To their credit, corporations do not appear to be heeding Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Charles Stimson’s suggestion that they boycott law firms representing Guantanamo detainees:
Instead of Fortune 500 companies such as Microsoft, DaimlerChrysler, and Pfizer dumping their outside counsel in a fit of political protest, firms have largely gotten support from corporate America and from within their partnership ranks.
âPro bono service and the rule of law are great traditions in the American legal profession, and we at GE have no intention of â and strongly disagree with the suggestion of in any way â discriminating against law firms that represent us on the basis of the pro bono, charitable, or public service that the lawyers in those firms choose to engage in,â Brackett Denniston, senior vice president and general counsel at General Electric, said in a statement. Jenner & Block and Covington, two firms involved in representing detainees, have done legal work for GE.
GEâs not alone in its position.
âI intend to continue to use the firms that regularly represent us. The fact that they engage in pro bono work or work for other clients that I donât necessarily agree with doesnât affect my decision,â says William Barr, general counsel of Verizon Communications and former attorney general under President George H.W. Bush. Debevoise & Plimpton and WilmerHale have both represented Verizon and are active in representing detainees.
Stimson has apologized, sort of. He remains on the job.
A top Democratic donor gives us an insider’s view of the behind-the-scenes fundraising battle between Obama and Clinton.
Official Conservative Narrative of Hillary Clinton’s candidacy takes shape: She’s forever doomed to vacillate between “centrist” pro-war position and “left-wing” antiwar stance.
And speaking of “centrism,” we’ve found what may be the ultimate example of a big news org’s mindless and reflexive use of the much-abused term. View it here.
With the news of Hillary’s big announcement today (I said ‘big’ not unexpected) The Atlantic has pushed its recent and arguably definitive profile of HRC in front of the magazine’s firewall.
Whoa . . . Steve Clemons calls out presidential candidate Bill Richardson on, um, well, as Clemons phrases it, the “blurring of public responsibilities and ‘what should be’ private behavior.” Man, that didn’t take long. Richardson just announced his candidacy today.
From TPM Reader TB:
I think you may have touched on this before, but I’d like to reiterate the single biggest mental block that currently makes me think I will not cast my vote for Clinton. It makes my stomach hurt to think that in twenty or thirty years I could look back at a list of presidents that includes “Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton.” This country is far too great to have to rely on two families for so much presidential leadership. Think about it: a two-term Hillary would be TWENTY-EIGHT years of Bush and Clinton. It’s petty, but like I said it’s a mental block, and I’m just not sure how I can get over it.
I wouldn’t call it a petty concern.
This is precious. Apparently Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is going to go after outgoing Iraq commander Gen. George Casey in his nomination hearings to become the next Chief of Staff of the Army.
Said Sen. McCain: “”I have very serious concerns about General Casey’s nomination. I’m concerned about failed leadership, the message that sends to the rest of the military.”
‘Failed leadership’ here, of course, is code for toeing the Bush line for the last two years and then resisting the new effort to dig the US even deeper into the mess of Iraq. In other words, Casey becomes the lamb in whose blood the sins of the Iraq War dead-enders (Bush, McCain, et al.) are washed clean.
Comic, Orwellian, so many possible descriptions.
Remember the long-delayed National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq that the Bush Administration managed to push off completing until after the election? Well, the Administration has slow-rolled completion of the NIE past the introduction of the surge and the State of the Union address, according to Ken Silverstein at Harper’s:
The situation came to a head last week, during a closed-door session of the Senate Armed Services Committee. This committee expected to be briefed on the long-awaited NIE by an official from the National Intelligence Council (NIC), which coordinates NIEs by gathering input from all of the nation’s various intelligence agencies. But the NIC official turned up empty-handed and told the committee that the intelligence community hadn’t been able to complete the NIE because of the many demands placed upon it by the Bush Administration to help prepare the new military strategy on Iraq. He then said that not all of the relevant agencies had offered input into the NIE process, and thus it had proven impossible to put together a finished product.
Why, yes, of course. They were too busy rolling out what they’re calling a new Iraq policy to prepare the NIE which should inform creation of that new policy. That tells you everything you need to know about the surge.