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I have little wisdom to add to this Abu Aardvark post, but I wanted to make sure people saw it: It's kind of lost in the shuffle of the coming battle over thevarious Iraq reports, but I find myself morbidly fascinated by thephotos and reports which have circulated in the Iraqi press aboutBush's meeting in Anbar with the controversial head of the AnbarSalvation Council Sattar Abu Risha.

Marty Lederman points to this excerpt from Jack Goldsmith's book at Slate. Goldsmith explains he only saw Alberto Gonzales disagree with David Addington once--and that Bush ended up siding with Addington. Addington's hard-line nonaccommodation stance always prevailed when thelawyers met to discuss legal policy issues in Alberto Gonzales' office.During these meetings, Gonzales himself would sit quietly in his wingchair, occasionally asking questions but mostly listening as thequerulous Addington did battle with whomever

If you haven't given to the ACLU in a while, here's the donate button. The ACLU (with some help) has scored some important wins this week, starting with today's decision that National Security Letters are unconstitutional. The ACLU said it was improper to issue so-called national securityletters, or NSLs -- investigative tools used by the FBI to compelbusinesses to turn over customer information -- without a judge's orderor grand jury subpoena.

No, seriously. The GAO's report on DHS is really important evidence that Bush has done very little to make this country more safe. But I'm most struck by the fact that the DHS people quoted are making exactly the same complaint the military did last week, when GAO reported that Iraq has met few of its benchmarks (for the record, DHS seems to be doing somewhat better than Iraq, making at

There are a number of details that make Sidney Blumenthal's latest appear to be a happy coincidence of timing. Just after Bush biographer Robert Draper reports that Bush still claims to have believed--in April 2006--that Iraq had WMD, Blumenthal comes out with an article tying up a lot of loose ends on Saddam Hussein's Foreign Minister, Naji al-Sabri, proving Bush was briefed that Saddam did not have WMD. On Sept.

I'm watching HJC's first hearing on FISA Amendment, and I think the Republicans may be giving us a superb opportunity to address one of the big problems of the FISA Amendment. You see, the Republicans have no fucking clue that the reason McConnell chose the Republican bill over the Democratic one is because it removed all oversight over minimization. Thus far--and at 12:04 we've only had questions from 3 Republicans--Dan Lungren has already

Josh and his reader ask WTF is up with Arlen's support for Larry Craig. TPM Reader BR wonders about Arlen: "What the hell isSpecter thinking? Is he trying to destroy the Republican party? Nothingcould be worse for them then drawing this out or attracting any furtherattention to the situation. Or did Specter offer friendly encouragementnot thinking Craig would take him seriously?

As I suspected, Judge Burns was none too impressed that Tommy K's daughter bought Phillip Halpern's long-lost uncle's house with the ensuing benefit to Halpern of precisely nada. Halpern, who had last seen his uncle in 1999, said in court papers hehad no knowledge of the deal and did not benefit in any way from it,and removing him or the office was not warranted. On that matter, Burns agreed.

I'm anxiously waiting the WaPo's analysis of today's GAO report. You'll recall the WaPo reported last week that someone had liberated a copy of the GAO to prevent BushCO from "softening" its conclusions. But the numbers suggest that some of the conclusions were softened: whereas on Thursday, the WaPo reported Iraq had met three and partially met two of the benchmarks, the GAO has since added two more partially met objectives--on