short form

My guess - and it is a guess - is that a lot of people are buying stocks today because they figure a 10% correction is over, saltted with the psychology of a four-digit DJIA, and the German government approving a Euro rescue package. There was also massive intervention to support the Euro - particularly from Japan - so a lot of that pressure is off.

Also, the Senate's version of banking and finance reform is a sham. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) was on the radio this morning having voted against it rattling off a list of failures that may as well have been taken from Karl Denninger, with the specific addition of talking about how it doesn't separate off investment banking again and needs to. She's hoping to fix it in reconciliation; good luck with that. Still, it helps explain why the financial sector stocks are leading this bounce.

A few notes: "Bankers confirm Wall Street's barbarianism." London bankers are worried about "Great Depression Mark II." Job claims jumped to 471,000, being pitched as a hike of 25,000, but it's actually worse; that's unrevised against revised, again, and last week's claims were revised up to 446,000, so it's really a little higher (+27K). The four-week moving average is now up to 453,500. Alphaville talks about the Eurozone as a giant CDO; that's worth reading.

eta: Ohhhh, no. There was a rumour flying about that Goldman Sachs had reached a settlement deal with the Dalek SEC. It was bogus, and the spike snapped off.

clearing tabs

Things revealed by the Kagan-is-a-sekrit-lesbian fail and the way most heterosexual people don't get it.

What do civil liberties supporters do now that Mr. Obama is revealed to be as resolute an opponent as Mr. Bush before him?

The founder of WikiLeaks has had his passport confiscated by the Australian government because it's "looking worn." Travel is essential to WikiLeaks functionality. WikiLeaks is on the list of websites the Australian government wants banned (and which the US military considers a target):

Secrecy is the crux of institutional power -- the principal weapon for maintaining it -- and there are very few entities left which can truly threaten that secrecy. As the worldwide controversy over the Iraqi Apache helicopter attack compellingly demonstrated, WikiLeaks is one of the very few entitles capable of doing so and fearlessly devoted to that mission. It's hardly surprising that those responsible would be harassed and intimidated by governmental agencies -- it'd be far more surprising if they weren't -- but it's a testament to how truly threatening they perceive outlets like WikiLeaks to be.

Why do voters hate incumbents? Glenn Greenwald has some thoughts:

It makes perfect sense that the country loathes the political establishment. Just look at its rancid fruits over the past decade: a devastating war justified by weapons that did not exist; a financial crisis that our Nation's Genuises failed to detect and which its elites caused with lawless and piggish greed; elections that seem increasingly irrelevant in terms of how the Government functions; grotesquely lavish rewards for the worst culprits juxtaposed with miserable unemployment and serious risks of having basic entitlements (Social Security) cut for ordinary Americans; and a Congress that continues to be owned, right out in the open, by the very interests that have caused so much damage. The political establishment is rotten to its core, and the only thing that's surprising is that the citizenry's contempt isn't even more intense than it is.

Malawi gay couple get maximum sentence of 14 years. Hopefully this won't help revive the stalled GBLT extermination bill in Uganda. eta: Turns out it's a cisgendered man and a transwoman whose identity is being ignored by media and judicial systems alike. Sadly, the jail sentence can't be similarly ignored.

One court away

Mr. Obama's legal team argues its way into a loophole: kidnap people to Bagram, rather than Gitmo, no matter who or where they kidnap them from, and the DC Court of Appeals rules they have no legal right to habeas corpus; they can be black-holed there forever. The technicals of the argument are that Bagram is in a war zone (Afghanistan), and it doesn't matter how the prisoners got there, or where they were arrested, or from where they were kidnaped, or by whom; once they're there, it's TOO BAD FOR YOU, FUCKERS. The court specifically states the nationality of those held is irrelevant (citizens or noncitizens), and they ignore the fact that one of those involved claimed to have been grabbed in Thailand and moved to Afghanistan, dismissing the claim as irrelevant speculation. They acknowledge that it would be relevant, but dismiss any opportunity to assert it, making a lovely little Catch-22 in the original sense.

And Bagram is conveniently located near the latest American torture facility, too.

This particular court has found ways to support ignoring Constitutional right to habeas corpus before. But if it goes to the US Supreme Court. Justice Stevens was one of the 5 in the 5-4 ruling upholding some right to habeas corpus at Gitmo.

Greenwald, again:

So congratulations to the United States and Barack Obama for winning the power to abduct people anywhere in the world and then imprison them for as long as they want with no judicial review of any kind. When the Boumediene decision was issued in the middle of the 2008 presidential campaign, John McCain called it "one of the worst decisions in the history of this country." But Obama hailed it as "a rejection of the Bush Administration's attempt to create a legal black hole at Guantanamo," and he praised the Court for "rejecting a false choice between fighting terrorism and respecting habeas corpus."

He's got a great extended quote of then-Senator Obama intoning against this very process he's since worked so hard to reinstate and enshrine, you should go read it.

More analysis here. Compare and contrast to the new Tory/LibDem coalition in the UK actually investigating torture, et al, as promised during the campaign.