The criminal case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn is over, at least in anything but the most technical of senses; now the focus shifts to the underlying dynamics and lawyering on the case.

In a late filing in the Northern District of California (NDCA) case of Golinski v. US Department of Personnel Management, the Department of Justice has formally stated that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is unconstitutional.

Yesterday, Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa announced a human rights inquiry into crackdowns on protestors. Human rights violations would not be tolerated, he claimed. King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa announced the move in a speech at an extraordinary Cabinet meeting Wednesday, saying such violations would not be tolerated, BNA reported. [snip] The king said [...]

I’m watching the Senate Foreign Relation Committee’s grilling of Harold Koh–either bmaz or I will post on that later. But Jim Webb just made a really important point. He noted that we have suspended, but not severed, our relations with Libya. After cornering Koh on that issue (and finally getting Koh to acknowledge that point), [...]

Thanks to POGO’s FOIA release here, we now know that not only was the persecution of Tom Drake by the DOJ completely bogus and vindictive, Tom Drake was bloody well right about TRAILBLAZER versus THIN THREAD to start with. Who couldda predicted?

EW and probably bmaz as well will likely have more to say on this one when they free up. Charlie Savage reported on Friday that Obama rejected advice from both Jeh Johnson (Pentagon general counsel) and, even more significantly, Caroline Krass (the acting head of DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel) when he availed to himself [...]

No matter how you look at this attempt to suppress and ignore the WikiLeaks material, it is bizarre and somewhat comical. The WikiLeaks Gitmo Detainee files genie is out of the bottle; it would behoove the US government to join the battle and arguments on the merits and facts instead of trying to cram the genie back in and play hide the bottle.

Jon Tester is, to the best of my knowledge, the first member of Congress to complain about FBI’s new investigative guidelines allowing agents to–among other thing–search potential informants’ trash. As a strong believer in government accountability and person privacy rights, I find it unacceptable that you would lower the threshold further for engaging in surveillance [...]

Bernie yanks the Bahraini GP and Vettel looks on track for another win in Montreal.

Former Bush Special Counsel Scott Bloch’s attempt to get out of his guilty plea has been denied and he will be sentenced to prison today.