Acting Office of Legal Counsel head David Barron is returning to spend more time with his law students at Harvard, to be replaced by Jonathan Cedarbaum. Unlike several of the legal jobs that have turned over under this Administration, this one doesn’t appear to be tied to a fight over counter-terrorism policy.

Very Serious Journalists, like James Risen, may look down their noses at bloggers, imagining us at our keyboards in our pajamas. They can laugh, but the kind of journalism practiced by FDL is running rings around them. “He said/she said” may work for the Village media, but FDL aims to sort out who’s right and why, and then tries to make things better. If FDL’s version of journalism appeals to you, we could use a little financial support to make things even better down the road.

Oh, but don’t worry about all these inconvenient details. “Many” of these detainees were and are being legally detained.

Though in recent days Lindsey Graham has come out against Liz Cheney’s McCarthyism, he was one of the Republicans who started this whole witch hunt last November by signing a letter (authored by Chuck Grassley) asking for a details on those who had defended detainees in the past.

Just out from the ACLU: a redacted list naming 645 detainees held by the U.S. at Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan.

The CIA requested to destroy the torture tapes in email on November 8, 2005. They confirmed the destruction on November 9. Not surprisingly, after Leonie Brinkema had asked about videotapes. But also right in the middle of debates about McCain’s Detainee Treatment Act. And note that briefing for Crazy Pete Hoekstra–but not the other Dems in Intelligence Committee leadership–on the same day that CIA started asking to destroy the torture tapes.

Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, 11/18/09 – Legal proceedings, such as they are, rumbled to life again today at Guantanamo Bay. Pre-trial issues in the case of Mohammed Kamin, an Afghan man who was captured by the U.S. in Afghanistan in 2003, were heard in a military commission courtroom on a small hill a few miles away [...]

Yesterday Sheldon Whitehouse used the idea that we could hold the current Guantanamo detainees similar to the way we hold people under a mental health commitment. Here is some information about the rights of those under a mental health commitment and concerns about the analogy being used in this context.