Entries by emptywheel

Security Clearances Two

I’m stuck between three gallons of canned tomatoes, a soon-to-be gallon of canned peaches, and a big pot of borscht. Which means I’m too hot to deal with the Padilla verdict yet. So instead I’m going to point out that my reading of Gonzales’ correction from a few weeks ago was correct.

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Banana Pudding

The NYT has a funny article out about the involvement of bigtime Republican lawyer Roderick Hills in directing Chiquita to continue bribing a Colombian right wing militia even after the State Department listed the organization as a terrorist organization. I say funny, most of all, because Neil Lewis bills the competing narratives surrounding Hills’ actions as a “Rashomon-like set of narratives,” but Lewis really provides only one of those narratives–Hills’.

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Gillespie Squared

Rove’s bed is not even cold and already Ed Gillespie is crawling into it.

Now, with the departure of Karl Rove, the president’s closest adviser, Gillespie, 46, a former lobbyist and Republican National Committee chairman, has once again been asked to help fill the void.

White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Boltenhas said that he plans to divide Rove’s broad political andpolicymaking duties — and the 60 or so White House staffers

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“It’s entirely possible that everything they think they know is entirely false”

cboldt linked to Wired’s liveblog from the warrantless wiretap Appeals hearing that took place today in San Francisco. Go read it. It may make you cry. Repeatedly, the government lawyers appeal to arguments outside all human cognition to defend their wiretap program.

“Was a warrant obtained in this case?” Judge Pregerson asks.

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About that May FISC Ruling

In light of the weekend’s news that there were actually two FISC rulings against the Bush Administration’s warrantless wiretap program, I’d like to return to this James Risen article from May 2.

Senior Bush administration officials told Congress on Tuesday thatthey could not pledge that the administration would continue to seekwarrants from a secret court for a domestic wiretapping program, as itagreed to do in January.Rather, they argued that the president had

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TSP Timing, Again

Josh and Spencer are just now catching up to something I pointed out three weeks ago: Tom DeLay got briefed on the TSP program on March 11, 2004, the day after the Hospital Meeting. Of course, that’s not particularly surprising since one of the things that went down at the briefing of the Gang of Eight on March 10 is that the Administration floated passing legislation to fix the problems in

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Behavior Detection

There are two things that “always” happen to me when I fly to DC. I “always” (often, rather) sit next to MI’s Republican Congressmen in First Class. And I “always” (almost always, probably) get pulled into secondary when I’m flying out of Reagan National Airport. I know why the latter occurs:

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Interesting Timing

I’m not so much surprised that Scottish Haggis Specter has urged Pat Leahy to ask for a meeting with the White House to negotiate testimony of White House officials.

For the last several months, I have been seeking the voluntary cooperation of the White House with the efforts of the Senate Judiciary Committee to get to the bottom of the scandal surrounding the firing of so many of the United States Attorneys

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Ghost Writing

I think it ought to be mandatory for everyone who reads this LAT article to also watch Bill Kristol on TDS. It’s bad enough, after all, to learn that the Petraeus report we’ve all been waiting for might as well be called the Dick Cheney report.

Despite Bush’s repeated statements that the report will reflect evaluations by Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S.

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