Archive for category: emptywheel

Mr. emptywheel and I have a running joke about "English Day"–where your dog, for one day only out of his entire life, can speak and understand English. What would we learn in that one day, we speculate, when McCaffrey the MilleniaLab could tell us precisely what he was thinking?

Which gives me another cool idea–"Source Day"–where for one day, we can see all of the sources that journalists use and consider credible. Because there’s nothing that would damage journalists’ credibility further than to discover that they consider certifiable loons like Pete Hoekstra credible.

But that’s just what–thanks to Christy–Joe Klein apparently believes. From Crazy Pete’s column in NRO:

As one of Klein’s sources for the complex technical and legal pointsthat seem to be in contention — and because Klein, his critics, andDemocrats in Congress have accused Republicans of trying to“misrepresent” these issues — it is important to correct and clarifythe record on three critical points, which also bear heavily on thebroader debate currently at hand.

Crazy Pete’s column, btw, is no more coherent than Joe Klein’s articles on the topic, so I guess we can surmise where Klein borrowed his abysmal logic from.

But here’s the thing. Crazy Pete is, well, crazy. He’s one of the guys who still believes that Iraq had WMDs. He’s the guy who thought it’d be a good idea to Read more →

Lotus is right–the indictment against Dickie Scruggs is pretty damning. Here’s the bit everyone is keying on, from a conversation between Timothy Balducci and Judge Lackey:

"my relationship with Dick [Scruggs] is such that he and I can talk very private [sic] about these kinds of matters and I have the fullest confidence that if the court, you know, is inclined to rule … in favor … everything will be good…" "The only person in the world outside of me and you that has discussed this is me and Dick [Scruggs]." "…We, uh, like I say, it ain’t but three people in the world that know anything about this … and two of them are sitting here and the other one … the other one, uh, being Scruggs … he and I, um, how shall I say, for over the last five or six years there, there are bodies buried that, that you know, that he and I know where … where are, and, and, my, my trust in his, mine in him and his in mine, in me, I am sure are the same."

We are talking Mississippi, I guess.

That said, I’ve got a couple of questions.

First, why was Zach Scruggs indicted? Best as I can tell, his involvement in this amounts to receiving the order they allegedly bribed Judge Read more →

Any speculation on whether Trent knew this was coming down when he resigned the other day?

ProminentMississippi trial attorney Richard "Dickie" Scruggs, the brother-in-lawof outgoing GOP Sen. Trent Lott, was indicted by a federal grand juryWednesday on charges that he and four other men tried to bribe aMississippi state court judge.

According to the 13-page indictment, Scruggs and three otherattorneys — including Lott’s nephew Zach — attempted to bribeMississippi Third Circuit Court Judge Henry L. Lackey with at least$40,000 in cash.

Lackey was assigned to hear a lawsuit in which Scruggs’ firm wasnamed as a defendant in a dispute involving $26.5 million in attorneys’fees stemming from a court settlement with State Farm Insurance overHurricane Katrina claims.

The indictment alleges that the bribe was intended to resolve the case in Scruggs’ and his firm’s favor.

Now, as bmaz pointed out on yesterday’s thread on Scruggs, Scruggs was due to hold a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton–so it’s not like Scruggs espouses the same politics as his brother-in-law, and it adds this to a long list of cases in which Trial Lawyers who support Democrats get into legal trouble. Also note, this is not the Paul Minor case, as I suggested it might be yesterday. This has to do with Scruggs’ efforts to help a lot of Katrina victims get their money from State Farm.

I have no Read more →

Steven Aftergood must have had an extra dose of turkey over the weekend, because it seems like Steven Aftergood week here at TNH. Today, he has a liberated CRS report on the implementation of Bush’s EO 13438, which authorizes the seizure of the assets of people determined to "threaten stabilization efforts in Iraq." At least according to the Congressional Research Service, the EO allows for incredibly broad application, since it allows for the asset seizure of people who financially support people who financially support people who financially support the destabilization of Iraq–you get the idea.

The scope, objectives and precedents of the order — Executive Order13,438, "Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who ThreatenStabilization Efforts in Iraq" — were examined in a new report (pdf) from the Congressional Research Service.

"Thebroad language of this executive order has been the subject of a degreeof criticism as potentially reaching beyond insurgents in Iraq to thirdparties, such as U.S. citizens, who may unknowingly be providingsupport for the insurgency," the CRS report noted, citing prior reports in the Washington Post, TPM Muckraker, and elsewhere.

Infact, the potential application of the order appears to be technicallyunlimited since it includes a recursive clause that has no definedendpoint.

Thus, section 1(b) of the Orderstates that any person who provides goods or services to a person whoseactions are proscribed under section 1(a) is himself subject to section1(a). But then, anyone who provides similar support to that person could likewise be swept up in the expansive terms of the order. And so on, without end. [my emphasis]

Now, if the Administration’s standards for this kind of thing were rational, it might not be a problem. But its behavior in similar circumstances has proven to be anything but. Consider this story from the LAT. It describes how a businessman who had long been blacklisted as a financial backer of terrorism got magically removed from the list recently–with no explanation.

Read more →

So far the RNC has spent $231,615 looking for Turdblossom’s missing emails.

The Sleuth has learned, the hunt for those missing gigabytes has cost the RNC more than $250,000.

According to an RNC filing with the Federal Election Commission, the committee paid $231,615 in October to Stroz Friedberg,a forensics firm chock full of former FBI agents hired to retrieve thelost electronic data. The report shows the committee also paid $41,217in October to Covington & Burling, the law firm representing the RNC on the missing e-mail controversy.

[snip]

But now that we know the RNC has paid Stroz Friedberg nearly aquarter million dollars, does that mean they’ve found the missinge-mail messages?

The RNC isn’t saying, nor is Stroz Friedberg.

So add that $231,615 to the $90,000 that Congressman Tom Feeney has paid to FTI to (apparently) recover his own missing emails.

This habit of deleting emails is beginning to cost the Republicans. How long do you think it’ll be before they start a special kind of defense fund, the email reconstruction fund (and celebrity golf tournament)?