U.S. government warns allies — among them the UK, Turkey, Israel, Denmark and Norway — about potential embarrassment in the upcoming round of Wikileaks disclosures that reportedly will “include thousands of diplomatic cables reporting corruption allegations against politicians in Russia, Afghanistan and other Central Asian nations,” according to Reuters.
Tom Delay, following his money laundering conviction: “This is an abuse of power. It’s a miscarriage of justice and I still maintain that I am innocent.”
We’ve gotten used to one or two House races being declared each week in November. But one other contest was settled earlier this week: the incredibly tight race for Attorney General of California, a very powerful position and often a stepping stone to bigger things. Kamala Harris, San Francisco DA, was up against Steve Cooley, LA District Attorney.
Yitzhak Rabin’s son, Yuval, has released a new peace initiative dubbed the Israeli Peace Initiative, a response to the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative. You can see the details in the Haaretz column linked above. What’s most remarkable about the outlines of the plan is, frankly, how unremarkable it is. That’s not a criticism but rather a recognition that all the plans that seem genuinely interested in a viable and plausible two state solution look very, very similar. A two state solution, based on ’67 borders with equitable/one for one land swaps, international security agreements, refugee question resolved with payments and a symbolic level of repatriation within pre-67 Israel, special arrangements for the Temple Mount area, both states’ capitals in Jerusalem.
The hard reality is that there’s no lack of plans — there’s a lack of political formula on either side to get there. That, or outside pressure.
There are 168 members of the Republican National Committee. The AP interviewed 51 of them, 39 of which said they’d prefer Michael Steele not be on the ballot for reelection as RNC chairman in January.
Be careful though and don’t over-read that. As we saw with Nancy Pelosi’s re-election as the top Dem in the House, it takes more than general discontent to oust a leader. You need the opposition to coalesce around a viable alternative. Heck, you need a viable alternative.
China reportedly working with U.S. and South Korea to deescalate the situation on the peninsula.
The President needs 12 stitches after an errant elbow to his lip during a pickup basketball game with friends and family at Fort McNair in Washington.
The son of an elderly South Carolina veteran charged with threatening to kill the President can’t say enough good things about how the Secret Service has handled the situation, but tells TPM that in his view the local VA hospital failed to act when his father started showing signs of depression and having suicidal thoughts.
The White House has released the name of the guy who elbowed President Obama in the lip today. It’s Rey Decerega, who is the Director of Programs for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute.
Decerega released a statement: “”I learned today the president is both a tough competitor and a good sport. I enjoyed playing basketball with him this morning. I’m sure he’ll be back out on the court again soon.”
The State Department is demanding that Wikileaks halt the imminent release of its next batch of classified U.S. government documents. The latest batch reportedly will include thousands of State Department cables. Some are believed to be highly sensitive, others merely embarrassing — to the U.S. and to foreign governments.
In a letter emailed yesterday to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and his lawyer, State Department Legal Adviser Harold Koh calls for Wikileaks to return the classified documents:
If you are genuinely interested in seeking to stop the damage from your actions, you should: 1) ensure WikiLeaks ceases publishing any and all such materials; 2) ensure WikiLeaks returns any and all classified U.S. Government material in its possession; and 3) remove and destroy all records of this material from Wikileaks’ database.
The AP paraphrases the letter as stating “that publication of the documents would be illegal and demanding that they stop it.” There’s little doubt that whoever within the U.S. government had access to the documents and leaked them did so in violation of the law — but whether Wikileaks bears any criminal liability in the U.S. for their publication is an entirely different issue.
Reading the letter closely, I think Koh stops short of stating that publication of the documents would be illegal, as the AP suggests. That would get Koh into “prior restraint” territory. The closest Koh comes to saying Wikileaks has broken the law is when he accuses Wikileaks of “furthering the illegal dissemination of classified documents.” He also claims that the documents were “illegally obtained” and that so long as Wikileaks retains the documents then “the violation of the law is ongoing.” Parsing Koh carefully, his ire is directed at Wikileaks but the punch of his legal argument is aimed at the original leaker(s).
The Koh letter also reveals that Wikileaks has given the latest batch of materials in advance to the New York Times, the Guardian and Der Spiegel. That’s consistent with Wikileaks’ prior practice of leaking the leak, as it were, in advance under embargo to major news outlets.
Wikileaks is expected to post the documents online today.