Just when you thought it was over, the Senate today voted to review the immigration bill. Debate is beginning now on dozens of amendments. You can watch it on C-Span here.

Prediction: The compromises will dilute the value of the bill to nothing. The path to citizenship is already is too onerous. Family reunification principles are already devalued. Concessions to Republicans are likely to make it worse.

The bill is S 1639, which you can view on THOMAS by typing the bill number in the search box.

There is one bi-partisan amendment that I favor and the Bush Administration opposes:

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Today is June Action Day (background here) on Capitol Hill. Thousands gathered in support of bills introduced to restore the right to habeas corpus, close Guantanamo and fix the broken military commissions system.

A hearing on the bills begins at 2:00 pm (ET).

From the ACLU (received by e-mail):

Over eighty organizations, led by the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International USA, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, and the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, came together to organize a rally and lobby visits to Congress. In addition to the rally, attendees at the Day of Action to Restore Law & Justice delivered over 250,000 petition signatures to Washington lawmakers, urging them to:

1. Restore habeas corpus and due process.
2. Pass the Restoring the Constitution Act of 2007.
3. End torture and abuse in secret prisons.
4. Stop extraordinary rendition: secretly kidnapping people and sending them to countries that torture.
5. Close the detention center at Guantánamo Bay and give those held currently access to justice.

Christy at Firedoglake provides the phone numbers for you to call. Today is the day to make yourself heard.

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Man, Richard Cohen really is clueless. He is predicting that Democrats will lose the 2008 Presidential election because they want to end the Iraq Debacle. I kid you not.

Antiwar Democrats in key primary and caucus states, particularly New Hampshire and Iowa, will not vote for a lukewarm antiwar candidate. This explains why Clinton recently reversed herself and voted to end funding for the war. The one Democratic presidential candidate from the Senate who did not was Joseph Biden. He said he opposed the war but saw no choice but to fund the troops. Precisely right, Joe. But more than right, prescient as well. As if to suggest what an issue this will become, Rudolph Giuliani called Clinton and Obama's vote a "significant flip-flop." Since then the Republicans have mostly trained their fire on each other. You can bet, though, that if either candidate gets the nomination, this vote will be hung around Clinton or Obama's neck, and the hoariest of cliches will be trotted out: weak on defense. It will have added resonance for Clinton because she is a woman.

Cohen thinks the GOP will win in 2008 like Nixon won in 1972, by attacking Dems for opposing a war. Cohen is a fool. More.

The government is obliged to treat the life-threatening medical conditions of its prisoners, including illegal immigrants who are held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Yet Homeland Security "has resisted efforts by the American Bar Association to turn [detention] standards into regulations, saying that rulemaking would reduce the agency's flexibility." This is the same agency that wanted the "flexibility" to fire, demote, and transfer its employees at will, without the civil service protections that safeguard against arbitrary employment decisions.

"Flexibility" is a code word for "freedom from oversight." In the detainee context, here's what the department's trumpeted flexibility brings:

The inspector general in the Department of Homeland Security recently announced a “special review” of two deaths, including that of a Korean woman at a privately run detention center in Albuquerque. Fellow detainees told a lawyer that the woman, Young Sook Kim, had pleaded for medical care for weeks, but received scant attention until her eyes yellowed and she stopped eating. Ms. Kim died of pancreatic cancer in federal custody on Sept. 11, 2005, a day after she was taken to a hospital.

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Paris Hilton looks none the worse for the wear of three weeks in jail. As TMZ notes, she looks....refreshed.

I don't think the news will be all Paris, all the time tonight. ABC and NBC decided not to do exclusive post-jail interviews after unconfirmed reports that the networks would pay big bucks for the rights to photos from the Hilton family. Instead, Larry King Live will get the "honors."

As for the length of her sentence, as the LA Times reports:

An examination by The Times of seven years worth of sentencing data showed that Hilton's 23-day jail stay was more than five times the average than served since 2002 by those serving time for similar charges.

Meanwhile, the allegations against the City Attorney who asked for her jail sentence and his wife (who drove with a suspended license and no insurance but avoided jail even after being in an accident) continue raise questions about "fairness and hypocrisy" in the LA criminal justice system:

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When I first heard about Lugar's "groundbreaking" speech on Iraq, I wrote:

I suspect that come September, Lugar will join the August group of Warner, Hagel and Smith and speak about change but go along with Bush.

I was wrong. It didn't take until September. Via Yglesias, Lugar has ALREADY said he is not changing his vote on Iraq:

However, [Lugar spokesman Andy] Fisher said the speech does not mean Lugar would switch his vote on the war or embrace Democratic measures setting a deadline for troop withdrawals.

What a joke.

Tomorrow at 2:00 pm ET, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties Oversight will hold a hearing on Habeas Corpus and Detentions at Guantanamo Bay.

Morris D. Davis is the chief prosecutor in the Defense Department’s Office of Military Commissions. In the New York Times today, he provides what he believes to be a vigorous defense of the commission procedures.

Let's take a look at his arguments, which in my view, by their omissions, amount to misreprsentations:

Many critics disapprove of the potential admissibility of evidence obtained by coercion and hearsay. Any statement by a person whose freedom is restrained by someone in a position of authority can be viewed as the product of some degree of coercion. Deciding how far is too far is the challenge. I make the final decision on the evidence the prosecution will introduce. The defense may challenge this evidence and the military judge decides whether it is admitted. If it is admitted, both sides can argue how much weight, if any, the evidence deserves. If a conviction results, the accused has the assistance of counsel in four stages of post-trial appellate review. These are clearly robust safeguards.

After arguing in favor of the hearsay standard used at the tribunals, he concludes:

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Last month, I wrote about Sen. Tom Harkin's bill to close Guantanamo within 120 days of passage. The ACLU has more on the bill, the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility Closure Act - S. 1469.

I will be interviewing Sen. Harkin today by telephone at 4:45 ET. (Update: Sen. Harkin has to reschedule for later this week due to negotiations on the immigration bill.) If you have some questions or thoughts about the bill, please put them in the comments.

It may take me a day or two to write up the interview, so please check back.

The text of the bill is here.

As to the bill's specifics:

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In a much vaunted speech, Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN), ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relation Committee, has broken ranks with the Bush Iraq policy. However, I see a fundamental flaw in what Lugar says that leaves us pretty much where we were. Lugar said:

The current debate on Iraq in Washington has not been conducive to a thoughtful revision of our Iraq policy. Our debate is being driven by partisan political calculations and understandable fatigue with bad news — including deaths and injuries to Americans. We have been debating and voting on whether to fund American troops in Iraq and whether to place conditions on such funding. We have contemplated in great detail whether Iraqi success in achieving certain benchmarks should determine whether funding is approved or whether a withdrawal should commence. I would observe that none of this debate addresses our vital interests any more than they are addressed by an unquestioned devotion to an ill-defined strategy of “staying the course” in Iraq.

President Bush will not countenance any straying from staying his course. There is a reason why NOT funding the Iraq Debacle is our only hope. Because President Bush will not budge. I have heard many pretty speeches from Republicans, including the much lauded John Warner, on how we must change course. But each and every one of these Republicans has failed to confront Bush and demand binding timelines for troop withdrawal. I suspect that come September, Lugar will join the August group of Warner, Hagel and Smith and speak about change but go along with Bush. I for one, will not be fooled again. Democrats must insist on a truly binding withdrawal date from Iraq - by not funding the Debacle after a date certain.

One of the "issues," and what a sad commentary on our political discourse, has been what is the right kind of "wealthy" for a Presidential candidate. Michael Bloomberg set the hearts of the Broderists aflutter and one of his main claims to fame is being, well, a billionaire. This is not seen as a problem for Bloomberg. Indeed, absent being a billionaire, Blooomberg would not even be discussed.

John Edwards, on the other hand, is by comparison, only modestly rich, with his net worth estimated at somewhere between 35 and 50 million dollars. What is the difference? I wonder how much of it is revealed in this Matt Yglesias post about Edwards' supposedly "tacky" mansion in North Carolina (I've never seen an image of the house so I have no opinion on its "tackiness" Update [2007-6-25 22:55:34 by Big Tent Democrat]: Alien Abductee brought us this link to images of the Edwards "compound":

I read Jay Cost's argument that John Edwards is an amateurish politician. It turns out to focus heavily on criticizing him for building such an enormous house. I know there's a pretty widespread sentiment that this huge house will be politically damaging, but that seems like a mistake to me. The basic reality is that Edwards is a rich man, and there's no hiding that -- big house or small house. Edwards' giant house, however, is not just expensive -- it's tacky. Its tackiness, however, perfectly reflects Edwards' working class roots and his whole "son of a millworker" narrative. I would never in a million years build a house like that no matter how much money I had, but that's because I'm a snob and nobody would ever vote for me.

This reminds me of no one so much as Bill Clinton circa 1992 and during his Presidency. The Washington Establishment never liked the Clintons because, as far as I could see, they were nouveau powerful and, in the minds of the Beltway, tacky. Sort of like they feel about the blogs. More.

Tomorrow is a big day in Washington, courtesy of the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International (USA), the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and the National Religious Campaign Against Torture. More information is available here.

Thousands of Americans are storming Capitol Hill to participate in a 'Day of Action to Restore Law and Justice' to rally and then call on Congress to restore habeas corpus, fix the Military Commissions Act, end torture and rendition and restore our constitutional rights. Activists from all fifty states will gather at Upper Senate Park on June 26, 2007 and deliver over 170,000 signatures to Congress, urging the restoration of our rights.

The point:

For nearly seven years, the Bush administration has torn down our fundamental rights and freedoms - from the suspension of habeas corpus and due process, to acts of torture, CIA kidnappings and secret prison programs. And on June 26, the American people will stand up in Washington, and demand those rights and freedoms be restored.

The rally is from 11:30 AM to 1:00 PM, at Upper Senate Park (Constitution Ave. between New Jersey and Delaware Avenues, NE), Washington, DC.

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People For the American Way reminds us what not stopping the confirmation of Samuel Alito to the Court has done so far:

Understanding the Alito Effect PFAW Experts Ready to Discuss the Supreme Court’s Dangerous Lurch to the Far Right

Since George W. Bush’s two nominees to the Supreme Court have taken their places on the bench, the Court has veered sharply to the right, with a series of crucial cases being decided by identical 5-4 majorities. These cases reveal a troubling future for Americans’ rights and liberties. For example, just this term:

· In Carhart v. Gonzales, the Court upheld a federal law banning an abortion procedure without any exception to protect a woman’s health,

· In Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co., the Court severely limited the ability of victims of pay discrimination under Title VII to obtain compensation for the discrimination, ruling that employers couldn’t be held accountable for discrimination that occurred outside the 180-day charging period.

· In Bowles v. Russell the Court held that a person who trusted and relied on an order from a federal district court judge giving him 17 days to file a legal appeal was nonetheless prohibited from appealing because the judge had given him the wrong deadline -- overturning prior rulings under which it could have allowed the person to appeal because of the "unique circumstances" of the case.

· In Hein v. Freedom from Religion Foundation, the Court held that taxpayers cannot bring a lawsuit challenging Executive Branch spending as an unconstitutional promotion of religion when the expenditures have been made out of general appropriations to the Executive Branch.

And consider what further damage is to come.