Matt Bai, in the Sunday Times Magazine, writes about the John Edwards campaign:

And yet, even taking that personal ordeal into account, there is something surprisingly arduous, even joyless at times, about Edwards’s second bid for the White House. Modern presidential campaigns tend to be aggressively upbeat and personality-driven; sure, every candidate has his favorite issues, but those issues generally exist mostly to color the candidate’s driving ambition with some shade of higher purpose. Edwards’s campaign feels oddly inverted. There’s no doubt he wants very badly to win, and yet there are times when the entire campaign seems little more than an excuse for him to talk about the issue with which he is now most closely identified: the case for the 37 million Americans living in poverty.

I think Matt Bai should realize that a normal person can feel no real joy with the current state of America.

The story of the moment assures us that the sponsors of the immigration bill, secure in the knowledge that the Decider supports their tireless work, intend to soldier on despite a notable lack of enthusiasm for compromise in the legislature. The more interesting story is the right wingers' continuing separation from their fearless leader.

[T]hey now think they see in Bush the heart of a man who thinks he is morally superior to them even as his own incompetence drags them over a political cliff.

Bush infamously said, on two separate occasions, that opponents of the immigration bill are deliberately trying to "frighten" the public, that they "don't want to do what's right for America," and other calumnies - all while his Cabinet secretaries, former chief speechwriter, and other close allies have called the opponents "bigots," "nativists," "anti-Hispanic," and other insults.

There will always be Bush loyalists, but their numbers are dwindling toward insignificance. Reasonable conservatives abandoned Bush because of his fiscal irresponsibility, his incompetence, or Iraq. His newly-revealed contempt for non-monied conservatives has peeled away more supporters. More Bushies will walk away if Bush doesn't show reciprocal loyalty to the conservative cause by saving Scooter Libby from imprisonment.

Poor George. Do you think his mom still loves him? Do you suppose he cares?

A million thanks to Jason Leopold of Truthout who just sent me a copy of the 103 page Scooter Libby sentencing transcript he purchased from the court reporter.

If a major media outlet doesn't publish it, I'm not going to post the whole thing or share it because this is how court reporters make their money and as a practicing lawyer, I don't want to break any rules.

I will read it late tonight and post pertinent excepts. If there's any part you particularly would like to read, let me know in the comments.

In other Libby news, via How Appealing, Judge Walton is allowing an amicus brief to be filed regarding the appeal bond issue. His order is here (pdf) and Howard says to check out the disparaging footnote.

The amicus brief by law profs is here.

(larger and original version here, via TMZ.com.)

Bump and Update: Paris has been ordered back to jail. Via TMZ.com.

Paris Hilton was just ordered back to jail in Lynwood. Hilton left the courtoom in tears, screaming, "Mom, Mom, Mom."

One witness described the scene as being "physically dragged" out of the courtroom by a female deputy.

Update: The court spokesman says at 12:30 pm PT after the hearing that the Sheriff called the court and asked if he would modify his sentence. The Court told the Sheriff to file the appropriate pleadings and the Sheriff never did. The issue of her medical condition never came up at the hearing because no papers were ever filed about it.

Get ready for the appeal and a fight over whether the appeals court will stay the court's order today pending the outcome. She could be out today if the appeals court stays the order. But nothing will happen before Monday.

More below the fold:

It's all Paris, all the time.

Earlier posts with background and my views here and here.

The judge in the Paris Hilton case flip-flops again. First he says Paris can appear by phone. Then the City Attorney complains and he orders her to come in. They are now waiting for Paris to arrive.

I'm riveted to the tv. I can't stand all the prosecutor heads screaming for blood. All three of the cable networks have them front and center. It's Gladiator Central.

But I'm watching as I'm packing and getting ready to leave town and will try to make to the finish.

Update: Hearing now scheduled for "midday" local time. The Sheriff's van is on its way to Paris' house to pick her up. They are going to do a perp walk? How disgusting. Her bodyguard has umbrellas in hand. The scene at her home is a complete circus. I haven't seen anything like this since the OJ road chase.

Continued updates below the fold.

As TalkLeft argued here, it is ridiculous for the State of Georgia to make Genarlow Wilson serve a minimum of 10 years because, at age 17, he engaged in a consensual act of oral sex with a 15 year old girl. Public outrage caused the Georgia legislature to change the law, but Georgia's courts have refused to apply the change retroactively to save Wilson from an unfair sentence.

Wilson is taking another shot at persuading a court to reduce his sentence by arguing in a habeas petition that 10 years is, under the circumstances, cruel and unusual. The constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual sentences is rarely held to be violated by a sentence that falls within a statutory maximum, but this is an unusual case.

[T]he General Assembly reduced the maximum sentence in such cases from 10 years with no chance of parole to 12 months or less in jail, a highly unusual step in an era when sentences are commonly lengthened, not reduced dramatically.

That almost unprecedented act of contrition by lawmakers ought to persuade the judge that Genarlow Wilson's sentence violates the standards set by the people of Georgia, which the law holds is a critical test of whether a punishment is cruel and unusual.

Georgia resident and former president Jimmy Carter asked Georgia's attorney general to recognize the injustice of Wilson's sentence, but the plea was futile.

More...

Are they stupid or are they lying? Yet again, the pollsters seem incapable of accurately describing the Reid-Feingold framework. Let's remind again what is being proposed - after a date certain, March 31, 2008, the Congress will not fund the Iraq Debacle. How could you ask the American People about this? Here's how:

Would you support a proposal that provides a binding withdrawal date from Iraq by announcing that after March 31, 2008, the war will not be funded?

Because that is the proposal. How does Gallup describe it?

[Would you support a] candidate who supports legislation that would cut off funding for the war in Iraq.

This is obviously an inaccurate description. It implies immediate defunding. And that is a false description. Gallup insists on falsely describing the proposal. The question is why?

Mark Kleiman writes:

I'd propose a simple rule: no one comes in who can't speak, read, and write English. I'm not a hard-core assimilationist . . .

You're not? I suppose Kleiman could argue that since there would be no need for language assimilation under Kleiman's plan. Being one of the wonky bloggers who we're supposed to take seriously, let's consider Kleiman's rationales for this departure from over a hundred years of immigration policy:

[T]he advantages, to immigrants and to the country, of having our citizens-to-be start out literate in the national language — which is also the world business language — seem to me obvious. As Net access becomes more and more nearly universal, so does access to the tools to learn English up to the rudimentary level which is all we ought to ask for. I'm reluctant to discriminate on the basis of social class, but I don't mind using intelligence and drive as filters.

That is some egregiously bad wonkery. Here's why.

When Alberto Gonzales and Andrew Card visited John Ashcroft in a desperate attempt to secure his approval of the president's illegal wiretapping program, the second in command at the Justice Department, James Comey, intervened (as TalkLeft reported here and here). Accompanying Comey on his trip to the hospital was Patrick Philbin, described in this post as (like Comey) having later left the Justice Department "under stressful circumstances."

Adding to Philbin's stress was the knowledge that helping Comey block Gonzales had caused his career to dead-end. According to answers that Comey supplied as a follow-up to his Senate testimony, Vice President Cheney blocked Philbin's promotion.

Mr. Philbin was considered for principal Deputy Solicitor General after Paul Clement became Solicitor General. It was my understanding that the Vice President’s office blocked that appointment.

I understood that someone at the White House communicated to Attorney General Gonzales that the Vice President would oppose the appointment if the Attorney General pursued the matter. The Attorney General chose not to pursue it.

Philbin also participated in Comey's "thumbs down" review of the wiretap program. Comey's written answers are available here.

Paul Krugman writes:

In Tuesday’s Republican presidential debate, Mitt Romney completely misrepresented how we ended up in Iraq. Later, Mike Huckabee mistakenly claimed that it was Ronald Reagan’s birthday. Guess which remark The Washington Post identified as the “gaffe of the night”? Folks, this is serious. If early campaign reporting is any guide, the bad media habits that helped install the worst president ever in the White House haven’t changed a bit.
. . . Asked whether we should have invaded Iraq, Mr. Romney said that war could only have been avoided if Saddam “had opened up his country to I.A.E.A. inspectors, and they’d come in and they’d found that there were no weapons of mass destruction.” He dismissed this as an “unreasonable hypothetical.” Except that Saddam did, in fact, allow inspectors in. Remember Hans Blix? . . .Mr. Romney’s remark should have been the central story in news reports about Tuesday’s debate. But it wasn’t.

I disagree with Krugman in this respect. Rudy Giuliani's false remarks about Iran should have been the central story:

I'm off to Aspen and the 2007 NORML legal seminar where I'll be speaking again on using the internet for free legal research and blogging.

Big Tent Democrat, TChris and hopefully, Last Night in Little Rock, will be posting in my stead.

One of the highlights is that we will again be able to spend Sunday afternoon at Hunter Thompson's Owl Farm. That's in addition to Tommy Chong and Tony Serra and food by Chris of Cache Cache. Not to mention my favorite Sheriff Bob Braudis who will be on scene. (One of Bob's sayings: You neither need a big stick nor a big gun to keep the peace in Aspen. Listen to Jimmy Ibbotson of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band singing Braudis is Our Man, His County Rocks.)

Check out my my videos of last year's Aspen conference and our day at Owl Farm. (My You Tube video of Owl Farm was my first video ever and has generated 23,137 views and been favorited 75 times.)

This year, Hunter's wife, Anita, has invited me to stay at Owl Farm, so that's where I'll be for the weekend. I'm bringing both my camera and video camera. Hopefully, if I haven't forgotten how to use them, when I get back, I'll have some new pix and video for you.

(The hard decision: Whether to sleep in Johnny Depps' bedroom downstairs in the basement or on the main floor. The former was very tempting, but I chose the latter.)

'Tis a privilege to live in Colorado. And yes, this is an open thread.

Congrats to the TL kid who graduates today from Cardozo Law School in New York City. His ambition: to be a public defender.

I never was a public defender, I've only been in private practice. But I've told the TL kid since he was a child that if he wanted to be a trial lawyer, he ought to spend a few years as a public defender, to master the skills of a litigator.

He's listening, and hoping for a job. Congrats, Nic, to a valiant effort and a great accomplishment. And I'm sorry you have spend the summer suffering through bar refresher to take the bar exam, but it's a rite of passage. I know you will do great.

If you have some words of encouragement for him today, I hope you will post them in the comments. TalkLeft is his home page so I know he'll read them.