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1:21 PM, May 3, 2011 • By DANIEL HALPERDebra Burlingame, Tim Brown, and Peter Gadiel react to the news of Osama bin Laden's death:
Steps to reforming intelligence. Jun 7, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 36 • By STEPHEN F. HAYES
Two weeks ago President Obama fired his top intelligence adviser—or at least the man who held the title.
Read more... And the Justice Department won't comment.1:14 PM, Mar 10, 2010 • By JOHN MCCORMACKWith everyone from the New York Times to Republican establishment lawyers and Lindsey Graham suggesting the Gitmo lawyers are proud heirs to the tradition of John Adams, it's worth recalling that three lawyers allegedly showed photos of CIA officers to 9/11 plotters -- and may have broken the law in the process. As the Washington Post reported in August:
Read more... 8:17 AM, Mar 10, 2010 • By THOMAS JOSCELYNJohn Schwartz of the New York Times has published a piece on the reaction of some conservatives to an ad by Keep America Safe asking for the DOJ to identify government lawyers who previously represented or advocated on behalf of terrorists.
Read more... 9:58 AM, Mar 9, 2010 • By WILLIAM KRISTOLI'm not a lawyer (though a few of my best friends are). But I gather there's an old legal dictum that goes: If you can't argue the facts, argue the law. If you can't argue the law, argue the facts. If you can't argue the law or the facts, blow smoke.
If you want to see some really high-class smoke being blown, it's worth taking a look at the recent statement signed by a bunch of Republican lawyers defending liberal lawyers now working at the Justice Department who'd previously represented or advocated for terrorist detainees. Nameless straw men (including me) and women (Liz Cheney) are subject to name-calling--"shameful," "unjust," and "destructive" appear in the first paragraph alone. In all three paragraphs of the lawyers' letter, highfalutin generalities are generally and highfalutinly invoked. The self-esteem and self-importance of lawyers are much in evidence. The only thing missing is an actual argument.
Read more... 12:43 PM, Mar 8, 2010 • By JOHN MCCORMACKMarc Thiessen writes at the Washington Post:
Would most Americans want to know if the Justice Department hired a bunch of mob lawyers and put them in charge of mob cases? Or a group of drug cartel lawyers and put them in charge of drug cases? Would they want their elected representatives to find out who these lawyers were, which mob bosses and drug lords they had worked for, and what roles they were now playing at the Justice Department? Of course they would -- and rightly so.
Yet U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder hired former al-Qaeda lawyers to serve in the Justice Department and resisted providing Congress this basic information. In November, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee sent Holder a letter requesting that he identify officials who represented terrorists or worked for organizations advocating on their behalf, the cases and projects they worked on before coming to the Justice Department, the cases and projects they've worked on since joining the administration, and a list of officials who have recused themselves because of prior work on behalf of terrorist detainees.
Holder stonewalled for nearly three months. Finally, two weeks ago, he admitted that nine political appointees in the Justice Department had represented or advocated for terrorist detainees, but he failed to identify seven whose names were not publicly known or to directly answer other questions the senators posed. So Keep America Safe, a group headed by Liz Cheney, posted a Web ad demanding that Holder identify the "al-Qaeda seven," and a subsequent Fox News investigation unearthed the names. Only under this public pressure did the Justice Department confirm their identities -- but Holder still refuses to disclose their roles in detention policy.
Read the whole thing.
Read more... 1:39 PM, Mar 5, 2010 • By DANIEL HALPERWith the arguments over detainees and their lawyers heating up, it's worth noting two past pieces by Keep America Safe's Debra Burlingame, both of which appeared in the Wall Street Journal.
Read more...
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With American evangelicals on the ground in South Sudan.
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Romney’s challenge is to address the deep uneasiness in America and point the way to a comeback.
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 Why we need to break up the banks.
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