That would be the sudden announcement and chiding by Attorney General Alberto “The Law is What Me and the President SAY IT IS” Gonzales directed at FBI Director Robert Mueller over the now admitted abuse of National Security Letters. As our friend Julia might say, this calls for the Claude Rains Memorial Gambling Awareness Award… we are just shocked… SHOCKED… to hear that the abusive NSL’s that were authorized by the USA PATRIOT Act might be used in an abusive way by officials of the Bush Administration. Just shocked. This is the same Alberto Gonzales who tells us that the...

Former Vice-Presidential Chief of Staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby was convicted on four of five counts arising from his lying to federal investigators in the investigation of the outing of former CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson. If When Libby is sentenced in June, he will probably face 20-27 months in prison. His overpriced legal team will appeal, hopefully keeping it in play until after the November 2008 election, when, if appeals and other maneuvers aren’t successful, Mr. Libby will receive a Presidential pardon. Some of the jurors commented that they were annoyed that Karl Rove and Dick Cheney weren’t also...

Friend of freedom, Guantanamo blog proprietress H. Candace Gorman lets the military have it in this piece in the Huffington Post, specifically directed at the (outrageous) decision of Gitmo military commission chief prosecutor Colonel Moe Davis to charge Marine Corps Major Michael Mori (military counsel to Gitmo detainee David Hicks; Mori’s co-counsel, Josh Dratel is interviewed here) with speaking contemptuously of the President, Vice-President or Defense Secretary. Mori has traveled to Australia and called the rigged kangaroo courts in which his client is to be tried… rigged, kangaroo courts. Mori, of course, now that he is facing charges, must retain...

In the Bush Administration, it seems it’s never, ever about anything else. For those inclined to blame Joe Lieberman for everything, feel free: he just sat there during the Vice-Presidential debate in 2000 and let Dick Cheney lie through his teeth about the government “having nothing to do” with his inconceivably good financial fortune as head of government parasite corporation Halliburton. And so, over six wonderful years later, the mirth and merriment (for those of us uncomfortable with technical terms like “graft”) just keeps on coming. We’ll start with this WaPo report indicating that the Bush FDA is approving– over...

Super Dave Johnson treats us to this daring counter-attack against the standard issue right wing echo chamber assault that (get this!) Al Gore has high electric bills! Well, he probably has a big house, and a lot of kids… oh, and that green energy option tends to cost more than standard electricity… but, goes the charge picked up by the usual suspect… “Al Gore is a hypocrite“. If that’s right wing code for “saint” and “hero”, then, yes he is. The intent is obvious: to scare Gore off from actually running, because the right wing is deathly afraid of him....

Democratic Senate Leader Harry Reid has been hinting at possible legislation to alter the Congressional authorization for use of force in Iraq, such as possibly just to fight al Qaeda and train Iraqi forces, for example. Unlike the non-binding resolution which still couldn’t come out of a filibuster, this type of legislation would be subject to an almost certain Presidential veto. Of course, in framing the issues for any leading Democratic candidate except Hillary Clinton, one couldn’t be clearer about pitting the interests and desires of the American people writ large versus those of the Beltway and military-industrial complex super-elite...

According to this report in the Grey Lady, Iraqi insurgents (we can assume that’s code for Sunni insurgents, though we are not told explicitly that it is Sunni insurgents doing this) have taken up a new tactic and weapon of choice: truck bombs that also release chlorine gas. You will recall that chlorine gas was banned in warfare following its widespread use in the First World War (the one to end all wars), and it is nasty if breathed in or contacts the skin… painful, and often fatal. I vaguely remember the threat of Saddam Hussein’s use of chemical weapons...

Well, the final battle over just how far we have fallen in the annals of 800 years of Anglo-American jurisprudence is on, with the intermediate appelate court known as the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, by a 2 judge to 1 margin, answering “Nyet” on the question: “Are there ultimate judicial checks on arbitrary executive power especially when ratified by a feckless partisan Congress?”, in dismissing habeas corpus petitions brought by the nearly 400 remaining Guantanamo detainees. Unlike prior judicial outrages along the way, I am actually less troubled by this one for at...

On this President’s Day, let’s all take a moment to salute one of the most consistently performing Presidents in American history, that, of course, being the current one. Unfortunately, he has been consistently performing at the level of disaster, and this observation in the Grey Lady about the reemergence of some centralized control of its network by the al Qaeda leadership should give us all pause, if not complete and total apoplexy. (It would seem, btw, that as yet another article in The Times laments the new design of the Freedom Tower for the World Trade Center site as reflecting...

(Updated) In a follow up from my American Street piece House of Pain (discussing the House vote on a non-binding resolution condemning “The SurgeTM”), it seems that the Senate Republicans, in contrast to their own threats to end fillibusters for their own purposes… now that they are not in the majority… the GOP Senators used a fillibuster (with the expedient of nine GOP senators not even showing up to vote) to block a non-binding resolution in the Upper House. Go ahead and say what you like about Joe Lieberman: he appears to have bucked the rest of (what he purports...