If you've always wanted to work for the FBI but had a little problem because you couldn't swear you never smoked pot or tried other controlled substances, relief is at hand.

Old guidelines barred FBI employment to anyone who had used marijuana more than 15 times in their lives or who had tried other illegal narcotics more than five times.

But those strict numbers no longer apply. Applicants for jobs such as analysts, programmers or special agents must still swear that they have not used any illegal substances recently -- three years for marijuana and 10 years for other drugs -- but they are no longer ruled out of consideration because of more frequent drug use in the past.

The explanation is that the FBI has to face reality.

But FBI officials say the move is simply an acknowledgment of reality in a country where, according to some estimates, up to a third of the population has tried marijuana at some point.

Turns out the intelligence agencies and law enforcement communities relaxed their standards some time ago.

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Just the other day I was complaining that a New York Times editorial opposing the death penalty referred to an investigative article by its reporter Adam Liptak that was behind its "Times Select" wall and how the wall prevented the excellent article from getting out. I wouldn't link to it because people couldn't read it without paying.

The New York Post reports today the Times is ending the "Times Select" wall and all of its content will be free.

Smart move.

I'm angry but not surprised that the Democrats propelled the FISA Amendment to passage this past weekend. Matt Stoller today has the response from the ACLU to his post yesterday accusing it of dropping the ball. They didn't of course. It was the Democratic leadership who not only dropped the ball, but picked it up and ran with it. The ACLU writes to Matt:

We met with Pelosi and with Reid -- we spoke with the staff from every leadership office. They did not listen to us. It was dem leadership who scheduled the vote on these particular bills. Why be mad at us and not at them? We met with them. They rebuffed our arguments.

We weren't notified that the bill was moving until 6 days before when Rep. Harman let it slip on Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer. We gave it the full court press: with action alerts, meetings with Members of Congress and Senators and their staff.

Pelosi and friends spent the entire week negotiating with the DNI and cut out ALL the civil liberties groups - not just the ACLU.

The Democrats have pulled this before, including the last-minute wrangling right before the August recess. Their reason then, like now, was that they were afraid of appearing soft of crime and terrorism.

Let's take a walk back to 1996.

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There has been a fair amount of talk about the demise of the DLC of late. Ed Kilgore's take, cited by Joe Klein, whose column was all wrong on the subject, is a good one. But Ed ignores the political problem with the DLC - its incessant attack on Democratic partisanship. Today in WaPo, DLC Chairman Harold Ford, Jr. co-authors a column that exemplifies precisely what is wrong with the DLC philosophy. Instead of arguing for Democratic ideas, Ford and Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley falsely portray Democrats as out of the mainstream:

With President Bush and the Republican Party on the rocks, many Democrats think the 2008 election will be, to borrow a favorite GOP phrase, a cakewalk. Some liberals are so confident about Democratic prospects that they contend the centrism that vaulted Democrats to victory in the 1990s no longer matters.

The temptation to ignore the vital center is nothing new. Every four years, in the heat of the nominating process, liberals and conservatives alike dream of a world in which swing voters don't exist. Some on the left would love to pretend that groups such as the Democratic Leadership Council, the party's leading centrist voice, aren't needed anymore.

But for Democrats, taking the center for granted next year would be a greater mistake than ever before. . . . With an ambitious common-sense agenda, the progressive center has a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to win back the White House, expand its margins in Congress and build a political and governing majority that could last a generation.

What in blazes are they talking about? On what issue is any Democrat arguing for ignoring swing voters? Why does the DLC insist on negatively caricaturing the progressive BASE of the Party? This is precisely why no one wants the DLC anymore. It is not their stands on any particular issue. It is their insistence on bashing the Democratic Party. The simple truth is a Democratic organization can not be based on espousing anti-Democratic principles an dbeing anti-Democratic Party. And that is what the DLC chooses to be. That is why it is obsolete. More.

Here we go again. Like clockwork, at least once a year, someone starts a dust-up about whether the blogosphere has enough women bloggers.

The Washington Post started the latest one with its assertion that Yearly Kos seemed dominated by white middle age males. Could have fooled me and I was there.

Jane at Firedoglake responds.

I have nothing much to add except to reiterate what I wrote in 2005, I am Woman, Hear Me Blog?

Maybe it's just me, but I am much more attuned to whether the blogger or opinionator has a voice I agree with and find readable, than whether s/he is male or female. There's only so many hours in the day, and I just don't spend many of them reading blogs and columnists who are going to make my blood pressure rise.

I saw an equal number of females and males over the four days at Yearly Kos and almost everyone seemed younger than me. It didn't matter to me one way or the other. I'd also point out that many of those who attended Yearly Kos were not bloggers at all but employees of progressive organizations, media outlets and candidates who were able to attend because their employers (or their campaigns) paid for it.

As for site demographics which also seem to be a topic around the blogosphere today, here are the latest for TalkLeft, from the recently completed Blogads Reader Survey:

Matt Stoller pens a diary that I find troubling and a vicious cheap shot at the ACLU:

Why did this bill happen suddenly this week, with little warning? Why did it create a situation where activists had basically no time to act? Where was the communications breakdown? I've hinted before at the rank incompetence of Anthony Romero's ACLU. . . . We saw that their narrow legalistic strategy failed here (as it often does). The ACLU should have been coordinating with the liberal House leadership on bills like this, giving outsiders weeks of notice so organizing can actually happen. We may not have been able to stop the bill, but at least we as a movement could have fought the fight. That this did not happen suggests an immense and unforgivable incompetence at the ACLU.

Excuse me Matt. Anything and everything I learned about the bill, and I started writing in the short term about this two weekends ago, came from the ACLU. In particular, Rachel Perrone was very helpful and proactive. The failure of the blogs and the self-appointed leaders of the Netroots this year has been abject and complete. From Iraq to FISA. How about looking at our own pathetic performance this year before we start casting stones.

It takes some nerve for a failing Netroots to go potshotting like this. Let's look in our mirrors first.

Thanks to Talking Points Memo for posting video of big portions of Hillary Clinton's breakout session -- including one of the two questions I got to ask her -- "How is your attorney general going to be different than Alberto Gonzales?" My question starts at 1:40 into the clip.

The other question I asked her was about warrantless electronic surveillance. I asked her if she were President, what kind of warrantless monitoring procedures would she authorize and what kind would she refuse to authorize? I haven't seen a clip of her answer to that anywhere yet.

Reportedly, there were 350 people who chose to attend Hillary's breakout session over those of the other candidates. That's 1/4 of those who attended Yearly Kos. I think any notion that Hillary was not enthusiastically welcomed at Yearly Kos is wrong. I thought she excelled during the breakout. As you can see from the entirety of the clip (not just my portion) she was cheered throughout.
As Newsweek reported, "The audience lapped it up."

Peter Daou, Hillary's online communications director, gives thanks here to Yearly Kos and those who attended.

Responding to Senator Barack Obama's statement that he would attack Al Qaida in Pakistan if Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf would not, Republican Presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani said he would seek permission from Mussarraf to attack Al Qaida in Pakistan. Rudy said:

We should seek [Pakistan's] permission if we ever have to take action there . . .

And if Musharraf says no? Bush joins the party

Jane Mayer in The New Yorker Magazine today exposes the torturous interrogation practices the C.I.A. used on its prize detainee, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, during his not-so secret stay in an overseas prison.

Author Jane Mayer, on the CBS Evening News, said:

"The Red Cross went in and got to interview these people for the first time," said Mayer on the CBS Evening News. "What these people described was hanging from the ceilings by their arms and being water-boarded, partially drowned, put on leashes and knocked into walls and basically deprived of all kinds of sensory imagery for years."

The article also puts the lie to President Bush's continuous insistence that the U.S. does not engage in torture.

Mayer's article further described the CIA program of physical and psychological abuse as completely regimented and deliberate.

"There have always been mistakes made in the past when prisoners have been abused in wars," Mayer told Mitchell. "But this is the first time it's been done on purpose."

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Remember the dyslexic Missouri doctor who botched the drug dosages in dozens of executions?

The New York Times today opines on the practice of states like Missouri that "hood the executioner."

Missouri's ultimate response was to pass a law protecting the identity of the doctor administering the drugs and his ability to practice medicine even if he screws up:

Last month, however, Missouri’s governor signed a law that makes it a crime to reveal the identities of current or former executioners — as The St. Louis Post-Dispatch did in the case of the doctor who claimed dyslexia. It allows executioners to sue those who expose them and forbids medical licensing boards to punish doctors or nurses who participate in executions.

As the Times says,

Under the new secrecy law, Missouri’s capital punishment system may plunge deeper into incompetence and cruelty, and it will be harder for citizens to stop it.

Bottom line:

We oppose capital punishment for a host of reasons, including that it is unconstitutional. Even those who support executing their citizens must see the need to ensure that the process is not barbarically cruel and is fully open to public scrutiny.

One quibble with the Times. It cites Adam Liptak's recent articles on lethal injection. If the Times is serious about exposing the injustice of lethal injections, it ought to take Liptak's articles out from behind its "Times Select" firewall so everyone can read them.

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It's a done deal. President Bush today signed the FISA Amendment into law. Law Prof Jack Balkin justly blames the Democrats.

Following up on Big Tent Democrat's analysis of the FISA bill, I have a few thoughts and additional links. First, thanks to Balkanization for posting the link to the FISA bill. It's S. 1927 (pdf).

As Marty Lederman noted,

The key to understanding the FISA bill is that it will categorically exclude from FISA's requirements any and all "surveillance directed at a person reasonably believed to be located outside of the United States," even if the surveillance occurs in the U.S.; even if the surveillance has nothing whatsoever to do with Al Qaeda, terrorism or crime; and, most importantly, even if the surveillance picks up communications of U.S. persons here in the States -- indeed, even if the surveillance is in part designed to intercept U.S. communications, so long as it is also "directed at" someone overseas.

....The amendment means, I think, that as far as statutory law is concerned, all of our international phone calls and e-mails can be surveilled, without exception, as long as the surveillance is in some sense "directed at" a person overseas.

Among those who sued over the warrantless NSA program were U.S. lawyers representing clients charged with terror offenses. At the time the suit was brought, lawyer Nancy Hollander, one of the plaintiffs, wrote:

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Jesse Spielman, a 23 year old Army private, was sentenced to 110 years yesterday for his part in the rape and murder of an Iraqi teenager and killing of her family members.

Spielman will be eligible for parole in ten years. The case was filed as a capital murder case, making the death penalty possible. Private Steven Green, believed to be the ringleader, will be tried in federal court where the Government is likely to seek the death penalty.

Spielman was convicted Friday of rape, conspiracy to commit rape, housebreaking with intent to rape and four counts of felony murder.

Military prosecutors did not say Spielman took part in the rape or murders but alleged that he went to the house knowing what the others intended to do and served as a lookout.

This was the ugliest singular atrocity I can remember coming out of the Iraq War. LNILR wrote it should have been considered a war crime.

The AP reported that the Army knew that Green had homicidal tendencies. The killings may have been the reason for the the June, 2006 kidnappings and beheadings of U.S. soldiers in Yousifiya. Shorter version of the crime:

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