All Blog Posts from Political Hotsheet

Democrats in Congress today praised the Obama administration for taking steps to revamp procedures for interrogating suspected terrorists and called the Justice Department's investigation into past interrogation methods the first step towards justice. Meanwhile, Republicans called the creation of the new interrogation unit and the investigation politicized power grabs and distractions from critical anti-terrorism efforts.

The Obama administration is assigning a veteran U.S. prosecutor to begin a criminal probe of CIA questioning of terror suspects during the Bush administration, it was announced Monday. The White House also confirmed it is creating a new terror suspects interrogation unit that it will directly supervise. The developments came on the same day a 2004 report from the CIA inspector general was released revealing interrogation techniques like threatening the suspects' families.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the inspector general's report provides "conclusive evidence" that interrogators overstepped the legal boundaries in place and that their techniques of "torturing detainees in U.S. custody did not make us safer."

"The conduct that is documented in this report illustrates the perils of the dark road of excusing torture down which the Bush administration took this nation," he said. "I also believe it underscores why we need to move forward with a Commission of Inquiry, a nonpartisan review of exactly what happened in these areas, so that we can find out what happened and why. Who justified these policies? What was the role of the Bush White House? How can we make sure it never happens again? Information coming out in dribs and drabs will never paint the full picture."

Though he would ultimately like to see a nonpartisan commission formed to examine the interrogations, Leahy said in a separate statement that Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to investigate the issue should bring a measure of accountability to the American people.

"I am grateful that the Justice Department is finally being led by an independent Attorney General who is willing to begin investigating this dark chapter in our country's history," he said. "I had no doubt that he would put the interests of the law ahead of politics, and he has demonstrated that."

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Nearly two years ago, the Bush administration sided with the major record labels in their civil lawsuit against an alleged, and briefly famous, Kazaa user named Jammie Thomas. Now the Obama administration is as well.

In a legal brief filed on Friday, the U.S. Department of Justice said the whopping $1.92 million fine that the Recording Industry Association of America slapped on Thomas was perfectly constitutional.

Federal prosecutors argue the relevant law is "carefully crafted" and consistent with "due process" and part of a necessary "regime to protect intellectual property. Under current law, copyright holders can sue for up to $150,000 per work (such as an MP3 file, DVD, or book).

Their brief adds: "Congress took into account the need to deter the millions of users of new media from infringing copyrights in an environment where many violators believe that they will go unnoticed." It does not take a position on issues other than the constitutional ones.

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Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales deflected questions Tuesday regarding whether he knew anything about former Vice President Dick Cheney's alleged orders to the CIA to keep its counterterrorism program secret from Congress.

"It's very difficult to talk about classified activities in an unclassified setting," Gonzales told CBS' "The Early Show" co-anchor Harry Smith.

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Seeking to calm fears that al Qaeda terrorists could be set free on U.S. soil, Attorney General Eric Holder pledged today that prisoners from the Guantanamo Bay prison facility would not be released in the United States.

"We would not bring them into this country and release them," Holder said.

The Obama administration promises to close the detainment center in just eight months. Holder did not rule out some of detainees being brought to the United States for trial.

The possibility of terrorists coming to America has been met with "Not in My Backyard" objections from members of both major political parties.

Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL) asked CBS News this question: "Do you know of any community in the United States of America that would welcome terrorists?"

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Attorney General Eric Holder does not believe anyone could plausibly claim the Justice Department moved too slowly while investigating misconduct in the corruption case against former U.S. Senator Ted Stevens.

In an exclusive interview with CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric, Holder, who noted that he has only been in his post for eight weeks, said he doesn’t think “anybody can say that this department has dragged its feet.”

He pointed out that “in this limited time that I've been Attorney General,” he “looked at the case, decided that mistakes had been made, and made the determination that the case had to be dismissed, looking at the totality of the circumstances.”

Holder also told Couric that he will not fire two major targets of the investigation, lead prosecutor Brenda Morris and William Welch during the probe.

“You're reportedly close to the lead prosecutor, Brenda Morris, who's under investigation for failing, among other things, to disclose crucial information to defense lawyers in this case,” Couric pointed out to Holder. “Another target of the investigation is, apparently, William Welch, who's head of the office, ironically, of public integrity. Will you fire either one of them? Will they stay on during the course of these investigations?”

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The Obama administration today made good on an earlier promise to make government agencies more responsive to requests to release documents to the public.

Attorney General Eric Holder announced that he was overturning the stricter guidelines employed by the Bush White House when it came to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) applications. In a memo to heads of executive departments and agencies, Holder instructed government workers to apply "a presumption of disclosure" when handling FOIA requests.

“The American people have the right to information about their government’s activities, and these new guidelines will ensure they are able to obtain that information under principles of openness and transparency,” Holder said in a statement announcing the new guidelines.

In his memo, Holder said that agencies must release information unless doing so is specifically prohibited by law.

The Freedom of Information Act was established in 1967. News organizations and watchdog groups rely on it to access government information that they believe should be shared with the broader public.

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Believe it or not, this is precisely the way the Founding Fathers envisioned how the Constitution could work. Pressure from the judicial branch (a pending deadline to file a substantive brief) and the legislative branch (Congressional subpoenas to Bush officials) forced the White House into compromising over the scope of executive privilege in the U.S. Attorney matter. It’s a win-win-win, Steve Carell would say.

Or, you can look at it another way. The deal that finally delivers Karl Rove and Harriet Miers into Rep. John Conyers Congressional den of inquiry came about because neither the Obama Administration, nor the Congress, wanted to risk creating “bad” legal precedent about the scope of the privilege—federal law that might be political convenient now, but which could hinder future administrations (or even this one, a few years down the road).

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Former Bush aides Karl Rove and Harriet Miers have agreed to testify before Congress under oath concerning the firings of U.S. attorneys, allegedly for political reasons, during the Bush administration.

The two will testify before the House Judiciary Committee in transcribed depositions. They may or may not be called for public testimony.

The White House Counsel’s office played an active role in bringing the parties together towards an accommodation, an official told CBS News White House Correspondent Mark Knoller.

UPDATE: Rove said Thursday morning that some Democrats would like to see him "barbecued." (Read more.)

Knoller reports that the key to the agreement was that the Obama White House stopped short of acknowledging that "executive privilege" still applied to Rove and Miers -- though the House Judiciary statement says "it was agreed that invocations of official privileges would be significantly limited."

Before President Bush left office, his counsel Fred Fielding instructed Rove that he was bound by executive privilege and could not testify.

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Attorney General Eric Holder, whom President Obama has tasked with overseeing the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention center, will be visiting the facility next Monday,CBS News' Stephanie Lambidakis reports.

Holder told reporters about the trip following a speech on Black History Month at the Justice Department today.

"We need to have our feet on the ground to really see what is going on down at the facility to see how people are being detained, to talk to people down there about the interrogation techniques that are being used," Holder said. "I think that will be an important first step as we try to resolve the issues that the president has put before me as the chairman of those review committees."

Separately, a report from the department's ethics' watchdog, OPR, currently sits on Holder's desk, which reportedly rebukes 3 former Bush administration lawyers for their legal advice allowing the use of water-boarding and other “enhanced interrogation technique" at the prison, CBS News' Andrew Cohen writes.

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Pass the Paxil. The word in Washington is that some former Bush Administration officials are experiencing “anxiety” about a pending Justice Department report on whether they violated legal or professional ethics when they authorized the use of water-boarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques” by dramatically narrowing the official definition of torture under American law.

Howard Fineman reported in the current issue of Newsweek that a draft of the report circulated in the waning weeks of the last administration “sharply criticized” the work of “torture memo” drafters John Yoo and Jay Bybee and Stephen Bradbury, who was head of the Office of Legal Counsel (which is, essentially, the law firm serving the executive branch).

Newsweek later reported that then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey objected to those conclusions and helped stall the release of the report.

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