According to the Virginia Bar and in a filing that she agreed with, Monica Goodling committed a “a criminal or deliberately wrongful act” that reflected badly on her “honesty, trustworthiness or fitness to practice law.”

To the Village, Mitch Daniels (R-IN) is a Very Serious “Grown-Up” Republican — but he sure sounded like a WATB on NPR this morning.

When people who’ve worked in sensitive intelligence positions want to write their memoirs, they typically submit their manuscripts to their parent agency; there’s a back-and-forth about what can be revealed; it’s resolved; and the book goes to the printer. For Shaffer, a former Defense Intelligence Agency officer — and someone in the rare position of being both an operations guy and an analyst — something different happened. The Pentagon bought the entire 10,000-copy first printing of Shaffer’s memoir, Operation Dark Heart, and destroyed it.

It remains to be seen whether this compromise will give Congress enough new oversight powers to prevent the abuses that happened under Bush (and heck–I assume the Gang of Four, if not the Gang of Eight–has signed off on assassinating US citizens solely on the President’s say so, so it’s not clear that oversight will be any use in protecting the Constitution). But Jeff Stein reports both Pelosi and DiFi declaring victory, while the White House and DOD remain silent.

It doesn’t seem like much has changed since Bush was criminalizing political speech.

Now that Earl Blumenauer has exposed the craven indemnification agreement the US government under the Bush/Cheney Administration gave to Halliburton/KBR, he should pursue the same types of agreements secretly given to telco companies participating in the illegal wiretapping program.

Remember the plaintive cries of Democrats and progressives about the wrongful politicization of the Department of Justice by the Bush/Cheney Administration? Remember the stunning chart Sheldon Whitehouse whipped out at a Senate judiciary hearing on Alberto Gonzales’ tenure as AG showing how politicized the hallowed independent prosecutorial discretion of the DOJ had become under Bush, Cheney and Gonzales? The one that Pat Leahy called “the most astounding thing I have seen in 32 years”?

The one constant theme underlying all the elements that could have and/or did lead to the BP Gulf oil spill is the mendacious corporate servitude of the Republican party, their leaders and policies. The arrogance and recklessness of BP and its oily partners gestated wildly under the Bush/Cheney administration and little is changing significantly under Obama.

Edward Horgan, a well-known Irish activist and former Irish Defense Force officer, has had his 10-year, multiple-entry U.S. visa revoked without explanation. Horgan and others believe it is because of his principled stand against the U.S. use of renditions, and in particular, the use of Shannon Airport in western Ireland as a stopover for U.S. rendition flights. The Obama administration should be ashamed for its behavior in keeping Mr. Horgan from entering this country.

Politico is now aiding the fear-mongerers in declaring the Obama’s Administration’s response to a failed terrorist attack a failure (one, two, three, four, balanced by this).

And yet, little mention of the successes the Obama Administration has had: preventing Najibullah Zazi’s alleged attack attempt, rooting out efforts to recruit Somali youth from Minnesota, catching several self-radicalizing Americans.