Barack Obama is speaking today at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. ABC reports in an attempt to "seem more muscular" on foreign policy, he is suggesting we withdraw troops from Iraq but redeploy forces into Afghanistan and Pakistan to hunt down terrorists. From speech excerpts:

There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will."

What's this all about?

[It seems to be] an attempt by Obama to ramp up his campaign to the next phase, where he hopes to seem not only a youthful idealist, but a president who would pursue a muscular foreign policy and protect the United States from terrorist attack.

....In many ways, the speech is counterintuitive; Obama, one of the more liberal candidates in the race, is proposing a geopolitical posture that is more aggressive than that of President Bush.

It could be just me, but I'm not in favor of sending our troops in Iraq anywhere but home to the U.S.

More from Obama's speech:

C-Span 3 is airing the Pat Tillman hearing live. Go here to watch.

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld decided to show after all.

Today, the Oversight and Govt. Reform Cmte. holds a hearing on Army Crpl. Pat Tillman's death by fratricide. Senior Defense Dept. officials describe what they knew about the incident. Witnesses include; Gen. Richard Myers (Ret.), Gen. John Abizaid (Ret.), Gen. Bryan Douglas Brown (Ret.), and fmr. Def. Sec. Donald Rumsfeld.

Feel free to live-blog in the comments if you're watching.

This seems insanity to me:

Under pressure from President Bush, Democratic leaders in Congress are scrambling to pass legislation this week to expand the government’s electronic wiretapping powers. Democratic leaders have expressed a new willingness to work with the White House to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to make it easier for the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on some purely foreign telephone calls and e-mail. Such a step now requires court approval.

How many times can the Dems be rolled on this? I hope the Dems are just kabuki-ing this thing. And there is only one hopeful sign that they are in this article:

One obstacle to a deal this week is a disagreement between Democrats and the White House over how to audit the wiretapping of the foreign-to-foreign calls going through switches in the United States. The Democrats have proposed that the eavesdropping be reviewed by the secret FISA court to make sure that it has not ensnared any Americans. The administration has proposed that the attorney general perform the review, but Democrats are unwilling to give that kind of authority to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, who is under fire for what some lawmakers describe as his misleading testimony about the dismissals of federal prosecutors and the wiretapping program.

(Emphasis supplied.) There is no way that Dems can give in on this point. Trust Gonzales? On anything? Simply insane.

The New York Times today features Joe Trippi, senior campaign advisor to John Edwards, discussing the importance of the internet for Edwards' campaign.

His role has been to help Mr. Edwards find ways to connect his message to the party’s liberal base in a campaign in which the traditional media channels have been clogged with news about Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, his two main Democratic rivals.

“The Internet is the principal way we are communicating with voters right now,” Mrs. Edwards said in an interview.

I think it's the right way to go for Edwards. I read all his campaign e-mails and really appreciate the way he's moved left of center since the Kerry campaign.

Why this race isn't between Hillary and Edwards as opposed to Hillary and Obama has me stumped. I think Obama needs a lot more seasoning and experience before becoming presidential material.

Which leads me to conclude it's still a three-way race and Edwards is very much in it.

In December, 2002, Mullah Habibullah and a man named Dilawar died while being held for interrogation at Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan. Their deaths were ruled homicides, caused by blunt force trauma. In other words, they were beaten to death. I describe their awful deaths here.

The military investigated, brought charges against a dozen or more soldiers. No one was held accountable. Here's an account of what happened in court.

Witnesses say a federal grand jury in Virginia is now investigating the killings.

In interviews over the past week, three soldiers and an officer from an Ohio-based 377th military police reserve company told The Associated Press they were called as witnesses to the federal grand jury in northern Virginia near the Pentagon. The 377th ran the jail at Bagram Air Field.

The men said they had been told the grand jury's targets were no longer in the military. Federal law allows the civilian prosecution of service members who have left the military since the crime occurred, even if military authorities previously have brought charges.

I hope it's not too late for justice for Habibullah and Dilawar. But, judging from what the recently subpoenaed ex-soldiers told the Associated Press, don't count on it. Sounds like the "blue wall of silence" is kicking in:

More...

As we suspected, the Bush leak to the NYTimes on Attorney General Gonzales' trouble with the truth was all a setup for this:

[F]rom the letter: It states, “One particular aspect of these activities and nothing more, was publicly acknowledged by the President and described in December 2005.” . . . That is what Gonzales says was the Terrorist Surveillance Program. . . .

We will repeat this again - that is NOT what the President confirmed:

. . . This is a highly classified program that is crucial to our national security. Its purpose is to detect and prevent terrorist attacks against the United States, our friends and allies. Yesterday the existence of this secret program was revealed in media reports, after being improperly provided to news organizations. . . .

The news report in question revealed that:

In mid-2004, concerns about the program expressed by national security officials, government lawyers and a judge prompted the Bush administration to suspend elements of the program and revamp it. . . . A complaint from Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, the federal judge who oversees the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court, helped spur the suspension, officials said. The judge questioned whether information obtained under the N.S.A. program was being improperly used as the basis for F.I.S.A. wiretap warrant requests from the Justice Department, according to senior government officials.

This is the program President Bush confirmed. The one with internal disputes. The very disputes Gonzales denies existed. More.

To me, the essential problem, and there are many others, but the essential problem with the proposed FISA amendments, is that it would hand to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales more power to obviate the need for court supervision of government surveillance. And that to me, is sheer insanity.

Personally, as long as Alberto Gonzales is the Attorney General of the United States, no sane legislator can support any amendments to FISA that weaken court oversight of a Justice Department run amok. I think it is time for STRONGER court oversight. Call it the Gonzales Amendment.

When politicians talk about “family values,” they rarely mention the importance of family to prisoners. Most inmates will eventually be released. Some will quickly return to crime. Those who have been regularly visited by family members are less likely to recidivate. The importance of family to prisoners should come as no surprise to “family values” advocates, so why don’t they routinely speak out about news like this?

Chronic prison overcrowding has corrections officials in Hawaii and at least seven other states looking increasingly across state lines for scarce prison beds, usually in prisons run by private companies. Facing a court mandate, California last week transferred 40 inmates to Mississippi and has plans for at least 8,000 to be sent out of state. ...

About one-third of Hawaii’s 6,000 state inmates are held in private in Arizona, Oklahoma, Mississippi and Kentucky. Alabama has 1,300 prisoners in Louisiana. About 360 inmates from California, which has one of the nation’s most crowded prison systems, are in Arizona and Tennessee. ...

Paige M. Harrison, a researcher for the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, said the out-of-state inmates faced problems familiar to the large number of in-state prisoners incarcerated hundreds of miles from their homes. A study in 1997 found that more than 60 percent of state inmates were held more than 100 miles from their last place of residence.

Private prisons are a profitable business (one reason why “family values” politicians keep silent about the adverse impact they have on families), but privatization of corrections isn’t conducive to rehabilitation, particularly when the prisons are built far from the prisoner’s home.

More...

Leaving town for five days is always difficult, even more so when it's for a blogging event for which I feel compelled to bring a camera, camcorder, voice recorder, laptop and all the attendant cords, most of which end up staying in my hotel room.

Then there's trying to wrap up all the day job duties, make sure the bills are paid that are due on the first of the month and so on.

So, you're on your own today. All topics welcome.

Update: KingOneEye has a top ten list of media do's and don'ts for those attending YKos.

Update: Myths and Facts About FISA.

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Republicans have been pushing to amend FISA before the August recess. A hearing of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence at which Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell was scheduled to testify today has been canceled.

Yesterday, for the first time, McConnell briefed Sen. Arlen Specter on the NSA program. While Specter hasn't discussed what he learned at the briefing, after it he labeled attempts to impeach or bring perjury charges against Alberto Gonzales "premature."

We need to slow down this train. FISA doesn't need to be gutted or amended. It needs to be followed.

"FISA was enacted to ensure that no president could unilaterally decide who to secretly and indefinitely wiretap under the guise of national security. These bills would allow terrorism to be used as a pretext for undermining our basic Fourth Amendment rights. Congress should not pass the bills which give the president a blank check to violate the rights of innocent Americans."

Congress should just say no to gutting FISA.

Update below: FISA action may not be off the table after all:

Via Stop the Drug War, an employee of the San Francisco Health Department has sent a letter to a marijuana dispensary warning them not to skimp on the amount pot it places in its ounce baggies.

Seems like the dispensary was rounding out an ounce to 28 grams when it's really 28.35 grams. From the letter:

It has come to my attention that some MCD's [medical cannabis dispensaries] are using the incorrect equivalent conversion between grams and ounces. You must use 28.35 grams/ounce, not 28 grams/ounce for all cannabis sold by weight. The law behind this is in the State Business and Professions Code, which is typically enforced by Weights and Measures (State Dept of Agriculture). As they currently are not addressing weights and measures issues regarding cannabis clubs, the City's MCD Inspection Program will enforce this requirement.

Please feel free to share this with any club operator (I do not have email for most operators).

Bottom line: More bud for the buck.

The Anchorage Daily News reports that federal agents are searching the home of Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska.

Keep on truckin', Sen. Stevens.

Sittin' and starin' out of the hotel window.
Got a tip they're gonna kick the door in again
I'd like to get some sleep before I travel,
But if you got a warrant, I guess you're gonna come in.

Update (TL): The Washington Post has more details.