Politico (and Andrea Mitchell at NBC) say so:

President-elect Barack Obama is "on track" to name Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) as his secretary of state shortly after Thanksgiving, two senior Obama aides said. Financial disclosure issues have been worked out, aides said. The officials said they expect her to accept.

I think this is right and I think it has been a done deal, subject to the Bill Clinton financial stuff, since last Thursday. Basically, when the President asks you to serve, you can not say no. I think a lot of the drama was folks on the Obama side hoping to torpedo the idea and hoping that Bill Clinton would provide the excuse. Bill Clinton knew this and made sure that it was perfectly clear that he would do whatever was necessary. On a related note, I agree with Josh Marshall on this:

As elected Democrats decide how to invest in the nation's infrastructure, they should remember this: bridges and roads and trains and buildings are all important, but so are drug and alcohol treatment programs, shelter and service providers for the abused and homeless and mentally ill, and reintegration services for newly released inmates.

The nation's infrastructure is more than a collection of the things we build and the surfaces we pave. Governing Democrats need to recognize that people are part of our infrastructure. Bridges are more easily repaired, but restoring productivity to the citizens we now discard will yield a better return on our public investment.

Democrats should also remember that the criminal justice system is part of our infrastructure. They should restore meaning to the phrase "equal justice for all" by helping states improve their woefully underfunded public defender services. [more ...]

Dr. Pepper promised to give a free soda to everyone in America if the Guns & Roses album "Chinese Democracy" (delayed since 1994) saw a 2008 release. It goes on sale Sunday and is streaming on MySpace now.

Beginning Sunday at 12:01 a.m., coupons for a free 20-ounce soda will be available for 24 hours on Dr Pepper's Web site. They'll be honored until Feb. 28.

I'm more of a Pepsi guy, so my coupon is up for grabs.

Update: "The attorney general is conscious, conversant and alert. His vital statistics are strong and he is in good spirits," according to a Justice Department spokesperson.

original post:

This is frightening:

Attorney General Michael Mukasey collapsed during a speech Thursday night and lost consciousness, a Justice Department official said. ... Mukasey was delivering a speech to the Federalist Society at a Washington hotel when "he just started shaking and he collapsed," said Associate Attorney General Kevin O'Connor. "They're very concerned."

Mukasey began slurring his words during the speech before collapsing and losing consciousness. He was taken to George Washington University Hospital.

We send our best wishes to the Attorney General.

Go Gators! Just to kick off our nightly college football discussion. Just kidding.

This is an Open Thread.

The U.S. Army has scheduled its first execution since 1961.

Ronald A. Gray has been scheduled to die by lethal injection at the Federal death camp at Terre Haute on December 12.

Only the President, as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, can approve the execution of a death sentence [Article 71(a), Uniform Code of Military Justice]. On July 28, 2008, the President approved the death sentence in the case of the United States v Ronald A. Gray. The President took action following completion of a full appellate process, which upheld the conviction and sentence to death. Two petitions to the U.S. Supreme Court were denied during the appellate processing of Pvt. Gray's case.

President Bush approved the death order. Gray was sentenced to death by a court-martial panel in 1988 for "two murders, an attempted murder, and three rapes."

Gray was 22 at the time of his sentencing. According to the 1999 U.S. military appeals court opinion here, there were psychiatric and organic brain damage issues, as well as a host of other issues, all decided adversely to Gray.

U.S. District Court Judge Richard J. Leon today ordered the release of five of the six habeas defendants in Boumediene v. Bush/Al Odah v. U.S (pdf). The opinion will be out later today.

In the first case of its kind, U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon said the government's evidence linking the five Algerians to al-Qaida was not credible as it came from a single, unidentified source. Therefore, he said the five could not be held indefinitely as enemy combatants, and should be released immediately.

"To allow enemy combatancy to rest on so thin a reed would be inconsistent with the court's obligation," Leon told the crowded courtroom.

[More....]

The Bush administration may claim the right to ignore the law when it engages in electronic surveillance, but it seems unwilling to share its unlimited power with the states. When the New York Police Department wants to use federal electronic surveillance laws to spy on suspected terrorists, it must convince the Justice Department to seek a warrant from the FISA court. The NYPD is complaining that the Justice Department "unfairly blocked the city’s applications for surveillance warrants, first in June and then in September."

[Attorney General] Mukasey said that the Police Department had sought authority ... to eavesdrop on “numerous communications facilities” without providing an adequate basis for their requests. Some officials who have been briefed on the cases said the requests, from the police Intelligence Division, were unusually broad, and included telephones in public places, like train or subway stations, rather than phones used by a specific individual.

Sure, go ahead and listen to every call made from a public telephone. Don't worry about the privacy rights of the New Yorkers you're supposed to be protecting. [more ...]

Susie Madrak and Anglachel point to two funny "blog analyzer" tools. One attempts to determine whether you can tell if a blog is written by a man or a woman. Here is the TalkLeft result:

We guess http://talkleft.com is written by a man (51%), however it's quite gender neutral.

The other is a readability analyzer. Here is TalkLeft's result:

This blog's reading level: High School

Not sure if that is good or bad.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

I've yakked enough. TChris and J, schedules permitting, will surely follow with some interesting posts on criminal law and politics.

For now, it is your turn.

One last thing, CA Pol Junkie apparently has some gizmo that projects the result of the MN Sen recount based on returns as they come in. Right now, with 18% recounted, he projects Coleman winning the recount by 21 votes. But the trend is our friend I think.

This is an Open Thread.

Via Glenn Reynolds, the the Right's brief against Holder - it is the Marc Rich pardon. Interestingly, it does not focus on the Clintons, but on Holder himself:

Steve Benen has a good post on it and what it means. As I have said repeatedly, not knowing a damn thing about health care policy, I leave commenting on this to those who do.