From Politico:

House Judiciary Committee John Conyers has issed a subpoena to the Justice Dept. for the unredacted interviews with President Bush and Vice President Cheney on former CIA operative Valerie Plame, as well as numerous other documents sought unsuccessfully by Democrats for years.

Conyers is also seeking FBI notes of interviews with some top former White House officials, including Karl Rove, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Scott McClellan, Dan Bartlett and Andrew Card.

The committee also wants unreleased memos from DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel, including an Oct. 23, 2001, memo related to use of American military forces to combat terrorism within the United States.

Conyers has been asking for those documents for a long time.

Facing a massive lawsuit, the U.S. Justice Department is opting to give a $5.8 million settlement to Steven Hatfill, the bio-weapons expert publicly tagged as a "person of interest" in the anthrax-in-the-mail scare from October 2001.

The Department of Justice issued a statement this afternoon:

By entering into this agreement, the United States does not admit to any violation of the Privacy Act and continues to deny all liability in connection with Dr. Hatfill's claims.

Hatfill, whose lawsuit against the New York Times was dismissed last year, will receive the lump sum of about $2.825 million and the government will also purchase for him a $3 million annuity that will pay him $150,000 each year for 20 years, DOJ said.

Times columnist Nicholas Kristof was among the first to disclose Hatfill's name in 2002.

The lawsuit charged the Department of Justice with leaking his name to reporters.

The anthrax case remains unsolved. The DOJ statement said:

"The government remains resolute in its investigation into the anthrax attacks, which killed five individuals and sickened others after lethal anthrax powder was sent through the United States mail. We commend the agents and law enforcement personnel who have devoted countless hours to the pursuit of the perpetrator of this horrible crime, and we reassure the public and the victims that this investigation remains among the Department's highest law enforcement priorities."

Late Update: This story was updated from earlier versions to reflect the total value of Hatfill's settlement package.

From the AP

Richard ''Dickie'' Scruggs, the attorney who built his career by taking on tobacco, asbestos and insurance companies, was sentenced Friday to five years in prison for conspiring to bribe a judge.

U.S. District Judge Neal Biggers Jr. called Scruggs' conduct ''reprehensible'' and fined him $250,000. The judge handed down the full sentence requested by prosecutors despite arguments from the defense for half that time in prison.

Scruggs appeared to nearly faint as the federal judge scolded him for his conduct. Some people in the courtroom gasped as Scruggs started to sway side to side and his attorney grabbed his arm to steady him. He had to be seated before the sentence was read.

''I could not be more ashamed where I am today, mixed up in a judicial bribery scheme,'' Scruggs told the judge.

Serving in Congress and trying to maintain two places to live -- one back home and one in Washington -- can get expensive. (Not everyone has the money for a mansion like Hillary Clinton.)

Luckily, Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN) has found a cheap place to crash when he's working inside the beltway -- renting an apartment from Republican operative and "robo-call" expert Jeff Larson. Larson and his wife bought the townhouse on Capitol Hill in March 2007 for $989,900, according to National Journal.

Coleman pays just $600 a month for a one-bedroom place in a Capitol Hill townhouse. That's remarkably cheap for the neighborhood, and a fraction of the $1,780 monthly rent Coleman paid on the Washington apartment he left in June 2007, according to a report this week from the National Journal.

Well, at least he usually pays. As the magazine discovered, Coleman doesn't pay his rent as promptly as many Americans.

Earlier this month, after National Journal questioned Coleman and Larson about the living arrangement, the senator said he discovered that his rent for last November and January had not been paid. In mid-June, Coleman covered the back rent with a personal check for $1,200 made out to Larson and signed by the senator's wife. Last year, Coleman sold furniture to Larson to cover one month's rent, according to Larson. And Larson held on to yet another month's rent check for three months, cashing it a few days after NJ's inquiries.

Coleman told the magazine that he moved into Larson's building to cut costs in July 2007. Coleman's Senate salary is $169,300.

It's unlikely Larson will evict Coleman anytime soon, since Larson has derived a lot of financial benefit from his relationship with the senator.

Larson's St. Paul-based company, FLS Connect, is a critical component of Coleman's political operation. The firm, which has raised money and hustled up voters for Coleman, has been paid about $1.6 million since mid-2001 by Coleman's Northstar Leadership political action committee and two Senate campaigns, according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission. Larson serves as the PAC's treasurer and provides it with office space in St. Paul; Coleman's Senate campaign stopped renting space from Larson last year.

FLS Connect is a go-to shop for the Republicans nationwide for fund raising and providing "robo-calls." In fact, the firm was targeted by the attorney general in Indiana for violating that state's automated call laws. The firm is also linked to The DCI Group, a lobbying firm that came under scrutiny for its work in Myanmar and its ties to the John McCain campaign. They're known for "Astroturf" organizing as well as robo-calls.

Also, Larson's wife has worked for Coleman:

Larson will get no argument on that score from his wife, Dorene Kainz, who went to work for the senator in September 2005 handling requests from Coleman's constituents in his St. Paul office. Senate records show that she has been paid $101,218 through March 31.

Yes, the caption at left is correct. That's Governor Jim Gibbons (R-NV), in a warm embrace with a former Playboy model who is most definitely not his wife.

Last we heard in the Gibbons v. Gibbons fiasco, the governor and the First Lady had called a truce in their acrimonious divorce proceedings.

But since that joint statement, Gibbons has been implicated in other acts of philandering: hundreds of text messages to a female "friend" and affectionate outings with younger women-- the most recent of which was caught on film.

The Nevada Appeal this morning, published a series of pictures of Gibbons and a female companion at a rodeo in Reno.

Gibbons responded in a brief statement to the Appeal:

What it shows, according to the governor, is him comforting a stressed out friend. "She was upset, crying," he said during a quick hallway interview with our reporter, who'd been trying to get a comment from the governor or his staff for two days. "She couldn't get her breath. I put my arms around her."

So who is the mystery parking lot woman seeking solace on Gibbons' shoulder?

According to the Appeal:

[W]e did a little checking on our own and now know his companion to be the ex-Playboy-model, ex-wife of an ex-Reno mayor. She is not the woman with whom he has widely been accused of having an affair of late and with whom he exchanged hundreds of text messages at all hours. But he has been seen around Reno with this woman, too. In fact, there are cell phone pictures of the two together at a Reno restaurant posted on area blogs.

Just for some context, the Appeal's photo spread comes in the midst of a huge budget crisis in Nevada.

Was the Air Force lobbying against the Pentagon on Capitol Hill?

This morning The Hill reports:

The Air Force has been ordered to investigate whether officials lobbied members of Congress improperly on a plan to merge military bases.

Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England asked the secretary of the Air Force --days before he was forced to resign -- to conduct an internal investigation after Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) raised concerns over the Air Force's actions.

McCain, the GOP candidate for president, believes a provision in the 2008 emergency supplemental sponsored by Sens. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) and Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), the leading defense appropriators, was the result of lobbying by Air Force officials. Similar language is in the House bill.

The measure would allow a military service secretary or the head of another federal agency to delay or veto a decision by the Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRAC) on "joint basing," an initiative that requires branches of the military to consolidate bases to save money.

A strange thing happened at a House Oversight hearing today, with a witness accusing a congressman of hacking a secure website, and claiming he was currently being investigated by the FBI.

The Committee hearing examined questionable practices at Pedernales Electric Cooperative. During the interrogation Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN) cited documents that he said came from "secret, password-protected website" of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, in testimony today in front of the Committee

In response, NRECA President Glenn English, a former Congressmen from Oklahoma, claimed that the NRECA counsel had told him that Cooper was in the process of being investigated by the FBI for taking unauthorized information from their website.

As Roll Call reports, the allegation upset the hearing and unleashed a flurry of denials:

Cooper responded that someone had given him authorization and provided him with a password to download the documents, but English said that only he or a limited number of other officials from the organization could authorize access. Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) immediately gaveled the hearing to a close.

An FBI spokesman said the bureau "doesn't comment on accusations made by others concerning its investigative activity."

Cooper spokesman John Spragens said, "This is a bogus attempt to intimidate Congress from trying to investigate an industry. The idea that a Congressman would be under investigation for conducting an investigation is laughable. That's why we have the Constitution."

Spragens added, "We have no reason to think that Congressman Cooper is under investigation."

It looks like the House Judiciary Committee will finally play hardball with Attorney General Michael Mukasey.

Committee chairman John Conyers (D-MI) has been requesting a range of documents from DOJ for a long time. Some of the issues date back as far as Election Day 2002, when Republicans in New Hampshire jammed the phone lines for a Democratic get-out-the-vote call bank, an effort one GOP operative said was modeled on the U.S. Marines tactic of jamming the enemies communications.

Now Conyers has the authority to subpoena that stack of records after the subcommittee on commercial and administrative law took a vote today and gave him the formal go-ahead.

They're looking for records of interviews from the DOJ investigation into who leaked the identify of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson, documents that may shed light on allegations of selective prosecution, and the details behind the replacement of Minnesota's U.S. Attorney Rachel Paulose. The committee is also requesting Office of Legal Counsel memos and enforcement reports from the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division.

Speaking of the Civil Rights Division, Conyers and several other lawmakers today sent a letter to Mukasey urging stop stonewalling a GAO investigation of the Civil Rights Division. Amid allegations that political pressures were shifting the division's priorities, Congress in March 2007 requested the Government Accountability Office conduct an investigation. Lawmakers say DOJ has not provided the documents and data needed to fully analyze the division's enforcement work.

The lawmakers also said they had "received reports that DOJ officials have removed key documents from files, claiming that GAO does not have a right to access predecisional or deliberative information that sets forth the Division's rationale on whether or not to pursue a case."

"We are troubled by the lack of transparency and refusal of the Department to cooperate fully with GAO's investigation," the lawmakers wrote in today's letter.

We were somewhat astonished this week to learn that the Pentagon had awarded a $298 million contract to arms dealer AEY Inc. despite the fact the company and its then-21-year-old president were on the U.S. State Department's Arms Trafficking Watchlist.

An Army general said, quite simply, they don't typically check that watchlist before awarding big contracts.

Now we've found evidence that the State Department might not be checking its own list.

AEY and its president, Efraim Diveroli, were on the watchlist as early as April 2006 because U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had started an investigation of the company in 2005 for "numerous violations of the Arms Export Control Act and contract fraud," according to the House oversight committee.

Yet according to a government Web site that tracks federal contracting activity, the State Department on Dec. 1, 2006, signed a purchase order for $113,967 with AEY to provide a batch of K3 Light Machine guns.

Less than two weeks after State officials inked the new deal with AEY, someone at Foggy Bottom was adding to the company's watchlist file. According to the oversight committee's report:

On December 12, 2006, the State Department made the following entry to the watchlist regarding both Mr. Diveroli and his company, AEY:

"There appear to be several suspicious characteristics of this company, including the fact that Diveroli is only 21 years old and has brokered or completed several multi-million dollar deals involving fully and semi-automatic assault rifles. Future license applications involving Diveroli and/or his company should be very carefully scrutinized."

According to the public records:

In February 2007, the State Department signed a purchase order for $70,330 for AEY to provide bullet proof vests.

Also in Februrary 2007, the State Department signed a purchase order for $166,357 for AEY to provide "340 Halographic Weapons Systems and 400 RICO Alpha 9 Tactical Weapons Systems."

In June 2007, the state Department signed a $34,878 purchase order for more bullet proof vests.

Legally, the watchlist doesn't have much teeth to it. It was set up for officials to consider when signing off on weapons deals. According to the committee's report:

In 1968, Congress passed the Arms Export Control Act to require companies engaging in the brokering of weapons and ammunition to obtain a license for each transaction. The State Department's Directorate of Defense Trade Controls may deny or revoke licenses if it "deems such action to be in furtherance of world peace, the national security or the foreign policy of the United States, or is otherwise advisable." To help make these determinations, the State Department maintains a watch list of suspect individuals and entities based on information it receives from law enforcement, the intelligence community, and other government and non-governmental sources.

A spokesman for the State Department said they're not going to comment while the department's inspector general is investigating the matter.

Between David Addington failing to submit testimony, and John Yoo forgetting his words, not a whole lot was cleared up by the House Judiciary Committee's hearing on interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay.

But on the bright side Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN), did manage to clarify a very important question. Just what branch of government is the Vice President in?

Cohen: Mr. Addington, what branch are we in?

Addington: Ah, sir, perhaps the best that can be said is that the Vice President belongs neither to the executive nor to the legislative branch, but is attached by the Constitution to the latter. That's from two legal opinions issued by the office of legal counsel to the Department of Justice dated March 9th, 1961, and April, I believe, it's 18th, 1961 by, I believe, Mr. Katzenbach if I remember. . .

Cohen: So he's a member of the legislative branch?

(cross talk)

Addington: No. I said attached by the Constitution to the latter. He is not a member of the legislative branch because the Constitution says that the Congress consists of a Senate and a House of Representatives. The Constitution further says that the Senate consists of Senators and the House of Representatives consists of Representatives and he is neither a Senator nor a Representative.

Cohen: But he is attached to the legislative branch?

Addington: That's the quote I read you.

Cohen: So he's kind of a barnacle.

(voice off camera): Kind of a what?!

Addington: He is attached. . . the word was attached by the Constitution to the latter. I don't consider the Constitution as a barnacle, Mr. Cohen.

Cohen: No, the Vice President. Since he's really not fish or fowl, he's just attached to something.

But don't take our word for it:

From the AP:

Federal agents raided Blackwater Worldwide this week as part of an investigation into a deal that allowed a local sheriff's office to store high-powered assault rifles at the company's armory in Moyock.

Blackwater spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell said Thursday that investigators with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives searched Blackwater's armory Tuesday as part of the investigation. She said she did not know whether the weapons in question were seized.

Late Update: The Raleigh News & Observer reports:

Agents of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives have confiscated nearly two dozen automatic rifles from Blackwater Worldwide, the private security contractor and firearms training company in Moyock, N.C.

The move came two days after a story in The News & Observer raised questions about the legality of Blackwater's deals to buy the guns for the Camden County Sheriff's Department. The security firm kept the rifles at its giant firearms training facility and used them in training law enforcement officers and members of the military.
...
Company spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell said ATF agents came to Blackwater Tuesday and took all the rifles there owned by Camden.

"It was not a raid," she said. "We were cooperative."

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) tried to pin John Yoo down on what exactly happened after he wrote his most infamous torture memo for the Bush administration, but like David Addington before him, Yoo seemed to have a small problem remembering his words:

Ellison: The name on the memo was Bybee, but you contributed to the memo right?

Yoo: Yes, sir.

Ellison: The memo was implemented at some point. Is that right?

Yoo: What do you mean by implemented sir?

Yoo later cited attorney client privilege in declining to answer questions about what happened after he wrote the memo.

Rep. Artur Davis (D-AL) interrupted Ellison's line of questioning to summarize the subcommittee interrogators' frustrations:

I have been on the committee for a year and a half, I've never seen two witnesses, frankly, struggle as much to appreciate ordinary use of terms and questions. Would you consider instructing the two witnesses to answer the questions that they're asked and if they wish to elaborate or clarify they can ask to do so, but given that we have time constraints I would ask that the chair admonish the witnesses to err on the side of being responsive as opposed to constantly quibbling over word choice because I've never seen it to the degree I've seen it today.

The seven and a half minutes of excruciating video are here:

After grilling John Yoo on the possibility of burying suspects alive, the great, grumpy committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) turned his attention to David Addington to question him on the Unitary Theory of the Executive, something Addington should know something about, oh, considering that was his primary justification for torturing terrorism suspects:

Conyers: Do you feel that the Unitary Theory of the Executive allows the President to do things over and above the stated law of the land?

Addington: The Constitution binds all of us, Congressman, the President, all the U.S. members of Congress, all of the federal judges. We all take an oath to support and defend it. I frankly don't know what you mean by the Unitary Theory of Government. I dont -

Conyers: Have you ever heard of that theory before?

Addington: Oh I have, I've seen it in the newspapers all the time-

Conyers: Do you support it?

Addington: I don't know what it is.

Conyers: You don't know what it is.

Addington: No, and it's always described as something Addington's the great, you know-

Conyers: I see.

We know. It's great, but it's even better in color: