looseheadprop

If you missed Jonathan Turley on Rachel last night, here’s you chance to see it. It is one of his best laid out explanations of why President Obama needs to get out of the way and allow an investigation into war crimes go forward.

Mark Danner has an Op Ed in the NYTimes today and a longer piece in the New York Review of Books both based upon the recent Red Cross report based on interviews with detainees transferred from CIA black sites to Gitmo. It is a chilling litany of tortures done to fellow human beings while in US custody.

Pakistani lawyers have succeeded in their effort to restore an independent judiciary. I like it when the good guys win. Well done, brethren.

AIG just release its list of to 20 counterparties (recipients of bailout money paid into AIG). Of the $22.4 billion total, $18.3 was paid out to the top 20 recipients. Only $6 billion of that is known to have gone to US banks or finaical institutions. The rest went to bail out overseas banks.

FireDogLake got its hands on copies of the letter sent from AIG to Tim Geitner and an enclosed “white paper” that is supposed to back up its conclusions. AIG is running a con and you can see it in their own words.

AIG is only “legally required” to pay retention bonuses if they want to retain the employees who brought the company to the point of disaster. I have a better idea. Don’t pay the bonuses and dare the employees to find a jury who make you do it.

[Laughing so hard my belly hurts. ]

SCOTUS refused to expand the voting right act today. They chose a defintion of “majority” that will allow for vote dilution of minority votes. The rationale for this was that the defination chosen provides a bright line test that is easy to understand.

Some of you may know that I usually take a health and fitness walk each morning down to the beach. My little piece of Long Island was still covered in snow, but on Friday morning I began to notice subtle signs of spring.

It began with the sunrise down at the beach.

A federal Judge has ordered the US Attorney’s Office in NY to turn over the Grand Jury materials from the Eliot Spitzer investigation to the New York Times. DOJ is appealing. Spitzer was never charged with a crime. Many suspect that the search warrant applications may turn out to be tainted and that SOMEBODY did a political hit job on Spitzer.

DOJ just released a bunch of previously secret OLC opinions. This is one of the earliest.