Judge Vaugn Walker has issued an extremely significant decision in the illegal wiretapping case of al-Haramain v. Bush/Obama. He has awarded damages and attorney fees to the plaintiffs on their claims of illegal and unconstitutional surveillance by the US government.

Just how inattentive and asleep at the wheel does the government think the American media and citizenry are, to brazenly engage in the simultaneous duplicity of relying on the Durham investigation in Geneva for the UN UPR On Human Rights at the same moment it was using the Durham investigation to bleed out the statute of limitation on the primary jurisdiction of the investigation at home? Well, they think the media and people are completely asleep and, sadly, they are quite correct.

As we have heard absolutely nothing from Eric Holder, John Durham, the DOJ or the Obama Administration in relation to indictments or other results of the investigation Mr. John Durham has been conducting since January 8, 2008, nearly three years, I thought a letter was in order asking just exactly what their status was. Here is that letter.

The DOJ has just announced significant arrests of eleven individuals, including four current Alabama state legislators, three lobbyists, two business owners and one of their employees, and an employee of the Alabama legislature in the long simmering Alabama Bingo case. The Karl Rove operative Leura Canary, still the US Attorney for that district in Alabama after all the Don Siegelman hell she caused is once again knee deep in the operation.

Given the current surveillance state situation in America, the Keith case, formally known as United States v. United States District Court, is one of the most important cases from our recent past, and has profound implications on our present and future. The Keith case doesn’t have simple facts, but they are fascinating and instructive. So bear with me as we go though them – this is going to take awhile, and will be laid out over a series of four posts.

Glenn Fine–DOJ’s Inspector General–is usually one of the most credible agents of oversight in the federal government. But his last report–examining whether the FBI investigated the First Amendment activities of lefty groups as terrorism–is a masterpiece of obfuscation. It manages to look at three different investigative efforts of the Thomas Merton Center’s anti-war activism, all [...]

Turns out “If al-qaida is calling” really meant a tragic game show of “Dialing for Detainees” and taking crank calls from batty old landladies. Based on this atrocious “evidence” human beings were detained without due process, beaten and abused. Right here in the “Homeland”. The new definition of “security”.

There is peril to the very fabric of American society when our founding principles are discarded and/or compromised, yet that is exactly what has occurred in the wake of 9/11. The stunning tale of Zeitoun and the Gitmo style gulag known as Camp Greyhound erected five years ago in the wake of Katrina tells us just how far down the slippery slope we have fallen as a nation.

Now that Earl Blumenauer has exposed the craven indemnification agreement the US government under the Bush/Cheney Administration gave to Halliburton/KBR, he should pursue the same types of agreements secretly given to telcom companies participating in the illegal wiretapping program.

Nine years ago today, George W Bush was informed that “Al Qaeda [was] determined to strike in US.” And then he went out to clear more brush at his pig farm in Crawford. Obama is showing no such presidential manliness in the second year of his term. Yesterday, his Justice Department actually indicted 14 of [...]