Josh Gerstein provides Lindsey Graham a soap box to complain that his efforts to craft a grand compromise with the Administration on Gitmo stalled in May. “I thought we were close to getting a deal,” Graham told POLITICO last week. “I had some meetings where I walked out of the White House and said, ‘This [...]

Brian Beutler reports that the Republicans are prepping to make sure no additional support for jobs gets passed next week. Senate Democrats want to vote on the first installment of a jobs package as early as Monday, amping up the pressure on Republicans to get aboard. But for the moment, they’re not biting. “We’ll have [...]

In response to the news that David Margolis spiked the misconduct conclusion in the OPR Report on OLC justifications for torture, I wanted to put together a timeline of its construction. Two things stick out. First, the role of Mary Patrice Brown–who replaced Marshall Jarrett at a time when OPR was backing off its offer [...]

As I reported yesterday, the Dawn Johnsen-less OLC wrote an opinion on January 8 retroactively authorizing the FBI’s inappropriate use of the exigent letters to snoop on Americans’ telecomm records. Now, Senators Feingold, Durbin, and Wyden, have demanded that opinion from Eric Holder. Of note, they tie their demand into DOJ IG Glenn Fine’s comment [...]

A couple of articles explain why Congress continues to be unable to reel in Wall Street.

There’s a cynical inclusion in the new PATRIOT language that DiFi put forward the other night. It basically creates an exception in the worsened Section 215 language just for libraries

One of the things Leahy’s PATRIOT reauthorization does is incorporate and/or undercut Feingold’s efforts supporting a more sweeping reform of domestic counterterrorism efforts.

Philip Zelikow made clear in today’s hearing how Congressional briefing should work. But all the evidence suggests that’s not what happened.

It seems that Michael Mukasey made a thus far successful effort to stall out production of the OPR report on Yoo and Bradbury.

I was gone a whole week, and Burris didn’t even resign? That makes him more stubborn than either Rove or Gonzales.