A federal judge dismissed complaints in a lawsuit alleging former Justice Department officials violated the rights of Arab or Muslim immigrants in the immediate months after the September 11th terrorist attacks. The lawsuit, brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights, sought to hold the officials accountable for subjecting the immigrants to harsh confinement on the basis of their race, national origin and religion. Still, the judge allowed claims of violations against prison staff to proceed.

But at least Representative Todd Akin, the son of his mother, father of his daughters, husband of his wife, and pious Christian that he is, didn’t call Senator Claire McCaskill a bitch.

‘Cause that would be downright ungentlemanly.

It’s not because Akin might lose to McCaskill, costing the GOP control of the Senate. It’s not because the focus on Akin might derail the careful planning for next week’s Republican National Convention. It’s not because the focus on Akin might spill over into the presidential race, forcing Romney and Ryan to talk more about social issues than the deficit, the budget, and the economy, and perhaps costing them the White House. It’s because Akin chose what Ryan did not.

To people here in Missouri, Akin’s comments were not terribly surprising. Akin is a known commodity — known to be highly conservative and well in keeping with a non-trivial slice of the Missouri electorate.

Like Br’er Rabbit telling Br’er Fox not to throw him in the briar patch, Claire McCaskill ran ads on Fox News during the GOP primary fight, calling Akin “too conservative for Missouri”. With an endorsement like that, conservatives in the GOP primary race were happy to hand Akin a victory with 36% of the vote.

Guidelines for how long officials at the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), a “clearinghouse” for terrorism established after the September 11^th attacks, are being expanded to allow for the retention of information on US citizens with no ties to terrorism.

The expanded guidelines allow for the NCTC to hold information for up to five years instead of 180 days, which was the requirement for information on US citizens not suspected of terrorism.

Remember when John Ashcroft put a drape over the bared breast of the “Spirit of Justice” statue at the Justice Department? The Republicans are now busy trying to cover their own political private parts after flashing a core part of their agenda – their war on women — at an inopportune time.

It’s a motley conservative crew that makes up the Misogynistic Army of the Right.

There are multiple indications in the large cache of US State Embassy cables WikiLeaks has been releasing (extended summary here) that the US State Department is willing to do just about anything to ensure the multinational agricultural biotech corporation, Monsanto, has its interests protected in countries around the world.

Cables show the State Department has been very active in defending Monsanto in France during the past decade.

SCOTUS has just ruled unanimously that John Ashcroft can’t be sued by Abdullah al-Kidd for using a material witness warrant to incarcerate him. The eight justices (Elena Kagan recused herself) all agree there was no law explicitly prohibiting this kind of abuse of material witness warrants, so Ashcroft has immunity from suit.

It’s utterly appropriate that Ashcroft would head to the poster child for everything wrong with privatization to make sure it complies with some kind of ethics.

The unredacted sections of the Goldsmith Memo do not rely on In re Sealed Case to claim warrantless wiretapping qualifies as a special need, whereas the White Paper does.