Mark Hosenball reports that aside from some pockets of short-term damage, the impact of the Wikileaks leak of diplomatic cables has been embarrassing, but not damaging. Internal U.S. government reviews have determined that a mass leak of diplomatic cables caused only limited damage to U.S. interests abroad, despite the Obama administration’s public statements to the [...]

I think a lot of the discussion about Freddie DeBoer’s “the blindspot” (with Steve Hynd as one exception) focuses too closely on the personalities–on whether Jane is mean in print or whether Ezra is too conciliatory–and not on whether our political dialogue is dangerously ignoring the plight of workers. For the purposes of this post, [...]

Five years ago, BabyDoc Duvalier applied for a passport for Haiti, threatening to return in a period leading up to elections. As a series of Wikileaks cables make clear, the US pressed hard–with apparent success–to prevent his return to Haiti. One cable shows the US asking France, on January 11, 2006, whether it could prevent [...]

FROM: Mr. Lloyd Blankfein 200 West Street New York, New York 202-555-MOTU TO: CEO Chump City, ForeignLand Dear Sir: I have been requested by the Facebook Company to contact you for assistance in resolving a matter. The Facebook Company has recently concluded new agreements to share its users’ identities. The contracts have immediately produced moneys [...]

Remember this? Remember when Bernie Sanders used a chunk of his FiliBernie to note that GE CEO Jeff Immelt, whose company benefited from $16 billion in welfare from the federal government, was a big fan of outsourcing to China? Gee! When GE had, a couple of years ago, some really difficult economic times, they needed [...]

Josh Gerstein notes a curious argument the government makes in its motion to deny bail to alleged leaker Jeffrey Sterling: that leaking is more dangerous than espionage. The defendant’s unauthorized disclosures, however, may be viewed as more pernicious than the typical espionage case where a spy sells classified information for money. Unlike the typical espionage [...]

You’d think after it had become the poster child for robo-signing foreclosure fraud, at a time when it was facing a class action suit arising out of that fraud, and at a time when all servicers had been anxiously awaiting the result of the US Bank v. Ibanez suit in MA, GMAC would be very [...]

On Friday, Judge Alvin Hellerstein had a hearing to figure out how to end the contempt suit the ACLU brought against the CIA for destroying the torture tapes. The ACLU asked that he hold the CIA in contempt. Hellerstein said that wouldn’t serve much purpose. The ACLU suggested that he could hold individuals–presumably meaning Jose [...]

As bmaz noted, we have learned that long time commenter and my blogmate at Next Hurrah, “Sister Sara,” passed away last year. If you’re familiar with her comments and posts, you’ll remember that she was incredibly knowledgeable with long experience in progressive politics (including in Wellstone’s early career). It was a tremendous gift to have [...]

A man about to go on trial in Switzerland for breaking that country’s secrecy laws has promised to give details of 2,000 individuals and corporations who are hiding their money in offshore accounts to Wikileaks tomorrow. The offshore bank account details of 2,000 “high net worth individuals” and corporations – detailing massive potential tax evasion [...]