233 Articles

Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Obama's Budget Calls for Billions in New Spending for Drones
(1 comments) the base spending plan for 2011 is 3.5 percent of gross domestic product. Adding in war costs, it comes out to 4.6 percent of GDP. Obama has called a three-year spending freeze on domestic programs, but the Defense Department is exempt from the proposal.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Is White House Pressuring DOJ to Delay Torture Report Until Health Care Bill Passes?
Did the Obama administration pressure the Department of Justice (DOJ) to suppress a long-awaited report from one of the agency's watchdogs on issues revolving around torture until Congress passes a health care bill?

Saturday, December 12, 2009
Blistering Indictment Leveled Against Obama Over His Handling of Bush-Era War Crimes
(12 comments) "Obama has substituted words for action on issues surrounding torture since his first days in office nearly one year ago. That's the point the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) made shortly after Obama's acceptance Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech. Officials from the civil rights organization issued a withering indictment of the Obama administration's handling of clear-cut cases of Bush-era war crimes.

Monday, December 7, 2009
DOJ Watchdog Report on Yoo, Bybee Torture Memos to be Released Soon, Agency Spokeswoman Says
(1 comments) people familiar with the contents of the report said the Justice Department shared the final version of the document with the subjects of OPR's investigation: former OLC attorneys John Yoo, Jay Bybee and Steven Bradbury.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Obama's DOJ May Appeal Ruling Ordering Release of Cheney's CIA Leak Transcript
(3 comments) The Obama administration indicated in court papers it may appeal a federal judge's ruling ordering the Justice Department to release portions of the transcribed interview between former Vice President Dick Cheney and Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor appointed to probe the roles Bush administration officials played in the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson six years ago.

Thursday, October 8, 2009
Spending Bill Includes Provision to Block Release of Abuse Photos
(1 comments) the Obama administration petitioned the US Supreme Court to hear the case at the same time the president privately told Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Connecticut) and Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) he would work with Congress to help get a measure passed aimed at blocking the photographs from being released.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Court Documents Reveal Existence of New Torture Tapes
(1 comments) A federal court judge on Monday revealed that the brutal interrogation of an alleged "war on terror" detainee imprisoned at Guantanamo for more than seven years was videotaped and she ordered the government to turn over the materials to the prisoner's lawyers.

Friday, September 11, 2009
High Court Urged to Reject White House Appeal to Keep Abuse Photos Secret
(1 comments) Obama indicated he would abide by the court's decision to release the photographs, but he abruptly shifted his stance after he was publicly criticized by the likes of Dick Cheney and Cheney's daughter, Liz.

Friday, August 14, 2009
Rove "Driving Force" Behind US Attorney Firings
(3 comments) Rove downplayed his role in the firings, saying he only acted as a "conduit" for complaints that Republican Party officials and GOP lawmakers sent to him about the federal prosecutors. The documents tell a different story.

Sunday, August 2, 2009
Holder Ponders Limited Torture Probe
(8 comments) By targeting just CIA interrogators who exceeded the torture guidelines, the Obama administration also would be shutting the door on new internal investigations that might reach higher levels - the Justice Department lawyers who established the parameters and the White House officials who encouraged the brutal tactics - including the near-drowning of waterboarding.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Obama Lawyers Shield Cheney on Leak
Though Judge Sullivan didn't issue a ruling in the case, he didn't appear swayed by the government's arguments. He said the Justice Department was, in effect, requesting that he "legislate" by issuing some sort of special Freedom of Information Act exemption for vice presidents.

Thursday, July 16, 2009
Bush May Have Continued to Secretly Operate John Poindexter's TIA Program
"Suspicionless Surveillance" was developed by the Pentagon's controversial Total Information Awareness department, led by Admiral John Poindexter, the former national security adviser who secretly sold weapons to Middle Eastern terrorists in 1980s during the Iran-Contra affair and was convicted of a felony for lying to Congress and destroying evidence. The convictions were later overturned on appeal.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009
NSA Turned Over Names of Americans Wiretapped to Ex-State Dept. Official
(1 comments) Hayden, who was interviewed by "Nightline," said it was absolutely untrue that the agency was monitoring Americans who are suspected of being agents of a foreign power without first seeking a special warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Top Democrat Says Bush Broke the Law By Authorizing Surveillance
(5 comments) George W. Bush justified his warrantless wiretapping by relying on Justice Department attorney John Yoo's theories of unlimited presidential wartime powers, and started the spying operation even before Yoo issued a formal opinion, a government investigation discovered.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009
NSA Gave Up Names of Americans Wiretapped to Ex-State Dept. Official
(3 comments) The names of American citizens that are blacked out can be revealed to government officials if they ask for them in writing and only if they're needed to help the official better understand the context of the intelligence information they were included in. But that wasn't the case with Bolton or other government officials and agencies.

Sunday, July 12, 2009
Bush Spying Relied on Faulty Theories
After the inspectors generals' report was released Friday, Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, renewed his calls for a bipartisan "truth commission" to examine abuses of power during the Bush administration.

Saturday, July 11, 2009
How Rove Said He'd Answer Siegelman Prosecution Queries
(1 comments) Rove indicated during his Fox News interview that he doesn't intend to stray from the responses to questions he had already provided to Smith, which were clearly written to elicit denials from Rove about his involvement in Siegelman's prosecution.

Saturday, July 11, 2009
Yoo Gave Bush White House Retroactive Legal Cover to Spy on Americans
(4 comments) The President's Surveillance Program (PSP) was far more expansive than the Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP), the report said, while the TSP allowed the NSA to spy on Americans' telephone calls without a warrant. The PSP went much further and remains classified and Yoo worked directly with White House officials on the PSP as he was the only official in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel who was aware of progra

Friday, July 10, 2009
More Than $600 Billion And Counting: Iraq War Lies Revisited
Editor's Note: As the war in Iraq surpassed its sixth year, a common refrain from politicians who supported the invasion is "don't dwell on the past, think about the future." It is an argument that distracts Americans from the important lessons that this history can teach.

Friday, July 10, 2009
Ex-Senator Graham: Cheney, CIA Lied to Congress About Domestic Spying
(8 comments) The history of the CIA is replete with examples of agency officials obscuring key details when telling members of Congress about controversial programs. In the 1980s, CIA Director William Casey was famous for mumbling over such points and gruffly reacting when asked to repeat himself.

Thursday, July 9, 2009
How Rove Said He Would Answer Conyers's Siegelman Prosecution Queri
(1 comments) While the details of Karl Rove's eight-hour deposition Tuesday before the House Judiciary Committee regarding his role in the firings of nine U.S. Attorneys and the alleged political prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman remain unknown, Rove has provided insight into how he said he intended to answer the panel's questions in the Siegelman matter.

Friday, July 3, 2009
Bush-Cheney Linked to CIA Leak Case
(4 comments) ..filing in a federal court case also makes clear that Cheney was at the center of White Housemachinations rebutting criticism from former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who charged in summer 2003 that the Bush administration had "twisted" intelligence to justify invading Iraq in March 2003. While seeking to discredit Wilson, administration officials disclosed to reporters that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, worked for the CIA

Friday, July 3, 2009
Eager to Tap Iraq's Vast Oil Reserves, Industry Execs Suggested Invasion
(2 comments) Two years before the invasion of Iraq, oil executives and foreign policy advisers told the Bush administration that the United States would remain "a prisoner of its energy dilemma" as long as Saddam Hussein was in power.

Thursday, July 2, 2009
Watchdog Group Obtains More Documents In 'Missing' Bush-Era E-Mails Case
The government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) released additional documents Thursday related to the organization's long-running lawsuit over the "disappearance" of as many as 15 million Bush administration e-mails.

Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Obama's Torture Hypocrisy
(3 comments) Taking office in January, Obama announced that his administration would not condone or practice torture, but he also opposed holding Bush administration officials accountable out of fear that his actions might be deemed vindictive.

Friday, June 26, 2009
Author Calls For DOJ's Ethics Watchdog to Probe Patrick Fitzgerald
An Emmy Award-winning journalist whose recent book sharply criticized U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald for failing to stop a key al-Qaeda figure during his tenure directing the elite bin Laden squad, filed a complaint with the DOJ's ethics watchdog requesting an investigation into Fitzgerald for allegedly using government resources to try and kill the publication of the book.

Friday, June 19, 2009
Secret CIA File Tests Obama's Pledge
(1 comments) President Barack Obama's promise of a more open government faces a new test this week as his administration weighs whether to release details of a May 2004 internal CIA report about the agency's use of torture, including how at least three detainees were killed in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Yoo, Bybee Rendition Memo Drafted Specifically For Zubaydah's Torture
(1 comments) Orange County Register interview: "I wish they weren't doing it, but I understand why they are," Yoo told the OC Register in response to a question about Jarrett's probe. "It is something one would expect. You have to make these kinds of decisions in an unprecedented kind of war with legal questions we've never had to think about before. We didn't seek out those questions. 9/11 kind of thrust them on us.

Thursday, June 11, 2009
Why Obama is Fighting to Keep the Detainee Abuse Photographs Secret
(8 comments) By trying to block the release of photographs depicting US soldiers abusing detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan, President Obama is essentially killing any meaningful chance of opening the door to an investigation or independent inquiry of senior Pentagon officials who were responsible for implementing the policies that directly led to the abuses captured in the images.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009
The CIA's Shifting Reasons For Withholding Documents in the Torture Tapes Case
"It is extremely difficult for any outsider to make his mark within a bureaucracy as parochial and insular as the one at CIA," said Goodman, who spent more than two decades at the agency. "Panetta, unfortunately, has tried to ingratiate himself with the negative elements. Panetta's first mistake was to keep in place all of the holdovers from the era of George Tenet and Porter Goss, who were responsible for a coverup culture

Monday, June 8, 2009
Newly Released E-Mails Reveal Cheney Pressured DOJ to Approve Torture
(3 comments) Dick Cheney and his lawyer, David Addington, pressured the Justice Department in 2005 to quickly approve a torture memo that authorized CIA interrogators to use a combination of barbaric techniques during interrogations of "high-value" detainees, despite objections from senior officials in the Department of Justice, according to e-mails written by James Comey, the DOJ's former Deputy Attorney General.

Friday, June 5, 2009
Crisis at the VA as Benefits Claims Backlog Nearly Tops One Million
(5 comments) The VA's claims backlog, which includes all benefits claims and all appeals at the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) and the Board of Veterans Appeals at VA, was 803,000 on January 5, 2009. The backlog hit 915,000 on May 4, 2009, a staggering 14 percent increase in four months.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Red Cross Informed Powell About Torture
(2 comments) The International Committee of the Red Cross began an investigation of US war crimes in Iraq from the first days of the invasion, interviewing Iraqi captives from March to November 2003. Powell is quoted as saying, "we are confident of our legal position, but we also know the world is watching us."

Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Powell Told U.S. Tortured Detainees, But He Failed to Act
(2 comments) On Jan. 15, 2004, ICRC president Jakob Kellenberger expressed his concern to Secretary of State Colin Powell about the Bush administration's attitude regarding international law. The next month, February 2004, the ICRC gave Bush administration officials a confidential report which found that U.S. occupation forces in Iraq often arrested Iraqis without good reason and subjected them to abuse and humiliation....

Monday, June 1, 2009
Crisis at the VA as Benefits Claims Backlog Nearly Tops One Million
(2 comments) In January and February, for the first time in military history, the number of battlefield suicides was higher than the number of combat deaths in the war zones, according to the Pentagon. Last year, 140 U.S. soldiers committed suicide, a record high, and during the first four months of 2009, 64 U.S. soldiers have committed suicide.

Saturday, May 30, 2009
Taguba Said He Saw Video of Male Soldier Sodomizing Female Detainee
(1 comments) In April, the Obama administration had agreed to release the photos because the Justice Department said it did not believe it could convince the Supreme Court to review the case. In court papers filed Thursday, the Justice Department indicated that it now intends to appeal the case to the Supreme Court.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Claims Graham Briefed About Domestic Spying in 2001 and 2002 Also Bogus
(5 comments) Graham said he was not told about the torture techniques used that the CIA claimed it had briefed him and Sen. Shelby on, echoing the statements he made back in 2005 about being kept in the dark regarding the domestic surveillance program. The document also alleged that Pelosi was given a full accounting of the torture program during in 2002 and 2003. But Pelosi said last week she was mislead by the CIA about waterboarding

Saturday, May 16, 2009
Obama Pressured Into Withholding Prisoner Abuse Photos
(2 comments) In reversing an earlier commitment to release photos of U.S. soldiers abusing prisoners, President Barack Obama succumbed to a propaganda barrage unleashed by former Bush administration officials, their congressional allies, the right-wing news media and holdovers who retain key jobs under Obama.

Saturday, May 16, 2009
Ex-CIA Official: Agency Brass Lied to Congress About Interrogations
(1 comments) House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who had been the ranking minority member of the House Intelligence Committee, vehemently denied that she was told the CIA planned on waterboarding detainees or intended to use other brutal techniques to try and extract information from "war on terror" prisoners."My colleague[Porter Goss], the chairman of the committee, has said 'if they say that it's legal you have to know they are going to use them

Saturday, May 16, 2009
EXCLUSIVE: Documents Describe Prisoner Abuse Photos Obama is Withholding
(2 comments) Obama said that his decision to withhold the photographs stemmed from his personal review of the photos and his concern that their release would endanger American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. But pressure from Bush administration holdovers, the media and two senators also played a role.

Friday, May 15, 2009
Cheney Intervened in CIA Inspector General's Torture Probe
(1 comments) Former Vice President Dick Cheney intervened in CIA Inspector General John Helgerson investigation into the agency's use of torture against alleged "high-value"- detainees, but the watchdog was still able to prepare a report that concluded the interrogation program violated some provisions of the International Convention Against Torture.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Army's Prescription to Combat Solider Suicides: Christianity
(3 comments) A recent edition of the U.S. Army's suicide prevention manual advises military chaplains to promote "religiosity,"- specifically Christianity, as a way to deter distraught soldiers from committing suicide, which in recent months, according to one veterans advocacy group, has reached epidemic proportions

Saturday, May 9, 2009
Ex-Sen. Domenici Under Increased Scrutiny in US Attorney Firings Probe
It appears that former New Mexico Sen. Pete Domenici has come under increased scrutiny over his role in the politically motivated firing of the state's former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias.

Saturday, May 9, 2009
CIA Refuses to Turn Over Torture Tape Documents to ACLU
(1 comments) Amrit Singh, an ACLU staff attorney, said the move is "a classic CIA delay tactic." In court papers, she said the government is using the criminal investigation "as a pretext for indefinitely postponing" its obligation to produce documents related to the destruction of the videotapes.

Thursday, May 7, 2009
DOJ Report Reaches "Damning" Conclusions for Bybee and Yoo
(6 comments) Bush's line of defense could collapse if it were determined that the lawyers were colluding with administration officials in setting policy, rather than providing objective legal analysis. Already, extensive evidence exists, including Yoo's own writings, showing that he participated in high-level administration meetings to discuss and set policy.

Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Top CIA Officials Were Given Daily Torture Updates of Zubaydah
CIA interrogators provided top agency officials in Langley with daily "torture" updates of Abu Zubaydah, the alleged "high-level" terrorist detainee who was held at a secret "black site" prison and waterboarded 83 times in August 2002, according to newly released court documents obtained by The Public Record.

Saturday, May 2, 2009
How a Health Benefits Law Formed the Basis For the 'Torture Memo'
Yoo's legal opinions virtually gave President Bush unilateral authority to launch preemptive military strikes against any regime suspected of having ties to terrorist groups, provided Bush with the power to begin a covert domestic surveillance program, and authorized the president to allow CIA agents to interrogate alleged terrorist detainees using brutal methods of interrogation as long as it didn't result in death or maiming

Friday, May 1, 2009
Senate Panel's Report Links Detainees' Murders to Bush's Torture Policy
(6 comments) A combination of "enhanced interrogation" techniques approved by high-level Bush administration officials coupled with a series of brutal beatings administered by military interrogators were directly responsible for the December 2002 deaths of two detainees at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan, according to a report released last week by the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Conyers, Nadler Formally Request DOJ Appoint Torture Special Prosecutor
(5 comments) House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers and Rep Jerrold Nadler, (D-NY), formally requested that Attorney General Eric Holder appoint a special prosecutor to probe and, "where appropriate, prosecute," Bush administration officials responsible for the torture of detainees at Guantanamo Bay prison and Iraq. Thursday, civil liberties groups presented Holder with a petition signed by 250,000 people demanding he appoint

Monday, April 27, 2009
Reagan's DOJ Prosecuted Texas Sheriff for Waterboarding Prisoners
(3 comments) George W. Bush's Justice Department said subjecting a person to the near drowning of waterboarding was not a crime and didn't even cause pain, but Ronald Reagan's Justice Department thought otherwise, prosecuting a Texas sheriff and three deputies for using the practice to get confessions.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009
CIA Watchdog Report Says Detainees Died During Interrogations
(14 comments) Last week, after the four "torture" memos were released, Attorney General Eric Holder said he told the CIA that the federal government would provide legal representation "to any employee, at no cost to the employee, in any state or federal judicial or administrative proceeding brought against the employee based on such conduct and would take measures to respond to any proceeding initiated against the employee.

Saturday, April 18, 2009
What Did Democrats Really Know About Bush's Torture Program?
(5 comments) What does the silence on the question of accountability among a large majority of Democrats mean? It begs the question: were Democrats aware of the CIA's "enhanced interrogation" program and are refusing to call for a wide-ranging probe because they approved of the torture?

Friday, April 17, 2009
Bush's Hypocrisy on War Crimes
(29 comments) In March 2003, after Iraqi troops captured several U.S. soldiers and let them be interviewed on Iraqi TV, senior Bush administration officials expressed outrage over this violation of the Geneva Convention.

Monday, April 13, 2009
CIA Videos Predated Bush Legal Memo
The ACLU is suing the CIA to release documents related to 92 interrogation videotapes that were destroyed by the CIA in 2005 as public attention began focusing on allegations that the Bush administration had subjected "war on terror" detainees to brutal interrogations that crossed the line into torture.

Thursday, April 9, 2009
Doug Feith: "I Was a Major Player" in Bush's Torture Policies
(2 comments) Last weekend, Spain's investigating magistrate Baltasar Garzon, who issued an arrest warrant for former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1998, ordered prosecutors to investigate Feith and five other senior Bush administration officials for sanctioning torture at the prison facility.

Thursday, April 9, 2009
Bush's CIA Suspected of More Torture
The publication of the ICRC's report led to renewed demands by human rights and civil liberties organizations that Attorney General Eric Holder appoint a special prosecutor with the mandate to launch a criminal inquiry. "It's imperative that the Justice Department appoint an independent prosecutor to conduct a criminal investigation,"- said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project.

Sunday, April 5, 2009
'Torture Memo' May Finally Go Public
(2 comments) In the first months of the Obama administration, release of the interrogation memos has been the subject of a fierce bureaucratic battle, with former CIA Director Michael Hayden reportedly incensed over their possible disclosure and Attorney General Eric Holder arguing for their declassification.

Thursday, April 2, 2009
Leahy Faults GOP Partisanship on Bush
(2 comments) The Leahy staffer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that if the truth commission does not come to fruition, that doesn't mean there wouldn't be oversight into the Bush administration's policies through "more traditional means," such as congressional hearings

Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Bush Aides Changed Watchdog Report
(3 comments) Last weekend, it was disclosed that Spanish investigative judge Baltasar Garzon had taken initial steps for launching a criminal probe of torture that was allegedly made possible by the work of six former Bush administration officials, including Yoo, Bybee and Addington as well as former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Garzon, whose court is famous for dealing with high-profile terrorism and torture cases...

Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Democrats Duck Bush Torture Probe
(3 comments) Despite now overwhelming evidence that ex-President George W. Bush and many top aides engaged in a systematic policy of illegal torture, national Democrats appear to be shying away from their recommendation last year for a special prosecutor to investigate these apparent war crimes.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Bush's 'Lawyer-Shopping' for Torture
In 2005, after pushing out the Justice Department lawyer who had overturned President George W. Bush's claimed authority to abuse "war on terror"- prisoners, his administration reinstated key elements of the memos granting Bush virtually unlimited powers over the detainees, according to a list of still-secret documents. I obtained the list of legal memos about Bush's "enhanced interrogation techniques"- from the ACLU,

Saturday, March 21, 2009
CIA Has 3,000 Docs on Torture Tapes
(2 comments) The Justice Department's restrictive handling of the 3,000 documents comes one day after Attorney General Holder issued sweeping new Freedom of Information guidelines for all Executive Branch agencies to "apply a presumption of openness when administering the FOIA." "The American people have the right to information about their government's activities, and these new guidelines will ensure they are able to obtain information.

Friday, March 20, 2009
Torture Memo Author John Yoo Blames Ruined Reputation on "Hippies, Protesters and Left-wing Activists"
(19 comments) According to people familiar with the OPR report, Yoo was briefed on the report in January. Yoo is said to have informed officials at the University of California at Berkeley, where he is a tenured law professor, according to two senior law school officials. He took a leave of absence in January to teach foreign relations law at Chapman.

Friday, March 20, 2009
CIA Reveals it Has E-Mails, Transcripts Related to Videotaped Torture of Prisoners
(1 comments) The Justice Department disclosed in a letter late Friday that the CIA has about 3,000 documents, including e-mails, transcripts and cables to officials in Washington, related to the videotaped interrogations of alleged "high-value" prisoners that the agency destroyed.

Thursday, March 19, 2009
Marine Capt. Tyler E. Boudreau Puts a Human Face on War
(2 comments) If Tyler Boudreau's brutally honest, devastatingly accurate, hard-hitting memoir, Packing Inferno: The Unmaking of a Marine, were read by the powers that be in Washington, D.C. and by the journalists assigned to cover both military conflicts, there is absolutely no way in hell the plight of our nation's veterans would take a backseat to the issues currently dominating the evening news coverage.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Bush Administration Engaged in a Conscious Policy of Torture
(5 comments) As more pieces of a very ugly mosaic fall into place – including new details from a confidential 2007 report by the International Committee of the Red Cross about interrogations at CIA "black sites" – any remaining doubt that the Bush administration engaged in a conscious policy of torture is disappearing.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009
CIA Confirms 12 of 92 Videotapes Destroyed Showed Prisoners Tortured
(1 comments) Less than a month after the meeting, on August 1, 2002, Yoo drafted a memo to Gonzales that was signed by Jay Bybee, the assistant attorney general in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel. That memo declared that President Bush had the legal authority to allow CIA interrogators to employ harsh tactics to extract information from detainees.

Friday, March 6, 2009
Rendition Memo Drafted Days Before Prisoner Sent to Thailand and Tortured
(5 comments) Two weeks before U.S. intelligence agents captured a "high-value" terrorist detainee in Pakistan in March 2002 and whisked him off to a "black site" prison in Thailand where he was allegedly tortured, the Department of Justice prepared a legal memorandum for George W. Bush stating he could ignore a law that prohibited the transfer of prisoners to countries that engage in torture.

Wednesday, March 4, 2009
John Yoo: Legal Memos Not Intended For 'Public Consumption'
(8 comments) John Yoo doesn't have any regrets about the controversial legal opinions he wrote for the White House--many of which were later withdrawn and repudiated--that gave former President George W. Bush unfettered and unchecked power in the aftermath of 9/11.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009
CIA Destroyed More Torture Videos
(10 comments) Dassin's letter said some information sought by the ACLU may be classified or "protected from disclosure, such as the names of the CIA employees who viewed the videotapes." Dassin said the CIA "intends to produce all of the information requested to the court and to produce as much information as possible on the public record to the plaintiffs."

Thursday, February 26, 2009
Pelosi Disagrees With Immunity Proposal for 'Truth Commission' Witnesses
(15 comments) In an interview with Rachel Maddow on her MSNBC program Wednesday, Pelosi called Leahy's investigative plan "a good idea," but objected to immunity that could prevent prosecutors from holding Bush administration officials accountable for crimes in a court of law.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Leahy, Pelosi Differ on Bush Probe
(13 comments) Over the next few weeks, several critical documents about the Bush administration's torture practices are expected to be released. Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is set to make public a voluminous, declassified report about the U.S. military's role in harsh interrogations. In an interview with Rachel Maddow on her MSNBC program Wednesday, Pelosi called Leahy's investigative plan "a good idea

Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Yoo's Memos Gave Retroactive Cover
(1 comments) As more becomes known about the genesis of those OLC opinions, the evidence increasingly points to a different reality, that Bush and his top aides essentially worked with Yoo and the OLC to fix the legal opinions around their desired policy, even to justify actions that had already occurred. The report is now being reviewed by Barack Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder, who may not accept some of the report's conclusions

Thursday, February 19, 2009
Bush Attorney, DOJ in Intense Talks Over Rove's Congressional Testimony
(8 comments) DoJ and White House lawyers are engaged in intense negotiations with attorneys for George W. Bush and three of his former advisers over demands that they testify before Congress and turn over documents about their alleged roles in the firings of nine U.S. Attorneys in 2006, according to court papers filed Thursday, lawmakers who serve on the House Judiciary Committee, and the House Counsel.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Obama Seeks Deal on Bush Privilege
"These tripartite discussions have been complicated and time-consuming," the Justice Department said in its court motion. "The requested 14-day extension is appropriate to permit these negotiations an opportunity to succeed, potentially obviating the need for this Court to address the sensitive separation-of-powers questions presented in this appeal."

Sunday, February 15, 2009
Torture Report Erodes Bush's Defense
(3 comments) A key line in George W. Bush's defense against war crimes charges has weakened with the disclosure that an internal Justice Department watchdog has concluded that the legal advice, which cleared the way for Bush's policies on torture and other abuse of detainees, was tainted by political influence.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Newly Declassified DOD Documents Reveal Detainees Tortured To Death
(17 comments) Newly declassified Defense Department documents describe a pattern of "abusive" behavior by U.S. military interrogators that directly led to the deaths of several suspected terrorists imprisoned at a detention center in Afghanistan in December 2002.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Leahy Calls for Truth Commission
(9 comments) Leahy is expected to introduce a bill soon that would create his proposed truth commission. Last month, Leahy's counterpart in the House, Rep. John Conyers, sponsored similar legislation to create a blue-ribbon panel of outside experts to probe the "broad range" of policies pursued by the Bush administration "under claims of unreviewable war powers."

Monday, February 2, 2009
More Pressure for Bush Torture Probe
(4 comments) "We need to follow this thing into those dense weeds and shine a bright light into what was done,"- Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-Rhode Island, said in a speech at Brown University on Saturday. "We can paper it over if we choose, but the blueprint is still lying there for others to do it all over again. It's important that we not let this moment pass."

Friday, January 30, 2009
Rove Has 'Absolute Immunity', Ex-White House Counsel Says
(28 comments) Earlier this month, Conyers' Judicary Committee also quietly subpoenaed former White House Counsel Harriet Miers and George Bush's former Chief of Staff Josh Bolten. The former advisers never showed up, according to documents.

Thursday, January 29, 2009
Yoo Suggests He Fixed Law Around Bush Administration's Desire to Torture
(13 comments) In a stunning editorial in Sunday's Wall Street Journal, John Yoo if "torture memo" and "Patriot Act" fame suggested in no uncertain terms that Bush administration officials sought to legalize torture and that he and his boss, Jay Bybee, fixed the law around the Bush administration's policy.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009
In Bold Extension of Exec Power, Bush Sent Rove a Letter Saying He Still Doesn't Have to Testify
(14 comments) George W. Bush is seeking to extend his sweeping concept of executive privilege into his post-presidency, with the first battle likely to be fought over a renewed demand from House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers that Karl Rove finally testify about the politicization of the Justice Department. Bush recently sent a letter to Rove reasserting exec privilege that would prevent Rove from testifying.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009
New Bush/Rove Privilege Fight Looms
On Monday, Conyers reissued a subpoena for Rove, a former White House deputy chief of staff, to testify before Congress about his role in firing nine federal prosecutors deemed not "loyal Bushies" as well as the controversial prosecution of Alabama's former Democratic Gov. Don Siegelman.

Monday, January 26, 2009
Holy Cow: Top Dems Are Serious About Investigating Bush's Criminal Acts
(16 comments) The emerging consensus among top congressional Democrats for some form of investigation into Bush's controversial policies has surprised some progressives who had written off the leadership long ago for blocking impeachment hearings and other proposals for holding Bush and his subordinates accountable.

Friday, January 16, 2009
DOJ Watchdog Still Probing Yoo/Bybee Torture Memo
(2 comments) The OPR investigation into a torture memo drafted by the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel is likely to recommend that the memo's authors, Jay Bybee and John Yoo, be rebuked for the way in which they interpreted a law that formed the basis of the memo, said people involved in the probe, which is being conducted by the agency's director H. Marshall Jarrett.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Bush/Cheney: 'Most Impeachable'
(3 comments) House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers says President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney committed impeachment-worthy offenses which must be thoroughly investigated even after the two men leave office as a means of reaffirming U.S. constitutional principles

Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Conyers: Bush/Cheney 'Most Impeachable"
(23 comments) House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers says President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney committed impeachment-worthy offenses which must be thoroughly investigated even after the two men leave office as a means of reaffirming U.S. constitutional principles.

Sunday, January 11, 2009
Additional Documents Link Bush Directly to Guantanamo Torture
(4 comments) The debate as to whether Bush administration officials have broken international and federal torture laws has played out over the past month in a series of interviews with major media in which Vice President Dick Cheney admitted that he "signed off" on requests by CIA interrogators to waterboard three alleged high-level terrorist detainees.

Sunday, January 11, 2009
Bush Spins Scandalous Neglect of Vets
(5 comments) It's not uncommon for Presidents to embellish their accomplishments upon leaving office, but George W. Bush, who will exit the White House leaving the country in the worst shape since Herbert Hoover, has gone a step further, moving past exaggeration into outright lying.

Monday, December 29, 2008
Proselytizing in the Military Likely to Continue Under Obama
(12 comments) Barack Obama's decision to have the evangelical megachurch leader Rick Warren conduct the invocation at next month's presidential inauguration proves that fundamentalist Christians still wield enormous power within the federal government and will likely continue to be a dominating force under an Obama administration.

Friday, December 26, 2008
Cheney Admits He 'Signed Off' on Waterboarding of Three Guantanamo Prisoners
(23 comments) Vice President Dick Cheney, in another stunning admission during his campaign to burnish the Bush administration's legacy, said he personally authorized the "enhanced interrogations" of 33 suspected terrorist detainees and approved the waterboarding of three so-called "high-value" prisoners.

Saturday, December 20, 2008
CIA Warned Condi on Niger Claim
(1 comments) A high-ranking CIA official warned Condoleezza Rice in September 2002 that allegations about Iraq seeking yellowcake uranium from Niger were untrue and that she, as national security adviser, should stop President George W. Bush from citing the claim in making his case against Saddam Hussein's regime, according to new evidence released by a House committee.

Thursday, December 18, 2008
Cheney Admits Detainee-Abuse Role
(2 comments) Vice President Dick Cheney said for the first time Monday that he helped get the "process cleared" for the brutal interrogation program of suspected terrorists.

Sunday, December 14, 2008
Torture Trail Seen Starting with Bush
(10 comments) A bipartisan congressional report traces the U.S. abuse of detainees at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib to President George W. Bush's Feb. 7, 2002, action memorandum that excluded "war on terror" suspects from Geneva Convention protections.

Sunday, December 14, 2008
Military Entangled in 'Extreme Missionary' Christian Reality TV Show
(4 comments) The Pentagon has once again come under fire by a military watchdog organization for its involvement in the production of two cable programs, one that featured two so-called "extreme" missionaries embedded with a U.S. Army unit in Afghanistan trying to convert Muslims to Christianity.

Thursday, December 11, 2008
Shinseki Promises to Streamline Benefits Claims at Veterans Administration
President-elect Barack Obama's choice of retired Gen. Eric Shinseki, a Vietnam War veteran who sustained combat-related injuries, to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs sends a clear message to the hundreds of thousands of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans that, unlike President George W. Bush, Obama takes the sacrifices they have made seriously.

Sunday, December 7, 2008
Mukasey's 'Nixon Defense' of Bush
(4 comments) When it comes to protecting George W. Bush and his administration, Attorney General Michael Mukasey is stretching legal arguments as far as his predecessor Alberto Gonzales ever did – now even invoking the "Nixon Defense" for justifying presidential wrongdoing.

Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Holder Must Balance Security, Rights
(3 comments) One of the top challenges facing Barack Obama's Justice Department will be striking a balance between fighting terrorism and protecting individual civil liberties, says a recent memo from the department's inspector general.

Wednesday, November 26, 2008
'Culture of Dishonesty' At Department of Veterans Affairs
The economic meltdown that has dominated media coverage over the past several months has overshadowed a crisis at the Department of Veterans Affairs, an agency in dire need of new leadership, veterans groups and Democratic lawmakers say.

Friday, November 21, 2008
Obama Team Tilts Toward Gates
(2 comments) Barack Obama's Pentagon transition team is sitting down with Defense Secretary Robert Gates in a move that some Beltway observers believe signals that the President-elect does plan to keep Gates on despite protests from Iraq War opponents.

Thursday, November 13, 2008
Lieberman's Weak Record on Oversight
(2 comments) Most of the attention on whether Joe Lieberman should be ousted from his Senate committee chairmanship has focused on his disloyalty to Democrats and his control of homeland security issues, but there's also the question of how well he has handled his panel's broad government oversight responsibilities.

Sunday, November 9, 2008
Obama: 'New Mission in Iraq: Ending the War'
(1 comments) President-elect Barack Obama, in one of the first policy statements of his transition, demanded that the Bush administration either submit the proposed U.S.-Iraq "status-of-forces agreement" to Congress or leave an opening for him to change it next year.

Saturday, November 1, 2008
DOJ's Internal Watchdogs Probing Leak of ACORN Investigation
(2 comments) The Department of Justice's internal watchdogs are investigating who told the Associated Press that the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), a grassroots group that has registered hundreds of thousands of new voters, is under federal investigation for alleged voter registration fraud, according to John Conyers, the Democratic chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

Friday, October 31, 2008
Justice Department Balks on Ohio Vote
(3 comments) Despite pressure from Ohio Republicans and President George W. Bush, the Justice Department has declined to intervene in a voter dispute in Ohio that could have purged at least 200,000 voters from registration rolls.

Sunday, October 26, 2008
STAY OUT of Ohio, lawmakers tell DoJ!
(4 comments) Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and five congressional lawmakers, urged Attorney General Michael Mukasey not to intervene in Ohio's voter registration dispute where Republicans have challenged the integrity of 200,000 new voter registration forms.

Friday, October 24, 2008
New Mexico GOP Attorney's 'Voter Fraud' Claims Unravels
Two years ago, Pat Rogers sought the FBI's intervention in what he believed was widespread voter fraud in Bernalillo County and "vote count/tally manipulation" that benefited his client, U.S. Rep. Heather Wilson. At the time, Rogers was legal counsel to the New Mexico Republican Party and to Wilson in her tough reelection campaign against Democrat Patricia Madrid.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Longtime New Mexico GOP Operative Continues to Push "Voter Fraud"
(1 comments) The Justice Department issued a directive to every US attorney in the country to find and prosecute cases of voter fraud during the height of hotly contested elections in 2002, 2004, and 2006, even though evidence of such abuses was extremely thin or non-existent, according to a former federal prosecutor.

Saturday, October 18, 2008
GOP Exploits ACORN Probe
In a replay of a tactic used to help secure President George W. Bush's second term, Republicans – aided by investigative agencies of the federal government – are making a campaign issue out of voter-registration forms with fake names like "Mickey Mouse."

Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Voter Registration Group ACORN Long a Target of GOP Operatives
(17 comments) For the past several weeks, Republican operatives have been stepping up their efforts in critical swing states claiming voter registration groups have been engaged in a massive voter fraud effort in an attempt to influence the outcome of November's presidential election.

Thursday, October 2, 2008
Army Private Subjected to Anti-Semitic Attacks Brutally Beaten By Soldiers
(2 comments) A U.S. Army soldier was brutally beaten by other soldiers in his platoon earlier this month following two incidents in which a drill sergeants allegedly used anti-Semitic slurs to address the soldier.

Thursday, October 2, 2008
Bush's Concerns Over 'Voter Fraud' Led to Iglesias's Firing
(1 comments) President George W. Bush and Karl Rove, the former White House political adviser, appear to have helped orchestrate the firing of former New Mexico U.S. Attorney David Iglesias after receiving numerous complaints from Republican activists that the federal prosecutor would not pursue charges of voter fraud, according to a report on the U.S. Attorney purge released Monday by the Justice Department's internal watchdog.

Sunday, September 28, 2008
In March 2007, Obama Called on Paulson, Bernanke to Address Economic Crisis
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was one of those lawmakers. In a March 22, 2007 letter, Obama urged Paulson and Bernanke to convene a "a homeownership preservation summit with leading mortgage lenders, investors, loan servicing organizations, consumer advocates, federal regulators and housing-related agencies to assess options for private sector responses" to the wave of foreclosures.

Friday, September 26, 2008
DOJ to Release Long-Awaited Report on US Attorney Firings Monday
(2 comments) A long-awaited Justice Department report probing the firings of nine U.S. Attorneys in 2006 is expected to be released Monday morning, according to David Iglesias, the former New Mexico federal prosecutor who was one of those caught up in the purge.

Friday, September 26, 2008
Rice Admits She Led High-Level White House Talks About Torture
(4 comments) Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has admitted for the first time that she led high-level discussions beginning in 2002 about subjecting suspected al-Qaeda terrorists detained at military prisons to the harsh interrogation technique known as waterboarding, according to documents released late Wednesday by Carl Levin, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Service Committee.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Cheney's Testimony in Valerie Plame Leak Case Classified, DOJ Says
(2 comments) The Department of Justice, in refusing to release Vice President Dick Cheney's interview transcript with the special prosecutor who investigated the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson, said for the first time last week that contents of Cheney's interview have been classified.

Monday, September 22, 2008
Palin's 'Troopergate' Battle Rages
(1 comments) As Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin works to derail a legislative inquiry into her firing of the public safety commissioner, state officials are vowing to finish a report on the controversy by Oct. 10 and to weigh contempt proceedings against Palin's husband early next year.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Palin Claims Right to See All State Files
(1 comments) Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is maneuvering to stop an investigation into an alleged abuse of power, in part, by claiming that she has an unlimited right to pry into the personnel records of all state employees, including the state trooper who divorced her sister.

Thursday, September 11, 2008
Palin's Office Launched Probe Into Ex Brother-in Law's Disability Claims
(1 comments) Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin – collaborating with her husband Todd and several senior aides – conducted what amounted to a rogue investigation into suspicions that her ex-brother-in-law was faking a job-related injury as a state trooper, according to state documents, law enforcement officials and former aides to Palin.

Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Palin's Office Scrubs Documents From Governor's Website
On July 18, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin made the unusual decision of posting two documents on her website, accompanied by a harshly worded statement, denying reports that her husband, Todd Palin, and officials in her office illegally accessed her ex-brother-in-law's confidential personnel files.

Thursday, September 4, 2008
Palin's Reformer Image Tainted by History of Ethical Lapses
(1 comments) A closer look at Sarah Palin's short political career reveals that she committed some of the same ethical lapses that she has attacked, especially during her unsuccessful bid for lieutenant governor in 2002. She also has shown herself to be a thin-skinned politician quick to see herself as the target of conspiracies.

Wednesday, September 3, 2008
McCain VP Pick Has History of Clashes
The political career of Sarah Palin, Sen. John McCain's vice presidential pick, has been marked by conflicts, score-settling and her own claim that she faces "enemies – powerful enemies."

Friday, August 29, 2008
Billionaire Backer Of Anti-Obama Ad Previously Broke Campaign Finance Laws
(3 comments) Harold Simmons has reemerged as the main financial backer of American Issues Project, the latest in a long list of political groups Simmons has financed with the intended goal of influencing public perception of Democratic candidates and derailing their political aspirations.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Judge Rebuffs White House Immunity
(1 comments) Facing a new reversal in federal court, the Bush administration is finding its options narrowed in its effort to stop congressional testimony from former White House counsel Harriet Miers and chief of staff Joshua Bolten regarding the firing of nine U.S. attorneys in 2006.

Friday, August 22, 2008
Conyers Questions Iraq 'Forgery'
(5 comments) House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers has asked current and former White House aides and ex-CIA officials to respond to questions about an alleged scheme to create a bogus letter in late 2003 linking Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda.

Saturday, August 9, 2008
5 Years After Blackout, Power Grid Still in 'Dire Straits'
(2 comments) Five years ago this month, a devastating blackout rippled through the Northeastern United States. The blackout plundged more than 50 million people into darkness for nearly three days and left a gaping $10 billion hole in the nation's economy.

Saturday, August 2, 2008
Justice Probe Still Threatens Gonzales
(3 comments) Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will face new legal jeopardy when the Justice Department's Inspector General issues his next report on how the Bush administration let politics influence prosecutorial judgments, says ex-U.S. Attorney David Iglesias.

Thursday, July 31, 2008
New Details Emerge in Missing White House Emails Case
(3 comments) The Bush administration may have already hired an outside contractor to search individual computers for tens of thousands of missing e-mails that disappeared between 2003 and 2005. But the search apparently does not include missing e-mails from March 2003 to September 2003, a crucial timeframe that encompasses the start of the Iraq war, an

Saturday, July 26, 2008
Government Investigators Give Bush's Troop 'Surge' Mixed Reviews
(1 comments) President George W. Bush's Iraq troop "surge," which is now ending, got a mixed report card from congressional investigators, who found that many of Bush's stated goals remained unmet.

Saturday, July 26, 2008
Secret "Torture Memo" Gave Legal Cover to Interrogators Who Acted in "Good Faith"
(3 comments) A Justice Department legal opinion issued in August 2002 advised the CIA that its interrogators would not be prosecuted for violating anti-torture laws as long as they acted in "good faith" while using brutal techniques to obtain information from suspected terrorists, according to a previously undisclosed memo released publicly Thursday.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Rep. Ackerman Defends Iran Sanctions Measure, But Critics Call it An Act of War
(2 comments) Two weeks ago, Rep. Gary Ackerman, the Democrat from New York, delivered an impassioned speech on the House floor defending a controversial resolution he co-sponsored calling on President George W. Bush "to increase economic, political and diplomatic pressure on Iran."

Friday, July 18, 2008
Reasons to Oppose Drilling in ANWR Found in Alaska's North Slope
Last November, the oil company British Petroleum (BP) plead guilty to a misdemeanor and paid a $20 million fine for violating the Clean Water Act related to a massive oil spill that occurred at BP's Prudhoe Bay operations in Alaska's North Slope two years earlier.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008
White House Loses Appeal to Keep Visitor Logs Secret
(3 comments) The White House lost an appeal to keep secret visitor logs containing the identities of evangelical Christian leaders who visited the White House and Vice President Dick Cheney's home, according to an opinion issued Friday by a federal appeals court.

Monday, June 30, 2008
Veterans Groups to Appeal Judge's Decision Over VA's Treatment of PTSD Cases
Two veterans advocacy groups said they would appeal a federal judge's ruling that A federal Judge has ruled that he lacks the legal authority to force the Department of Veterans Affairs to immediately treat war veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and could not order the VA to overhaul its internal systems that handle benefits claims and medical service.

Thursday, June 26, 2008
Ex Weapons Inspector: Iran Not Pursuing Nukes, But U.S. Will Attack Before '09
(8 comments) Scott Ritter, the former chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq, is speaking out about what he sees as history repeating itself regarding U.S. policy toward Iran and the inevitability of a U.S.-led attack on the country, which he believes will happen prior to a new president being sworn into office in January 2009.

Monday, June 23, 2008
Report: Rising Health Care Costs Causing Serious Economic Woes
(7 comments) Skyrocketing health care costs are taking a toll on the nation's long-term economic well being, requiring an immediate "multipronged solution" before the "window of opportunity" to address the issue closes, according to a new report by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

Monday, June 16, 2008
McClellan Testimony May Shed Light On Niger Forgeries
(6 comments) Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan's testimony next week before the House Judiciary Committee promises to reignite the debate over the "16 words" in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address that claimed Iraq tried to purchase 500 tons of yellowcake uranium from Niger and how the White House's response to the bogus intelligence lead to the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame.

Monday, June 16, 2008
Waxman Subpoenas DOJ for Bush, Cheney's Plame-Leak Transcripts
(3 comments) Congressman Henry Waxman, the Democratic chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, issued a subpoena Monday morning to the Attorney General Michael Mukasey demanding he turn over the FBI's interview transcripts of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney who were questioned in 2004 about the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame.

Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Libby Links Cheney to Plame Leak
(7 comments) FBI documents obtained by a congressional committee indicate that Vice President Dick Cheney may have authorized his former deputy to leak the identity of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson. Now, according to the transcript cited by Rep. Waxman, it appears that Libby did tell prosecutors in an earlier interview that it was "possible" that Cheney did order him to leak Plame's identity.

Wednesday, June 4, 2008
McCain Adviser Gramm Lobbied for UBS Illegally in 2004, Complaint Said
(2 comments) McCain adviser Phil Gramm started work at UBS as a vice chairman in January 2003, immediately after leaving Congress. A month earlier, he had shifted $2 million in campaign contributions from the Friends of Phil Gramm Political Action Committee to a UBS PAC, a move that let the bank increase its visibility with lawmakers.

Thursday, May 29, 2008
McClellan Suggests Plame Cover-up
(4 comments) Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan says George W. Bush's political guru Karl Rove arranged a private meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby in 2005 when the two men were under mounting suspicion for leaking the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson.

Thursday, May 29, 2008
U.S. Soldiers Launch Campaign to Convert Iraqis to Christianity
Some U.S. military personnel appears to have launched an initiative to covert thousands of Iraqi citizens to Christianity by distributing Bibles and other fundamentalist Christian literature translated into Arabic to Iraqi Muslims.

Tuesday, May 27, 2008
GOP Contender Linked to Attorney Firing
Though virtually unknown outside the Albuquerque area, Bernalillo County Sheriff Darren White reportedly was pushing former US Attorney David Iglesias to crack down on Democratic-backed voter registration drives and then took his complaints about Iglesias's lack of aggressiveness to Washington.

Friday, May 23, 2008
Rove Prot�g� May Dig for Dirt on Obama
(1 comments) Timothy Griffin, a central figure in the U.S. Attorney scandal and a prot�g� of Republican political guru Karl Rove, reportedly has been hired to dig up dirt on likely Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.

Monday, May 19, 2008
McCain Defends 'Enron Loophole'
(2 comments) Sen. John McCain says he opposes the $307 billion farm bill because it would dole out wasteful subsidies, but his chief economic adviser Phil Gramm also wants to stop its proposed regulation of energy futures trading, a market that was famously abused when Enron Corp. manipulated California's electricity prices in 2001.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Bush Operative Pushes Voter-ID Law
A senior legal adviser to the Bush-Cheney 2004 reelection campaign is working behind the scenes to help enact a Missouri state constitutional amendment that critics say would suppress the vote in the key battleground state this November by requiring voters to show proof of citizenship.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Torture Policies Undermine 9/11 Case
The Pentagon's decision to drop war-crimes charges against Mohammed al-Qahtani, the alleged "20th hijacker" in the 9/11 attacks, again underscores the consequences of the Bush administration's descent into torture and other abusive treatment of "war on terror" detainees.

Sunday, May 11, 2008
IBM, Darrell Issa, and Millions of "Lost" White House Emails
(4 comments) A reasonably sensible storage professional makes sure all necessary data was properly copied. And normally new applications -- whether it's an e-mail server or the backup system for it are tested and re-tested before anything gets destroyed.But this situation isn't normal,and the story keeps changing,or getting added to,like one of those chain letters that clutter your inbox.My suspension of disbelief is officially suspended.

Friday, May 9, 2008
Lost E-Mails Obscure 'Plame-gate'
(3 comments) This new gap of missing emails – from March 1, 2003, to May 23, 2003 – also may have wiped out evidence of how George W. Bush and his top aides reacted to the emerging criticism from former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson that the White House had sold the war using false claims about Iraq seeking uranium from Niger in Africa, an investigation by The Public Record http://www.pubrecord.org has found.

Thursday, May 8, 2008
Introducing The Public Record - A Real News Magazine
(2 comments) It has been a lifelong dream of mine to edit my own investigative news magazine.I hope you will join me in celebrating the launch of The Public Record,a nonprofit,online political magazine that promises In-Depth, Incisive, Independent Reporting.We believe the independent and mainstream media have become saturated with individuals who opine and pontificate instead of report.Sadly,that means many important topics are not being

Wednesday, April 30, 2008
US Military Coordinated Day of Prayer Events With Christian Right Group
(2 comments) At least half-a-dozen active-duty military officials have been working closely with a task force headed by the far-right fundamentalist Christians planning religious events at military installations around the country to commemorate Thursday's National Day of Prayer.

Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Halliburton Bribe Case Haunts Cheney
(1 comments) Dick Cheney's tenure at Halliburton ended eight years ago, but a federal investigation of alleged bribes from a company subsidiary to Nigerian officials lingers from the Cheney era, raising questions about what the Vice President knew or should have known.

Friday, April 25, 2008
The Bush Team's Geneva Hypocrisy
Newly released U.S. government documents, detailing how Bush administration officials punched legalistic holes in the Geneva Convention's protections of war captives, stand in stark contrast to the outrage some of the same officials expressed in the first week of the Iraq War when Iraqi TV interviewed several captured American soldiers.

Thursday, April 24, 2008
Groundbreaking New Book Documents Widespread Election Fraud
(11 comments) Unlike the reportage leading up the invasion of Iraq, which relied heavily on anonymous sources who spoon fed mainstream reporters wild tales of Iraq's vast weapons cache, the reports about stolen elections in "Loser Take All" is backed up by smoking gun evidence in the form of documents and on the record accounts from public officials and behind-the-scenes exe

Tuesday, April 22, 2008
VA Tried to Conceal Extent of Attempted Veteran Suicides, Email Shows
(2 comments) Top officials at the Veterans Administration tried to conceal information from the public about the sudden increase of suicides and attempted suicides among veterans that were treated or sought help at VA hospitals around the country, a previously undisclosed internal VA email released Tuesday indicates.

Monday, April 21, 2008
VA Confirms 18 Vets Commit Suicide Everyday
(27 comments) In a stunning admission, top officials at the Veterans Health Administration confirmed that the agency's own statistics show that an average of 126 veterans per week -6,552 veterans per year-commit suicide, according to an internal email distributed to several VA officials.

Saturday, April 19, 2008
Chertoff's Legal Advice Led to First Case of Waterboarding
(10 comments) When the CIA wanted assurances in the summer of 2002 that their agents would not be prosecuted for using brutal interrogation methods against a so-called high-level detainee in custody the agency turned to Michael Chertoff, the former head of the Justice Department's Criminal Division.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008
FBI Email Says Bush Signed Exec Order Authorizing Harsh Interrogation Methods
(6 comments) President George W. Bush's comment to ABC News – that he approved discussions that his top aides held about harsh interrogation techniques – adds credence to claims from senior FBI agents in Iraq in 2004 that Bush had signed an Executive Order approving the use of military dogs, sleep deprivation and other tactics to intimidate Iraqi detainees.

Thursday, April 10, 2008
Iraq War Costs Skyrocketing, But Congress Unable to Scrutinize Spending
(4 comments) Nearly all of the $516 billion allocated by Congress to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq has come in the form of emergency spending requests, a method the White House has abused, depriving Congress the ability to scrutinize how the Pentagon spends money in the so-called global war on terror. The use of emergency supplemental bills to fund the wars has likely resulted in the waste of billions of taxpayer dollars.

Tuesday, April 8, 2008
'Power of the Purse' Best Hope Dems Have to Change Direction in Iraq
(1 comments) Despite tough questions and somewhat heated exchanges between Democratic lawmakers and General David Petraeus and US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, the Democratic leadership in the House has signaled it has no immediate plans to flex their legislative muscle to change the direction of the conflict while President Bush is still in the White House.

Friday, April 4, 2008
White House Query Led to Memo Advising Bush to Ignore Fourth Amendment
(2 comments) Eleven days after 9/11, John Yoo, a former deputy in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, drafted a 20-page memorandum questioned how Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures would be applied if the U.S. military used "deadly force in a manner that endangered the lives of United States citizens."

Thursday, April 3, 2008
Death of Prisoner Justified If Interrogator Acted in 'Good Faith,' Report Said
(1 comments) In early January 2003, commanders stationed at Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba complained to Rumsfeld that military officials were unable to glean information from prisoners about alleged terrorist plots in the US and abroad using conventional interrogation methods.

Thursday, March 27, 2008
Classified Memo Reveals Iraqi Prisoners as "Starving"
(2 comments) A classified memo written by a top military official stationed in Western Iraq reveals that a prison in downtown Fallujah is so overcrowded and dirty that it does not even meet basic "minimal levels of hygiene for human beings."

Thursday, March 27, 2008
Navy Chaplain Fired From Teaching Job After Report Exposed His Anti-Islamic Views
(2 comments) A top Navy chaplain who wrote a book several years ago attacking Islam, calling the religion "evil," and urging the United States to launch a "jihad" against the faith, has been fired from a prestigious theological institute after officials at the school recently became aware of the chaplain's controversial book.

Tuesday, March 25, 2008
IBM, Darrell Issa, and Millions of "Lost" White House Emails
(4 comments) In a court document filed late Tuesday responding to the White House's show cause order, the National Security Archive said that Facciola should order the White House to immediately make a "forensic copy" of individual hard drives or "there is a high likelihood that email data will be obliterated."

Saturday, March 22, 2008
White House Official Tells Judge Searching for Missing Emails Requires Too Much Work
(7 comments) The White House's chief information officer said the Bush administration should not be compelled to search for millions of emails on individual computers and hard drives that may have been lost between 2003 and 2005 because it would be too expensive and require hundreds of hours of work, according to a filing the White House made with a federal court late Friday.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008
The Making of "Operation Iraqi Freedom"
(1 comments) The Iraq war, which was predicated on the existence of weapons of mass destruction, has resulted in the deaths of nearly 4,000 US troops and has cost taxpayers roughly half-a-trillion dollars. As the war now enters its sixth year it's worth revisiting how prewar Iraq intelligence was cooked in the months leading up toward the preemptive strike and how the handful of dissenters who objected to Iraq policy were sidelined.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Questionable Trading Practices May Have Led to Bear Stearns' Collapse
(9 comments) Last March, Scott Coren and Michael Nannizzi, analysts at Bear Stearns, issued a report upgrading the stock of New Century Financial, a company that provides sub-prime mortgages to low-income homebuyers, from "underperform" to "peer-perform." What Coren and Nannizzi's research note on New Century didn't say was that Bear Stearns was one of the Wall Street banks that financed New Century's mortgage operation.

Monday, March 17, 2008
Fired US Attorney Details GOP Effort to "Cage" Votes in New Mexico in 2004
(6 comments) The Justice Department issued a directive to every US attorney in the country to find and prosecute cases of voter fraud in their states during the height of hotly contested elections in 2002, 2004, and 2006, even though evidence of such abuses was extremely thin or non-existent, a former federal prosecutor says in a new book.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Navy Chaplain Who Called for Attack on Islam Finds His Credentials Under Scrutiny
(3 comments) On paper, Lieutenant Commander Brian K. Waite, a United States Navy chaplain, appears to be one of the nation's foremost scholars on a wide-range of topics such as traumatology, theology, and Biblical history. But a closer look at Waite's credentials shows that the chaplain, who serves tens of thousands of military personnel, may not be as scholarly as he holds himself out to be.

Sunday, March 9, 2008
"Myth" of Voter Fraud Focus of Senate Hearing; Iglesias Set to Testify
(3 comments) A Senate panel chaired by California Democrat Dianne Feinstein is investigating whether the myth of voter fraud has led to "disenfranchisement" among individual voters. On Wednesday, the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration is scheduled to hold a hearing to explore the matter. Iglesias is one of the witnesses who will testify about the issue.

Wednesday, March 5, 2008
VA Official: More Than 60,000 Iraq, Afghanistan Vets Diagnosed With PTSD
(1 comments) Attorneys for two veterans advocacy organizations are hoping to convince a judge that a lawsuit filed against the Department for Veterans Affairs last year and several government officials associated with the VA should receive class-action status.

Wednesday, March 5, 2008
New Lawsuit Filed Against Defense Secretary Over Fundamentalist Christianity in Military
(5 comments) An Army specialist who served two tours of duty in Iraq sued Defense Secretary Robert Gates and his supervising officer Wednesday for allegedly trying to force him to embrace fundamentalist Christianity and then retaliating against him when he refused.

Friday, February 29, 2008
Mukasey Rebuffs Pelosi, Refuses to Prosecute Bush Aides for Contempt
(24 comments) As expected, Attorney General Michael Mukasey refused Friday to refer congressional contempt citations against President Bush's Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and the president's former counsel, Harriet Miers, to a federal grand jury claiming that the officials did not commit a crime when they refused to testify before Congress.

Sunday, February 24, 2008
Questions Remain About Rove's CIA Leak Email
(1 comments) In an email exchange requesting that he clarify his position, Luskin said , "Neither Mr. Rove nor I was involved in any manner in the collection of emails or other electronic documents in response to subpoenas from the Special Counsel [Patrick Fitzgerald].

Friday, February 22, 2008
DOJ Office Launches Formal Probe Into Legal Basis Behind Torture Memo
The investigation was launched after an article published by this reporter last week revealed that the author of the August 2002 legal opinion, John Yoo, a former attorney in the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), relied on a health benefits statute to form the legal basis for waterboarding and other "enhanced" interrogation techniques, an OPR official at OPR said.

Thursday, February 21, 2008
Fired US Attorney Calls on White House to "Produce" Bolten, Miers to Congress
(2 comments) David Iglesias, the former U.S. attorney for New Mexico who was one of nine federal prosecutors fired two years ago for reasons that appear to be politically motivated, said questions related to his dismissal remain unanswered.

Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Florida State Officials Under Fire Over Anti-Muslim Film, Promoting Christianity
Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum agreed to establish a Muslim community advisory group late last week after he came under fire for directing state officials to watch "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West," a controversial film featuring the alleged ex-terrorist promoting fundamentalist Christianity and others vilifying Muslims as terrorists.

Wednesday, February 13, 2008
US Air Force Academy Used "Former Terrorists" to Proselytize Fundamentalist Christianity to Cadets
(6 comments) Last week, the prestigious United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs invited three self-described former terrorists who have boasted about murdering hundreds of civilians in the Middle East and blowing up a bank in Israel to speak to cadets about the evils of Islam and their experiences as alleged radical Islamic fundamentalists turned fundamentalist Christians.

Wednesday, February 13, 2008
"Torture Memo" Author Used Health Care Statute to Form Legal Basis for Waterboarding
John Yoo, the author of the infamous August 1, 2002 "torture memo" that formed the legal basis for waterboarding against high-level terrorist detainees, used an old statute authorizing health benefits in providing the White House with the legal definition of torture, according to a former Justice Department official.

Sunday, November 18, 2007
Fired Attorneys Build Case Against Gonzales
(3 comments) John McKay, the fired former US attorney for the Western District of Washington, said evidence in the public record demonstrates the former attorney general and his underlings may well have obstructed justice.

Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Congress Ignoring Critical Report on Pentagon Spending
(1 comments) nonpartisan research arm of Congress issued a damning report that criticized the Pentagon for mismanaging hundreds of billions of dollars in emergency funds it received to pay for the occupation of Iraq and the war in Afghanistan.

Friday, September 21, 2007
Pentagon Sued Over Mandatory Christianity
Military watchdog org files lawsuit against the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and a US Army major, on behalf of an Army soldier stationed in Iraq. The suit charges the Pentagon with widespread constitutional violations by allegedly trying to force the soldier to embrace evangelical Christianity and then retaliating against him when he refused.

Friday, September 21, 2007
Pentagon Sued Over Mandatory Christianity
Military watchdog org files lawsuit against the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and a US Army major, on behalf of an Army soldier stationed in Iraq. The suit charges the Pentagon with widespread constitutional violations by allegedly trying to force the soldier to embrace evangelical Christianity and then retaliating against him when he refused.

Thursday, July 26, 2007
Gonzales Memo: White House Granted Extraordinary Access to DOJ Files
(2 comments) A new wrinkle over the apparent politicization of the Department of Justice (DOJ): a May 2006 memo, signed by embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, granted VP Dick Cheney extraordinary authority to review active federal civil and criminal investigations at the DOJ. At the time Gonzales signed the memo, Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was preparing his defense in the Plame outing case.

Thursday, April 5, 2007
Investigators Eye Broader White House Email Trail
Last week, Justice Department documents turned over to a Congressional committee investigating circumstances behind the selective firing of seven US attorneys revealed that some Bush administration officials have primarily used email accounts maintained by the Republican National Committee to conduct official White House business. This appears to be a violation of the Presidential Records Act.

Thursday, March 29, 2007
DOJ Emails Illustrate Plan to Mislead Congress
(1 comments) The common thread in the thousands of pages of documents released by the Department of Justice in conjunction with a Congressional probe into the US attorney dismissals is that top officials in the DOJ who worked behind the scenes believed that they were doing something improper in selectively dismissing the attorneys and acted with a clear intent to deceive lawmakers if any questions into reasons for the firings arose.

Thursday, March 8, 2007
Waxman Asks Fitzgerald to Testify Before Congress
(1 comments) Congressman Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said Thursday he wants Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to testify before his committee about his investigation into the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame-Wilson's identity. Plame-Wilson, Waxman's office said, has agreed to testify before Congress on March 16.

Friday, February 23, 2007
Defense Attorney Claims Fitzgerald Believes Cheney told Libby to Leak Plame's Identity/from the transcript!
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Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Jason Leopold | Trial Reveals Wilson Smear Began Far Earlier
"The list of officials linked to this case runs from VP Dick Cheney right on down to one of his low-level press officers. Testimony has revealed that a coordinated effort was put into place beginning in June 2003 by Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Karl Rove, Libby... and as many as a dozen other officials to go after Wilson. In doing so, Wilson's wife's undercover CIA status was compromised, and a possible crime was committed."

Tuesday, November 7, 2006
Democrats Call for Federal Probe Over GOP "Robocalling"
Democratic congressmen John Conyers and John Dingell called for a federal investigation late Tuesday evening into a last minute ploy by Republicans to swing the midterm election by inundating registered Democrats with harassing prerecorded telephone calls trashing the candidates they intend to vote for.

Saturday, May 13, 2006
BREAKING: Karl Rove Indicted on Charges of Perjury, Lying to Investigators
(4 comments) Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald spent more than half a day Friday at the offices of Patton Boggs, the law firm representing Karl Rove

Saturday, May 13, 2006
Rove Informs White House He Will Be Indicted
(1 comments) Within the last week, Karl Rove told President Bush and Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten, as well as a few other high level administration officials, that he will be indicted in the CIA leak case and will immediately resign his White House job when the special counsel publicly announces the charges against him, according to sources.

Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Target Letter Drives Rove Back to Grand Jury
Karl Rove's appearance before a grand jury in the CIA leak case Wednesday comes on the heels of a "target letter" sent to his attorney recently by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, signaling that the Deputy White House Chief of Staff may face imminent indictment

Monday, April 17, 2006
State Department Memo: '16 Words' Were False
On January 12, 2003, the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) "expressed concerns to the CIA that the documents pertaining to the Iraq-Niger deal were forgeries," a State Department memo dated July 7, 2003, says.

Friday, April 14, 2006
Libby Says He Can't Recall Speaking to State Dept. Official About Plame
Defense attorneys for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby said in a court filing late Wednesday that the former chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney doesn't remember a conversation he had with a State Department official in June 2003 in which the official told Libby that Valerie Plame Wilson worked for the CIA.

Monday, April 10, 2006
Bush and Cheney Discussed Plame Prior to Leak
(1 comments) In early June 2003, VP Dick Cheney met with Leaker-in-Chief Bush and told him that CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson was the wife of Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson.

Tuesday, April 4, 2006
Enron's Kazillion Dollar Bash
Skilling and Lay have maintained that they were unaware of off-balance-sheet partnerships that caused Enron to implode in a wave of accounting scandals. But a 1997 videotape featuring Skilling, Lay and several other former executives of the one-time high-flying energy company seems to suggest otherwise. The videotape was produced as a going-away present for departing executive Rich Kinder.

Monday, April 3, 2006
Fitzgerald Discovered Identity of CIA Leak Suspect Two Years Ago
But in early February 2004, a month after he started the investigation, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald shifted gears and started to build a perjury and obstruction of justice case against White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove and Vice President Dick Cheney's former Chief of Staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby according to several attorneys close to the investigation.

Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Fitzgerald Will Seek New White House Indictments

Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Woodward's Plame-Leak Deep Throat
He is referred to as "official one" and he is the mysterious senior Bush administration official who unmasked the identity of an undercover CIA operative to Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Bob Woodward in mid-June 2003 and conservative columnist Robert Novak a month later.

Monday, March 20, 2006
Fitzgerald Previews Government's Case Against Libby
During a recent federal court hearing, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said he plans to focus on the week of July 7 to 14, 2003.

Sunday, March 19, 2006
Libby Attorneys Identify CIA Officials in Plame Leak
The identity of intelligence officials who are thought to have passed information about covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson to Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, surfaced in a federal court document filed Friday evening.

Sunday, March 19, 2006
Obstruction Trial May Jog Libby's Memory
Prosecution witnesses may unravel Libby's defense strategy.

Wednesday, March 1, 2006
Details Emerge in Latest Plame Emails
The White House confirmed that it recently turned over to Spec. Prosecutor Fitzgerald 250 pages of emails from the VP Dick Cheney related to covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson. The emails were not submitted three years ago by White House staffers ordered to turn over all documents that contained any reference to the Wilsons.

Saturday, February 25, 2006
White House 'Discovers' 250 Emails Related to Plame Leak
Did Gonzalez intentionally impede justice? This is the worst case of the fox guarding the hen house. He should be impeached

Saturday, February 25, 2006
Gonzales Withholding Plame Emails
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has not turned over emails to the special prosecutor's office that may incriminate Vice President Dick Cheney, his aides, and other White House officials who allegedly played an active role in unmasking Plame Wilson's identity to reporters.

Wednesday, February 22, 2006
NSC, Cheney Aides Conspired to Out CIA Operative
The investigation into the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson is heating up. Evidence is mounting that senior officials in the office of VP Dick Cheney and the National Security Council conspired to unmask Plame Wilson's identity to reporters in an effort to stop her husband from publicly criticizing the administration's pre-war Iraq intelligence...

Friday, February 10, 2006
Cheney Spearheaded Effort to Discredit Wilson
Vice President Dick Cheney and then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley led a campaign beginning in March 2003 to discredit former Ambassador Joseph Wilson for publicly criticizing the Bush administration's intelligence on Iraq, according to current and former administration officials.

Monday, January 30, 2006
Enron: The Bush Administration's First Scandal
(1 comments) For many people familiar with Enron's crooked "E" logo has come to represent corporate greed, corruption and excess. But more important, Enron should be symbolic for something else: it was the first in a long list of corporate scandals involving the Bush admin. and numerous members of Congress.

Tuesday, January 17, 2006
NSA Spying Evolved Pre-9/11
NSA spying helps White House single out "certain individuals that became of interest to some officials in the White House" and gave them the J. Edgar Hoover treatment.

Friday, January 13, 2006
Bush Authorized Domestic Spying Before 9/11
The NSA advised Bush in early 2001 that it had been eavesdropping on Americans during the course of its work according to a declassified document. The NSA's vast data-mining activities began shortly after Bush was sworn in and the document contradicts his assertion that the 9/11 attacks prompted him to sign a secret executive order authorizing the wiretapping.

Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Fitzgerald Maintains Focus on Rove
Sources say that Fitzgerald has been quietly building his case against Rove in the past month, interviewing witnesses, in some cases for the second and third time, who have provided him with information related to Rove's role in the leak. It is unclear when Fitzgerald is expected to meet with the grand jury again.

Thursday, January 5, 2006
NSA Destroyed Evidence of Domestic Spying
(3 comments) The National Security Agency, the top-secret spy shop that has been secretly eavesdropping on Americans under a plan authorized by President Bush four years ago, destroyed the names of thousands of Americans and US companies it collected on its own volition following 9/11, because the agency feared it would be taken to task by lawmakers

Tuesday, January 3, 2006
How they got caught: After lobbyist broke off engagement, ex-fiancee told of illicit dealings to FBI
Michael Scanlon found himself at the center of one of the biggest political scandals in Washington history as a result of cheating and lying -- the old fashion kind...a disgruntled ex-fiancee!

Monday, January 2, 2006
Bolton Testimony Revealed Domestic Spying on Up to 500 US Citizens
Bolton was just one of many government officials who learned the identities of Americans caught in NSA intercepts. The State Department asked the NSA to unmask the identities of American citizens 500 times since May 2001.

Thursday, December 29, 2005
Bush-NSA Spying in Defiance of Congress, Court
Despite the public rebuke, Bush circumvented the judicial process and secretly authorized the NSA to spy on thousands of individuals in the United States in defiance of the very court that issued a legal opinion saying the administration was already infringing on civil liberties.

Tuesday, December 27, 2005
Rice authorized National Security Agency to spy on UN Security Council in run-up to war, former officials say

Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Leak probe not seen to end with Rove, lawyers say
Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is not expected to shut down his investigation into the leak of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson when he finishes his inquiry of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove's role in the leak, lawyers close to the probe said.

Saturday, December 17, 2005
The Case against Karl Rove
(1 comments) Unless Rove's attorney intervenes at the 11th hour yet again, Fitzgerald is expected to ask the grand jury to indict Rove - at the very least - for making false statements to the FBI and Justice Department investigators in October 2003, lawyers close to the case say.

Wednesday, December 7, 2005
Donald Rumsfeld's War
The lack of soldiers on the ground has been a hot-button issue since the start of the Iraq war in March 2003. Career military officials believe that's the reason the war hasn't been a "cakewalk," and they blame Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for designing a flawed war plan.

Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Bill Frist, the Former 2008 GOP Presidential Candidate
It's one thing to lie in politics. It's another to be caught in a lie. Bill Frist has been caught in a lie. His political future is over. The immediate question is, can he survive as Majority Leader?

Wednesday, September 21, 2005
The GOP’s Fiscal Policies Turned a Natural Disaster into a Man-Made Catastrophe
Republicans like to brag that, as a political party, they are more fiscally responsible than their Democratic counterparts. Well, thanks to President Bush’s four years in office that theory can now take up residence in the urban legend department.

Monday, September 19, 2005
CIA Intelligence Reports Seven Months Before 9/11 said Iraq Posed No Threat to U.S., Containment Was Working

Wednesday, September 14, 2005
Division of Funeral Corp. Charged With Desecrating Corpses Hired to Collect Deceased Victims of Hurricane Katrina
A funeral services company negotiating a contract with FEMA to remove dead bodies in New Orleans settled a class-action lawsuit alleging the company desecrated thousands of corpses.

Saturday, September 10, 2005
FEMA Chief Brown Paid Millions to Fla. Residents Unaffected by ‘04 Hurricane to Help Bush Win Votes During Presidential
The embattled head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, approved payments to thousands of Florida residents who were unaffected by Hurricane Frances last year in an effort to help President Bush win a majority of votes in that state during his reelection campaign.

Tuesday, September 6, 2005
Seems like More People Died than Prospered Under Pres Bush’s Leadership
Chalk another one up for the Bush administration. That’ll be President Bush’s long lasting legacy when we look back on the first few years of the 21st Century. Thousands of people killed on U.S. soil because the president failed to protect them.

Saturday, September 3, 2005
State Marriage Took Precedence Over State of Louisiana
Why is President Bush more concerned with the state of marriage than the state of Louisiana?

Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Global Warming and Widespread Blackouts Are Just as Deadly as Terrorism
Global Warming isn’t some hair-brained scheme cooked up in a laboratory by mad scientists. It’s an issue that is as real as terrorism. And it’s just as deadly.

Monday, August 22, 2005
President Bush Knows the True Reasons He Started A War in Iraq, But He's Not Going to Tell
Every year, right around the anniversary of 9/11 the Bush administration spins the public about the reasons 1,864 American soldiers have died fighting for a lie

Tuesday, August 9, 2005
Cheney + Pakistan = Iran
VP Cheney Helped Cover-Up Pakistani Nuclear Proliferation In '89 So US Could Sell Country Fighter Jets

Friday, August 5, 2005
Halliburton Secretly Doing Business with Key Member of Iran’s Nuclear Team
Scandal-plagued Halliburton was secretly working with one of Iran’s top nuclear program officials

Friday, July 29, 2005
Energy Adviser Who Solicited Enron to Help Write Nat’l Energy Policy to Be Named Chair of FERC

Thursday, July 14, 2005
Report Shows Karl Rove May Have Lied to Federal Agents, a Federal Crime, During Oct 2003 Testimony Into CIA Agent Leak
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