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.

It's that time of year again, where we really would like TalkLeft readers to take the 2008 annual Blog Reader Project Survey. The survey helps journalists, blogger, and advertisers better understand the demographics related to blogs. Please use this link to take the survey. While we won't get access to your results, the demographic information gleaned from TL readers will help us with advertisers.

Even if you've taken the 2008 survey on another site, please click through to add your results to our totals; you WON'T have to take it again.

Also, if you get tired of the survey before finishing, you can quit and the answers to the questions you submitted will still count. Thanks, everyone.

Charles Seife writes in today's NYTimes:

Minnesota’s instruments for counting votes are simply too crude to determine the winner in a race this tight. . . . Luckily, Minnesota’s electoral law has a provision for ties. After all the counting and recounting, if the vote is statistically tied, the state should invoke the section of the law that requires the victor to be chosen by lot. It’s hard to swallow, but the right way to end the senatorial race between Mr. Coleman and Mr. Franken will be to flip a coin.

This seems right to me.

Speaking for me only

I didn't see any news today because after work I became enmeshed in the online world of electronic gadgets. I'm still replacing the items taken during my home invasion last month, and since I wasn't insured, I have to go slowly. Make that at a snail's pace. I've spent untold hours this week learning and relearning the features of dvd -vhs recorders, blue ray players and units that do both with upscaling convertibility to 1080p so the picture matches that on your 1080p Hi-Def tv. [More...]

Josh Marshall writes:

I don't have any problem with Obama's cabinet picks so far. But it's certainly true that Democrats with a high partisan profile haven't figured prominently among his major appointments, with the notable exception of Rahm Emanuel.

I guess Hillary is in the "Hillary for New York" party. I am tempted to attribute this to CDS but that is probably not the case. He probably does not think Hillary has a "high partisan profile." After all, Republicans love the Clintons - remember all the Hillary-cans?

Speaking for me only

This is an Open Thread.

I have always called my self a "Centrist." What does that mean actually? Well nothing really. But it is valuable politically.

We Democrats are "the Centrists" now I am happy to say. Chris Bowers is not:

Pew recently releases a much-discussed survey arguing that, despite massive partisan gains for Democrats, the ideological balance of the country has not shifted much. . . . This finding needs to be disputed . . .

I disagree. This finding needs to be embraced. I think we should argue that the country chose "Centrism" when it chose the Democratic agenda. More . . .

If this fellow is to be believed, apparently so:

Mark M. Lowenthal, an intelligence veteran who left a senior post at the C.I.A. in 2005, said Mr. Obama’s decision to exclude Mr. Brennan from contention for the top job had sent a message that “if you worked in the C.I.A. during the war on terror, you are now tainted,” and had created anxiety in the ranks of the agency’s clandestine service.

Yes, Mr. Lowenthal, if you were involved in torture, if you defended torture, as Mr. Brennan did (his empty protestations to the contrary notwithstanding) you are tainted, for life. I do not presume Mr. Lowenthal's libel of the entire CIA is accurate, but I DO agree with him that torture enablers are tainted. And rightly so.

Speaking for me only

Ungracious outgoing Colorado Republican Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave, who has yet to call winner Betsy Markey and congratulate her on her win in Colorado's 4th District race for Congress, made a robocall for Georgia Congressman Saxby Chambliss after her defeat. Here's the text:

Hello, I'm Marilyn Musgrave. Until last month I was the congresswoman from Colorado. Leftist special interests from around the country poured money into my district to defeat me. They overwhelmed us with money. And they smothered the truth with vicious attacks and lies.

More...

Your daily Percy Harvin report:

[Florida] Receiver Percy Harvin, meanwhile, missed practice Tuesday but [Florida coach Urban] Meyer said he was "getting better and better." Harvin sprained his right ankle against the Seminoles and is considered questionable against the Crimson Tide.

Since I only have the New Deal and Percy Harvin on the brain, here is an Open Thread for your commenting pleasure.

Digby has recommended this post. It is an interesting post in parts, but some of it is absurd to my eyes. Some particularly wrongheaded parts of it (as well as some of the interesting parts) follow:

Paul Krugman in his Times columns, his Times blog, and his latest book The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008 (which Krugman will be discussing at the FDL Book Salon this afternoon at 2 pm EST), has devoted a great deal of attention to describing the lessons to be learned from FDR and the New Deal (both its successes and failures.) In particular, he has expounded on John Maynard Keynes' critiques thereof. In his last column, Krugman wrote:

The idea that tight fiscal policy when the economy is depressed actually reduces private investment isn’t just a hypothetical argument: it’s exactly what happened in two important episodes in history. The first took place in 1937, when Franklin Roosevelt mistakenly heeded the advice of his own era’s deficit worriers. He sharply reduced government spending, among other things cutting the Works Progress Administration in half, and also raised taxes. The result was a severe recession, and a steep fall in private investment.

This was Keynes' critique (annotated at the link) at the time: