makes a good point. When a man who has used the cover of being an anonymous source to leak a CIA operative’s identity–not to mention untold other smears–complains that commenters online can be anonymous pseudonymous, it pretty much discredits that complaint once and for all.

Then it got surreal.

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Mukasey Confirmed

From which we can take the following lessons:It’s unclear that our political system has the fortitude to save itself anymore.If you’re running for President, it’s dangerous to take a stand against torture–even if, like John McCain, you’ve been tortured yourself.It takes a real beating–like the one Alberto Gonzales gave Richard (one good reason not to blog before coffee) Mark Pryor when he AGAG appointed Tim Griffin and attempted to “gum to

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