emptywheel

FDL book salon welcomes the man who first exposed the NSA's inner workings, James Bamford, to talk about his latest book on the agency The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America.

Nancy and Harry just gave the Big Two and a Half a big homework assignment for the next ten days: solve retirement and health care.

There's a reason why no one at the G20 wanted to shake hands with George Bush, and it has everything to do with our failing economy.

Now that Waxman is taking over Energy and Commerce from John Dingell, we need a strong leader to replace Waxman at Oversight. I nominate either Dennis Kucinich or Elijah Cummings.

Mitt wants to force the auto companies into bankruptcy--and offers a whole lot of ignorant justifications for doing so.

Why is Mitch McConnell hiding from the debate about the auto bailout?

A review of the three different potential sources of funding for the auto industry.

I was talking with mr. emptywheel about what one of the bad--but by no means worst--case scenarios in a GM bankruptcy would be. This scenario is just one of several that might happen--by no means guaranteed, and Congress would fight the scenario at every stage, though with increasingly less leverage. But it is a scenario that follows a great deal of logic about possible outcomes. It is this scenario, though, that explains why both Toyota (I've seen reported--looking for the link) and many in Congress want to bailout GM before it gets to bankruptcy.

For some reason, the AP left out all the sacrifices the UAW has already made to make the US manufacturers more efficient.

One of the key grounds for appeal in the Don Siegelman case is that there was evidence of juror misconduct--two jurors plotting how to get a conviction--that the prosecution had the US postal inspectors investigate even while insisting any investigation would taint the jury process. At issue is a series of e-mails that arose in 2006 suggesting that two jurors had outside influence as they decided Siegelman's bribery conviction.