Confirming Rahmbo, via think Progress, WH Press Secretary Robert Gibbs say no to torture prosecutions:

CNN’S ED HENRY: Just so I understand, you’re saying the people in the CIA who followed through on what they were told was legal, they should not be prosecuted? But why not the Bush administration lawyers who, in the eyes of a lot of your supporters on the left, twisted the law, why are they not being held accountable?

GIBBS: The president is focused on looking forward. That’s why.

You think some blogs might call Obama a "shill for Bush," like they did Jane Harman?

Speaking for me only

Update: Musi's mother was interviewed by the AP and is pleading for his release. She says he is 16 and was "swept up by "gangsters with money."

His mother is calling on President Barack Obama to pardon him or allow her to attend his trial.

If he needs character witnesses or mitigation witnesses, since he's indigent, the government will have to pay their travel expenses here. This sure is going to be an expensive trial for the U.S.

Update: Here's a good article on why Kenya was thought to be the place to try them. The US and EU recently signed agreeements with Kenya to try pirates. But, maybe there should be a special piracy tribunal, like the Hague. That would be expensive too. A former U.N. prosecutor who helped set up a special tribunal for Sierra Leone and indicted ousted Liberian President Charles Taylor says: [More...]

Fascinating piece in New York Magazine this week on how Wall Streeters are adapting to the new realities presented by the financial crisis.

The most telling parts of the piece, however, come not from the writer of the story but from a source identified only as a "Goldman vet"

“When I talked to my friends in November and December at firms like Goldman, they would tell me, ‘If the government doesn’t bail us out, we’re going down.’ They really thought they were going to zero, and without exception, they all forget that now. They forget that their company’s stock was going to zero. It’s a state of delusion; they don’t remember those days. The flip side of that is, every guy except the Goldman guy remembers that Goldman was bailed out.”

[More...]

Via Drudge (reporting on Fox News, so should be reliable):

CHENEY: One of the things that I find a little bit disturbing about this recent disclosure is they put out the legal memos, the memos that the CIA got from the Office of Legal Counsel, but they didn't put out the memos that showed the success of the effort. And there are reports that show specifically what we gained as a result of this activity. They have not been declassified. I formally asked that they be declassified now. . . I've now formally asked the CIA to take steps to declassify those memos so we can lay them out there and the American people have a chance to see what we obtained and what we learned and how good the intelligence was, as well as to see this debate over the legal opinions.

Fair enough. Let's get it ALL out there, not just the memos Cheney wants out there. Sounds like Cheney is in on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Let's do it.

Speaking for me only

From TPM, Representative Jane Harman's office responds to the CQ story:

Congresswoman Harman has never contacted the Justice Department about its prosecution of present or former AIPAC employees and the Department has never informed her that she was or is the subject of or involved in an investigation. If there is anything about this story that should arouse concern, it is that the Bush Administration may have been engaged in electronic surveillance of members of the congressional Intelligence Committees.

Assuming this is true, Harman has a strong point. I also find it incredibly ironic that some folks who have been quiet as church mouses on the Obama Administration's policies on Bush Administration abuses (or even before, see Senator Obama's cave in on FISA) have been on the attack against Harman.

For the record, my previous view of Rep. Harman on FISA, warrantless wiretapping and the value of primaries. See also this and this. Harman was converted on FISA long before this story broke, due to pressure from the Left flank and a primary challenge from Marcy Winograd. It did not come today. Speaking for me only

The Supreme Court accepted cert today in Pottawattamie County v. McGhee, 08-1065, an Iowa case in which two men wrongfully convicted of murder sued the prosecutors. Curtis W. McGhee Jr., and Terry Harrington served 25 years of a life sentence for killing a retired police officer before being freed when it turned out prosecutors had withheld evidence about another suspect and presented false testimony from witnesses.

[Prosecutors]Richter and Hrvol argued that they were immune from lawsuits because they were acting within the scope of their job. Federal courts, however, rejected their motions to dismiss the lawsuits, saying the immunity did not extend to them.

The lower courts found immunity on the withholding evidence claim but said the prosecutors can be sued for procuring false testimony during the investigation and using it against the defendants at trial. Scotus Blog has the pleadings in the case.

As Big Tent Democrat and the New York Times noted, Marcy Wheeler of Empty Wheel broke the story of the number of times the C.I.A. used waterboarding on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah. Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in a month. That's an average of 6 times a day.

Doesn't this show the ineffectiveness of the technique? Particularly when it was only one of a number of coercive techniques that were used in tandem? (Others, according to the May 30, 2005 memo were facial and abdominal slapping,walling, sleep deprivation through shackling, nudity coupled with adult diapers.) Marcy has more on this here. [More...]

Via Atrios, apparently some TARP repayment is more equal than others:

TCF Financial Corp (TCB.N) said it received approval to pay back $361 million in funds it received from the U.S. Treasury's Capital Purchase Program, and cut its quarterly dividend by 80 percent. . . . TCF Financial said it will buy back all of its 361,172 shares of its preferred stock from the U.S. Treasury at a price of $361.2 million plus a final pro rata accrued dividend.

Meanwhile, back of the megabank ranch, the Obama Administration is rearranging the deck chairs, floating the idea of converting its preferred shares to common stock. As Krugman notes, this is pointless:

The explosive CQ story (this post provides a good basis for doubting the story as reported) regarding an alleged telephone conversation between Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) and a "suspected Israeli agent" turns on the identity of the "suspected Israeli agent" Harman was is alleged to have conspired with. Josh Marshall thinks it was Power Rangers mogul Haim Saban, an American citizen, staunch supporter of all things Israel, and a significant Democratic contributor. Marcy Wheeler thinks it was Naor Gilon, an Israeli citizen suspected of being a spy. Who the conversation was with is crucial under FISA:

The NYTimes reported:

The new information on the number of waterboarding episodes [of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah] came out over the weekend when a number of bloggers, including Marcy Wheeler of the blog emptywheel, discovered it in the May 30, 2005, memo.

(Emphasis supplied.) Cheers to the Times for crediting Marcy with the original reporting. Jeers to Reuters:

CIA interrogators used the waterboarding technique on Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the admitted planner of the September 11 attacks, 183 times and 83 times on another al Qaeda suspect, The New York Times said on Sunday.

The New York Times reported Marcy Wheeler broke the story. Reuters should have too.

If my kid, when he was a kid, was strip searched in the 8th grade at school because they thought he had ibuprophen, I would have been up in arms.

Tuesday, the Supreme Court hears arguments in the case of an Arizona student who was strip searched at school.

Savana Redding was an honors student at a middle school in Safford, Ariz., with a clean discipline record. A friend of Savana’s, who was found in possession of pain relievers, told school authorities that Savana had given her 400-milligram ibuprofen pills, a prescription -level dose of the pain reliever in over-the-counter Advil and Motrin, used to treat headaches and menstrual cramps.

I don't care if it was percodan or dilaudid. You don't strip search kids. [More...]

The Constitution Project has issued the most comprehensive report in 30 years on the constitutional right to counsel.

Excessive caseloads, inadequate funding, ethical breaches, politicization of the public defender system, lack of timely appointment of counsel or no appointment at all are depriving the poor of the constitutional right to representation in criminal and juvenile cases. This is the conclusion of a report released today by the Constitution Project’s bipartisan National Right to Counsel Committee. The report, Justice Denied: America’s Continuing Neglect of Our Constitutional Right to Counsel, outlines the crisis in the country’s public defense system and offers 22 recommendations to state and federal officials to fix it.

The report includes recommendations for adequate funding, independent oversight, and standards for attorney competence, compensation, and workload.

A summary of findings is here, and the full report is downloadable here (pdf).