DA Mike Nifong issued an apology to the three vindicated Duke lacrosse players today in court.

A hearing is ongoing as to whether Nifong committed criminal contempt of court. After the apology, the defense lawyers withdrew their request for sanctions.

Contempt of court is an affront to the dignity of the Court. The court is the victim.

The Judge previously found probable cause to believe that Nifong lied to the court at two pretrial hearings.

If convicted, Nifong could be fined and sentenced to up to 30 days in jail. He has resigned as DA and been ordered disbarred.

There has been a kerfuffle about a TNR piece by a soldier in Iraq. The piece apparently describes some alleged atrocities. I have not read the piece as I am not a TNR subscriber. It has been a cause celebre in the Right Blogs. John Cole reports the soldier decided to reveal his true identity.

Memeorandum reports that the Right blogs have been in full bore attack mode against this US soldier fighting in Iraq.

I have no brief for the soldier. I do not even know what he wrote. I do find it ironic that supporting the troops is important for some only to the extent the soldier says what you want him to say.

Matt Yglesias, who knows what this was all about in terms of the soldier's article, writes some good stuff.

Glenn Greenwald writes a great post that delves into how the Media has been the decider of who is "sober and serious" and who is a "wacko." Glenn exposes yet again how little intelligence and information the Media actually possesses and how the "serious and sober" designees are anything but. His discussion of Joe Lieberman's appearance at the insane John Hagee's church and the speech Joe delivered there is required reading.

But I do think Glenn is missing one very important development in this all - it is something I have been talking about a lot this year - the irrelevance of the Media and the Beltway Elite in the shaping of public opinion on the issues of the day. Any reading of public opinion polls demonstrates that the Media pundits and Beltway Gasbags have been utterly tuned out by the American People. From Hiatt to Broder to Ignatius to Brooks to O'Reilly to Klein to whomever you wish to name, their impact on public opinion has dropped to near zero.

They are enraged by this development and they have taken to attacking Democratic leaders like Harry Reid in overt and brutish ways in reaction. But as Reid's letter to Fred Hiatt attests, he is not worried nor is he listening to the Media or the DC Gasbags on this. He has figured it out. They are irrelevant now. How this process has occurred is not entirely clear yet. But I am convinced it is true. See also this post from Markos on "the fair fight." I think the irrelevance of the Beltway Media is central to this development.

A letter:

On reading the July 21 editorial "The Phony Debate," it became clear why The Post's editorial writers have been such eager cheerleaders for the Bush administration's flawed Iraq policies -- the two share the same disregard for the facts en route to drawing dubious conclusions.

The editorial was an inaccurate commentary on the nature of the Senate debate, the reality in Iraq and the president's stubborn adherence to failed policies.

Your editorial wrongly asserted that "a large majority of senators from both parties favor a shift in the U.S. mission." While a majority of the Senate voted again last week for a plan that would keep U.S. forces in Iraq for counterterrorism and troop protection and launch a diplomatic effort to help stabilize the region, Democrats were joined by only a handful of courageous Republicans -- far from a majority of Republicans and not enough to break the Republican leadership's filibuster. And if the president truly supports changing course, as your editorial implied, he needs to do much more than tell us "it's a position I'd like to see us in" -- he must drop his irresponsible veto threats and tell Republican leaders to stop blocking votes on proposals to carry out this change.

Finally, it was disingenuous to assert that Democrats are using Iraq to stir voters' passions; the American people are sufficiently disappointed on their own. Three-quarters of Americans recognize that the war is going badly, three out of five support further funding only if it includes a timetable for transitioning the mission, and nearly all expect their president to work with Congress to do something to change course.

HARRY REID

U.S. Senator (D-Nev.)

Washington

Jack Balkin returns to the issue of originalism and why progressives should embrace it:

Doug Kendall and Jim Ryan's essay in the New Republic makes the eminently sensible point that progressives should stop viewing originalism as the enemy just because they have come to associate it with people they disagree with politically. Instead, they should recognize that originalism is the right approach for progressives as well as conservatives . . .

It's important to remember that before Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, there was Hugo Black, one of the great liberal defenders of the Bill of Rights, who made originalist arguments for the positions he took. Originalism is not the interpretive philosophy of stand patters. It is the philosophy of people who want to restore and redeem the Constitution's promises in a world where they have been forgotten or disrespected. . . . If liberals think that the current generation of conservative judges have hijacked the Constitution and twisted its meaning, they shouldn't respond by callling for a counter-hijacking. Rather they should follow the example of Hugo Black. They should call for a return to first principles, to the best interpretation of the Constitution's original meaning and underlying values. They should be originalists once again.

Many progressive scholars avoid these conclusions because they know that life is change. They are worried that originalism means giving up the idea of a living constitution-- a constitution that adapts to changing times. Nothing could be further from the truth, as I have explained here and here. Properly understood, fidelity to original meaning and living constitutionalism are not opposed positions. They are two sides of the same coin.

Indeed. I have agreed with Professor Balkin on this point for a while, most notably here.

Josh Marshall has a, to me, very inadequate post this evening on what to do about the Bush Administration:

Without going into all the specifics, I think we are now moving into a situation where the White House, on various fronts, is openly ignoring the constitution, acting as though not just the law but the constitution itself, which is the fundamental law from which all the statutes gain their force and legitimacy, doesn't apply to them.

If that is allowed to continue, the defiance will congeal into precedent. And the whole structure of our system of government will be permanently changed.

Whether because of prudence and pragmatism or mere intellectual inertia, I still have the same opinion on the big question: impeachment. But I think we're moving on to dangerous ground right now, more so than some of us realize. And I'm less sure now under these circumstances that operating by rules of 'normal politics' is justifiable or acquits us of our duty to our country.

It is so frustrating to me when smart people like Josh (he's a Brown grad too, snark) just up and ignore the remedies that the Congress has available to it. Now it just so happens that I favor impeachment of Gonzales but do not favor impeaching the President.

But I do favor the Congress using its many powers - the Spending Power, the inherent contempt power - in nontraditional ways to check the Bush Administration's behavior. Why does Josh throw up his hands instead of urging the Congress to use the power it clearly can apply - on Iraq, on Gonzales, on just about everything.

More.

Let's hope Dick Cheney and Alberto Gonzales won't find inspiration in Malaysia's threat to use anti-terrorism laws to censor bloggers who insult the Malaysian government.

The move comes as one of Malaysia's leading online commentators has been questioned by police following a complaint by the main governing party. The new rules would allow a suspect to be detained indefinitely, without being charged or put on trial.

Sound familiar? Malaysian double-speak is reminiscent of the nonsense we hear from the American right.

[O]fficials insist the law is not intended to strangle internet freedom.

No, the law is intended to strangle dissent.

From the AP:

Documents show that eight congressional leaders were briefed about the Bush administration's terrorist surveillance program on the eve of its expiration in 2004, contradicting sworn Senate testimony this week by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

The documents, obtained by The Associated Press, come as senators consider whether a perjury investigation should be opened into conflicting accounts about the program and a dramatic March 2004 confrontation leading up to its potentially illegal reauthorization. A Gonzales spokesman maintained Wednesday that the attorney general stands by his testimony.

At a heated Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday, Gonzales repeatedly testified that the issue at hand was not about the terrorist surveillance program, which allowed the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on suspects in the United States without receiving court approval.

. . . A four-page memo from the national intelligence director's office shows that the White House briefing with the eight lawmakers on March 10, 2004, was about the terror surveillance program, or TSP. The memo, dated May 17, 2006, and addressed to then-House Speaker Dennis Hastert, details "the classification of the dates, locations, and names of members of Congress who attended briefings on the Terrorist Surveillance Program," wrote then-Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte.

It looks more and more like a Special Prosecutor is in order.

Ed Morrisey writes a very perplexing post that seems utterly incorrect to me. He says:

Tony Snow rather forcefully responded to this development, calling it a singular event in American history, where the legislative branch will direct the executive branch -- in the form of the federal prosecutor -- to file contempt charges against itself.

Of course this is NOT a singular event as anyone who has read the CRS report would know. Indeed, the curent White House counsel Fred Fielding was involved in the most recent of these in the 1982 Burford matter, when the Reagan White House caved in to the Congress when faced with a contempt citation. I suspect there is a strong possibility the White House will cave in again. Wonder what Ed will think then. More.

"Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio?" - Paul Simon

With a cloud of steroids hanging over Barry Bonds as he is poised to break Hank Aaron's home run record, with Michael Vick indicted for dog fighting, with NBA ref Tim Donaghy implicated in a gambling scandal, sports seems to be at a new low. It goes lower today in France:

Tour de France leader Michael Rasmussen was removed from the race by his team after winning Wednesday's stage, the biggest blow yet in cycling's doping-tainted premier event. "Michael Rasmussen has been sent home for violating (the team's) internal rules," Rabobank team spokesman Jacob Bergsma told The Associated Press by phone.

Can the Tour survive this? I suppose it will but where have all the sports heroes gone? It is like the entirety of sport is suffering a BlackSox scandal. Say it ain't so Joe.