SCOTUS decided today to take John Ashcroft’s appeal of a 9th Circuit decision finding that he did not have immunity from suit in using the material witness statute to illegally hold someone without probable cause. The Supreme Court, finishing its first sitting of the new Term, agreed on Monday to hear a single new case, [...]

Michael Isikoff takes a story Jack Goldsmith already treated and raises the logical conclusions. As I noted, Jack Goldsmith asked John Rizzo why it was that Woodward could publish the proceedings of a briefing from which even top Obama officials–like John Podesta–were excluded. Rizzo responded, Simple. When a President himself is a key source and [...]

Check out the following passage in HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan’s statement opposing a moratorium on foreclosures: No one should lose their home as a result of a bank mistake. No one. That is why the Obama Administration has a comprehensive review of the situation underway and will respond with the full force of the law [...]

Was discussing the state of the NFL last night with Marcy, and the prevailing opinion was an unusual lack of particularly exciting or compelling story lines. A strange parity and blaah seems to have set in to the league that hardly ever suffers from that. So, guess what, screw it I’m going with baseball as [...]

Mary and I both noted the suggestion in Judge Lewis Kaplan’s summary opinion refusing to let Hussein Abebe testify against Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani that Abebe himself was coerced to testify. Kaplan’s complete ruling provides more details. At the very least, Kaplan’s opinion points to an entire day of Abebe’s  interrogation–the day on which he first [...]

I’m going to have a longer post about some curious details revealed in Judge Lewis Kaplan’s order refusing the government request to have Hussein Abebe testify against Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani. But I wanted to point to a footnote in which Kaplan anticipated the critics now claiming that if Ghailani had been tried in a military [...]

The NYT has a fascinating story about the $75,000 house that led to the GMAC deposition on robosigning that finally alerted the world to the extent of the fraud behind foreclosures. It’s worth reading for the description of Thomas Cox, a lawyer who volunteers at legal assistance to make right for his years of doing [...]

Elizabeth Warren, presumably laying the foundation for an Administration deal with banks to not unwind the entire securitization paperwork problem in exchange for loan modifications, points to banks’ voluntary foreclosure moratoria as proof the banksters are trying to solve this problem (presumably meaning the foreclosure fraud, but not the larger problems). She additionally stated that [...]

The UndieBomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, had his first day in court since he decided to represent himself today. The outcome of the day was to schedule another pre-trial hearing on January 12. The only drama of the day pertained to whether Abdulmutallab would grant his standby counsel, Anthony Chambers, access to discovery. Abdulmutallab stated he [...]

The Treasury Department gave Felix Salmon’s response to Crusader against Injustice Timmeh Geithner’s statement on foreclosures more attention than it gave mine–they emailed a response to Salmon’s questions about why foreclosures would hurt property values. And their response is even more telling than Crusader against Injustice Timmeh Geithner’s original statement. First, at least 40 % [...]