The lawyers for the plaintiffs in Perry v. Schwarzenegger trial had a conference call to preview what they will say in next week’s closing arguments (which Teddy, bmaz, and I will cover from the courthouse). The most interesting response from the legal team came in response to questions about the defendants’ complaints about having a [...]

As you’ve likely heard, the Chamber of Commerce has officially endorsed government welfare to limit corporate risk. (Again.) The head of the United States Chamber of Commerce said Friday that his group is not yet lobbying against legislative efforts to raise BP’s liability cap, viewing the issue as not yet “ripe.” He signaled, however, that [...]

I’m going to have more to say about James Clapper’s nomination to be Director of National Intelligence. But for now I want to point out similarities between how the Administration’s treated that nomination and its involvement in primaries. Two things make James Clapper’s nomination anything but a done deal. Most important to us little people [...]

Anyone want to bet that Rahm Emanuel will be more incensed that AT&T made his Gmail address vulnerable than about the illegal wiretapping the telecom did for Dick Cheney? Apple has suffered another embarrassment. A security breach has exposed iPad owners including dozens of CEOs, military officials, and top politicians. They—and every other buyer of [...]

I’m not in the least surprised by the LAT report that Obama is trying to come up with a compromise plan that would allow it to use Bagram as its terrorist prison even after it hands over the prison to the Afghans. The Obama administration wants to retain the ability to hold terrorism suspects from [...]

A bunch of hippie members of Congress noticed the same thing about Obama’s BP Commission that I noticed: it lacks subpoena power. So Lois Capps and Ed Markey in the House and Jeanne Shaheen and several of her colleagues are pushing legislation to give the Commission subpoena power. U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), along with [...]

Twenty-some years after one of the biggest industrial disasters in history, seven former Union Carbide executives have been sentenced to a few years in jail. A court in central India ruled Monday that seven top executives and the company they worked for are guilty for their role in the 1984 industrial disaster that killed thousands [...]

Senator Bill Nelson indicates the most horrific possible outcome is at hand in the BP Gulf Oil Spill, namely that basic well integrity is truly shot and oil and gas have breached the well casing and well bore and are escaping into the rock and out into the ocean through the sea floor.

As MadDog noted, Judicial Watch just got some new documents detailing briefings Congress received. Or rather, they got new documents providing further proof that CIA has no fucking clue what it said to Congress during some key briefings (this batch shows, for example, that the fall 2003 briefings were never finalized into a Memo for [...]

Wired reports that authorities have arrested a military intelligence analyst who had boasted that he leaked two videos, an intelligence report on Wikileaks, and hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables to Wikileaks. Federal officials have arrested an Army intelligence analyst who boasted of giving classified U.S. combat video and hundreds of thousands of classified State [...]