Who you gonna believe, AP or the Supreme Court web site? The newly revised Docket for 03-6747 says,
Nov 3 2003 Response Requested . (Due December 3, 2003)
Nov 3 2003 Brief amicus curiae of Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press filed.
That “Response” is the one from the Government that the AP reported had no deadline (which would have been very odd). If anyone has a pointer to an online copy of the Reporter’s Committee brief, I’d appreciate it.
Thanks to Marty Lederman for the heads up.
Incidentally, I discovered yesterday that one of my new, wonderful colleagues, Ricardo Bascuas was at the Miami PD’s office when this all happened, and is writing an article on the M.K.B. case.
Update: Marty Lederman has full procedural details at the SCOTUSBlog
Brad DeLong has made a small industry of noting how the Bush administration lies by reflex (which is not at all the same thing as making it an art form). Sample titles:
Nicholas D. Kristof has just woken up to this reality. But only partly — he blames the evil courtiers and partly exonerates the evil bosses duped by their henchmen. In Death by Optimism he recounts the following story:
Mr. Cheney has cited a Zogby International poll to back his claim that there is “very positive news” in Iraq. But the pollster, John Zogby, told me, “I was floored to see the spin that was put on it; some of the numbers were not my numbers at all.”
Mr. Cheney claimed that Iraqis chose the U.S. as their model for democracy “hands down,” and he and other officials say that a majority want American troops to stay at least another year. In fact, Mr. Zogby said, only 23 percent favor the U.S. democratic model, and 65 percent want the U.S. to leave in a year or less.
“I am not willing to say they lied,” Mr. Zogby said. “But they used a very tight process of selective screening, and when they didn’t get what they wanted they were willing to manufacture some results… . There was almost nothing in that poll to give them comfort.”
Mr. Kristof is concerned by this. Not because a fish rots from the head, or because he thinks that this sort of behavior has been the G.W. Bush M.O. since at least his governorship, if not his career as a military deserter. No, Mr. Kristof thinks the Evil Courtiers are misleading that nice Mr. Bush and that clever Mr. Cheney, feeding them bad data and thus leading them down the path of self-delusion:
I wish administration officials were lying, because I would prefer hypocrisy to delusion — at least hypocritical officials make decisions with accurate information.
What evidence we have, however, suggests that the decision to invade Iraq did not depend on any data, true or false, but was a goal of the administration hawks when they took office. Bad data may have influenced the tactics, and the force levels, but there’s nothing to suggest reality had much to do with the over-all strategy.
In any case, even if it were the case that the Evil Courtiers were lying to the Emperor, what creates the conditions in which this behavior is a successful strategy for the careerist courtier? Only a climate that punishes the truth.
So the scary thing is, Mr. Bush and his aides may not be lying when they look at Iraq and boast of a cheering population that a Western press sourly refuses to acknowledge. There’s a precedent: Saddam Hussein.
Could anyone have imagined a year ago that Kristof or other establishment columnists would be comparing Bush to Saddam Hussein? Or that it wouldn’t seem odd?
Since the blog seems to be under attack by a comment spammer (of the idiot-political rather than commercial variety), I will be installing anti-spam patches. I apologize in advance for any temporary instability this causes.
Meanwhile, here’s version 1.01of my comments policy:
Yale announed yesterday that Harold Koh will be the next Dean of the Law School. Harold was one of my favorite professors in law school, and supervised one of the student papers I wrote — although I suspect it required him to stifle a fair amount of bemusement at my idiosyncratic ideas.
I think he’ll be a terrific Dean.
It seems that the Senator Paul Roberts now says he spoke too soon about the White House’s willingness to cough up the Iraq Intel documents the Senate committee has requested.
Meanwhile relations between Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Intel Committee, traditionally a haven of bi-partisanship, appear to be breaking down badly. Senator Rockefeller, committee Vice-Chair, pretty much accused Republicans of going through his trash or breaking into his computer. And, for the first time that I’m aware of, the Vice-Chair gently threatened to use his subpoena power if necessary. Clearly neither side wants a fight now. But f the administration doesn’t give in eventually, they may get fireworks much closer to the election.
The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said Tuesday he spoke too hastily when he said the White House would provide his panel with the documents and interviews it is seeking for its inquiry on prewar intelligence on Iraq.…
Roberts and Rockefeller have been at odds about the scope of the inquiry. Under Roberts’ direction, the committee is examining whether intelligence about Iraq’s weapons programs and ties to terrorists was properly collected and analyzed. Rockefeller and other Democrats also want to examine whether intelligence was manipulated by the administration to make the case for war.
Roberts said Tuesday a leaked strategy memo from Rockefeller’s staff “exposes politics in its most raw form.”
The memo discusses strategy for “revealing the misleading, if not flagrantly dishonest, methods and motives of senior administration officials who made the case for unilateral pre-emptive war.” It discussed how Democrats could press for an independent investigation that has already been rejected by the Republican-led Congress or launch their own investigation.
In a statement, Roberts said that the memo “appears to be a road map for how the Democrats intend to politicize what should be a bipartisan, objective review of prewar intelligence.” The memo was disclosed by syndicated radio show host Sean Hannity.
In his own statement, Rockefeller the draft was not approved or shared with any member of the committee. He said it “was likely taken from a waste basket or through unauthorized computer access.”
He said, however, it “clearly reflects staff frustration with the conduct of the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation and the difficulties of obtaining information from the administration.”
The letters to the administration agencies complained of their slowness to provide materials sought by the committee and set last Friday as the response deadline. The senators said they have received material from three of the agencies. But the White House, while saying it would work with the committee, has not agreed to comply.On Sunday, Roberts announced on CNN that the White House had agreed to supply the requested documents and the interviews.
“I probably spoke too hastily,” Roberts said Tuesday. “When you are dealing with the White House, they want to make sure they are not getting into a precedent in regard to various documents used by the executive.”
He said a White House official, whom he declined to identify, left him with the impression last weekend the material would be provided. Asked if there was further communication after his remarks Sunday, he said, “Yeah — in the Monday Washington Post.”
He said White House comments in the newspaper distancing it from Roberts’ statements “prompted meaningful dialogue between me and the White House.”
But he said he was satisfied with the outcome of the conversations. “I think we’ll have a positive relationship, and I think the documents will be provided. And the interviews,” he said.
Rockefeller wasn’t as confident.
“It’s very hard for me to come to believe that the White House is going to cooperate on things which potentially could put them in a different light,” he said, speaking separately to reporters.
Rockefeller said if the committee doesn’t receive the material it seeks, the leaders will call the department heads, “and the next step after that one considers very, very carefully the subpoena option.”
“This is not a game,” he said. “This is a question of how did we get into this war.”
Roberts said subpoenas would be a last resort. “I think we can work this out without any subpoenas,” he said.
The British government announces that it is going to create to encourage its depostiary libraries to create a massive web archive.
Websites get legal place in national archive:
Millions of website pages, online magazines and CDs will be saved for the nation under a private member’s bill which became law last week.
Today, the MP who sponsored the bill predicted that Guardian Unlimited website pages would be preserved in the national archive.The Legal Deposit Law puts the growing number of electronic publications on the same footing as printed newspapers, books and documents which have been collected by law since 1911 for the use of scholars by the British Library and five other deposit libraries.
The existing print legal deposit arrangements have enabled the British Library alone to collect and save, in perpetuity for the nation, more than 50 million items. In the past year, the library has acquired 95,286 books, 248,686 journal issues, 1,994 maps and 2,357 newspaper titles through legal deposit. But that is likely to be dwarfed by the scale of potential electronic deposits: a study last year forecast a massive increase in online publications, predicting a near quadrupling (from 52,000 to 193,000) in the number of electronic journal issues published in the UK between 2002 and 2005. There are nearly 3 million websites with “.uk” in their titles and although many are of merely passing interest, many will be fascinating to future historians - the websites that sprang up after the September 11 attacks but have not disappeared, for instance.
Chris Mole, Labour MP for Ipswich, who introduced the bill in December, said he was thrilled. “This new legislation will now mean that a vital part of the nation’s published heritage will be safe and accessible as an important resource for business and education users in the future.”
He said the British Library, the National Library of Scotland and the National Library of Wales; the University Library, Cambridge; the Bodleian Library, Oxford; and Trinity College Library, Dublin, would have to use their judgment in “harvesting” websites and electronic publications.
…
Publishers have negotiated reassurances from government that they would not be forced to disclose valuable information free of charge - for example short life financial forecasts will not be made available for three months, by which time they will no longer be commercially valuable.
Apart from websites, important local and national government documents, such as the Home Office series of online-only research reports and web-based government consultation papers, which are an important resource for lawyers and researchers in tracing the origin of legislation, and the minutes of the National Assembly for Wales, will be archived.