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Tue, 15 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

TPM Muckraker - By Paul Kiel - Apr. 15 (Opinion) - Back in February, the AP broke the story that the White House had secretly modified a proposed rule to crack down on contract fraud.

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Rudy Put $400,000 In Advance Funds On Credit Card For Travel Expenses

Sat, 01 Dec 2007 03:25:00 -0800

TPM Muckraker - By Paul Kiel, Greg Sargent - Dec. 01 (News Report) - We've been swimming in credit card receipts from Rudy Giuliani's administration today, and one thing in particular has struck us: in 2001, apparently with an eye to future globetrotting, Giuliani's administration sent a check for $400,000 to American Express.

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Ex-Navy Instructor Promises to Hit Back If Attacked on Torture

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 08:43:32 -0800

TPM Muckraker - By Spencer Ackerman - Nov. 08 (News Report) - Our body of experience shows a friendly approach is most successful in interrogation, Nance says. SERE's historical memory goes back to the French and Indian Wars in understanding torture methods that captured U.S. troops might face and devising strategies to resist them. He relates the story of Hans Joachim Scharff, a master Luftwaffe interrogator who spurned abusive techniques used by the Gestapo (also, interestingly, termed "enhanced interrogation") in favor of rapport-building. Scharff's legendary success is still studied by U.S. interrogators. Unfortunately, he says, "after Guantanamo, I thought, how can anyone at SERE ever teach the Geneva Conventions again?"

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Obama: Fire Voting Rights Chief

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 12:11:17 -0700

TPM Muckraker - By Paul Kiel - Oct. 19 (News Report) - In a letter today, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) urged the acting attorney general to fire voting rights section chief John Tanner. Citing Tanner's remarks earlier this month that "minorities don't become elderly the way white people do: They die first," Obama wrote that "Through his inexcusable comments, Mr. Tanner has clearly demonstrated that he possesses neither the character nor the judgment to be heading the Voting Rights Section." He concluded: "For that reason, I respectfully request that you remove him from his position."

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Phone Jamming Cover-up at DoJ? Conyers Wants Answers

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 09:15:56 -0700

TPM Muckraker - By Paul Kiel - Oct. 05 (Opinion) - It happened nearly five years ago, but House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) still has plenty of questions about the New Hampshire phone jamming case. In a letter Wednesday, he asked Acting Attorney General Peter Keisler a number of questions about the case, focusing in particular on whether the Justice Department has "adequately investigated and prosecuted" the case. You can read the letter here.

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U.S. Attorneys Investigation Waits on House Leadership

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 14:16:38 -0700

TPM Muckraker - By Paul Kiel - Oct. 03 (Opinion) - "The scandal at the Department of Justice has gone on long enough," said Rep. Rahm Emmanuel (D-IL) back in March. Careers have been destroyed and legitimate public corruption cases have been derailed. It is time for accountability -- it is time for the truth." Six months and several Department senior resignations later, it's a different time. The urgency is gone.

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Voter Fraud Guru up for Vote Tomorrow

Tue, 25 Sep 2007 17:46:11 -0700

TPM Muckraker - By Paul Kiel - Sep. 25 (News Analysis) - Finally, the time has come. The Senate Rules Committee will vote tomorrow on whether Hans von Spakovsky, the former Justice Department official who former employees say was key to the politicization of voting rights section, will get a term on the Federal Elections Commission. Von Spakovsky is also a veteran of Republican efforts to target voter fraud.

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Voter Suppression Showdown, Round 2: Von Spakovsky

Wed, 13 Jun 2007 00:55:04 -0700

TPM Muckraker - By Paul Kiel - Jun. 13 (News Report) - Following Bradley Schlozman's memorable performance before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, former senior Civil Rights Division higher-up Hans von Spakovsky will be appearing before the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration tomorrow.

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Some in U.S. Intelligence See Musharraf on His Way Out

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 00:15:13 -0700

TPM Muckraker - By Spencer Ackerman - Jun. 12 (News Report) - ince September 11, 2001, the U.S.'s Pakistan policy can be summed up in two words: Pervez Musharraf. But within the U.S. intelligence community, and in Pakistan, there's a growing belief that the U.S.-friendly military dictator's days are drawing to a close -- and possibly within the next few months. It may be time for the U.S. to face what it's long feared in the nuclear state: the prospect of chaos, rising Islamism or anti-Americanism that follows Musharraf. But the hope -- among Pakistani military officers and politicians, to say nothing of U.S. diplomats -- is that the increasingly inept and unpopular Musharraf can be eased out of power while the U.S. slowly distances itself from him, allowing for as smooth a transition as is possible in the turbulent South Asian country. Some see the Pakistani Army remaining powerful enough to prevent a chaotic transition or an Islamist takeover. "This is going to be a Pinochet-like transition, instead of a Marcos-like one," one former Pakistani official tells TPMmuckraker. In other words, according to the ex-official, the U.S. may not stand foursquare behind its ally Musharraf until he's ultimately forced from power, as President Ronald Reagan chose with doomed Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

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Goodling Admits to Breaking Law with Political Hiring

Wed, 23 May 2007 12:05:00 -0700

TPM Muckraker - By Paul Kiel - May. 23 (News Report) - Both in her opening statement and in further testimony, Goodling admitted to weeding out candidates for assistant U.S. attorney positions because they were not Republicans. Under questioning from Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-CA), Goodling admitted that she did block the hiring of an assistant U.S. attorney in the D.C. U.S. attorney's office because she judged him too liberal. "I made a snap judgment and I regret it," she said. When Sanchez pressed as to how many times Goodling had done this, Goodling said she couldn't come up with a number, and that she didn't "feel like there were that many cases."

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Meet Monica "Buzz Saw" Goodling

Sun, 01 Apr 2007 09:34:30 -0700

TPM Muckraker - By Paul Kiel - Apr. 01 (Opinion) - There has been an assumption that Monica Goodling, the Justice Department's liaison to the White House, is pleading the Fifth simply because of her role in preparing false testimony to Congress.

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As Whistle Blows for 110th Congress, Dem Probers Still Suiting Up

Wed, 03 Jan 2007 07:54:37 -0800

TPM Muckraker - By Justin Rood - Jan. 03 (News Report) - The House returns tomorrow to begin a new session. Democrats have announced they'll push an ambitious legislative agenda in the first 100 hours, but some people -- us, of course, and many of our readers -- are eager to see congressional investigations kick off a new era of more involved oversight. Well, I hear we're all going to have to wait a while for those fireworks to begin. Just like the Fourth of July, the parade comes first.

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Union: DHS Raids Grabbed Legal Workers

Wed, 13 Dec 2006 14:10:03 -0800

TPM Muckraker - By Justin Rood - Dec. 13 (Special Report) - Union officials are outraged over a massive immigration sweep yesterday, which sent 1,000 Homeland Security Department agents -- some in riot gear -- to meatpacking plants in six states to round up immigrant workers suspected of using fake identification, but may have picked up legal workers in the process. "Stormtroopers came in with machine guns, rounded [the workers] into the cafeterias, separated identified citizens from non-citizens, and then they took away all green cards and put non-citizens onto buses," regardless of the immigrants' legal status, Jill Cashen of the United Food and Commercial Workers union (UCFW) told me this morning.

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GOP Senator: Iraq War

Fri, 08 Dec 2006 10:55:00 -0800

TPM Muckraker - By Justin Rood - Dec. 08 (News Report) - It's the kind of thing you'd expect to hear on Pacifica Radio, not in a speech by a Republican senator. -- "I, for one, am at the end of my rope when it comes to supporting a policy that has our soldiers patrolling the same streets in the same way ...

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