New at TWI

Politico asks whether Frank Ricci, the firefighter in the affirmative action case that’s dogged Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, can become an outspoken voice against her nomination. The answer: not really, but conservatives will try to make it happen anyway.
Ricci’s attorney Karen Torre … appeared on Fox News’ Neil Cavuto with two of the cases [...]

Since the beginning of the financial meltdown last year, Mike Lillis, The Washington Independent’s congressional correspondent, has been documenting the failure of Congress and the Bush and Obama administrations to place tough restrictions on executive compensation as the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve shoveled taxpayer money out the door to bail out America’s largest [...]

As TWI’s Mary Kane has demonstrated in previous reporting, when a bank forecloses on a delinquent mortgage and evicts the homeowner, it can often be heartbreaking. But, as Mary writes in her latest story on the housing crisis, foreclosure is very often just the beginning of another long, equally tragic process that is currently wreaking [...]

Last month, TWI’s Mary Kane reported that mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were quietly slipping requirements into loan modification agreements that high-risk borrowers who are behind on their mortgage payments sign away their rights to sue, as a condition for changing the terms of their loans.
Talking Points Memo’s Elana Schor picked up on [...]

The Atlanta Federal Home Loan Bank loaned $51.5 billion to Countrywide — a mortgage lender at the heart of the subprime crisis — in 2007. Washington Mutual, which went on to become the largest failed bank in American history, received $31 billion in loans from the San Francisco FHLB. IndyMac, which was seized by the [...]

Our finance writer Mary Kane reports that a bruised, battered and little-noticed federal agency responsible for insuring mortgages is about to take a prominent role in the government’s effort to fix the foreclosure crisis.
The Federal Housing Administration — which was relegated to the sidelines for the last eight years — has now been tasked with [...]

TWI’s Spencer Ackerman caught up with John Kiriakou, a former CIA official who oversaw the interrogation of a high-profile Al Qaeda prisoner, to talk about President Obama’s executive orders to close Guantanamo Bay and ban so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques.”
“It’s a great leap forward in terms of respect for human rights,” said John Kiriakou, the retired [...]

TWI economy reporter Mary Kane breaks some startling news today. In November, mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac quietly slipped a requirement into mortgage modification paperwork that forces homeowners to waive their legal rights in order to be eligible to renegotiate their loans. The broad requirement bars borrowers from bringing suits related to their [...]

Fellow TPM alum, Kate Klonick has joined us to blog the remaking of the Department of Justice, including Eric Holder’s Senate confirmation hearings Thursday. Klonick, who dogged the Troopergate story while the rest of us ignored the arctic scandal when it broke this summer, has already hit the ground running on The Streak. Here’s her [...]

2009 is poised to be a big year for the Democrats, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to overlook the GOP here at TWI.
I’m pleased to announce that David Weigel has joined our staff to cover the Republican Party and the remaking of the right.
David is formerly of the libertarian magazine Reason, where, as an [...]