It’s anybody’s guess where the fiscal slope talks are going after today’s leadership session, but today marks the end of the first week of the lame duck session in Congress. What exactly got done? Well, the Senate confirmed a director for the FDIC for the first time since Sheila Bair left 16 months ago. The [...]

I’ve taken a closer look at the US Attorney from the Southern District of New York’s $1 billion lawsuit against Bank of America – particularly their subsidiary Countrywide – for “the hustle,” the program of selling mortgages with practically no underwriting and passing them on to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And there’s something interesting [...]

The Obama Administration’s war on whistleblowers has been well-documented by Kevin Gozstola and others. Now, McClatchy has the tale of a similar muzzling of whistleblowers at the National Reconnaissance Office, which handles the nation’s spy satellites: A senior officer with the nation’s spy satellite agency is being investigated over criminal allegations related to contracting even [...]

At a speech today before the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney will attack the President for intelligence leaks designed to bolster the Administration’s foreign policy record. But instead of focusing on the leaks that show a clear double standard, or the leaks actually being investigated by the Justice Department, Romney will [...]

I think my disgust over federal housing policy is just about complete. As you know, we’re still waiting for the actual terms of the foreclosure fraud settlement, more than one month after the announcement. But more information has dribbled out, not much of it to the good. Michael Hiltzik rounded up some of the more [...]

Fresh off his Daily Show appearance, HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan announced that Bank of America will provide additional assistance to homeowners under the as-yet undisclosed foreclosure fraud settlement. BofA will write down to market value, according to Donovan, over 200,000 loans that correspond to certain criteria: if the homeowners are underwater, delinquent by more than [...]

Just to recap the last 24 hours in the rule of law: if you order the massacre a village of Iraqis, you will get your charges reduced to “dereliction of duty” and get sentenced to no more than three months confinement. Furthermore, the rest of your colleagues that participated in the incident will not serve [...]

The New York Times sued the Justice Department over their reticence to turn over a memo from the Office of Legal Counsel detailing the argument for how the US government can legally assassinate an American citizen. The Times has previously reported on the memo, which justified the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, but that report from [...]

Last night, before the August recess, the House of Representatives completed work on a series of bills responding to the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. As Andrew Restuccia explains, the main bill, called the CLEAR Act, which passed 209-193, has a variety of different elements, many of them similar to the Senate energy and [...]