Here comes Oprah Winfrey, all weekend long, beating the drum for Barack Obama, in South Carolina, Iowa and New Hampshire.

It's now a stadium event in South Carolina. Can "the nation's wealthiest African-American woman" have an impact on the voters of a poor state like South Carolina? The race card is already in play. African American supporters of John Edwards are calling the Oprah-Obama tour a publicity stunt.

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Woody Allen on the writers' strike. And this came in by e-mail yesterday from a Hollywood writer and TalkLeft reader:

Yesterday the AMPTP has hired some big gun PR guys who have Democratic connections.

The AMPTP announced yesterday that it had retained Mark Fabiani and Chris Lehane of Fabiani & Lehane and Steve Schmidt of Mercury Public Affairs "to assist in communicating the industry's proposed New Economic Partnership."

Fabiani and Lehane have a long history in Democratic politics, serving as senior aides and advisors to President Clinton, Vice President Gore and other Democrats across the country. Lehane is currently in the Hillary camp. Schmidt is a Republican guy, so nothing we can do there.

We would like to get blogs to write about this to put pressure on these guys. The idea that people who work closely with Dems would help to bust a union is disgusting. Hopefully we can pressure them to drop the job.

And a new way to support the writers: Tell the Networks How You Feel.

What's the proper response to a child that steals two cookies? Can it really be calling the police to issue her a citation?

Police cited a [14-year-old female]Bethlehem middle school student for stealing two cookies worth 50 cents from the cafeteria at the request of one of the student's parents, school officials said today.

True, she was on suspension for having stolen candy from a teacher's desk, and it was her parent who asked the school to call in the police, but this doesn't seem to me to be appropriate intervention.

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As Governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee was pretty good on immigrants' rights. Today, he released his proposed immigration plan, and it's an about-face.

His new immigration plan does not address education, health care or other services provided to illegal immigrants....In addition to building the fence and installing surveillance cameras along the border, and adding law enforcement agents, the plan would, among other things:

• Punish employers who hire illegal immigrants, create a system to verify citizenship and stop the IRS and Social Security Administration from accepting fake Social Security numbers.

• Pass a tax plan, called the FAIR tax, which would eliminate the IRS as well as income, corporate, payroll and other taxes in favor of a 23 percent sales tax. Huckabee said this would credit an economic disincentive for illegal immigration.

• Eliminate the visa lottery system and admission preferences for brothers and sisters of citizens, increase visas for highly skilled and educated applicants and expedite processing for Armed Services members.

• Force illegal immigrants to return to their home countries before they are allowed to apply to return to the U.S.

It also rejects the Mexican consular ID card.

Only two copies of the Magna Carta exist outside Great Britain. One is in Australia and one is in New York. Southby's is auctioning off the New York copy.

In the year 1215, a group of English barons handed King John a document written on parchment. Put your royal seal on this, they said. John did, and forever changed the relationship between the monarchy and those it governed. The document was the Magna Carta, a declaration of human rights that would set some of the guiding principles for democracy as it is known today.

While that original edict was initially ignored and John died the next year, its key ideas were included in other variations over the next few decades, most notably the right of Habeas Corpus, which protects citizens against unlawful imprisonment. More than 800 years later, about 17 copies survive, and one of those, signed by King Edward I in 1297, will go up for sale Dec. 18 at Sotheby's.

Lindsay at Majikthise would really like the New York copy, which is expected to rake in $20 to $30 million. That probably won't happen, but we can all settle for reading it here.

Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) has called for an investigation into the destruction of the CIA interrogation tapes (background here):

Today U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) sent the attached letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey asking him to open an official investigation to determine whether the destruction of CIA interrogation tapes violates the law.

He wrote: "I urge you to investigate whether CIA officials who destroyed these videotapes and withheld information about their existence fiom official proceedings violated the law. . . CIA Director Hayden asserts that the videotapes were destroyed 'in line with the law.' However, it is the Justice Department's role to determine whether the law was violated."

You can read his letter here (pdf). Also check out Marcy (Empty Wheel) and Marty Lederman at Balkanization on Michael Hayden's letter

The battle between Huffington Post and Mike Huckabee is ongoing.

• Round 1: Murray Waas exposes Huckabee in Huffpo.

• Round 2: The Huckabee campaign posts a response by a former aide attacking HuffPo .

• Round 3: Arianna jumps in, defending Huffpo and Waas.

Our contributions (and slightly different take from all of them to date:)

• Huckabee and Wayne Dumond: Interview With Dumond's Attorney

• Mike Huckabee's Tangled Web

Stay tuned, I hear there's more to come.

The German Government has long been opposed to Scientology which it regards as a money-making cult rather than a religion.

Now a large group of German government ministers has declared Scientology "incompatible with the Constitution."

One very controversial component of Scientology is its drug treatment program, Narconon. Tom Cruise, in an interview with Der Speigel quoted here, called it "only successful drug rehabilitation program in the world."

Cruise: I'm a helper. For instance, I myself have helped hundreds of people get off drugs. In Scientology, we have the only successful drug rehabilitation program in the world. It's called Narconon.

SPIEGEL: That's not correct. Yours is never mentioned among the recognized detox programs. Independent experts warn against it because it is rooted in pseudo science.

Cruise: You don't understand what I am saying. It's a statistically proven fact that there is only one successful drug rehabilitation program in the world. Period.

SPIEGEL: With all due respect, we doubt that.

So do many others.

The New York Daily News reports that Judith Nathan received security from the NYPD for months before the affair went public.

Judith Nathan got taxpayer-funded chauffeur services from the NYPD earlier than previously disclosed - even before her affair with then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani was revealed, witnesses and sources tell the Daily News.

"It went on for months before the affair was public," said Lee Degenstein, 52, a retired Smith Barney vice president who formerly lived at 200 E. 94th St., Nathan's old building.

In January, 2001, Bernie Kerik said Judith received protection as a result of a threat in December, 2000. The affair became public in May. Now, the neighbors say she received sporadic protection since early in 2000.

Former neighbors of Nathan's, as well as a law enforcement source, describe a full-scale valet service at Nathan's beck and call well before the affair became public.

The Giuliani campaign now revises its story.

They said Nathan had received previously undisclosed "threats" earlier in 2000, and that protection was provided at those times.

One question: How could she need protection because of a threat before she was a public figure or publicly identified as the Mayor's girlfriend?

The New York Times has learned the CIA destroyed interrogation tapes of two al-Qaeda detainees.

The videotapes showed agency operatives in 2002 subjecting terror suspects — including Abu Zubaydah, the first detainee in C.I.A. custody — to severe interrogation techniques. They were destroyed in part because officers were concerned that tapes documenting controversial interrogation methods could expose agency officials to greater risk of legal jeopardy, several officials said.

Both the Judge in the Moussaoui case and the 9/11 Commission had requested the tapes:

The recordings were not provided to a federal court hearing the case of the terror suspect Zacarias Moussaoui or to the Sept. 11 commission, which had made formal requests to the C.I.A. for transcripts and any other documentary evidence taken from interrogations of agency prisoners.

The C.I.A. confirmed the destruction today when the Times informed the agency it would be publishing an article about the tapes tomorrow.

The CIA defends its actions but destruction of evidence and withholding information about the existence of evidence is a serious no-no. This could be a significant story. [More...]

Former Arkansas Governor and Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee is taking a lot of heat these days over his clemency decisions while Governor -- particularly that of Wayne Dumond. Huckabee's latest statement, released today, is here.

This is a complicated tale. For the facts of the Dumond - Ashley Stevens rape case, and why Huckabee might have had doubts about Dumond's guilt, based on problems with the scientific evidence and Stevens' identification of Dumond, there's no better source than the appellate court opinions on the case. Here are four of them:

• January, 1988
• January, 1989
• September, 1989
• August, 1990

TalkLeft contributor Last Night in Little Rock also known as John Wesley Hall, was Wayne Dumond's post-conviction attorney. In addition to seeking post-conviction relief in the state courts, John represented Dumond in his federal habeas actions, the pre-Huckabee clemency request and in the civil case against Sheriff Coolidge Conlee, who displayed Dumond's castrated testicles on a jar on his desk. John obtained a $150,000.00 verdict for Dumond for the tort of outrage. The Sheriff later died in prison while serving his own 20 year sentence for extortion, gambling and other crimes. (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, 9/26/96, available on Lexis.com)

An interview with John about Dumond's sentence commutation and clemency, the roles of former Lt. Gov. Tucker, Bill Clinton and Mike Huckabee, Dumond's castration and his thoughts on Dumond's original rape conviction, from evidentiary doubts to the sentence disparity, follows:

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake, 12/06/07]

Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive....

Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee is on the ropes after his repeated denials that he recommended parole for Arkansas rapist and murderer Wayne Dumond. For background on the Wayne Dumond case, check out Byron York's article today at the National Review.

It began in September 1984, when Dumond, a 35-year-old handyman, kidnapped and raped a 17-year-old high-school cheerleader in the small eastern-Arkansas town of Forrest City. Dumond was allowed to remain free on bond while awaiting trial, and in March 1985 two masked men entered his house, tied him up with fishing line, and castrated him. People were stunned; the case, already notorious, became much more so. And that was before the local sheriff, a rather colorful man named Coolidge Conlee, displayed Dumond’s severed testicles in a jar of formaldehyde on his desk in the St. Francis County building. Amid tons of publicity, Dumond was found guilty and sentenced to life plus 20 years.

The case took on a political coloring when it became known that the victim was a distant cousin of Bill Clinton. After conviction, Dumond, who claimed he was innocent, asked Clinton for clemency. Clinton declined.

For details about what Huckabee knew about Dumond and when he knew it, see Murray Waas' article at the Huffington Post yesterday. Also, here's a detailed chronology (pdf) of events concerning the case.

York interviewed Huckabee last August about his role in Dumond's release. [More...]