There’s absolutely no reason to think that the barely literate postcard sent to Paul Wellstone’s office the day before his plane crash had anything to do with his death. The FBI files [released in FOIA to Minnesota Public Radio] reveal, for the first time, the specific criminal leads pursued by investigators. FBI agents investigated the [...]

The outage of the day is the report that Hamid Karzai’s chief of staff, Umar Daudzai, receives a steady stream of bags of Euros from Iran. One evening last August, as President Hamid Karzai wrapped up an official visit to Iran, his personal plane sat on the airport tarmac, waiting for a late-running passenger: Iran’s [...]

I admit I’m no big fan of Elena Kagan. But tell me whether I’m justified in worrying about this? Data point 1: On at least one occasion, Antonin Scalia participated in the Koch brothers’ secret sessions plotting to advance the Koch agenda. Data point 2: Antonin Scalia is hunting buddies with Dick Cheney. Data point [...]

The NYT has a worthwhile editorial lambasting the Obama DOJ’s pursuit of SCOTUS review in Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, which will probably result in expanded immunity for government officials that abuse the law so as to abuse the rights of Americans. The editorial focuses closely on the way in which DOJ’s defense of absolute immunity amounts [...]

The biggest headline from Friday’s Wikileaks dump (everywhere but the NYT, anyway) is that the “US ignored torture.” But the way in which an official policy ignoring torture was followed by collaboration with one of Iraq’s torture squads raises the question whether the US involvement in Iraqi torture was more direct. Did the US “ignore” [...]

As you may have heard on Twitter, Omar Khadr has plead guilty to all charges against him. Omar Khadr, the only Canadian, only child soldier and only Guantanamo Bay detainee charged with battlefield homicide in the killing a U.S. soldier, pleaded guilty to all terrorism and murder charges on Monday. “Yes” said Mr. Khadr, when [...]

It says something about our country that the person who wrote this op-ed could, in a few short years, go on to serve as the primary economic advisor to the President. (h/t scribe) And this study shows that measured this way, the mortgage market has become more perfect, not more irresponsible. People tend to make [...]

As I noted in my last post on the move, led by Fidelity National, to require banks to warrant against “incompetent or erroneous affidavit testimony or documentation,” the move was largely about getting Fannie and Freddie on board and with them making this a standard practice in the industry. So I’m not surprised by the [...]

Yankees get bounced, Rangers on the way to their first World Series and Brett Favre is going back to Lambeau. Oh, and the first ever Korean Grand Prix is being run and the new track looks good.

Before the Wikileaks document dump this afternoon, DOD and Murdoch were out with claims that the impending dump would put 300 Iraqis at significant risk of reprisal. As Wikileaks noted via Twitter, the article falsely claimed that Wikileaks would reveal actual names. Besides, if DOD has a problem with leaks, they likely have a problem [...]