Sheldon Whitehouse

“This is war,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.). “I think the decision you’ve made to try these cases in federal court represents a policy and political decision.”

Responding to a question from Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who’s asked frequently when the Justice Department will finally release the repeatedly delayed report by the Office of Professional Responsibility on the conduct of lawyers at the Office of Legal Counsel under President Bush, Holder said that he expects it will be released by the end [...]

Former Acting Assistant Attorney General Daniel Levin, who headed the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel under President George W. Bush after the departure of Jack Goldsmith, said this morning that “I personally am not opposed to criminal investigation of my conduct and others during the period in question.” Levin was referring to the period [...]

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee — or half of it, more accurately — has begun its first day of markup of the landmark Kerry-Boxer climate legislation. And once again, it’s a pretty one-sided debate.
Last week, Ranking Member James Inhofe (R-Okla.) threatened to boycott the markup unless the committee received an Environmental Protection Agency [...]

A group of 10 Democratic senators today reintroduced legislation designed to end the sentencing disparity between powder and crack cocaine — a long-standing push that never quite seems to get enacted.
In a statement, the lawmakers cite the reasoning behind the proposal.
Under current law, possession of five grams of crack cocaine (roughly the weight of two [...]

As Daphne pointed out, the insurance industry’s witness at yesterday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing to examine a law exempting health insurers from federal anti-trust rules was none-too-comfortable defending that exclusion from Democratic attacks. But you didn’t have to watch the proceedings to learn that University of Arkansas professor Lawrence Powell, representing the Physician Insurers [...]

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), the former U.S. Attorney who’s been pointing out for more than a year that waterboarding is and always has been torture, made the key point yesterday (and the same one I made here) that the criminal investigation of “enhanced interrogation techniques” that turned into torture would be an ordinary and obvious [...]

Perhaps emboldened by a rare victory over the gun lobby last week, a group of liberal senators introduced legislation Wednesday to prevent people convicted of felonies overseas from owning firearms.
The proposal attempts to close a loophole created by a 2005 Supreme Court decision, which found that the prohibition on gun ownership applies only to felons [...]

More on that new provision in the intelligence authorization bill pushing disclosure on the efficacy of torture. The measure was proposed by Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.) to counter the Obama administration’s portrayal of torture as ineffective, and particularly in light of the release of the Justice Department’s 2002 and 2005 memoranda justifying its use. In [...]

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) just denounced Supreme Court Justice John Roberts’ disingenuous umpire theory of judging — his oft-quoted statement that the role of a judge is just to call “balls and strikes” as he sees them — with a harsh critique of what’s turned out to be remarkable “judicial activism” by the conservative majority [...]