That's what the White House press secretary Dana Perino said concerning the New York Times' reports about White House involvement in the decision to destroy tapes of CIA interrogations.

What was "pernicious and troubling"? Not the decision to destroy them (which almost certainly violated criminal statutes barring...

The Supreme Court's decision today to hear challenges to the detentions at Guantánamo is a highly significant one that mark a watershed in the Bush Administration's detention policy. It could mark the beginning of Guantánamo's unraveling -- notwithstanding the string of disappointing rulings to come from the Court in this...

Yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 13-3 to authorize subpoenas focused on the Bush Administration's warrantless wiretapping program. Here is what the authorization read:

Be it resolved that, pursuant to its authority under Rules 25 and 26 of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the Senate Committee on the...

Yesterday, judges in the military commissions established by the 2006 Military Commissions Act at Guantánamo dismissed charges against two detainees charged with "war crimes" -- Omar Khadr and Salim Hamdan. According to the Times, the rulings, which were both on highly technical grounds, threw the commissions into "turmoil." In...

The Supreme Court this morning said that it would not review the case of the Guantánamo detainees. Three Justices (Souter, Breyer, and Ginsburg) voted to grant the detainees a hearing. But you need four votes for a case to be heard (and five votes to win). Justices Kennedy and Stevens...

We all stand on the shoulders of giants. And few giants loom larger in the study of "executive prerogatives" than Arthur Schlesinger Jr., that great American historian--and that great American--who recently and sadly passed away.

Let's pause and ponder for a moment what Schlesinger has to say about this...

In the coming days, commentators will be scrambling for their thesauruses to find new ways to describe the mounting criticism of Attorney General Gonzales (try "calumny" or "obloquy" for starters). But it's worth lingering on one perhaps the most illuminating aspect of today's news: What the White House wanted to,...

After the summary defenestration of Donald Rumsfeld and the slow martyrdom of Scooter Libby, the New York Times' call yesterday for the President to fire his Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, no longer seems unrealistic. Yet the firing of one person, no matter now misguided or sub par their performance as...

It's hardly the fall of the Berlin wall, more a knocking away of a block or two away: Yesterday, the Justice Department announced that it would allow a handful of legislators to look at a key document related to National Security Agency's newly amended domestic spying program. Like other...

As Cenk Uygur has explained, Virgil Goode's slur is a naked attempt to link terrorism, immigration, and Islam in a way that panders to the ugliest kind of nativism. It's worth stepping back too to look at why Goode is so wholly wrong.

For Goode is far wide...

A federal district court in Washington, DC yesterday issued the first judicial interpretation of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 in the very same legal case that the Supreme Court ruled on in June.

The case is Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, in which one of the Guantánamo detainees challenged the...

In a federal court of appeals in Washington, DC today, a case has been filed that casts troubling light on the apparent willingness of the United States government to detain innocent men as "enemy combatants" in order to secure international support for its 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Here, in brief,...

Tomorrow, a German man arrives at John F. Kennedy international airport. This seemingly unremarkable event is in fact a moment of personal bravery that ought to spur national contrition.

Khaled E-Masri, the arriving German national, tried to come to the United States once before. When he arrived, he was...

Oversight is the rallying cry of the new Democrat Class of '06. But there's a danger that the policy area most obviously in need of real accountability - our domestic national security agenda - will get short shrift in the rush to address the Iraq debacle.

Legislators moved quickly...

Two weeks ago, the White House led a chorus baying for the blood of anyone who stood in the way of the President's Military Commission Act stood in the way of defending America. After five years' inaction on detainees and interrogation issues, the White House discovered a need for speedy...

"Checks and balances" has a nice ring. But it's a currency that doesn't go a long way in Washington today.

The Military Commissions Act of 2006, of MCA, passed by the House and Senate and likely to be signed by the President tomorrow is a wholesale assault on the...