As Siun noted yesterday, Mohamed el Baradei issued a statement critical of US support for Hosni Mubarak in advance of returning to Egypt (and, as of now, being put under house arrest). Of course, you in the West have been sold the idea that the only options in the Arab world are between authoritarian regimes [...]

Just a quick post while I’m packing so you all have fresh thread to unwind. And also to note that Halliburton did manage to convince Nigeria to give them a half-off special for Dick Cheney’s freedom, though they had to bring Poppy Bush and James Baker in to close the deal. Nigeria’s anti-corruption police have [...]

Last night I appeared on a panel on the Scooter Libby case. It was Judge Reggie Walton, Peter Zeidenberg, Alexandra Walsh from the Libby team, Lee Levine (who represented Andrea Mitchell and Tim Russert), Walter Pincus and I. The panel itself was good. My high point came after Walsh had explained why the Defense had [...]

Joe Lieberman has introduced what he claims to be a law targeted at Wikileaks. “The recent dissemination by Wikileaks of thousands of State Department cables and other documents is just the latest example of how our national security interests, the interests of our allies, and the safety of government employees and countless other individuals are [...]

I am very very grateful that Ryan Grim exposed Bush as a plagiarist on Thursday. When Crown Publishing inked a deal with George W. Bush for his memoirs, the publisher knew it wasn’t getting Faulkner. But the book, at least, promises “gripping, never-before-heard detail” about the former president’s key decisions, offering to bring readers “aboard [...]

I think it was the timing of the end of the torture investigation that hurts most of all. Just days ago, Harold Koh was boasting of the Durham investigation to the UN. Then Bush started his dog and pony show, including his proud admission to have ordered up torture. All of which made today’s announcement, [...]

Today’s news will be dominated with Bush’s admission that Cheney was mad at him for not pardoning Libby. Bush, in an interview aired Monday on TODAY, said Cheney was angry that Bush only commuted the sentence of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, convicted of lying during the leak investigation. [snip] ‘I can’t believe you’re going to [...]

The National Security Archive has been doing great work going back and collecting the documents leading to the Iraq War, adding some it acquired through FOIA. Its first installment provided new evidence of how quickly the Bush Administration turned to targeting Iraq both before and after 9/11. Its second installment looked at whether anyone had [...]

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 [...]

Jeebus: Goldsmith may be getting a hang of this blogging thing, but I’m not: John Rizzo, not John Brennan. So the stuff I originally said about Brennan doesn’t make any sense. I may not always agree with Jack Goldsmith, but he’s getting a hang of this blogging thing. Today, he posts the answer John Brennan [...]