But you are dead wrong on this “I have so little to give” fatster. You give so much everytime you comment here. You may not appreciate what you give, but others do.

I have so little to give, though I do gain so much reading and studying here. I do have this one humorous link to share, though, for a brief change of pace. (Humor sustains me.) If interested, just scroll down to the video.

As quickie Devil’s advocate (although DOJ has that bench full right now) it’s because the whole of our justice system is supposed to be based on an advocacy system and if both advocates before the court ask for the withdrawal in connection with an overall settlement, it wouldn’t be a big stretch to give it to them.

I do think it gives courts like the British court some additional toe hold (although Spataro had to go to trial with no classified info). And it would, if they were interested, certainly give “Congress” a very decent grounds to have hearings about it here.

After all, there were quite a few fingers in the pie
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/29/AR2005062902971_pf.html

“Officials involved in the Milan operation at the time said it was conceived by the Rome CIA station chief, organized by the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, and approved by the CIA leadership and by at least one person at the National Security Council. The station chief has since retired but remains undercover.” (WP, June 30, 2005)

I remember back when Dana Priest had stories coming out a lot more frequently. She seems to have been pretty quiet of late, what with the McCarthy firing and the wingnuts going after her husband.

OTOH, WaPo still has Kurtz and his fascination with Letterman and Spitzer. I guess if the Bushies had just been sleeping with co-workers instead of slicing genitals and putting together regimes using sodomy by object as a “prep” for interrogations, Kurtz might work up an interest.

Or …

Attempting to vacate the ruling is attempting to strike it from the public record. It could not be cited in this or other courts, though its reasoning could be used, but only as if new – and doing so would have to contend with the stigma that the issuing court withdrew from, canceled, its argument.

Attempting to vacate it is the Obama DoJ’s attempt to sweep up the trail of bread crumbs leading to that three-foot mound under the carpet. That’s a political decision made by its de facto client, the Obama White House, not the American people. Far better to raise the carpet and tackle the three-foot mound.

The Obama administration, with the DoJ serving as its taxpayer-funded criminal defense counsel, is attempting to shield its predecessor’s (and possibly its) crimes from exposure. Predictable, but foul, and outrageous for a candidate that touted his top marks at Harvard Law and his credentials teaching constitutional law at Chicago.

If the Dems lose badly at the polls in 2010 and 2012, it won’t be just because Obama chose Rahm’s strategy as his “way forward”. It will be because he abandoned the posture he chose to run on in order to pursue power and stability for those with it. His party would deserve whatever drubbing at the polls it gets.

Also, Horton really highlights the dishonesty of the majority opinion (for example, the claim by the majority that Canada wasn’t willing for us to ship Arar there, when that was just a DOJ lie and is directly contradicted by mega-info available publically).

He shows how our courts have evolved, from “those who torture are the ‘enemies of all mankind’” to “those who torture are the ‘Department of Justice of the United States, so we have to ignore it’”