I guess, once Rahm Emanuel designated him the Acting Attorney General, Lindsey Graham realized he could demand even more from the Administration. Because now he is saying he will only support closing Gitmo if he can also pass a law authorizing indefinite detention. “I’ve been talking to the administration for the last couple of days. [...]

Breaking! (Not) Dick Cheney loves him some waterboarding. KARL: If you have somebody in custody like Abdulmutallab, after just trying to blow up an airliner, and you think he has information on another attack, I mean, do you think that those enhanced interrogation techniques should have been — should have been used? I mean, would [...]

The NYT has an account of how Rahm and Jim Messina tried to give Eric Holder a minder a year ago. Last winter, when Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. called the United States a “nation of cowards” for avoiding frank conversations on race, President Obama mildly rebuked him in public. Out of view, Mr. [...]

Update: Bob Schacht asked for more context, so here goes. This IG Report was the third DOJ’s Inspector General, Glenn Fine, has done on the FBI’s use of National Security Letters and “exigent letters,” though this is the first to focus almost exclusively on exigent letters. In 2003, the FBI installed representatives of AT&T and [...]

It has taken me a while. But I’ve finally gotten through the DOJ IG Report on exigent letters. Page numbers below will be to the PDF page. Page 14: Footnote 1 notes there are Secret and TS/SCI versions of this report. Keep that in mind as you read the redactions–while it’s probably safe to assume [...]

Count me among those who are grateful that Harry Reid scaled back the Senate jobs bill instead of letting MaxTax Baucus and Chuck Grassley use it to push through another estate tax break for Paris Hilton. That said, what he is pushing is another poorly-designed tax break that will do little to support jobs. More [...]

Gregg has a post up expressing shock that Richard Blumenthal, CT’s craven Attorney General running to replace Chris Dodd, advocated against using civilian law for both Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the UndieBomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Gregg argues that Blumenthal’s stance (on this issue and on opposition to Bernanke’s reconfirmation) is directly counter to the Administration’s [...]

In her piece on Holder’s efforts to uphold the rule of law last week, Jane Mayer explained that Rahm Emanuel opposed the idea of civilian trials for the 9/11 plotters because it would piss off Lindsey Graham. Emanuel, who is not a lawyer, opposed Holder’s position on the 9/11 cases. He argued that the Administration [...]

I’ve made a concerted effort to avoid piling on the Toyota recall story. But this excellent Bloomberg story–describing how two former National Highway Traffic Safety Administration officials helped Toyota avoid more comprehensive responses to its brake failures on four different occasions–deserves a lot of attention. Former regulators hired by Toyota Motor Corp. helped end at [...]

The Sunlight Foundation has a superb report of the way in which Bill Tauzin, whom Obama attacked during his campaign for his slimy deal-making, pushed through a deal with the Obama White House that limited savings from the pharmaceutical companies in the health care bill to $80 billion. The report: Traces Tauzin’s history as a [...]