Context: After a big battle yesterday, I won a detention hearing in federal court getting bail for a very young client in a drug case. Like all such hearings, it was decided by a Magistrate Court Judge.

Even when the defendant wins, the Government can get a stay of the release order while it decides whether to appeal to the District Court Judge. So despite winning the bail issue, my client stays locked up.

At 4:55 pm today, the Government filed a motion with the District Court Judge to revoke the Magistrate Judge's order. I will now spend the weekend writing yet another brief in hope that on Tuesday, when the reconsideration motion is heard, my client -- finally -- will be released.

This is an open thread.

We have 12 million people living in this country without proper documentation, many of whom work, have families and pay taxes.

While Congress stalls year after year on providing a path to citizenship for them, and the radical right says there is no room for them, the Bush Administration has no problem playing favorites:

The American Embassy in Baghdad announced Thursday that it had expanded tenfold its program to help Iraqi employees of the American government here, who faced threats for their work, to obtain visas and ultimately citizenship in the United States.

Why should the Iraqis get special treatment? Because they provided aid to the U.S. in its unneccessary preemptive war that we entered under false pretenses?[More...]

Bump and Update: TalkLeft now has its own DNC tote bag -- one that respects privacy rights.

Via Dem Convention Watch, Glenn Greenwald and Corrente, here is the tote bag the DNC will be providing participants.

Jokes about retroactive immunity aside, this isn't the bag you want. Given the security in place at the convention, this one is. (Larger photo here.)

Newly revised from our every day 4th Amendment subway tote just for the Denver Democratic National Convention, this is a far better choice.

Let the 4th Amendment speak for you as you hand your bag over for a search. It's a silent protest and reminder to authorities that you consider searches without reasonable suspicion or probable cause to be an infringement of your privacy rights. You can order yours now, whether you are an official convention attendee or not.

Dennis Kucinich didn't get the impeachment hearing he wanted, but he did get a hearing on "Executive Power and Its Constitutional Limitations." That gave former Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson the opportunity to tell Congress that

there's a "compelling case" for the impeachment of President Bush, but that short of that, it should appoint a special commission to investigate egregious abuses of power. Anderson, testifying Friday at a House Judiciary Committee hearing looking at the constitutional limits of the executive branch, detailed a litany of what he said were "heinous" human rights abuses, unprecedented power grabs and denials of due process.

Illness kept John Dean from testifying, but in this article Dean compares President Bush's abuses of power to those of Richard Nixon.

Remember when John McCain promised to run a respectful campaign? Cliff Schecter examines McCain's hypocrisy in painting Barack Obama as the terrorists' choice for president, in his accusation that Obama would rather lose the war than lose the election, and (most recently) in running an ad that falsely implies Obama has been endorsed by Fidel Castro. If this is McCain's notion of a respectful campaign, what will we see if he decides to get nasty?

John McCain was right. No one has supported Bush more than McCain has on Iraq. TPM has a great timeline. Some of the highlights:

3/18/03, Fox, "O'Reilly Factor"

O'Reilly: "All right, Senator, if you were president, what would you have done differently in the run-up to this war?"

McCain: "Nothing."

O'Reilly: "Nothing?"

McCain: "The president has handled this, in my view, skillfully."

More . . .

Jerome Armstrong reports on the political landscape for the Fall congressional elections:

A 15 seat gain would be tremendous for Democrats in the House in 2008. Going into the 2006 election, there were 202 Democrats and 232 Republicans and 1 Independent. Democrats won 31 seats in '06, and then have won seats in 3 special elections, to now hold a 236-199 advantage heading into the 2008 election.

And my question is this, in terms of policy what will change because of this 15 seat gain? What do we expect from the current Democratic Party in terms of policy? Some things I suppose - federal funding of stem cell research, the renewal of S-Chip, the eventual wind down of the Iraq Debacle. These things matter. But will there be a renewal of progressivism in Washington with Obama as President and a padded Democratic majority? I doubt it. This election has been run by the Dem Party with a "We Are Not Bush Republicans On Everything, Just Some Things" platform. And that is what we will get.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

From WaPo, via Political Wire, McCain advisor Charlie Blakc signals that McCain has made his VP decision:

He's [McCain] in a position to make the decision on short notice if he wanted to."

It seems clear to me McCain has made his decision. From the Wapo article:

Two top aides to the presumptive Republican nominee said the decision is likely to be announced after Obama returns from Europe on Sunday and before the Beijing Olympics begin Aug. 8.

I think it is the Mittster. What's your guess?

Via Digby - the General returns:

TalkLeft has been following (here and here and here) the murder of Ronnie White in the Prince George's County jail after he ran over and killed a police officer. The Washington Post today takes a long look at the troubled jail and its troubled staff of jailers.

In the past seven months, jail officials have suspended at least six officers, some of whom were charged criminally. Two were suspended for allegedly smuggling cellphones into the jail for inmates; two more were accused of having sex with prisoners. One was suspended after he was charged with robbing two teenagers at gunpoint in Charles County, another after he allegedly assaulted his wife.

Another officer "was convicted of second-degree assault after he beat a woman, breaking her rib." Still another was ordered out of his house after he threatened to kill his wife. Then there's the officer who "was jailed this week after being convicted in Charles County of armed robbery." He's been suspended without pay.

Glenn Greenwald picks up and expands on my post on Cass Sunstein and egregious crimes, adding some very important information and analysis. Greenwald writes:

Jane [Hamsher] also asked [Bruce] Fein about Obama adviser Cass Sunstein's recent statements that Bush officials should not be prosecuted for their illegal detention, interrogation and spying programs. To get a sense for why this matters, National Journal this morning listed Sunstein as one of a small handful of likely Supreme Court appointees in an Obama administration. But -- similar to Fein's point regarding Jay Rockefeller, Jane Harman and comrades -- Sunstein has long been one of the most vocal enablers of Bush radicalism and lawlessness, having continuously offered himself up over the last seven years to play the legal version of the TNR role of "even-liberal-Cass-Sunstein-agrees-with-Bush."

More . . .

This editorial comments upon a hearing held Tuesday before a subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee that examined the Army Medical Action Plan.

That’s the plan to prevent the kind of systematic neglect and mistreatment exposed by The Washington Post last year at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Despite promises of reform and statements of concern about wounded soldiers, this is what's happening: [more ...]