Putting my seminar readings to productive blog-use, I have posted a review of David Hackett Fischer’s Washington’s Crossing here at Charging RINO. [Apologies for the pointer post, but it's rather long and I didn't want to clutter up TMV with it in case people aren't interested.]

In testimony before the House Judiciary Committee yesterday, AG Alberto Gonzales suggested (for the first time publicly) that the Administration believes there may be legal justification to eavesdrop on communications occurring solely within the United States (the program already revealed covers only calls in which one party is outside the US). As the NYT and WaPo report this morning, Gonzales was asked by Rep. Adam Schiff if such domestic eavesdropping could occur; the AG replied “I’m...

In an interesting exercise of judicial restraint, the Supreme Court announced this morning that an appeal from Jose Padilla – the American citizen held for more than three years in a Navy brig as an ‘enemy combatant’ before being charged last fall – was now moot considering his current legal status. Justices Thomas, Alito, and Scalia made no comment on the ruling, while Justice Kennedy took the rather uncommon step of writing an opinion [PDF] explaining his vote. Kennedy’s...

Yesterday the Senate passed – by an unsurprisingly huge margin – a bill called the Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act of 2006. The vote was 90-8, which the opposition coming for the most part from senators who felt the legislation did not go far enough (McCain, Obama, Kerry, Feingold, Graham, Coburn). Senators DeMint and Inhofe also voted against final passage. What’s in this bill? The following are drawn from coverage today in the NYT, WaPo, LATimes, and The Hill,...

The Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony Tuesday from five former judges on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) court; the judges urged Congress to impose oversight on the president’s secret and controversial warrantless wiretap program. The New York Times has the only report I’ve found so far on this (it is a big news day, after all), but it’s a decent one. Four of the judges were on Capitol Hill testifying in support of Senator Specter’s plan to grant the...