Surprise! John Yoo Believes in Broad Executive Powers

Former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo has been spewing his grandiose views on presidential power ever since leaving the Bush administration. So although his latest book, “Crisis And Command,” is an unusually ambitious 446-page historical survey of executive power from George Washington to George W. Bush, his More…

Best of 2009: Republicans Make Case for Prosecuting Bush Officials

All day, we’re re-running our favorite blog posts of the last year. This post was originally published on March 4, 2009.

The Senate Judiciary Committee’s “Getting to the Truth Through a Nonpartisan Commission of Inquiry” convened this morning to consider Sen. Patrick Leahy’s (D-Vt.) proposal for a sort of “truth More…

Best of 2009: Sotomayor’s ‘Controversial’ Comments Backed Up By Academic Research

All day, we’re re-running our favorite blog posts of the last year. This post was originally published on May 26, 2009.

One of the things that most infuriates conservative commentators like Michelle Malkin and Stuart Taylor about Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is that in delivering a 2002 More…

FBI: We Should Have Known About Abdulmutallab, but Father’s Warning Wasn’t Enough to Search Him

Following up on my earlier post on the FBI’s longstanding problems with putting terror suspects on its terror watchlist, I just got off the phone with FBI spokesman William Carter, who clarified a few things.

Although Carter couldn’t talk specifically about the case of the failed Northwest Airlines More…

Best of 2009: FBI Interrogators Argued in 2002 That Enhanced Interrogation Techniques Were Illegal and Ineffective

All day, we’re re-running our favorite blog posts of the last year. This post was originally published on Nov. 8, 2009.

As former Vice President Dick Cheney and some Republican lawmakers continue to debate whether torture works and was a legitimate interrogation technique during the Bush administration, it’s almost jaw-dropping More…

2008 FBI Audit Flagged Failure to Place Terror Suspects on Watchlist

While the State Department is fending off questions about why it didn’t revoke Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s visa and points fingers at the National Counterterrorism Center, it’s worth noting that the FBI last year was told, following an in-depth audit by its inspector general, that it More…

58 Percent of U.S. Voters Want to Waterboard Failed Christmas Bomber

Don’t expect any charitable feelings around the holidays. According to a new Rasmussen national telephone survey, 58 percent of U.S. voters say they’d support using waterboarding and other aggressive interrogation techniques to extract information from the failed Northwest Airlines Flight 253 bomber.

Just 30 percent oppose using such More…

Best of 2009: Al Franken Reads 4th Amendment to Justice Department Official

All day, we’re re-running our favorite blog posts of the last year. This post was originally published on Sept. 23, 2009.

Just in case he wasn’t familiar with it, Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) decided to read the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution to David Kris, assistant attorney general of the More…

Best of 2009: One Need Look No Further Than John Yoo for Evidence of Executive Lawbreaking

All day, we’re re-running our favorite blog posts of the last year. This post was originally published on July 13, 2009.

The Gatekeepers

Immigration remained a divisive political issue in 2009, although it largely simmered on the sidelines as Congress and the president focused their legislative efforts on other priorities. A comprehensive immigration reform bill wasn’t even introduced in Congress until mid-December. Still, the new administration stepped up the enforcement of immigration More…