When Anwar al-Awlaki’s family sued for due process, the government invoked state secrets, even as Crazy Pete Hoekstra and a stream of anonymous sources have leaked details of the drone targeting of him for over a year. One of the things Robert Gates specifically invoked state secrets over is whether or not we’re engaged in military operations in Yemen. Another is details of our counterterrorism work with Yemen.

Jon Walker liveblogs the Michigan, Missouri and Kansas primaries.

Today, important primaries are taking place in Michigan, Kansas and Missouri. FDL Elections will be live blogging the results as they come in this evening.

With the Michigan primary election just days away on August 3rd, there is currently no clear leader in the Republican gubernatorial race. The latest EPIC-MRA poll has the race effectively a three way tie among Attorney General Mike Cox, Rep. Pete Hoekstra, and Businessman Rick Snyder. In the Democratic primary, Virg Bernero holds a solid eight point lead over Andy Dillon.

There is a great deal of evidence that Jose Rodriguez knew as early as September 6, 2002 that he needed to destroy evidence of the torturers exceeding the guidelines set in DC. According to anyone’s definition, that means Rodriguez knew years before he had the tapes destroyed he was destroying evidence of torture, even by Jay Bybee’s and possibly John Yoo’s measure.

Yet the AP — in their “most complete published account” — doesn’t even mention that torture?

As I mentioned in this post, I’ve been weeding through the documents released under FOIA to Judicial Watch last week. I think they suggest there’s a much closer relationship between the CIA misrepresentations on Congressional Briefings and the destruction of the torture tapes than we’ve known before.

The CIA documents released in the latest FOIA batch prove that all the claims that CIA (and Crazy Pete Hoekstra) have made about briefings Congress received on torture are, at best, reconstructions based on years old memors, if not outright fabrications.

It’s OK to admit that al-Qaeda’s capabilities are eroding as ours are improving!

Someone should have told Crazy Pete that filibustering as shamelessly as he did here is a skill best used in the Senate, not in a Governor’s mansion.

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.