Update: Nothing on classified information or telecoms and NSA surveillance requests. Neither side brought it up.

I'm in the courtroom at the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals waiting for oral arguments to begin in the appeal of former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio who was convicted earlier this year of insider trading. I'll be live-blogging over at 5280.com for as long as my batteries and internet connection last.

Update: Conclusion: This is no slam dunk for the Government, particularly on whether Judge Nottingham erred in excluding expert defense witness Fischel without a Daubert hearing and perhaps on the materiality instruction. The judges were definitely harder on the Government than on Maureen Mahoney. You can't predict the outcome of an appeal based on the questions. Still, two of the judges seemed more favorable to the defense than the government on the materiality issue and all three had problems with the exclusion of the defense expert witness without a Daubert hearing. If I were Nacchio, I'd be cautiously optimistic. If I were the Government, I'd be concerned. But no one has a crystal ball and everyone will have to wait until the opinion is rendered.

Digby spotlights this nonsense from Fox Dem Bob Beckel:

Fox political analyst Bob Beckel mourned last night that Sen. Joe Lieberman’s endorsement of John McCain is “the price…us Democrats pay for MoveOn.org and others who drove Joe Lieberman out of the party,” said Beckel. “They campaigned against him actively and raised money against him and he was beaten in the Democratic primary. … Now we’re paying the price and all I can say is ‘a pox on their house."

The pox of course is on the Fox Dem house, and its leading practictioner of mendacity and petty vindictiveness, via Kagro, Joe Lieberman:

Lieberman: "I want Democrats to be back in the majority in Washington and elect a Democratic president in 2008. This man [Ned Lamont] and his supporters will frustrate and defeat our hopes of doing that."

Of course Lieberman was not telling the truth. And we knew he was not. But Beckel's theory is, in many ways, more condemning of Lieberman than we are. Beckel is saying Lieberman is endorsing McCain for President out of spite. Beckel also seems to share Lieberman's delusion that Lieberman's endorsement actually matters. As Lieberman himself said, no Democrat wanted his endorsement. It is unclear whether anyone except McCain even asked for it. No poxes there Mr. Beckel.

It's time for the Tuesday open thread. I'm starting my day early with court, followed by a visit to the jail, then on to the Tenth Circuit for the oral arguments in the Joe Nacchio appeal, which I hope to be live-blogging at 5280.com, provided the court doesn't decide to ban laptops from the courtroom.

After that it's a holiday party and time with the TL kid who just arrived back in Denver. Wednesday I have a date with Frontier Airlines, flying to Texas and back in time for dinner.

So, while I'm occupied elsewhere, here's a place for you to keep each other up to date on whatever is going on in your world.

Back in 2005 I wrote Welcome to America, It Will Only Cost You a Leg , about Moises Carranza-Reye, an immigrant from Mexico who came to Colorado looking for work. He ended up in a county jail on an immigration hold, where he lost a lung and part of a leg after developing a streptococcus infection.

He sued in federal court, and today his lawyer announced a settlement. Carranza-Reye will receive 1.5 million dollars.

About the Park County Jail:

Park County Jail...houses alien detainees under a contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).....[It] takes in immigration detainees and overflow inmates from other counties and the state prison system, charging $45 a day per prisoner; "This jail is a revenue-generator for the county," says Colorado Springs attorney Lloyd Kordick. "They're actively advertising for customers. They're also trying to minimize their costs, and they really didn't care about the consequences."

The treatment Carranza-Reyes and the other detainees received will make you sick: [More...]

Sen. Harry Reid pulled the FISA bill today saying there were too many amendments to consider before the Christmas recess.

Senator Christopher J. Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat and presidential candidate, spent much of the day attacking the idea of giving immunity to the phone companies, and he took credit for the delay.

“Today we have scored a victory for American civil liberties and sent a message to President Bush that we will not tolerate his abuse of power and veil of secrecy,” Mr. Dodd said in a statement.

“The president should not be above the rule of law, nor should the telecom companies who supported his quest to spy on American citizens,” he said. “I thank all my colleagues who joined me in fighting and winning a stay in the rush to grant retroactive immunity to the telecommunications companies who may have violated the privacy rights of millions of Americans.”

The ACLU calls today's action "a clear win for civil libertarians."

“The ACLU wants to thank Senator Dodd and all of the senators who joined the effort to protect civil liberties. Senator Dodd was joined by nine other senators who voted in a midday procedural vote and 15 Senators who signed a letter asking for the Judiciary Committee’s bill to be given preference over the Intelligence Committee’s bill.

The House of Representatives has passed a $516 billion appropriations bill that President Bush has said he will sign -- provided Republicans add on $40 billion for the war in Iraq. (Roll call vote on $31 million for funding the war in Afghanistan is here.)

Received by e-mail tonight from Congresswoman Diana DeGette's office:

The Consolidated Appropriations Act passed the House of Representatives tonight on a vote of 253 to 154 [Amendment #1]. On Amendment #2, regarding funding for Afghanistan and prohibiting any funds from being used for Iraq, the vote was 206 to 201. The bill now goes to the Senate.

It invests in health care access, medical research, education, veterans, energy efficiency, and secures money for the Democratic and Republican conventions, to name just a few.

Colorado Congressman Ed Perlmutter also sent out an e-mail with praise for passage of the bill's convention security funding.

Wandering through Google News, it looks like a lot of people are labeling this a pork bill. The House Government Appropriations Committee's website where you can view the provisions for yourself is here. The committee's press release on the bill is here (pdf).

On the upcoming Senate consideration and war funding, the article linked above reports:

Meet Jerry Givens, former executioner for the Commonwealth of Virginia, with 62 state-sponsored killings under his belt. As he tells ABC News, he's sorry now and he has come to oppose capital punishment.

As the state's chief executioner, Givens pushed the buttons that administered lethal doses of electricity to the condemned. He could even choose how many volts to administer. And he is the first to admit that it was largely guesswork.

"If he was a small guy, I didn't give that much. You try not to cook the body, you know. I hate to sound gross,'' he told ABC News in a rare interview.

Givens has no formal medical training. although he once took a first aid course. He was given on the job training by his counterparts in Texas.

Among the reasons he's now opposed to the death penalty:

After the death penalty was reinstated in Virginia, Givens noted, ruefully, "crime went up.''

Givens' real doubts began with the number of wrongful convictions. He says: [More...]

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has shown some mercy and granted a pardon to the victim of a gang rape who was sentenced to 200 lashes because she was in the company of a man other than her spouse at the time of the crime.

The rape took place a year and a half ago in Qatif, a small Shiite town in the Eastern Province, the center of Saudi Arabia’s oil industry. The woman, who has been publicly identified only as the “Qatif girl,” said she met a former boyfriend to retrieve a photograph of herself. They were sitting in a car when seven men attacked, raping them both.

As I wrote here, the original sentence of 90 lashes was upped to 200 lashes after her lawyer complained to the media. Back to today's news:

Commenting on the pardon, the Saudi justice minister, Abdullah bin Mohammed al-Sheik, told Al Jazirah that the king fully supported the verdicts against the woman but had decided to pardon her because it was in the “interests of the people.”

“On one hand this tells people, ‘We support our system and we will punish you if you violate it,’” he said. “Yet he’s also showing mercy. Throughout, he’s making it clear that he is not disagreeing with the judge’s opinion on this sensitive issue of sexual chastity, but he believes that there is a higher interest to be served by the pardon, whether that’s relationships between Shiites and Sunnis, or international opinion.”

Thank you King Abdullah.

Update: A transcript of Gov. Corzine's remarks is here.

New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine today signed the bill passed by the N.J. legislature last week abolishing the state's death penalty. (Background here.)

In an extended and often passionate speech from his office at the state capitol, Mr. Corzine declared an end to what he called “state-endorsed killing,” and said that New Jersey could serve as a model for other states.

“Today New Jersey is truly evolving,” he said. “I believe society first must determine if its endorsement of violence begets violence, and if violence undermines our commitment to the sanctity of life. To these questions, I answer yes.”

New Jersey is the first state to legislatively ban the death penalty in more than 40 years. The eight men on New Jersey's death row will now serve life in prison without parole.

In Rome, Italy, lights will flush through the arches of the Coliseum for 24 hours in recognition of the repeal.

States that still have the death penalty include: [More]

Noah Shachtman at Wired reports on a bill passed last week banning gang members from serving in the military. He writes:

It's a problem that's worse -- and more complicated -- than you think. I've talked to Marine officers in Anbar province who swore by their gang-bangers: No one else could spot criminal activity on a base more quickly; no one else could find so many holes in the base's protection.

But when these guys come home, it can become a nightmare -- with gangs equipped with military gear, and trained in close-combat tactics.

More from the Army Times and Stars and Stripes.

CREW won a battle in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia today when Judge Royce Lamberth ordered the White House to turn over visitor logs of 9 religious commentators, including James Dobson, Gary Bauer and Jerry Falwell.

Visitor records are created by the Secret Service, which is subject to the Freedom of Information Act. But the Bush administration has ordered the data turned over to the White House, where they are treated as presidential records outside the scope of the public records law.

But U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth ruled logs from the White House and Vice President Dick Cheney's residence remain Secret Service documents and are subject to public records requests.

Lamberth refused a second request by CREW pertaining to the Jack Abramoff investigation. CREW wanted the judge to prevent the Secret Service from destroying its copies of visitor logs after tendering them to the White House. Lamberth said he lacked jurisdiction over the request. However,

Because the logs were declared Secret Service records, however, they cannot be destroyed without approval from the National Archives.

Update: Consideration of the bill has been postponed to January due to the number of proposed amendments and lack of time to consider them.

Update: Here's the transcript of Dodd's speech.

****

The Senate is debating S. 2248 to overhaul FISA. The bill contains retroactive immunity for the telecom companies.

A vote will begin shortly on whether to accept the bill. Right now they are moving to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed.

You can watch live on C-Span3.

Update: The Roll Call vote is happening. The room looks more than three-quarters empty. By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum requirement is waived. 60 votes are needed to move forward with the bill. Clerk calls roll.

Sen. Leahy is expected to file a substitute bill stripping the telecoms of immunity.

Vote tally: Boxer, Feingold, Cantwell, Brown, Harkin, Wyden, Cardin, Kerry, Menendez and Dodd voted in the negative so far. Leahy and Durbin voted yes, as did Feinstein, Schumer, Kennedy, Specter, Levin and Ken Salazar. Again, this is the motion to invoke cloture to allow the bad Senate Intel Committee bill to proceed.

Vote total: Cloture is invoked. 76 to 10. Motion is agreed to. Harry Reid: No one intends to talk for 30 hours but some want to talk post-cloture. Reid wants everything from now on to take 60 votes, except for final passage. The rules don't require it, but they do take 60 votes to stop a filibuster. They are arguing about that now.

More...