The Senate Judiciary Committee with host some “wise men” to help them figure out how our nation comes to grips with the crimes committed in the last eight years.

8 years of George Bush:”All right. You’ve covered your ass, now.”Five years of FUBAR in Iraq KatrinaAlberto GonzalesTwo landslides losses for the GOP The collapse of our entire economic system And now this:
“What is amazing is that Steele was elected because of his communications skills, and it is those skills that are damaging the Republican Party.

DOJ only gave us a small subset of the OLC memos the ACLU has requested. And it appears that Steven Bradbury’s “no harm no foul” memos withdrawing older guidance still leave giant loopholes to permit abuse.

I’ve got so many links to really confused reporting on what happened in the al-Haramain case on Friday (see here, here, and here, for starters), that I’m going to take the trouble of trying to correct it. DOJ is not “defying” any judge, not the Appeals Court nor the District Court. Instead, they’re intensifying efforts to prevent details of their warrantless wiretap program from coming forward.

Christy asks why it took so long to publish Steven Bradbury’s October 2008 opinion restoring the 4th Amendment. Two very good reasons: because they were still relying on it for domestic wiretapping. And they didn’t want to reveal they hadn’t withdrawn the memo until after being hounded by Congress to do so.

A bunch of DOD-related OLC opinions just got released (h/t Spencer)

Of note, the one eviscerating the 4th Amendment has been released, and a key one on FISA that I believe Steven Bradbury didn’t include in his FOIA response on opinions relating to FISA.

Consider this a working thread.

In addition to the news that the CIA destroyed 92 torture tapes, DOJ has informed Judge Hellerstein that we will shortly get a list of all the witnesses who may have viewed those tapes.

The John Pistole speech to the money laundering conference came right in the middle of debates about retroactive immunity for those who helped the government illegal wiretap Americans. I wonder whether it was meant to reassure them about their legal liability as well?

In May 2006, Bush’s DOJ provided a description of the warrantless wiretapping to the judge in the al-Haramain suit. On Friday, Obama’s DOJ submitted four new declarations–presumably to correct the “inaccurate” information provided in May 2006.