The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case of Ali Saleh Kahlan al Marri, a U.S. legal resident originally from Qatar who has been held since 2001 in the Navy Brig in South Carolina. He was seized in Peoria, Ill.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond ruled in July that the president had the power to detain Marri under the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force enacted by Congress in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. But the court also said he could challenge his designation as an enemy combatant before a district court in South Carolina.

The question: Can the military indefinitely detain a U.S. citizen or legal resident seized on American soil? Background on 4th Circuit decision here. The ACLU has more on today's Court action.

Your daily dose of non-news on Percy Harvin. Nothing new on Florida all purpose star Percy Harvin's status for the SEC championship game. We'll have to wait until 4 pm Saturday to find out it looks like.

This is an Open Thread.

Update: (TL) If you haven't voted yet for the ABA's Top 100 Law Blogs, please go over and vote for us. It takes less than five seconds. Thanks!

Obama will have a choice: He can give the Left what it wants and weaken our defenses. Or he can follow the advice of his more prudent advisers, recognize that Congress, the courts, and officials including Attorney General Michael Mukasey have already moved to end the worst Bush administration abuses — and kick the hard Left gently in the teeth. I’m betting that Obama is smart and tough enough to do the latter.

The advisor to watch on this is Cass Sunstein, who is no doubt advising Obama to do precisely what Taylor wants. Yglesias is "stunned" to read this from Taylor - I have no idea why, Taylor has always defended Bush abuses. Will he be stunned to learn that Obama advisor Sunstein has defended Bush abuses too?

Speaking for me only

Update: Bail pending appeal denied. The sentence:

Count 1: 1 year county jail; Count 2: 12 - 48 mos, concurrent with count1; Count 3: 12 - 48 mos concurrent with counts 1 and 2; Count 4: 26 mos to 120 mos; Count 5: 15 years, parole eligibility after 5 yrs, consecutive 12 - 72 mos; Count 6: 15 years, parole eligibility after 5 yrs, consecutive 12 - 72 mos, concurrent with count 5; Count 7: 60 - 180 mos, consecutive 12-72 months; Count 8: 60 - 180 mos, consecutive 12-72 months, concurrent with count 7; Count 9: 18 - 72 mos, consecutive to ct 8; Count 10: 18 - 72 mos, consecutive to ct 9.

How much time did he get? At first glance, it looks to me like he has to do at least 6 years on counts 1 through through 8, and then two additional sentences of 1.5 to 6 years each on counts 9 and 10, meaning a minimum of 6 + 3 (1.5 + 1.5) for a total minimum of 9 years. [Update: The LA Times and Las Vegas Sun come up with the same 9 year calculation I did.] [More...]

Expected bad news:

With the economy deteriorating rapidly, the nation’s employers shed 533,000 jobs in November, the 11th consecutive monthly decline, the government reported Friday morning, and the unemployment rate rose to 6.7 percent. The decline, the largest since December 1974, was fresh evidence that the economic contraction accelerated in November, promising to make the current recession, already 12 months old, the longest since the Great Depression. The previous record was 16 months, in the severe recessions of the mid-1970s and early 1980s.

“We have recorded the largest decline in consumer confidence in our history,” said Richard T. Curtin, director of the Reuters/University of Michigan Survey of Consumers, which started its polling in the 1950s. “It is being driven down by a host of factors: falling home and stock prices, fewer work hours, smaller bonuses, less overtime and disappearing jobs.”

Ugh.

For two months work, Sarah Palin's traveling makeup artist and hair stylist were paid $110,000, according to newly filed RNC campaign expense reports.

The clothing total, previously at $150,000 is also expected to rise, but the final numbers weren't available when the Times posted its story tonight. Stay tuned.

Barbara Walters names Barack Obama the most fascinating person of the year in her special tonight.

In 2005, she named Camilla Parker Bowles. In 2006, she named Nancy Pelosi and in 2007, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling.

Also on Walters' list tonight, Rush Limbaugh, a man who got pregnant, Tom Cruise, Will Smith and actor Frank Langella who plays Richard Nixon in the new movie Frost/Nixon.

I changed the channel when she named Sarah Palin.

Who would you have named?

FBI Agent Mark T. Rossini of New York has been charged in Los Angeles with illegally accessing FBI computers in 2007 to help the once-famous, former private investigator, Anthony Pellicano, who was facing illegal wiretapping and racketeering charges. Pellicano was convicted and is in prison.

In May, Pellicano was convicted by a federal jury in Los Angeles of conspiring to run a criminal enterprise that employed illegal wiretaps to dig up dirt on the rich and famous on behalf of his elite Hollywood clients. Pellicano is awaiting sentencing for convictions on those 76 counts, as well as for convictions in August in a separate trial for wiretapping and conspiracy to commit wiretapping.

It looks like Rossini has already made a deal: the charges were filed by information and consist of five misdemeanors of illegal access to computers. [More...]

No change to the status of Florida all purpose star Percy Harvin. He is still questionable for Saturday's SEC championship game against the Crimson Tide of Alabama.

I know you were all on the edge of your seats waiting for today's Harvin report.

This is an Open Thread.

Another driving while Ambien'd story in the news today: An elected District Attorney in Durango, Colorado was sentenced to 10 days of home detention (and loss of his driver's license.)

Craig Westberg, the DA for Archuleta, La Plata and San Juan counties, also must attend alcohol-education classes, perform 60 hours of public service and pay more than $3,000 in court costs and restitution for car damage.

....He was arrested in October 2007 after witnesses reported an erratic driver. Westberg has said he took an Ambien sleeping pill and left home to run an errand when his vision suddenly became blurred.

Patrick Kennedy got a better deal in his DWA (driving while ambien'd) ordeal: Rehab.

Here's a 2006 news article with statistics. [More...]

Former Boston FBI Agent John Connolly, purportedly the inspiration for the Matt Damon character in The Departed, is in a federal courtroom in Miami today, being sentenced for a gangland murder. He faces 30 years to life.

Connolly told the judge today he didn't do it.

During testimony, jurors heard that Connolly was on the mob payroll, collecting $235,000 from Bulger and Flemmi while shielding his mob pals from prosecution and leaking the identities of informants.

The prosecution's star witnesses at the Miami trial were Flemmi, who is now in prison, and mob hit man John Martorano, who has admitted to 20 murders, served 12 years in prison and is now free.

Connolly was serving a 10 year sentence for racketeering when he was indicted for the mob hit.

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