Should Executives that Suborn Perjury Get Special Favors?
In my opinion, the key lines from Judith Regan's suit against the News Corp are these:
The complaint charges that one unnamed senior News Corp. executive"counseled Regan to lie and withhold information from investigators"about her acknowledged affair with former New York City PoliceCommissioner Bernard Kerik. Another unnamed News Corp. executive "advised Regan not to produceclearly relevant documents in connection with a governmentalinvestigation of Kerik,'' according to the complaint.
Regan basically accuses two of
What Is It with GOPers and Their Email?, Episode 516,345
It seems the only thing Republicans do more consistently than troll for extra-marital sex in public places is delete their emails. Via CREW, ABC News is reporting that Congressman Feeney is spending a chunk of money in an attempt--apparently--to reconstruct some lost emails.
Since April, Rep. Tom Feeney, R-Fla., has paid over $90,000 to aWashington, D.C.
Further Evidence They Threw AGAG Under the Bus
Amanda notes something rather interesting. While John Ashcroft and Dick Thornburgh attended today's ritual swearing in ceremony for Michael Mukasey, Gonzales did not.
This morning, Michael Mukasey was officially sworn in as the 81stAttorney General of the United States. At the beginning of his remarks,President Bush thanked officials for joining him, including formerAttorneys General John Ashcroft and Dick Thornburgh.
They're Not Telling
The White House and DOJ gave a very curious "no comment" to Scott Shane for his article on the reopened investigation into the illegal wiretap program.
Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman, and Brian Roehrkasse, a JusticeDepartment spokesman, declined to say whether Mr. Mukasey had pressedMr. Bush on the clearances for the department’s Office of ProfessionalResponsibility.
This is really curious--and suggests to me that we (and the Democrats quoted in the article) are
They're Monitoring Falafels but Not Their Own Agencies
Via Noah Shachtman, I see that a woman with potential ties to Hezbollah got a job in both FBI and CIA.
How good are the FBI and CIA's background checks? Each agency requiresits own separate investigation and polygraph before people are signedup to sensitive jobs. Each agency missed an absolute whopper...
A 37-year-old woman who previously worked as an FBI agent and a CIA analyst, pleaded guilty Tuesday to charges
4 Days on the Job and Already Mukasey Has Lapped Gonzales
I guess this offers at least a trickle of hope that those that made up reasons to torture and wiretap and ignore the Constitution might be held to account?
The Justice Department has reopened a long-dormant inquiry into thegovernment's warrantless wiretapping program, a major policy shift onlydays into the tenure of new Attorney General Michael Mukasey.
The investigation by the department's Office of ProfessionalResponsibility was shut down after the previous attorney general,Alberto Gonzales,
AGAG's Clique Didn't Even Know Tribal Crimes Were Part of the Job
Today's installment in the Denver Post's series on justice on tribal lands is absolutely devastating to the Bush DOJ, starting with the anecdote from Paul Charlton describing a "high-level DOJ official" who had no clue that tribal justice was part of the US government's obligation.
Talking with superiors about a gruesomedouble murder on the Navajo reservation, Charlton was stoppedmidsentence and asked by a high-level Justice Department official whyhe was involved in a
The FISA Amendment Will Legalize Data Mining, Part One
I've been puzzling over something since the temporary FISA amendment passed in August. The Administration has claimed they needed on easy fix: to allow NSA to wiretap electronic communication that starts and finishes on foreign soil, whether or not that communication passes through the US between sender and recipient. Yet both times when Congress sets about providing that easy fix to FISA, the Administration demands much more.
Dick DeVos Is a Welfare Queen
I pointed out a few weeks ago that the ginormous King Ranch is a welfare queen recipient of cotton subsidies. Well, wouldn't you know it, billionaire and GOP sugar daddy Dick DeVos is a welfare queen recipient of corn subsidies (perhaps we should call him the "High Fructose Corn Syrup Daddy").
Consider Dick DeVos.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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
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.
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
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
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.
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
