I've got early court today, leaving at 7:30 a.m. Big Tent Democrat is taking a few weeks off and won't be posting much. So, I hope you'll all contribute some comments.

Check out my post on Mike Huckabee and Wayne Dumond over at Firedoglake, Mike Huckabee's Tangled Web.

I'll be back at some point today.

Update: Stop back this afternoon if you'd like to read an interview with LNIR, John Wesley Hall, Wayne Dumond's attorney, about the case, Huckabee, Tucker and Clinton. I have some final edits to do before I post it.

Prison Nation sets another record:

About one in every 31 adults in the United States was in prison, in jail or on supervised release at the end of last year, the Department of Justice reported yesterday. An estimated 2.38 million people were incarcerated in state and federal facilities, an increase of 2.8 percent over 2005, while a record 5 million people were on parole or probation, an increase of 1.8 percent.

The racial disparity that TalkLeft highlighted in this story is confirmed by the statistics:

In several states, incarceration rates for blacks were more than 10 times the rate of whites. In Iowa, for example, blacks were imprisoned at 13.6 times the rate of whites, according to an analysis of the data by the Sentencing Project, a research and advocacy group.

A California judge today sentenced Kiefer Sutherland to 48 days in jail on his 4th D.U.I. arrest. It wasn't a surprise, since that's what his plea agreement called for.

He asked to start serving the sentence immediately and will be at the Glendale City Jail.

He must serve all 48 days in jail. Under the terms of his plea, he also must serve 60 months probation, pay a $510 fine, enroll in an 18-month alcohol-education class and attend weekly alcohol-therapy sessions for six months, [Asst. City Attorney]Jeffries said.

A new ABC News poll shows Hillary Clinton leading in New Hampshire.

Hillary Clinton is holding off Barack Obama in New Hampshire with a single-digit but seemingly solid lead, scoring more committed and enthusiastic support, higher trust to handle pressing issues and broad margins on leadership, experience and electability.

The chart and numbers are here. (pdf).

Among likely voters in the Democratic primary, Clinton has 35 percent support, Obama 29 percent, John Edwards 17 percent and Bill Richardson 10 percent, with others in the low single digits.

As to why Hillary's support is considered "solid" and "more reliable":

Among those who've definitely decided on their candidate, she leads Obama by a wide 43-28 percent; and among the most enthusiastic likely voters she leads him by 45-24 percent.

Hillary also leads on six of the seven issues polled and has the largest advantage on health care.

A federal judge has ruled the DNC can exclude Florida delegates from the convention as a penalty for moving up their primary date.

[U.S. District Court] Judge Robert Hinkle said that political parties have a First Amendment right to set their own rules and enforce them. The national party did that, which means that Florida will not have a say in picking the Democratic nominee.

Florida's set its primary for January 29 even though the rules don't allow them before February 5, so as to maintain the importance of the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries. Two other states, Nevada and South Carolina, are also allowed early primaries "to add geographic and racial and ethnic diversity."

The Justice Policy Institute has a new report "The Vortex: The Concentrated Racial Impact of Drug Imprisonment and the Characteristics of Punitive Counties," on the racial disparity in the imprisonment of drug offenders.

The report confirms that African Americans are imprisoned in far greater numbers than whites.

Of 175,000 people sent to prison for drugs nationwide in 2002, over half were black, though blacks are 13 percent of the population.

It found no relationship between rates at which people are sent to prison for drug offenses and the rates at which people use drugs. The study said 9.2 percent of blacks use illegal drugs, compared with 8.1 percent of whites.

More....

Remember Wisconsin "political prisoner" Georgia Thompson, whose conviction was reversed by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals drawing questions about the U.S. Attorney's handling of the case?

The State Claims Board has ordered the state to repay her $228,000 in costs and legal fees.

She was wrongfully imprisoned for four months.

Chad Heins, aqe 33, imprisoned for 14 years for a rape and murder he did not commit, has been freed from prison in Florida. He is the ninth DNA exoneration in Florida and the 210th DNA exoneration nationwide. The Florida Innocence Project says:

On Tuesday December 4, 2007, at the Fourth Judicial Circuit Court in Jacksonville, Florida, the Fourth Circuit State Attorney officially dropped the murder and attempted rape charges against Chad Heins in light of results of DNA testing which conclusively prove his innocence. After fourteen years of enduring the torture of wrongful incarceration and the humiliation of being convicted of murdering his sister-in-law, Tina Heins, Chad Heins gained his freedom in time to return to his family in Wisconsin for Christmas.

More...

The Firedoglake bloglift is continuing. Marcy Wheeler (Empty Wheel) and TBogg have moved their blogs to FDL. Update your bookmarks:

• Empty Wheel
• TBogg

A Tennessee jury has found Michael Lee McCormick not guilty following a retrial of his murder case. McCormick spent 15 years on death row.

Update: C-Span 3 is stream and playing the audio of the hearing now (11:44 am ET). The AP now has a report, Justices Grill Detainees' Lawyer, on how the arguments went.

The Supreme Court today is hearing oral arguments in the consolidated cases of Boumediene v. Bush and Al Odah v. U.S., 06-1196 regarding the rights of Guantanamo detainees to challenge the legality of their confinement in federal courts.

Lawyers for the foreign detainees contend the courts must step in to rein in the White House and Congress, which changed the law to keep the detainee cases out of U.S. courts after earlier Supreme Court rulings. The most recent legislation, last year's Military Commissions Act, strips federal courts of their ability to hear detainee cases.

Solicitor General Paul Clement, representing the administration, said foreigners captured and held outside the United States "have no constitutional rights to petition our courts for a writ of habeas corpus," a judicial determination of the legality of detention.

The Court may have to determine whether Guantanamo Bay in Cuba is really on U.S. soil. [More...]

Paul Krugman notes the radical departure by his fellow Timesperson Kit Seelye from the "Dems claim world is round, GOP disagrees" reporting. Seelye has decided to opine in a news article that Obama is right and Edwards and Clinton are wrong on health care mandates. Krugman writes:

I have a lot of problems with this Kit Seelye piece. It’s kind of weird that the usual “both sides may have a point” reporting gave way to a clear declaration that one side is right — precisely on an issue where many, many health experts believe that Obama is wrong, and that mandates are both feasible and essential.

I have no idea what the right answer is here, but I feel confident Kit Seelye does not either. I know that people like Krugman and Jon Cohn believe Edwards and Clinton are right (see also this),. And I trust them more than I do Kit Seelye, who relies on a person who works for the conservative AEI and an Obama spokesman.

As I said, I have no knowledge n this subject, but the reporting on this complex and debated subject by Seelye is clearly poor. Krugman points to this WSJ article for some good reporting on the subject. It is obvious that the WSJ report by Laurie Meckler is superior to Seelye's work. But Seelye has proven to be a poor reporter for quite some time.