I hate to say it, but, I told you so…
Just the other day, when I was writing about the case of Jewel v. NSA (and responding to the Columbia Journalism Review’s criticism that no one was covering this important case about warrantless wiretapping), I remarked that while More…
Funny how, as Greg Sargent at The Plum Line notes today, the Obama administration hasn’t yet taken a position on pending legislation that would curtail its ability to rely on the “state secrets privilege.”
As I’ve been reporting here, the Justice Department has been relying heavily on the More…
In an interview that aired Wednesday night on the CBS Evening News, Attorney General Eric Holder suggested to Katie Couric that the Obama administration is unlikely to depart dramatically from the Bush administration’s position on the use of the state secrets privilege, noting just one case out of about 20 More…
Carrie Johnson in The Washington Post today picks up on a problem we’ve been writing about at TWI for months now: when it comes to information about crimes committed by the previous administration, President Obama isn’t following through on his big commitments to “open government.”
“Civil liberties advocates are More…
Reading The New York Times’ lead editorial today feels a bit like reading a summary of much of what I’ve been writing for the past two months: that President Obama, despite his impressive pronouncements on closing the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay and ending torture and unnecessary government More…
The Senate Judiciary Committee’s “Getting to the Truth Through a Nonpartisan Commission of Inquiry” convened this morning to consider Sen. Patrick Leahy’s (D-Vt.) proposal for a sort of “truth and reconciliation” commission.
The hearing was full of all the predictable, lofty statements from illustrious supporters about why a commission would More…
In an October 2001 memo released today on Monday, then-Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel John Yoo advised the Pentagon’s top lawyer that the president may not only deploy the military within the United States, but it may More…
A U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco today rejected the Obama Justice Department’s attempt to continue to conceal evidence of warrantless wiretapping.
As I wrote in my story today, the government filed an emergency appeal last week hoping to halt the release of documents More…
Related to Daphne’s post from last week on the sweeping power of presidential pardons, Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) has a Salon piece today urging President George W. Bush to show some restraint as he leaves the office. Pre-emptive pardons for administration officials involved in torture and warrantless spying More…
Who said “telecom immunity?”
With the economy in the tank and Washington distracted by gazillion-dollar industry bailouts, it seems like forever since that buzz-phrase — ubiquitous earlier in the year — was uttered in this town.
You recall the issue: The White House wanted not only expanded powers to spy More…
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