We have unexpectedly quick news out of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on the Perry v. Schwarzenegger Proposition 8 marriage equality appeal. the 9th has dismissed Imperial county’s attempt to intervene, and certified the remainder of the case to the California Supreme Court for a determination of the issue of standing, which it held to be a state law issue.

Eight years ago I went to a conference for young breast cancer survivors. It was pretty useful to be around a bunch of other women who, like me, had been diagnosed with breast cancer in their twenties and thirties. It was also useful to hear doctors who had actually thought about things like long term [...]

Robert Chesney had an interesting observation about the inter-agency group Dafna Linzer reports is working on some kind of statement with regards to Congress’ restrictions on Obama’s ability to move detainees from Gitmo to the US: the apparent non-participation of DOD in the group. Second, and perhaps relatedly, note that the story also describes the interagency [...]

Remember the entire point of Karl Rove’s plot to fire a bunch of US Attorneys and replace them with partisan hacks? It was to advance the political career of the new USAs. Perhaps his most prominent success on that measure is Chris Christie. Though Christie abandons his state even in the face of blizzards–and then [...]

That’s the short version of this Dafna Linzer story on Obama Administration plans to combat Congressional efforts to keep Gitmo open forever. Obama will include a signing statement with the appropriations bill asserting that limits on what he can do with Gitmo are unconstitutional [see update below]. Obama administration officials say they plan to reject [...]

… to refer not to General Motors, but to Genetically Modified food: The US embassy in Paris advised Washington to start a military-style trade war against any European Union country which opposed genetically modified (GM) crops, newly released WikiLeaks cables show. In response to moves by France to ban a Monsanto GM corn variety in [...]

Speaking of material support for terrorism, David Cole uses the recent trip by Rudy Giuliani and others to suck up to the Mujaheddin-e Khalq (MEK) as an opportunity to explain the idiocy of the Holder versus Humanitarian Law Project SCOTUS verdict. DID former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Tom Ridge, [...]

The NYT has an editorial rightly condemning ascending Chair of the House Homeland Security Committee Peter King’s upcoming hearing to attack Muslims. It is disturbing to listen to Representative Peter King, the incoming chairman of the Homeland Security Committee. He has announced plans to hold a hearing next month into what he calls the “radicalization [...]

It is hard to believe 2010 is over and gone already, but nevertheless we have blasted through another year here at Emptywheel full of substantive and important issues on the merits and fun and relaxation with Trash Talking. And another year of football is heading down the stretch. Big props to the TCU Horned Frogs [...]

The Editor of Spain’s El Pais, Javier Moreno, has an interesting piece explaining why he published the Wikileak cables. He points to the same thing I pointed to–American efforts to squelch torture investigations in Spain and Germany–to explain the importance of the cables, though he also adds US efforts to prevent Spanish banks from doing [...]