christopher_hallam

Charlie Savage reports this morning on the number of initial “inquiries” done by the FBI that turned into actual investigations: The document, which covers the four months from December 2008 to March 2009, says the F.B.I. initiated 11,667 “assessments” of people and groups. Of those, 8,605 were completed. And based on the information developed in […]

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Justice Department has issued an official memo that allows FBI agents to eschew giving Miranda warnings to terror suspects. Matthew Miller, a Justice Department spokesman, said the memo ensures that “law enforcement has the ability to question suspected terrorists without immediately providing Miranda warnings when the interrogation is […]

The Washington Times op-ed page isn’t known for being classy, but Ted Nugent‘s op-ed today, flagged by the folks at Media Matters, reaches another level of ugly: There is no country in Africa that truly respects freedom or the rule of law. The majority of countries in Africa are in economic ruin because of political […]

Marc Lynch and others have been making the argument that, if Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddaffi had succeeded in crushing the rebels, the wave of democratic protests across the Arab world might have been halted: This emerging consensus misses some extremely important context, however. Libya matters to the United States not for its oil or intrinsic […]

Nick Baumann has the latest in abortion insanity: In testimony to a House taxation subcommittee on Wednesday, Thomas Barthold, the chief of staff of the nonpartisan Joint Tax Committee, confirmed that one consequence of the Republicans’ “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act” would be to turn IRS agents into abortion cops—that is, during an audit, […]

I have a post up at Greg‘s place exploring whether or not Rick Santorum‘s remarks about sharia presage the “stealth jihad” conspiracy theory becoming an element of the GOP presidential primary. Steve M. points to a Gallup poll that shows the most some of the party’s committed culture warriors, Mike Huckabee, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, […]

Paul Krugman says he doesn’t read conservative or libertarian blogs. I think you miss a lot by doing that. I think I would be a less thoughtful person if I didn’t read Tim Lee, the most intellectually honest person on the internet, the criminal justice reporting of Radley Balko, or Damon Root‘s legal writing. I […]

The Obama administration can always count on House Republicans to make something bad they’ve done look reasonable. In this case, House Armed Services Chairman Rep. Buck McKeon has proposed stripping Attorney General Eric Holder of the authority to decide the venue in which terrorism cases are tried. Section 4. Requirement for Military Custody: This section […]

The new review process will give detainees who have lost their habeas cases a possible opportunity for release through review boards held every six months, in which they’ll be entitled to an attorney provided they can afford to hire one or one volunteers to represent them. In his statement on the Gitmo news today, ACLU […]

Today, in a post on inequality, Andrew Sullivan writes “Penalizing people for their success does not help the less successful.” I can only assume Sullivan is talking about progressive taxation, but I think his glib conflation of one’s presence in a higher tax bracket with “success” is one of liberals’ key pet peeves, since it […]