There's wild speculation all over TV and the internet about where Bernard Madoff will serve his ultimate sentence. A hyper-ventilating legal pundit on Fox News was yelling he'd go to a maximum security facility. Not so fast.

The Bureau of Prisons has a 108 page manual (pdf) (P5100.08), titled "Inmate Security Designation and Custody Classification", on designations. In Chapter 5, it identifies public safety factors and notes they can be waived. Generally, see page 50: [More...]

Final Update: Here's the statement Madoff made in court today (pdf). Here's the transcript of today's plea hearing (pdf)

Update: 11:16 am: Sentencing will be June 16. The Government asked for immediate jailing. CNBC and CNN report the Judge said he intends to grant the request and order Madoff into custody immediately. It's done.

Update 10:55 am: The Judge has accepted the guilty plea. The Government is telling the judge how the scheme operated. The victims who object to the plea are now being heard. Next issue should be bail.

Update: 10:47 am ET: CNBC Updates: [More...]

Glenn Greeenwald writes about the Freeman Affair, pointing out this bizarre Fred Hiatt tirade in defense of AIPAC:

What's striking about the charges by Mr. Freeman and like-minded conspiracy theorists is their blatant disregard for such established facts. . . . Crackpot tirades such as his have always had an eager audience here and around the world.

Fred Hiatt ought to know about the market for crackpot conspiracy theories. After all, he publishes Charles Krauthammer and George Will. But what it truly ironic is that in this very edition of the WaPo, the "crackpot theory" Hiatt derides is supported by the reporting of Walter Pincus and is "disseminated" by the "Dean" himself, David Broder. Hiatt writes that Freeman's "tirade" makes it "clear just how bad a selection" Freeman was. Perhaps. But it has long been clear that Fred Hiatt is an embarrassment to the Washington Post.

Speaking for me only

Since Democrats and others (including me) spent a great deal of time criticizing President Bush for issuing a recordbreaking number of signing statements, it seems necessary to consider President Obama's signing statement issued in relation to the recently enacted Omnibus Spending Bill. TPM has the relevant passage:

Numerous provisions of the legislation purport to condition the authority of officers to spend or reallocate funds on the approval of congressional committees. These are impermissible forms of legislative aggrandizement in the execution of the laws other than by enactment of statutes. . . . Yet another provision requires the Secretary of the Treasury to accede to all requests of a Board of Trustees that contains congressional representatives. The Secretary shall treat such requests as nonbinding.

I think the signing statement is defensible in one aspect and indefensible in another. It appears to be asserting that the provisions in question are a form of legislative veto which the Supreme Court deemed unconstitutional in the case INS v. Chadha. In one aspect, this claim seems well established and moored to clear Supreme Court precedent. In another, I think it is unmoored and indefensible. I'll explain why I think so on the flip.

Does anyone find it unusual that Bernard Madoff's lawyers didn't file a motion today for bail pending sentencing? I just checked the court docket and the only thing they filed were their entries of appearance. The only filing by the Government was the emails it received from victims, which it filed under seal.

Has the Government agreed to let Madoff stay out on bond pending sentencing? If not, why wouldn't Madoff's lawyers file a big brief arguing for it? The Judge said yesterday it's one of two issues he will take up tomorrow./

Here's Reuters and Bloomberg's latest articles with speculation from lawyers and sources they interviewed about why Madoff may have agreed to plead guilty, but it's still not adding up for me. I have a long post ready on other possibilities, but I'm holding off in case some real information emerges tonight or tomorrow. I don't feel like just fueling more speculation. [Updates below]

Late afternoon on the West Coast. For those wondering, we'll be back in the college hoops coverage business starting tomorrow night as we prepare for the start of March Madness next week.

This is an Open Thread.

“It will be a top priority of the Justice Department to hold accountable executives who have engaged in fraudulent activities.”

-Justice Department spokesman Matthew A. Miller

As opposed to the attitude towards investigating the abuses of the Bush Administration, it seems that the Obama Administration is foregoing the Establishment-favored "Lets not bicker over who killed who" approach and is gung ho for prosecuting financial fraud:

This seems a very good initiative:

President Obama today signed an Executive Order creating the White House Council on Women and Girls. The mission of the Council will be to provide a coordinated federal response to the challenges confronted by women and girls and to ensure that all Cabinet and Cabinet-level agencies consider how their policies and programs impact women and families. The Council will be chaired by Valerie Jarrett, Assistant to the President and Senior Advisor, and will include as members cabinet-level federal agencies. The Executive Director of the Council will be Tina Tchen, Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of the Office of Public Liaison at the White House.

Giving this brief to Jarrett, who is very close to the President, gives this council a heft that it would not have otherwise. Kudos to the President.

Speaking for me only

In his skewering of Howard Fineman, who has been getting blasted all over, the part I really liked was Jamison Foser's "Cramering" of Fineman, pulling out Fineman's past political pronouncements like this one in 2005:

[I]n a roomful of well-connected Democrats the other night, I was struck by how gloomy they were. They can’t stand Bush, but didn’t have much faith in their own party’s prospects. Why? Well, some of the reasons they articulated are short-term and tactical; some are purely personal; others more philosophical; and I have a few myself . . .

Two Democratic landslides wins later, that column looks pretty stupid. Even better, as Foser notes, one of the most laughable Fineman assertions was that the GOP had an insurmountable advantage in political "star power," ticking off "Rudy, Arnold, Condi and Colin." Heh. Fineman's lucky there is no tape. It could be his "buy Bear Stearns" moment.

Speaking for me only

This article suggests that President Obama will "drastically reshape" the Fourth Circuit when, in the near future, he nominates judges to fill circuit vacancies. It's about time.

In recent years, the Fourth Circuit had become the most assertively conservative court in the nation. Its judges have taken the lead in trying to reduce federal power in several areas, even once trying to lead the way in undoing the Miranda rule that criminal suspects must be apprised of their rights before they answer questions. The court’s conservative majority also tried to roll back affirmative action policies and was reliably supportive of Bush administration efforts to widen presidential authority in detaining terrorism suspects without trial or charges without Congressional input.

An essential mission of the Obama administration should be to restore balance to the federal judiciary, not just in the Fourth Circuit. [more ...]

There is no Sixth Amendment exception for accused criminals who are particularly out of favor with the public. Bernard Madoff is entitled to a lawyer, just like everyone else who is charged with a crime. Why, then, do some idiots feel the need to threaten Madoff's lawyer, Ira "Ike" Sorkin? The man is just doing his job (and as Jeralyn pointed out, he's done it by pleading Madoff straight up to all the charges against him -- hardly a strategy that should enrage the public).

Memo to the crazed loons who are threatening Sorkin: You're likely to need your own lawyer one day. You might want to rethink your animosity to those who spend their lives defending the accused.

The UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) opened its Summit on Global Drug Policy today at which they are expected to approve another decade of the War on Drugs. Human Rights Watch explains why the U.N. approach should be rejected.

On March 11-20, 2009, the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) will meet, opening with a high-level segment that will set the international drug policy agenda for the next decade.

In many countries around the world, drug control efforts result in serious human rights abuses - torture and ill-treatment by police, extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detention, and denial of essential medicines and basic health services. UN drug control agencies have paid little attention to whether international drug control efforts are consistent with human rights protections, or to the effect of drug control policies on fundamental human rights.

In our own country, the war on drugs has been a failure, emphasizing prison over treatment. [More...]