Jeff Kaye has been telling us for years that the Army Field Manual which the Obama Administration adopted as its standard for all interrogation still allows a great deal of abuse. (See his three part series from earlier this month, for example: one, two, three.) Today, former military interrogator Matthew Alexander joins in Jeff’s calls [...]

Remember how I suggested that yesterday’s WaPo story on exigent letters might be an attempt to pre-empt the IG Report? Well, here’s that IG Report. I’m working on a longer post, but MadDog can’t wait, so consider this a working thread.

Two updates on the Prop 8 fight happening outside the courtroom. First, Protect Marriage has just sued the Courage Campaign for what it says is trademark infringement. At issue is the logo (on the left) Courage Campaign is using for its trial tracker–depicting two women and their children–which is a clear parody of the logo [...]

Lanny Davis has wasted no time trying to spin MA voters’ rejection of Obama’s focus on corporations rather than people into an attack on progressives. He starts by ignoring that aspect of the liberal complaint and (as the Administration is doing) blaming all of this on Coakley. Liberal Democrats might attempt to spin the shocking [...]

Yoo casts himself here as a mere lawyer, but he was much more (and much less). So reads the Padilla response to Yoo’s efforts to dismiss Padilla’s suit against him. Padilla’s team goes on to argue why the 9th Circuit must allow Padilla’s suit against Yoo for violation of his constitutional rights to continue. The [...]

The WaPo has a story out describing how the FBI, from 2002 until 2006, used exigent letters to collect phone records without the proper underlying terrorist justification. The FBI illegally collected more than 2,000 U.S. telephone call records between 2002 and 2006 by invoking terrorism emergencies that did not exist or simply persuading phone companies [...]

As I’ve been processing the three days I spent at the Prop 8 Trial last week, there’s been a lot to think about: how much I learned about gay experience, both historically and psychologically; how odd a role I had as an observer (the journalists present appeared to be largely split between “objective” journalists and [...]

I don’t have time to comment at length on this Scott Horton article–revealing many details surrounding the deaths of three Gitmo detainees claimed to have killed themselves. But go read the whole thing. Here’s an excerpt–which suggests that when the three detainees died, they were not in Camp Delta, but outside of their cells. At [...]

Between the auto show and the Prop 8 trial and associated travel, last week was tremendously exhausting for me and it will take me several days to actually report on those two events. But it seems one thing hasn’t moved on very much since last Sunday–the reporting surrounding Jonathan Gruber’s role in pitching the Administration’s health [...]

In a full throated mea culpa by the New York Times Public Editor, Clark Hoyt, appearing in the Sunday edition, the Times officially describes the critical and material implications which arise when readers are misled by undisclosed interests of sources and authors like Jonathan Gruber in their paper of record. Unfortunately, Hoyt and the Times did not have the decency to apologize to Marcy Wheeler for previously inferring otherwise.