It would be irresponsible for me to say that Felix Salmon probably cashed a nice check from the banking industry when he produced this defense of the US declining to prosecute HSBC for money laundering. I think a couple elements of his piece wind up being self-negating, so I don’t have to do much work. [...]

A Justice Department Inspector General’s report on the Fast and Furious matter largely exonerates Attorney General Eric Holder, claiming that he knew nothing about the gun-running operation until after the death of a US Border Patrol agent. The report by the Justice Department’s Inspector General Michael Horowitz said there is “no evidence that … Holder [...]

Mitt Romney released an energy plan yesterday that some outlets report sets a goal of energy independence by 2020. That’s not quite right. The goal expressed here is “North American energy independence” by 2020, and when you consider that one of our biggest if not our biggest energy trading partner is Canada, and that Mexico [...]

This is a couple days old, but two House Democrats have come into possession of evidence of significant crimes by Walmart, including bribery. The Democrats, Henry Waxman and Elijah Cummings, sought additional documents from Walmart on possible violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The joint investigation by the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee [...]

White House officials have been in consultation with the GOP House leadership in advance of tomorrow’s contempt of Congress vote for Attorney General Eric Holder over the Fast and Furious scandal and the Justice Department’s response to an Oversight Committee investigation and document request. However, the two sides have not reached an agreement, and as [...]

When Operation Fast and Furious really broke last year, I was a bit surprised that Republicans didn’t make more of it. Here we have an operation – and at this point we have to ignore that it began under the Bush Administration, as the GOP has done – that directed gun dealers to sell weapons [...]

The leaked documents from the Trans-Pacific Partnership showed the possibility for the agreement to expand well beyond the original countries that are party to the agreement. And before the TPP has completed negotiations or been signed, we’re already seeing evidence of that. In remarks yesterday at the outset of the G20 summit, Mexican President Felipe [...]

In an upset last night, Beto O’Rourke, a former city councilman in El Paso, defeated incumbent Democrat Silvestre Reyes in the Democratic primary in Texas’ 16th district. O’Rourke just crossed the 50% threshold needed to avoid a runoff. This is a safe Democratic seat for November. The race in the border district was important, because [...]

After reading the New York Time’s excellent reporting on Wal-Mart’s pervasive bribery of foreign officials (Mexico in this case, but it’s hardly isolated to them), I remembered reading stories last year, including this excellent piece by Dan Froomkin, about how the Chamber of Commerce and major corporations were quietly but persistently lobbying Congress to water [...]

As Marcy Wheeler says, this plot has it all – Mexican drug cartels, Iran, assassinations, attacks on the Saudi AND Israeli embassies. You name it, it’s in there. FBI and DEA agents have disrupted a plot to commit a “significant terrorist act in the United States” tied to Iran, federal officials told ABC News today. [...]

The state of Texas is hours away from defying the White House and international law by executing a Mexican national, and the Supreme Court could step in today to stop the execution. Humberto Leal, 38, is awaiting a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court on whether to block his lethal injection in Huntsville. He was [...]