Championship Sunday for the NFL is here. Vikings at the Saints and Jets at the Colts. Let’s rock and roll.

Jeebus. Larisa just pointed me to this. A highly unusual ruling by Lord Hutton, who chaired the inquiry into Dr Kelly’s death, means medical records including the post-mortem report will remain classified until after all those with a direct interest in the case are dead, the Mail on Sunday reported. And a 30-year secrecy order [...]

I’m not Raul Grijalva or Jerry Nadler, but I thought I’d try to respond to TPM reader MD’s “sob story” (as MD called it) because the story illustrates the issues at stake in health care reform. Here’s the story. Like everyone I have a sob-story to tell about health care. After telling it to countless [...]

I actually don’t know whether I am officially (that is, physically) “barren” or not. I know, though, that not long after I got married, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. My doctors told me right away I’d go through six months of intensive treatment, followed by five years of hormonal treatment. The hormonal treatment, Tamoxifen, [...]

As I reported yesterday, the Dawn Johnsen-less OLC wrote an opinion on January 8 retroactively authorizing the FBI’s inappropriate use of the exigent letters to snoop on Americans’ telecomm records. Now, Senators Feingold, Durbin, and Wyden, have demanded that opinion from Eric Holder. Of note, they tie their demand into DOJ IG Glenn Fine’s comment [...]

From the start, let me say I support sidecar reconciliation going forward–the passage of the Senate health care bill, tied to the simultaneous passage through reconciliation of some fairly substantive changes (eliminating most of the excise tax, inclusion of a public option, possibly with Medicare buy-in, elimination of the antitrust exemption, and drug reimportation) that [...]

In the abundant free time left over from the Prop 8 trial yesterday, Vaughn Walker dismissed the Jewel case, one of the last suits against the government for conducting widespread collection of telecomm data. EFF says they will appeal this decision. Walker’s ruling basically judges that the plaintiffs in this case lack sufficient standing to [...]

Adam Bonin notes this curious, short opinion in the larger Citizens United decision endorsing the idea that ballot supports should not have to reveal their identities. I dissent from Part IV of the Court’s opinion, however, because the Court’s constitutional analysis does not go far enough. The disclosure, disclaimer, and reporting requirements in BCRA §§201 [...]

Okay, I still haven’t gotten through the IG Report on exigent letters. But Ryan Singel at Threat Level has–and he made a really disturbing find. Obama’s OLC (the one that Dawn Johnsen might have been leading if anyone had pressured Arlen Specter when he flipped parties) legalized the illegal use of exigent letters several weeks [...]

The decision by the Supreme Court in Citizen’s United v. FEC is in.