Gitmo Not Likely to Close Till 2011 at the Earliest

We’d already set aside the January 2010 deadline for closing the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay that President Obama set on his first day in office. But now the administration is acknowledging that it probably won’t close the prison down until 2011 — at the earliest.

While funding is the More…

For the Record, I Am Not on the CIA Payroll

Charlie Savage and Scott Shane have a great story today about U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies improperly spying on constitutionally protected activities of American citizens. Overcollection, as it’s euphemistically known in the intelligence business, has, unsurprisingly, occurred for years, despite official denials in the Bush administration. One American More…

Controversy Grows Over Obama Signing Statements

Despite President Obama’s previous criticism of former President George W. Bush’s “signing statements” that limit the president’s responsibility to comply with a bill passed by Congress, it turns out Obama has been doing much the same thing since he took office.  Charlie Savage reported in The New York More…

NYT Draws Different Conclusion Than Fox News on Sotomayor’s Enemy Combatant Comments

Whereas Fox News appears to have read Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor’s 2003 lecture to Indiana University law students as an approval of broad executive power in the war on terror, Charlie Savage at The New York Times today has the opposite take.

According More…