He can’t seem to believe that the rest of us are that stupid. We’re conspiracy nuts – scientists and laymen, alike – if we can’t get that this was naturally occurring and that Bruce Ivins could do this alone.

Other than his bio on the site, how’d he get to be an expert?

http://anthraxinvestigation.com/

Mueller says the new guidelines are in the process of implementation and says they have [with emphasis] been briefed to HJC’s staff.

[Since Tiananmen Square, actually] We’ve been used to seeing public officials who do not understand the ability of on-line information networks to damage their talking points.

But here’s an official who doesn’t seem to know how hollow rings a claim that “It’s ok because we’ve given you a briefing” after plain old print has carried accounts of undocumented briefings and how the Bush administration has used them to stymie further Congressional action. (ref: The Dark Side, The Way of the World, now Angler; I’m sure there are others.)

Mueller might have intended to make some kind of mollifying statement. In some possibly mythical past in which the main business of the executive branch was not to keep its doings secret from the other two branches and the public, so it might have sounded: “I see; then I must talk with my chief of staff.” And we all turn to our coffee and cake and nice evening. But not now.

They both had tremendously more chops than Yoo and prior to 9/11, Goldsmith and Posner cemented their spot in what passes for the firmament when you are looking down, with a treatise on international law the basically posits that the chief exec of a country can do whatever they feel they can get away with when it comes to citizens of other nations and other nations – - treaties and laws don’t really mean much.

Philbin started the “illegal combatant” ball rolling with the first door opening memo and he did it knowing full well that the only reason for his memo was to “legalize” torture at Presidential whim. I give a bye for it in general, bc of the timing and what he might have believed in his heart (that although he was handing over the power of attainder he only thought it would be used against bad guys, not cab drivers and drunken Germans partying away from their wives in Macedonia and stray Canadians and children – infants.

But the fact is that he and Goldsmith have never, despite Goldsmith’s self glorifying more recent novella, backed away from human trafficking, disappearing, torture and kidnap as fine and dandy. And they both abhor the thought that the tales of who was tortured, and killed, and why, and on what lack of evidence and on whose say so and whose policies – would ever come out. They are Straussian in predeliction if not conditioning there, the fairy tale story has to hold together for history as one with no greys, one untarnished, of good over evil – and they guys who, as Goldsmith and Posner point out, are “big enough” to “win” get to claim the mantle of “good” and make sure that is the only story told.

Rove isn’t the only one in the whole admin who believed in controlling the narrative. It’s why I find it so interesting that the OLC memos are so bereft when it comes to a “facts” section – they didn’t even have facts to redact for most of them. The facts didn’t matter – they could make them up and fill them in later – that’s what happens when you can control the narrative unchecked. And it keeps happening, bc the narrative suits the Dems as much as the Repubs – it allows for passive inaction, with only a little window dressing to offer a pretense that they are doing anything.

How many times has Koh been there over the last few years? And still nothing.

They should devote a whole hearing to nothing but the Seton Hall kids and their work. Nothing will come of that either, but they at least deserve as much face time as a fraud like Philbin.

Patrick Philbin on the subject of Boumediene and habeas, as (to me) he fuzzed the distinctions between POWs and Bush’s new category of illegal enemy combatants (some of them charged with specific crimes) — man, I would have to read that over to catch all of it. I’m sure he means what he says and I’m sure he has a very good legal education, but he maybe does not have such a good international historical education. And then there was Prof Rotunda, who played up to Brownback’s worries about closing GTMO: comparing it to all the alternatives she ran through, she made GTMO sound like summer camp and all alternatives impossible, which is nonsense but I guess that’s her job.

The other witnesses on the second panel were great and I’m sorry I’m not doing them justice. On the earlier panel, Harold Koh of Yale Law School was outstanding — as we say in baseball, give that man a contract.

Feingold’s and Whitehouse’s questions throughout deserve study. Whitehouse closed with a statement summarizing three key concerns: secrecy, closing GTMO, and … (long pause for senior moment here …) Anyway, he obviously valued the statements of most of the witnesses very highly. It always seems a bit of a shame to me that so much of their good work doesn’t go further.