I’m going to have more to say about the Libya memo the Administration released yesterday. But I just wanted to point out something about the structure of it. Here’s the first paragraph: This memorandum memorializes advice this Office provided to you, prior to the commencement of recent United States military operations in Libya, regarding the [...]

As MadDog and I were discussing on this thread, the May 6, 2004 Jack Goldsmith opinion on the warrantless wiretap program references an OLC opinion that appears not to have been publicly released or, even in the course of FOIA, disclosed. Thus, this Office will typically construe a general statute, even one that is written [...]

Through what can only be described as a Christmas miracle, our very own Mary has “discovered” the new version of the OLC Christmas carol, as updated by the Obama/Bush OLC.

Steven Edwards, one of the four journalists banned from Gitmo for reporting publicly available information, has an important story on squabbles within the Obama Administration about what should be in the recently updated Gitmo military tribunal manual. At issue is whether actions like Khadr’s alleged crime–throwing a grenade during active warfare–should be included. The officials [...]

It was not Ben Nelson who killed the nomination of Dawn Johnsen, nor was it Arlen Specter or Senate Republicans. No, the sole reason Dawn Johnsen is not leading the OLC is that Barack Obama and his coterie of advisors did not want Dawn Johnsen leading the OLC.

There was never any question but that the nomination of Dawn Johnsen to be head of the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel would be withdrawn. Now we have confirmation of that fact.

As I posted a week ago, in April 2006 Steven Bradbury wrote one of the most egregious of all the egregious torture memos, one approving the new Army Field Manual, including its Appendix M laying out more intense interrogation methods. While the legal analysis of the memo was, itself, fairly nondescript, the analysis in the [...]

There are a couple of things that have been bugging me about the authorizations DOD got for interrogations.  It’s not clear what kind of authorization DOD used to justify detainee interrogations after the Yoo memo was withdrawn in 2003-2004–they had no overall interrogation approval from OLC. While it’s possible they were just relying on already-existing [...]

Rosalind linked to this LAT article describing Clarence Thomas’ pro-abuse views. According to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, a prisoner who was slammed to a concrete floor and punched and kicked by a guard after asking for a grievance form — but suffered neither serious nor permanent harm — has no claim that his constitutional [...]

Sorry to get so deep in the weeds on the missing OLC documents, but I wanted to show why this matters, using the example of the Legal Principles (AKA the Bullet Points) documents. As I’ll show below, one of the most sensitive documents involved in the controversy between CIA and OLC on the Legal Principles [...]