The stay is requested pending their appeal of that order to the SCOTUS. SCOTUSblog has helpfully posted the full brief in PDF form.

A response brief from DOJ is due today, and I’m hoping for something better than "the courts can’t compel us to release anyone, thank you very much." But I am, sadly, not holding my breath on that one.

Why?  Because of what the US government may or may not continue to do:

At issue in the case are several orders issued by District Court judges, temporarily limiting the government’s power to transfer individuals out of Guantanamo. The detainees’ lawyers sought those limits to give them a chance to challenge any possible transfer to another country where the prisoners were likely to be tortured, or detained further. Some of the orders require a 30-day notice before a detainee could be sent elsewhere. (more…)

In my first sweep through the DOJ firings docudump, I’m not finding any answers to a question that I posed to David Iglesias during his book salon.

And I’d looooove to know the answer.

It’s John Anderson’s fault. When I was reading his fabu book, Follow The Money, I noticed a cryptic note about some Rove tactical maneuvering that stuck in my mind.

The tidbit in a footnote on page 277: details of Rove’s prior use of a pliant USAtty office in San Antonio for payback against political opponents as a template for the current USAtty scandal and politicization questions embroiling the DOJ. So many of Rove’s actions are repeats of successful smaller oppo actions in his past — what other predictors are we missing?

In David’s book, he mentions that he had a conversation with the USAtty from San Antonio, Johnny Sutton, who warned Iglesias that he’d been given a sneak peek at a list that David’s name was on that was not going to be good news.

What list did Sutton see? From whom did he get that sneak peek? And why?

I’ve asked and asked about this, and still haven’t found any answers. But I’d sure like to see someone ask Mr. Sutton. Wouldn’t you?

With the recent release of a myriad of e-mails, documents and breathy reportage and leakage, it’s no wonder that Rove and Gold Bars Luskin tried to get themselves out in front of the wave by giving multiple "exclusives."

Oxymorons notwithstanding, when you have bad PR coming your way, it’s always better to stand in front of it shouting "look, over there!"

It’s like the dogs in Up.  Except Rove and Luskin have better Beltway material to offer up than a squirrel sighting, I’m certain.

Any day now, I expect to see anonymous exclusives about the Cheneyites or some other poor, expendable sap or deserving payback offendee cropping up in a news exclusive near me.

Honestly, it’s been their M.O. for ages, so it’s not exactly a shocker when it happens, now is it?

Deflect, deny, desensitize. Rinse, lather, repeat.

What’s funny is the breathless tone of Isikoff’s latest in Newsweek.

In perhaps the most significant passage in the new material, former White House counsel Harriet Miers—questioned by the judiciary committee for the first time in June—described getting a phone call from a "very upset" Rove telling her that Iglesias was "a serious problem and he wanted something done about it."

Who here didn’t know about the ruckus caused by NM GOP politicos and Rove having their fingers in this particular political pie? Don’t be shy, raise your hand. *crickets*

The more intriguing question for me is: will Harriet, also being in this up to her overly-eyelinered eyeballs, spill on the Turdblossom to save her own scrawny hind end? Or, more importantly, to deflect any tarnish from Dubya’s hiney?

Will Rove get a polite little card with to the effect of "roses are red, violets are hokey, get some more lawyers or head to the pokey," in Harriet’s swirly handwriting?

A girl can dream.

Word is that the DOJ is seriously beefing up the fraud enforcement unit within the Criminal Division. This is some very good news indeed: The department is looking for what Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer calls “a superstar” to lead the fraud section. It also plans to add 10 trial attorneys and fill the long vacant job of deputy chief for corporate, securities and investment fraud.

Listen my children and you shall hear, of the continued obstruction and gooberish fear… The Grand Obstruction Party and weak-kneed Democratic leadership. Still at it: Still unconfirmed are three circuit court nominees and four nominees for assistant attorney general positions, including Dawn Johnsen for the Office of Legal Counsel.

The vote on Sonia Sotomayor’s SCOTUS nomination is likely to come at 3 pm ET today. Would that other legal positions were also a priority in the Senate. This is what happens when you fail to make the rule of law a priority: Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), speaking at the start of a committee meeting, expressed frustration that the Senate has not confirmed any nominees to the federal judiciary this year. In all, he said, there are 17 nominations that the Judiciary Committee has sent to the full Senate and that are still awaiting confirmation.

An interesting pattern has emerged among the federal judges charged with reviewing the habeas petitions of Gitmo detainees. Chisun Lee of ProPublica explains: A close examination of the decisions shows that some of the fears about sending terrorism cases to civilian courts have not been realized.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse offers to bring a little hardball to the OLC proxy fight. From the National Law Journal (subs. req.): One vocal Johnsen supporter, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), said he’s eager for a Senate debate about the office. “I’m happy to spent the whole [time] talking about what the Bush administration did to the Office of Legal Counsel and why it needs to be cleaned up….