In April, 2007, Rep. Henry Waxman, Chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, wrote this letter (pdf) to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales about the missing RNC e-mails.

[RNC Counsel Rob] Kelner's briefing raised particular concerns about Karl Rove, who according to press reports used his RNC account for 95% of his communications. According to Mr. Kelner, although the hold started in August 2004, the RNC does not have any e-mails prior to 2005 for Mr. Rove. Mr. Kelner did not give any explanation for the e-mails missing from Mr. Rove's account, but he did acknowledge that one possible explanation is that Mr. Rove personally deleted his e-mails from the RNC server.

Mr. Kelner also explained that starting in 2005, the RNC began to treat Mr. Rove's emails in a special fashion. At some point in 2005, the RNC commenced an automatic archive policy for Mr. Rove, but not for any other White House officials. According to Mr. Kelner, this archive policy removed Mr. Rove's ability to personally delete his e-mails from the RNC server.

Mr. Kelner did not provide many details about why this special policy was adopted for Mr. Rove. But he did indicate that one factor was the presence of investigative or discovery requests or other legal concerns. It was unclear from Mr. Kelner's briefing whether the special archiving policy for Mr. Rove was consistently in effect after 2005.

The Committee's investigation page is here (pdf). Susan Ralston's 2007 deposition is here.

Jason at Truthout writes today about the RNC's claim for executive privilege. Also see Scribe's diary from April about possible implications for Rove.

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Link:

Four suicide bombers hit a Kurdish Yazidi community in northwest Iraq on Tuesday, killing at least 175 people and wounding 200 others, the Iraqi military said.

The bombs tore through communities near Qahataniya, 75 miles west of Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, according to Iraq Army Capt. Mohammed Ahmed and Abdul-Rahman al-Shimiri, the top government official in the area.

The attack was the deadliest in Iraq since 215 people were killed Nov. 23 when mortar rounds and five car bombs devastated a Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City. Dhakil Qassim, mayor of Sinjar, a town near where the attacks occurred, said al-Qaida in Iraq was behind the attack, citing what he said were Kurdish government intelligence reports.

Bob Ney aide Will Heaton is set for sentencing in federal court on Thursday. The Boston Globe today reports he wore a wire to nab Ney and is proud to have done so.

Will Heaton let FBI agents record his telephone calls and taped a 2 1/2-hour meeting with Ney. He leaked documents and worked late into the night and on weekends to avoid arousing suspicion that he was working with the government.

"The moment I walked into my first meeting with the Justice Department, a huge weight was lifted off my chest," Heaton wrote in a letter to US District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle. "For the first time in years I felt at peace with myself and I knew I was finally making the right choice."

As to Heaton's misconduct:

Heaton pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy. He admitted accepting a golf trip to Scotland, expensive meals, and tickets to sporting events between 2002 and 2004 as payoffs for helping clients of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Heaton faces up to five years in prison. His guidelines are 18 to 24 months but he's asking for probation due to how hard he worked for the FBI.

I'd like to say Bill Richardson is refreshing for his willingness to admit when he screws up. First, at the Yearly Kos debate, he admitted he "screwed up" in saying we need more Supreme Court Justices like Byron White.

Today, he says he "screwed up" in saying at the GLBT debate that gays choose their sexual orientation.

I made a mistake. I screwed up," he said, acknowledging that the gay blogosphere is upset with him. "[The blogs] went nuts saying, you know, that I literally was a moron and that I didn't understand their struggle," he said.

But, his screw-ups are on big issues. What would happen if he were President and had the opportunity to act before someone pointed out his screw-ups to him?

Richardson says he's not running for VP but won't say he won't accept the nomination.

I also wonder whether Richardson is ready for prime-time. From today's article:

Richardson, who supports civil unions, was asked if he would veto a gay marriage bill because he believed in his heart that same-sex marriage is wrong. He replied, "I don't want to get into that. I thought you guys were going to ask me about other stuff. Don't you care about other stuff?"

He needs some media training, and fast.

In September, General David Petraeus will report to Congress that we are making real progress in Iraq and that Surge is producing evidence of success but that, of course, the jury is still out and that "it is up to the Iraqis." And Petraeus will cite evidence like this, via John Cole. But John's cite to Michael Ware makes those politicians, Republican and Democrat who buy this line, vulnerable at the end of that F.U., in March 2008:

What the U.S. troops are doing is giving a set of numbers, a series of data, a number of lowered attack figures that may give the military the political cover it needs in Washington. But at the end of the day, by cutting these deals the seeds are being sown for a much broader, more entrenched civil war that America will leave behind.

Will America be leaving it behind? Not before November 2008 if Bush and Petraeus have their way. There is something politicans always seem to forget - that elections are on Election Day. Worrying about polls or how something looks more than a year before the election is just plain stupid politics. Why do they never consider how something is going to look on Election Day. Mark my words, those pols. GOP or Dem, who support continung the Iraq Debacle on Petraeus' say so in September 2007, will pay a steep price in November 2008.

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.

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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.

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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.