While we're on the topic of the Patriot Act today, the L.A. Times reports that the Justice Department may begin using one of its rarely noted provisions -- one that gives the Attorney General the power to shorten the time period within which state death row inmates can file federal appeals of their death sentences. New regulations have been proposed to implement the power.

The rules implement a little-noticed provision in last year's reauthorization of the Patriot Act that gives the attorney general the power to decide whether individual states are providing adequate counsel for defendants in death penalty cases. The authority has been held by federal judges.

Under the rules now being prepared, if a state requested it and Gonzales agreed, prosecutors could use "fast track" procedures that could shave years off the time that a death row inmate has to appeal to the federal courts after conviction in a state court.

As for what the new regulations provide:

The procedures would cut to six months, nstead of a year, the time that death row inmates have to file federal appeals once their cases have been resolved in the state courts.

It would also impose strict guidelines on federal judges for deciding such inmates' petitions. Federal district judges would have 450 days, appeals courts 120 days.

If it weren't so serious, this line would make me laugh: "Proponents say that would prevent foot-dragging by liberal judges."

As if that's the problem given the number of wrongfully convicted people on death row, those denied adequate counsel and DNA testing at the state level, and a host of other constitutional guarantees.

It was bad enough that AEDPA limited habeas appeals to one year. This is even worse.

Update: The ACS blog has more.

Via Instapundit, a case of the federal government using "sneak and peek" search warrants in a Tennessee cockfighting case with no connection to terrorism.

The Patriot Act expanded the government's ability to use sneak and peek (delayed notice) warrants.

“This is one of the few provisions of the Patriot Act that was sneaked into the Patriot Act in the middle of the night so that no one knew it was there,” said Michelle Richardson, a legislative consultant for the ACLU’s Washington, D.C., Legislative Office. “It was passed without everyone knowing about it.”

Prior to the Patriot Act, she said, federal courts had held that agents could conduct secret searches and defer notifying the targets for short periods of time in very limited circumstances, such as when someone’s life might be in danger.

More....

Peter Baker in the Washington Post quotes Karl Rove :

About a year and a half ago, it became apparent talking to my family that there are things happening, that it was time to go."

Marcy at Empty Wheel has been cataloguing the remaining investigations that could land Rove in hot soup and notes, "we have no clear denial that Rove is leaving because the investigations into his activities may soon bear fruit."

About a year and a half ago puts us at January - March, 2006. Rove had already skirted PlameGate. There was no U.S. Attorney firing investigation going on then, or congressional investigations into politicizing federal agencies. Investigation into missing e-mails weren't that big a deal.

Rove and his wife live in Washington, not Texas. I don't think they own a house in Texas any more, although I think they own one in Florida. They have one child who is off at college. Leaving now to spend more time with the family unless someone in the family is very ill doesn't ring true. We haven't heard about any severe illness.

What Rove did have a year and a half ago, that would worry any family, were big time legal bills from PlameGate. Now that Rove is facing congressional and other inquiries on so many fronts, the U.S. Attorney firing scandal, the improper use of federal agencies for lobbying activities, the RNC E-mails and even the continuation of the Abramoff investigation and possible troubles via former aide Susan Ralston, his legal bills can only be mounting. And his lawyer, Robert Luskin, doesn't come cheap.

More...

I used to think I was a liberal hawk. After all, I considered the Soviet Union an Evil Empire, believe that the US involvement in Vietnam was defensible though ultimately a strategic mistake, strongly supported Desert Storm and the war against the Taliban and Al Qaida in Aghanistan and agree with Barack Obama that if the US has actionable intelligence about Al Qaida in Pakistan, the US should strike if Pakistan will not. That's pretty hawkish you must admit.

But Glenn Greenwald disabuses me of this notion:

[T]here is virtually no debate within the foreign policy establishment about whether the U.S. has the right to continue to intervene and attack and invade and occupy other countries in the absence of those countries attacking us. . . . [I]t is an implicit, unexamined belief among our foreign policy elites that the U.S. is entitled, more or less, to use military force even in the absence of being attacked or threatened with attack.

When the heck did this happen? Even Iraq was sold as a "growing and gathering threat." And that was the big debate about preventive vs. preemptive war. The idea of preemptive war is one launched in the face of an imminent threat. General Wes Clark explained it well in 2002:

A new poll by the American Research Group has Hillary Clinton continuing to lead by big margins in the Democratic primary race. Note how Obama has fallen ten points, from 31% to 21% from March, 2007 to now.

Edwards is up a point. And Hillary's support among women is up to 42%.

Update 8/15:: Hillary's lead over Obama is also widening in New Hampshire, according to the latest Rasmussen poll.

The report by the Commission of Inquiry into the Actions of Canadian Officials in Relation to Maher Arar has been released (pdf.)

This was one of the more telling disclosures:

In October 2002, (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) officials knew that the United States might have sent Mr. Arar to a country where he could be questioned in a "firm manner." In a report to his superiors dated October 11, 2002, the CSIS security liaison officer (SLO) in Washington spoke of a trend they had noticed lately that when the CIA or FBI cannot legally hold a terrorist suspect, or wish a target questioned in a firm manner, they have them rendered to countries willing to fullfull that role. He said Mr. Arar was a case in point.

Spencer Ackerman at TPMMuckraker has more. Some background is here. While Canada awarded Mr. Arar $9 million in damages and issued a public apology, the U.S. has kept him on the terror watch list.

All of TalkLeft's Maher Arar coverage is accessible here.

Luck has run out for former Adelphia execs John Rigas and his son Timothy. Three years after being found guilty of fraud, they reported today to federal prison in Butner, N.C. to begin serving their 15 and 20 year respective sentences.

While they didn't get their choice of prison locale, they were allowed to serve their sentences at the same institution.

John Rigas is 83 years old and suffers from bladder cancer. It's a death sentence for him, just like it is for Bernie Ebbers who got 25 years.

America. Prison Nation. It's just sick.

James Ujaama was one of the early terrorism suspects who took a deal to avoid a big jail sentence. I followed his case extensively at the time because he was arrested in Denver.

The Government initially alleged he scouted for terror camp locations in Bly, Oregon. He ended up pleading guilty only to providing cash, computers and fighters to the Taliban, in exchange for his cooperation against others. He was sentenced to two years, about one of which had been served in pre-trial detention. He's been on supervised release since 2004.

The Government was counting on Ujaama to testify at the trial of London cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri.

Ujaama, it seems, got cold feet and split to Belize using a fake Mexican passport.

On Friday, the Judge in Seattle where he pleaded guilty in 2003 revoked his plea deal. Today, in federal court in Manhattan, he pleaded guilty to the original terrorism charges lodged against him and now faces up to 30 years when sentenced.

On a related note, I still think that Condi Rice confused Ghost detainee Khaled el-Masri (also spelled al-Masri, a German shoe salesman) with the London Cleric and only ordered his release after the cleric al-Masri was arrested. By then, el-Masri had been in jail for five months.

Among the more curious details of the mix-up, if there was one: al-Masri the cleric, has one eye and a hook for hands. You would think someone would have noticed the difference between him and Khaled el-Masri before five months went by.

Alberto Gonzales, fresh from his trip to Iraq, is headed to....Harbor Springs, MI.

He'll be conducting a press conference and meeting there with "Michigan's Twelve Sovereign Indian Nations Leaders to discuss efforts to combat violent crime in Indian Country."

A skeptic might say they don't want Gonzales in Washington or anywhere near the Justice Department.

The Government gave its closing argument today in the terrorism trial of Jose Padilla. The AP reports intent is key.

Was Padilla the "star recruit" of a terrorism support cell run by Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi whose ultimate goal was violent establishment of fundamentalist Islamic regimes around the world, as prosecutors claim?

Or did Hassoun and Jayyousi intend to provide relief and charity for innocent Muslims suffering in global conflict zones? And was Padilla simply an American who had recently converted to Islam and traveled overseas not for terrorism but to learn Arabic and the Quran?

The lawyer for one of the three defendants, Adham Amin Hassoun, also gave his closing today:

But Hassoun attorney Kenneth Swartz said in the first of three defense closing statements that "this case is all about speculation. It is not about proof of a crime. There is no intent to murder. The only intent is to provide relief."

Lawyers for Kifah Wael Jayyousi and Jose Padilla will close tomorrow. More on today's defense closing is here.

The Christian Science Monitor takes a long look at the case in tomorrow's paper. It says

Despite warnings, officials used 43 months of severe isolation to force Jose Padilla to tell all he knew about Al Qaeda.

Peter Boyer, exposed here as clueless by mcjoan, misses the significance of one of the bigger pieces of news in his New Yorker story (see Jeralyn's post on the article):

Among those smiling appreciatively at Giuliani’s remarks was retired Rear Admiral William L. Schachte, seated several rows back. Schachte gained notoriety in 2004 as a key figure in the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign against John Kerry. Schachte had been Kerry’s commanding officer in Vietnam and, in August, 2004, declared that he was on Kerry’s boat the night Kerry saw combat action that brought him his first Purple Heart. Schachte asserted that Kerry had not encountered enemy fire that night. (Kerry and two of the men who served with him have said that Schachte wasn’t on the boat.)

Rudy has eagerly accepted the support of lying skunk SwiftBoater Schachte. Before I asked, how low will Rudy go? The bottom has not been found yet.

This piece of news DOES make this, via Sargent, Newsweek article very ironic.

Some of Dick Cheney's neighbors are unhappy to have him vacationing in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in part because it's just annoying.

Since his arrival here earlier this week, Cheney has come under fire from locals complaining about black helicopters, presumably part of the vice president’s security detail, flying overhead and disturbing their peace.

The helicopters may be keeping an eye on protesters who, unlike the vice president, have a sense of humor.

During the pre-march rally, a towering effigy of the vice president, carrying a fishing pole and squirting oil derrick, and smaller bust of President Bush, with red devil’s horns, was unveiled to hoots, hollers and other expressions of approval prior to performances by musicians and speakers. ...

Upon rolling the wobbly, 11-foot tall effigy over a mile to the front gate of Cheney’s residence, shouting protesters waved anti-war signs at passing and honking motorists, as U.S. Secret Service officers sitting in a black truck and sheriff’s deputies looked on, while Stanford hung a lasso around the effigy’s neck.

To the chants of “No more war,” Stanford, Spence and others toppled the Cheney effigy a second time, knocking the head off as it smashed into the pavement. The delighted crowd applauded and hollered in mock victory as a man draped in a white beach towel, waving an American flag, kicked the effigy’s head toward the busy street.

During the early days of the Iraq war, American soldiers and Iraqis memorably toppled a statue of Saddam Hussein that had stood in Baghdad.