Update: Here are my photos of President Clinton taken this afternoon in Boulder.

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I may have a touch of the Norman Hsu political groupie syndrome. While I didn't bundle any money to attend, I'm off to see Bill Clinton at a Hillary fundraiser in Boulder -- even though it means I have to drive 60 miles afterwards to see a client in jail.

Here's an open thread.

I'll leave you with a quote from Judge Mukasey contained from an article, New York's Federal Judges Protest Sentencing Procedures (The New York Times December 8, 2003, available on Lexis.com) about the Feeney Amendment that raised criminal sentences, limited the ability of Judges to impose downward departures and imposed a reporting requirement on judges who granted downward departures. The report was to be submitted by the Chief Judge and made available to members of Congress.

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The ACLU has filed a "friend of court" brief with the Minnesota Court considering Sen. Larry Craig's motion to withdraw his guilty plea over his bathroom sting arrest. You can read the brief here. The ACLU says (press release will be available here later today):

“The real motive behind secret sting operations like the one that resulted in Senator Craig’s arrest is not to stop people from inappropriate activity. It is to make as many arrests as possible – arrests that sometimes unconstitutionally trap innocent people,” said Anthony Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU. “If the police really want to stop people from having sex in public bathrooms, they should put up a sign banning sex in the restroom and send in a uniformed officer to patrol periodically. That works.”

After noting that Sen. Craig has not always been a friend to civil liberties, the ACLU says that doesn't matter and explains its legal reasoning:

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Update: Here is the text of President Bush's nomination of Judge Mukasey this morning and Judge Mukasey's acceptance.

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White House sources said Sunday night Michael Mukasey has accepted President Bush's offer to be our next Attorney General.

What's up with Sen. Charles Schumer? First he touts Mukasey to Bush for both the Supreme Court and the Attorney General's position, and now he's promising a tough confirmation hearing and saying Judge Mukasey only has "potential" to be a consensus nominee?

Schumer said Mukasey will face questions about "important and sensitive issues," such as the controversy over the Bush administration's warrantless electronic surveillance program and the appointments of U.S. attorneys. But he said the former judge "has the potential to become a consensus nominee."

Maybe he should have ascertained the Judge's positions on these issues before he recommended him for the job.

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Hillary Clinton's proposed health care plan is being released today.

Like John Edwards and unlike Obama, her plan will call for mandatory insurance for all Americans.

It will be much more streamlined and less complicated than the plan she introduced while Bill Clinton was President.

For those who are already insured and happy with their plans, there won't be any required changes.

Insurers will be required to provide insurance to everyone regardless of pre-existing conditions.

The plan will provide tax subsidies to individuals and small businesses to help pay for health insurance. Part of the cost will be covered by rolling back some of Bush's tax cuts to those earning more than $250,000 a year.

Yes! The Sopranos gets its due and wins the Emmy for Best Drama Series.

But what was up with the censors? They were way too fast on the trigger. Sally Field did not deserve to get censored. Here's the video [Via Think Progress.]

After giving a tribute to the mothers of soldiers in harm's way, she said "If mothers ruled the world, there wouldn't be any god -" [cut]. The sentence uncensored: "If mothers ruled the world, there wouldn't be god-damned wars in the first place."

Congrats also to Jon Stewart and the Daily Show for winning the award for Best Variety, Music or Comedy Series and Al Gore, whose Current TV won an award for Creative Achievement in Interactive TV.

Overall, though tonight's Emmy Awards were terrible.

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Bump and Update: OJ is being held without bond until tomorrow. His lawyer, Yale Galanter of Florida, responds:

"Obviously we intend to fight these charges vigorously. We believe it is an extremely defensible case based on conflicting witness statements, flip-flopping by witnesses and witnesses making deals with the government to flip," he said.

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Original Post: OJ Simpson Arrested

From AP:

O.J. Simpson was arrested Sunday on charges related to an armed robbery involving sport memorabilia, police said. Simpson was arrested shortly after 11 a.m. and is being brought to a police office, Capt. James Dillon said. Police are still determining charges against Simpson.

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Via Kos:

“We are going to bring an end to this war and I will fight hard in the United States Senate to make sure we don’t pass any funding bill that does not have a deadline,” Obama told the crowd.

Big props to Senator Obama. Hurrah!

AP reports:

President Bush has settled on Michael B. Mukasey, a retired federal judge from New York, to replace Alberto Gonzales as attorney general and will announce his selection Monday, a person familiar with the president's decision said Sunday evening.
Mukasey, who has handled terrorist cases in the U.S. legal system for more than a decade, would become the nation's top law enforcement officer if confirmed by the Senate. Mukasey has the support of some key Democrats, and it appeared Bush was trying to avoid a bruising confirmation battle.

See Jeralyn's detailed reporting on Mukasey.

I've already got a full day's worth of blog posts up. Time to let you take over, while I head outdoors.

Check out the recent diaries and don't forget to hit the "recommend" button for those you like.

• Randinho in Coming to America - Two Tales and Two Methods on a terrible recent immigration death in the desert.

• Michael Gass has several, his latest is The Bush Middle East Oil Gambit.

• Scribe has a diary, If I Were President.

If you'd like to write a diary on TalkLeft, whether as cross-posts or new material, here's the basics.

Virginia is the only state in the Union that allows the taking of DNA for certain violent felonies. On Friday, the Virginia Supreme Court upheld the suspicionless taking of DNA from a rape suspect in 2003 that linked him to a 1991 "cold case" rape.

The Virginia Court of Appeals upheld the conviction in 2006, and the Virginia Supreme Court, finding the taking of DNA no different than fingerprinting, upheld the suspicionless and probable cause-less taking of the same that linked the defendant to the 1991 rape. Anderson v. Commonwealth, 2007 Va. LEXIS 115 (September 14, 2007).

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[Photo via CelebStoner]

Keith Stroup probably regards his arrest yesterday at a Boston marijuana reform rally as a badge of honor.

While delivering a speech at yesterday's Freedom Rally, he announced:

"Eight hundred thousand people were arrested last year for marijuana. Every 41 seconds someone gets arrested for marijuana. I got arrested a couple of hours ago right here."

In all, there were 60 arrests. Those arrested received "Class D" tickets. Even with bad weather, 5,000 attended the event.

I missed this before, but Howie Kurtz, who often takes his cues from the right wing, talked about it this morning on CNN. The producer of the infamous "Path to 9/11" has a conspiracy theory:

"Whatever anyone may think about me or this movie, this is a bad precedent, a dangerous precedent, to allow a movie to be buried," added Nowrasteh, who received death threats even before the miniseries was broadcast last September. "Because the next time they'll go after another movie. The Bush administration may go after a movie. The next administration may go after a movie. No matter who it is, they may go after a movie. I think this town needs to stand up."

Stand up for an atrocious, unfair and inaccurate work presented as factual? Nowrasteh has an ally:

This isn't about politics, said film director Oliver Stone, but about the right of artists to have their work distributed. "This is a shame; it's censorship in the most blatant way," said Stone, who has hired Nowrasteh for several writing projects. "I'm not vouching for its accuracy -- it's a dramatization -- but it's an important work and needs to be seen."

It deserved to be scorned and was as it was a piece of fiction passed as fact. It was on ABC for 2 nights. There are a lot of "works" that were much more deserving to be seen than that "work." I think ABC should sell it back to Nowrasteh though so he can sell it through the usual right wing channels.