In his defense, McCaffrey's firm BR McCaffrey Associates, LLC claims that "General McCaffrey is not a lobbyist."

Source: http://news.prnewswire.com/DisplayReleaseContent.aspx?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/11-30-2008/0004933623&EDATE=

How do McCaffrey's actions in sending a briefing paper singing the virtues of his client, Defense Solutions, to General Petraeus not constitute lobbying? And, btw, how does he escape the legal definition of a lobbyist and the registration requirement?

From Barstow's piece:

[Defense Solutions] signed Barry R. McCaffrey, a retired four-star Army general and military analyst for NBC News, to a consulting contract starting June 15, 2007.

Four days later the general swung into action. He sent a personal note and 15-page briefing packet to David H. Petraeus, the commanding general in Iraq, strongly recommending Defense Solutions and its offer to supply Iraq with 5,000 armored vehicles from Eastern Europe. “No other proposal is quicker, less costly, or more certain to succeed,” he said.

Thus, within days of hiring General McCaffrey, the Defense Solutions sales pitch was in the hands of the American commander with the greatest influence over Iraq’s expanding military.

“That’s what I pay him for,” Timothy D. Ringgold, chief executive of Defense Solutions, said in an interview.

...but he does offer "advocacy consulting services" to "get specified results for clients who want action." Source: http://www.mccaffreyassociates.com/

They add that "BR McCaffrey Associates LLC will not engage in activities that would require us to register as an agent of any foreign government." They don't rule out registering as lobbyists for US or non-governmental interests, but with a quick Google I don't see any reference to them doing so. (And presumably they wouldn't deny that McCaffrey is a lobbyist if he were registered as one.)

This comment was just too dumb for me to plod on:

Those on the left normally found fault in ... Brennan’s vocal support of ... FISA.

(Also posted at NYT.)

Office of Legal Counsel, which has become controversial because of its legal defense of practices bordering on torture.

"Bordering on" torture? Are you kidding? Is there anything you would consider a legal defense of torture as opposed to "practices bordering on" torture?

Look at the Bybee torture memo issued by the OLC with the definition of physical pain as needing to "be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." And even then the OLC allowed for necessity and self-defense exemptions in case a government interrogator did inflict such intense pain. Yoo, the head of the OLC (now gracing the Times' Op-Ed page BTW), famously argued that the President could (depending on the circumstances) authorize crushing the testicles of the son of a suspect. Does that merely border on torture? Waterboarding and inducing hypothermia were in the past condemned as (and at least in the case of waterboarding, prosecuted as) torture when practiced by other countries. But in your view they're not quite torture when they're authorized by the OLC?

...describes a dsytopia that in many ways reads like a description the Bush administration (though it must be admitted it may resemble the Obama administration in more way ways than we might like to admit):

Terrorist bombings, national-security scares, universal police surveillance, bureaucratic arrogance, a callous elite, perversion of science, and government use of torture evoke the worst aspects of the modern megastate.

Source:

A post on "Brazil" as one of the best conservative movies:

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTkyNjE5NTg0ZTU3ZjYyMjI2YzU2YTVlMmM2MzBjZGM=

In addition to Democrats, he would be an interesting Congressman to pressure to challenge the Obama DOJ on this. If he didn't approve of it when Bush was doing it, how can he possibly approve now that a Democratic president is? For him, the partisan juices and the principle (strange word in the context of Specter, I know) should align.

As I understand it, the doctrine of standing is currently defined purely by legal precedent not legislation, but if Congress wanted to weigh in legislatively, they could. The doctrine is perfectly reasonable in most cases: if you can't find someone who was harmed then maybe you have no business introducing a suit. But cases like this where standing is difficult or impossible to prove because of secrecy are different. IMHO, it should be possible to introduce a suit based on it being in the public interest, without proving that any specific person was harmed.

John Yoo:

"Now that I'm not in the government, part of my role, because I have a certain amount of expertise, is to try to keep the government honest."

-- From an interview with the Orange County Register.

On the other hand, back when he was in government....

http://volokh.com/posts/1236201800.shtml

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/government-think-legal-2323245-people-decisions

I don't want to be too hard on Joe Klein generally, but this euphemism for law-breaking made my jaw drop:

[I]n the intelligence culture, ... some operators are asked to behave extra-legally for the greater good of the nation.

This is in the context of CIA torture, so he is clearly talking about violations of US law not, say, spies violating the law of a foreign hostile nation to collect information there.

Link:

http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2009/04/16/torture-memos-released/

Ed Morrissey at Malkin's HotAir:

Bybee and the OLC were asked what interrogators could do within the law, and instead the OLC reverse-engineered a legal opinion to allow them to violate it. I understand why they did, but it still violated the statute.

http://hotair.com/archives/2009/04/17/the-odd-leap-in-the-interrogation-memos/

Tom Maguire:

The newly released torture memos are cold-blooded and clearly client-driven - the lawyers knew the answers they wanted and reasoned backwards.

http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2009/04/everyone-gets-a-pass.html

I wonder if there would be enough bipartisan support to impeach (now federal judge) Bybee.

Rick Moran of Right Wing Nuthouse: