President Bush made a suprise visit to Iraq today. He said the war is not over, but "it is decisively on its way to being won."

As the two leaders shook hands in Maliki's private office, an Iraqi journalist hurled his shoes at the US president, shouting: "It is the farewell kiss, you dog." Bush was not struck.

Soles of shoes are considered the ultimate insult in Arab culture. After Saddam's statue was toppled in Baghdad in April 2003, many onlookers beat the statue's face with their soles.

The New York Times adds: [More...]

Open Thread.

Via lilburro, it amazes me still that sentences like these can still be spoken by supposedly respectable people:

Mr. Obama will soon face the same awful choices that confronted George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, and he could well be forced to accept a central feature of their anti-terrorist methods: extraordinary rendition. If the choice is between non-deniable aggressive questioning conducted by Americans and deniable torturous interrogations by foreigners acting on behalf of the United States, it is almost certain that as president Mr. Obama will choose the latter.

The writer is a former CIA official and is indicative of everything that is wrong with the intelligence community. They know nothing, learn nothing (torture does not work and never has) and of course have no moral compass (the writer thinks Bush and Cheney will be vindicated). The more I read from these people, the more I am convinced that the CIA requires a complete overhaul.

Speaking for me only

Yesterday, a legislative commission established to examine the death penalty in Maryland released its final report and recommended the death penalty be abolished.

"There is no good and sufficient reason to have the death penalty," Chairman Benjamin R. Civiletti said at a news conference. Regarding the commission's recommendation of repeal rather than reform, he said, "There are so many faults, so many flaws within the system that we could not imagine ... ways in which to cure it."

Ben Civiletti was the U.S. Attorney General under Jimmy Carter. I've had many conversations with him over the past decade as we serve on a board together, and while I admire him tremendously, I can assure you he's no "softie" on crime issues.

The chief findings in the report: [More...]

I am going to try and do a daily open thread that features the better diaries written by our readers. Today we have 2 new ones from Jacob Freeze - Obama's Crooked Muse, discussing the dealings betwen Penny Pritzker and the FDIC and Obama And FDR: The Politics of Low Expectations. We also have a new diary from lilburro, who has been stellar on the issues involving the intelligence community and Obama, Rand Beers for CIA Chief.

If you write quality diaries, I will be sure to feature them in an Open Thread. So please do. This is an Open Thread.

Georgia Prosecutor Paul Howard is a man on a mission. Having failed to get the death penalty for Brian Nichols, he's not giving up. He's going to ask the feds to bring a death penalty case against Nichols on the charge of killing a federal officer, a different offense than the one charged in Georgia. One of the victims in the Atlanta case was a customs officer whom Nichols killed in his home.

He's also going to seek a change in state law for future cases -- he'll ask them to remove the requirement of a unanimous verdict in cases where the victim is a law enforcement officer, the killing occurred during the course of a robbery or while the offender was in custody. The Georgia House passed such an amendment earlier this year to a Senate bill providing for life without parole in certain cases, but the Senate refused to adopt it in the final version that became law.

He complains the state doesn't get a level playing field in death cases. That's ridiculous. [More...]

Jamison Foser writes:

To anyone who lived through the media feeding frenzy of the 1990s, during which the nation's leading news organizations spent the better part of a decade destroying their own credibility by relentlessly hyping a series of non-scandals, the past few days, in which the media have tried to shoehorn Barack Obama into the Rod Blagojevich scandal, have been sickeningly familiar.

I lived through the feeding frenzy against Hillary Clinton in the Dem primary (that one was cheered in certain Left circles), the frenzy against Al Gore in the 2000 election, through the Media feeding frenzies of the Iraq Debacle, and the various and sundry other Media feeding frenzies of the last 8 years. In my view, Obama has gotten nothing compared to that over Blagojevich. Indeed, the attempts to start the frenzy have been nonstarters for the most part.

Don't get me wrong - I admire the vigilance of Foser, Media Matters and others on the Left against the Media. We must always stand vigilant. But that vigilance was sorely lacking in the last year when the subject of the attacks was Hillary Clinton. The good news is that, by and large, President-Elect Obama remains a Media Darling and will be difficult to touch in the next year. More worrisome to me frankly is the likelihood that legitimate progressive criticism of Obama will be shouted down. We must be vigilant against that as well.

Speaking for me only

The Atlanta jury which was deadlocked Thursday on the death penalty for Brian Nichols remained deadlocked today. The final outcome was 9 to 3 for death. As a result, the judge will impose a sentence of life without parole on Nichols today.

Nichols, who turned 37 on Wednesday, sagged in the shoulders as he heard of the continued deadlock that foreshadowed his escape from execution. Wearing a dark pin-striped suit and cobalt blue shirt, the former $80,000-a-year UNIX administrator for United Parcel Service sat expressionless, as he has for most of the 56 days of the trial, his only hint of nervousness an eye that blinked repeatedly.

The prosecution turned down an offer by Nichols to plead to life without parole last year. The cost of this trial was enormous.

The jury heard 144 witnesses and considered more than 1,200 pieces of evidence. The cost to taxpayers for the defense alone is estimated to have cost well over $2 million — perhaps more than $3 million — although a final accounting won’t be known until all vouchers for lawyers, their staff and four expert witnesses are submitted.

Hopefully in the future, more prosecutors will see the wisdom behind such pleas.

Via HuffPo, on the Daily Show last night, Hall and Oates sang goodbye to Alan Colmes who is leaving Hannity and Colmes in January. (Alan asked to leave the show and will be staying with the network in another capacity.)

Oates has a new album out, 1,000 Miles of Life, that was recorded in Nashville and includes performances by Blues Traveler’s John Popper, Bela Fleck, Blind Boys of Alabama, Steve Cropper, Bonnie and Bekka Bramlett. His home? Since the 1980's it's been Aspen, Colorado where he spends a lot of time shredding.

This is an open thread.

I find it interesting that Cole endorses the Obama as conventional pol interpretation offered by Daniel Larison:

Having finally recognized that Obama is a savvy political operator who is interested in effective government to pursue what are still broadly progressive goals, and having started to grasp that Obama is not a neo-McGovernite radical dove but is actually rather hawkish and establishmentarian in his instincts . . . People have a hard time making sense of a politician who can appear as the friend of the Hyde Park Independents and the Daley machine when each connection suits him, because it isn’t supposed to work that way.

I am not at all sure why it is not supposed to work that way (FDR worked with Tammany and reformers) - but I do find it amusing that this interpretation of Obama as conventional pol is now considered singularly insightful, when it was once considered an affront (I know this because this has always been my interpretation of Obama and I affronted most Obama supporters with it).

Speaking for me only

Attorney Maureen Martin makes the legal case for Gov. Rod Blagojevich in the Chicago Tribune today.

She says it's questionable whether a federal crime was committed and Fitz should have waited for the grand jury to indict before arresting him. She says this should be a state bribery case, brought in state court.

Food for thought. A few of her arguments are below:

Omar Khadr, the Canadian captured as a teen on the battlefield in Afghanistan, has a hearing today in his military commissions proceeding at Guantanamo.

Most human rights and legal experts say the evidence against Khadr seems too weak to be able to hold up in a US civil court or an ordinary military tribunal.

Khadr could then become the first beneficiary of the closing of the Guantanamo detention facility.

The ACLU is monitoring from Gitmo. [More...]