The Daily Muck

The U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay has been opened for since just after the September 11, 2001 attacks yet the military tribunal system there has produced only one conviction (through a plea bargain). Hundreds have been freed after having never been charged with any crime, yet Defense Secretary Robert Gates told a year-end Pentagon news conference that the government has made little progress toward its “vowed goal of closing” the prison. (AFP)

Experts in interrogation assert that “the United States is behind the curve of current best practices, and that videotaping is an essential tool in improving the methods – and results – of questioning terrorism suspects.” According to the specialists, the lack of videotapes in “as many as 100 ‘high-value’ terrorism suspects has prevented” the “capturing” of details that should be “archived, compared, and analyzed in-depth by a range of government experts.” (Boston Globe)

Frances Fragos Townsend, the retiring chief terrorism adviser, said last week that she finds the threat of subpoenas from Congressional investigations “offensive and crippling.” During the Clinton Administration, the primary investigative committee in the House of Representatives issued 1,089 subpoenas from 1997 through 2002, 97% of which targeted officials of the Clinton Administration and the Democratic Party; only 11 subpoenas related to allegations of Republican abuses. (Carpetbagger Report)

Some alert media bloggers noted that during last week’s press conference by President Bush, he did not call on CNN, making CNN’s Ed Henry (who always gets called on) and Helen Thomas (who almost never gets called on by Bush) the only two front-row reporters not to be called on. Recently, CNN has been pressing the White House hard about its deceptiveness on Iranian intelligence and evasiness about its role in destroying the torture tapes. (Media Bistro, Think Progress)

An increasing number of immigrants have filed lawsuits in order to facilitate their stalled U.S. citizenship applications. Issameldin Mohamed of Egypt, for example, sued the “Department of Homeland Security, Secretary Michael Chertoff, FBI Director Robert Mueller and other top government officials as defendants,” so that his name could be cleared in a government background check and his naturalization application could be approved. (USA Today)

Federal law enforcement agencies cannot keep up with the recent boom in mortgage fraud cases. Reports of mortgage fraud have doubled since 2005 and risen eightfold since 2002 but as the FBI conceded, “we have limited resources and have to put them where they do the most good.” In the meantime, career criminals and organized-crime rings are turning to mortgage fraud because of the low risk and high profit. (New York Times)