David Kris gave a speech at the Brookings Institute last week, largely intended to make the case for civilian trials. Here’s the main framework of the speech: Today, however, the consensus that developed in the aftermath of 9/11 shows some signs of unraveling.  In particular, there are some who say that law enforcement can’t – [...]

Scott Shane and Eric Lichtblau tell a sort of weird story of how a House Intelligence Committee staffer, Diane Roark, tried to reach out to William Rehnquist to get him to review Dick Cheney’s illegal wiretapping program. Within months of the beginning of the eavesdropping program in October 2001, a staff member of the House [...]

Time for Trash Talk. We got futbol, football, NCAA baseball and F1 in Canada.

Threat Level posted a quarter of the chat logs between alleged Wikileaks leaker Bradley Manning and hacker Adrian Lamo (it didn’t post those with particularly personal or potentially dangerous national security information). While the logs don’t provide many details about what was in the 260,000 State Department cables that has the government so spooked, they [...]

Apparently, the Brits are calling Americans–including President Obama–xenophobic for referring to the company shitting up our Gulf  as “British Petroleum.” So for this installment of my now-regular reflection on how, fifty-some years ago, we overthrew a democratically-elected government for that company shitting up our Gulf, I’m going to call it the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. You [...]

I had a bit of fun with Michael O’Hanlon on Tuesday. At the America’s Future Now conference, he was pitted against Juan Cole in a debate over the future of our Afghan war. I took the first question to note that we weren’t just facing a choice between escalating in Afghanistan (O’Hanlon’s position) or maintaining [...]

Dawn Johnsen has a must-read op-ed today describing how the Bybee memo damaged the Office of Legal Counsel. In 2004, the leak of a controversial memo on the use of torture catapulted the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel into the spotlight. Fallout and debate continue, including in the context of my nomination — withdrawn [...]

As McClatchy reported yesterday, Judge Henry Kennedy granted a the habeas petition of a Yemeni man, Mohamed Hassan Odaini, several weeks ago. That brings the total number of men held at Gitmo who have won habeas petitions to 36. Kennedy’s ruling reveals not just his exasperation with the government’s arguments, but also the absurd lengths [...]

BP and the US government have yet again been dishonest about the nature and size of the oil gusher leaking into the Gulf of Mexico water; it is over twice the highest estimates to date.

The WaPo is scouring the business world looking for the perfect talent to lead the failing company. Today, they announced they’ve hired the guy who drovem GM into the ditch to its board. Rick Wagoner, who was fired as chief executive of General Motors by the White House, has been elected to The Washington Post [...]