In a ruling that anticipates how the government will ignore torture as it tries alleged detainees in civilian court, Judge Lewis Kaplan rejected Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani’s efforts to get his indictment for contributing to the 1998 embassy bombings dismissed because he was tortured while in US custody. As Kaplan argues, Ghailani could only use the [...]

When you live in flyover country and have the opportunity to appear on cable, it lacks some of the niceties of the big city: no green room, no professional makeup artist, and sometimes you have to drive yourself to the studio through Detroit’s version of rush hour traffic (yeah, I know, no one works in [...]

The great news just keeps coming. Remember the “new” state secrets policy DOJ announced last year? It basically amounted to a promise that the Attorney General would review any invocation of state secrets to make sure such an invocation was really really secret rather than just sort of secret but really embarrassing, along with a [...]

Elena Kagan is a poor selection to replace Justice John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court.

I’ve thought of some bright sides regarding the news that Elana Kagan is Obama’s pick to replace Stevens: If ever SCOTUS needs money, Elana Kagan is a great fundrasier! Imagine how it’ll make Republican heads explode when they realize Hamdan lawyer Neal Katyal may be Acting Solicitor General. Given that Republicans will try to oppose [...]

The White House press made a bit of a todo over the fact that Eric Holder was finally allowed to go on a Sunday show today (he’s appearing on both ABC and NBC). Given all the somewhat bizarre claims from people like Rahm that Holder botches his public statements, it sort of makes you wonder [...]

Jim White catalogued some of the hesitancy among the traditional media (and, frankly, the blogosphere) to highlight the precise piece of news that DOD banned four reporters from Gitmo over: the name of the witness dubbed Interrogator #1 who testified at the Omar Khadr hearing the other day, Joshua Claus. Kudos to HuffPo and CNN [...]

Jeebus. Found these numbers via Susie. 70% of those surveyed by Pew have either had someone in their household looking for work, had their hours/wages cut, or had problems paying significant bills. 70%. I’m writing this from the Clusterfuck State, and that number is astounding even to me. No wonder incumbents are going to get [...]

Talk some trash and rip this joint.

Last year and in February, we watched as the EU balked at US demands for data-sharing under the SWIFT program. The Belgian cooperative in charge of the international money transfer database moved its servers to the EU, but the US still wanted the same access it had had when the servers were in the US. [...]