It’s a privilege to be in a position where you can conspire to destroy evidence in order to preserve the ugly secrets of the torture state. A proud privilege. A privilege that Senator Pat Roberts, who used to be chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee back when Bush was adding phrases like [...]
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We finally have a final resolution of the Binyam Mohamed case in the UK (backstory here):
Three of Britain’s most senior judges have ordered the government to reveal evidence of MI5 complicity in the torture of British resident Binyam Mohamed – unanimously dismissing objections by David Miliband, the foreign secretary.
In a ruling that will cause deep [...]
As in “what really happened”.
In June 2006, the Bush military announced that three Guantánamo detainees had committed suicide by hanging themselves in their cells.
In November 2009, a team of students and faculty at the Seton Hall University law school analyzed a heavily redacted NCIS report of the alleged suicides, and found the official government account [...]
I’m not a great one for year-end lists, and Looking Back (sagely or otherwise) at The Year That Was. But I thought I’d share this reflection.
The biggest political story of the year, I think, should have been the huge gulf between the Obama we were sold (Obama-who-walks-on-water) and the Obama we find we actually [...]
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Ever since Alberto “Buttercheeks” Gonzales started to disgrace the office of the Attorney General of the United States — preening himself every time someone called him General Gonzales — there has been active speculation exactly how stupid the man really is.
Buttercheeks, it seems, finally tired of the debate, and decided to settle the [...]
For years, Democrats have complained about how George Bush and his band of merry men put two wars on the national charge card. About how, far from raising taxes or cutting non-military spending to cover the cost of his wars, Bush actually cut taxes and introduced a massive new domestic spending program, Medicare Part [...]
Attorney General Eric Holder’s announcement last Friday that Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four co-defendants will be tried in civilian courts in New York City produced the predictable barrage of fulminations from Republicans (about how the sky will absolutely fall on our heads).
But what has attracted next to no comment is just how few of the [...]
Batten the hatches. Gird your loins. Circle the wagons. The sky is about to fall on our heads. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan has just ruled that most of the FBI’s interview with Dick Cheney during the Valerie Plame investigation must be made public:
A federal judge says the FBI must publicly [...]
Back when news of the dramatic hospital bed story broke in May 2007, John Ashcroft took over from John McCain as the reigning St. John of American politics.
Some news that appeared late Friday evening, and got buried over the holiday weekend, shines a light on the other side of John Ashcroft.
A three-judge panel [...]
Once again, the Obama administration has chosen to hew closely to the Bush administration’s line on a controversial aspect of The War Against Terror. This time it’s about supporting the CIA as it invokes national security as a reason for drawing an invisibility cloak around the CIA’s “defunct detention and interrogation program”.
The Central Intelligence [...]
