31 year old attorney and tuberculosis patient Andrew Speaker is now in Denver at National Jewish Hospital. His life for the forseeable future won't be pleasant.

He'll likely spend several weeks in a drab hospital room with a high-tech vent and an ultraviolet light that kills bacteria as it is sucked out of the room. His only view of the outdoors will be the wall of a building, a patch of grass, and some patio tables and chairs on the ground below. He will be allowed to have visitors, but they must wear face masks, doctors said.

....Normally, patients with similar diagnoses — Speaker is believed to have a low level of TB in his system — would be allowed to leave the room while in the hospital. But doctors plan to keep him in the room for the immediate future until they can preform more tests, officials said.

Sounds like jail.

So the Third Way's Scott Winship is still hung up on labels:

The biggest issue folks had with my last post was with my claim that the country tilts right of center. Since I indicated yesterday that I'd defend that claim today—yes, I realize that I didn't provide much evidence yesterday—and since I'm intending this post to be an example of the kind of evidence-based argumentation that I have in mind, let's get this party started.

Winship's proof? why self-indentification polls of course. Well, I self identify myself as a Centrist. Who disagrees with me on that? Let's face it, labels mean nothing as to what people believe on specific issues and that really is the point isn't it? Winship mentions Paul Waldman's argument on the issue (which, for those who care, I am looking at you my good friend Ed Kilgore, is the whole point of the Politics of Contrast - make folks deal with the actual stances of the two parties) and promises, eventually, to actually bring some facts to his argument for "empiricism." About time Scott. For a guy arguing for fact-based empiricism, you sure are taking your sweet time bringing some actual facts to the table.

Via digby, President Bush inspiring confidence:

[T]here is not much real give in the administration's policies. . . . [B]y all reports, President Bush is more convinced than ever of his righteousness. Friends of his from Texas were shocked recently to find him nearly wild-eyed, thumping himself on the chest three times while he repeated "I am the president!" He also made it clear he was setting Iraq up so his successor could not get out of "our country's destiny."

Oh gawd.

Via Glenn Greenwald, the latest Beltway hearthrob - the Hollywood actor/former lobbyist Fred Thompson - describes how he would have dealt with Iraq:

This is what Thompson said last month when interviewed by Chris Wallace on Fox News:

WALLACE: What would you do now in Iraq?

THOMPSON: I would do essentially what the president's doing.

Ok. If you like George Bush's Iraq Debacle, then Fred Thompson is your man, or at least one of them. Because all of the leading GOP Presidential candidates say the same thing.

I'll be out the rest of the afternoon and we haven't had an open thread yet this week. So here you go.

The criminal law world has been awaiting the Supreme Court decision in U.S. v. Claiborne and U.S. v. Rita, which address unresolved questions from the Booker case (argued in the Supreme Court by TalkLeft contributor TChris) which ruled the federal sentencing guidelines are no longer mandatory.

The issue in the Claiborne case is whether a sentence below the guideline range must be justified by extraordinary circumstances. Scotus Blog reports:

The case of Claiborne v. U.S. (docket 06-5618) was heard by the Court on Feb. 20, along with a second Guidelines case (Rita v. U.S., 06-5754). The cases were heard in tandem because they both test what sentence under the Guideline may be treated as "reasonable" when challenged on appeal. The Clairborne appeal asks whether a sentence below the Guideline range is presumed to be reasonable, while the Rita case asks whether a sentence within a Guideline range is presumed to be reasonable.

But today the Public Defender's office representing Claiborne confirmed he was shot to death in Saint Louis in recent days.

So what happens to his case?

More...

Judge Reggie Walton ruled today that following Scooter "I. Lewis" Libby's sentencing, he will release the more than 150 sentencing letters received in the case, both those asking for leniency and those asking for a harsh sentence.

The order is here (pdf).

Personal information such as home addresses and phone numbers will be redacted from the letters.

The Judge gave Libby's lawyers a little wiggle room. If they think additional personal information should be redacted from specific letters, they have until June 4 to identify that information in an ex parte submission to the court. The Judge says that he will only consider those further redactions that contain "plainly sensitive or confidential" information.

There's a sentence in the Order that indicates to me the Judge thinks the charges Libby was convicted of are quite serious. He writes that the number of letters received are indicative not only of the high public interest in the case but "of the weightiness of the underlying charges."

Team Libby can't be happy with that sentence.

Update: Marcy weighs in.

or so say the usual suspects.

Atrios has been all over this and there is no need to rehash the obvious.

I mean how many times will the Beltway Gasbags trot this bromide out?

The question that remains for the autumn is what the Republicans will do. Their congressional members voted almost unanimously to give the president financing long enough to sustain the current offensive. . . . But just below the surface, the GOP ground is beginning to shift. . . . Mitch McConnell, the supremely realistic Senate Republican leader, told reporters that "the handwriting is on the wall that we are going in a different direction in the fall, and I expect the president to lead it."

The problem is the President says he has changed course:

Last November, the American people said they were frustrated and wanted a change in our strategy in Iraq . . . . I listened. Today, General David Petraeus is carrying out a strategy that is dramatically different from our previous course.

One more time Charlie Brown?

Jason Leopold interviews fired New Mexico U.S. Attorney David Iglesias. You can read and watch here.

He fingers Harriet Miers and Karl Rove or others in the West Wing of the White House as being responsible for the firing list.

He advocates James Comey or someone like him to replace Alberto Gonzales.

He explains his role in the Office of Special Counsel investigation. They have subpoena power. He did not approach them, they approached him.

They were mostly interested in Hatch Act issues. He says Pat Rogers pressured him to file "bogus" voter fraud cases.

There's no smoking gun but he believes one exists:

More...

In some states, employees have only 180 days after a discriminatory act (a termination based on race, for instance) to file a claim under Title VII. In the rest of the states, employees have only 300 days. Those ridiculously short deadlines became even more burdensome after the Supreme Court decided this week to reject the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission's long-standing belief that claims based on discriminatory pay arise with each discriminatory paycheck. According to the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision, the discrimination occurs when the level of pay is first set, not when each subsequent check is received.

As the NY Times editorializes today, the majority "forced an unreasonable reading on the law, and tossed aside longstanding precedents to rule in favor of an Alabama employer that had underpaid a female employee for years." The decision makes it almost impossible to bring a disparate pay claim, since employees rarely know what other employees are making at the time their pay is set.

Congress should amend Title VII, both by making clear that discrimination in pay is a continuing act, and by lengthening the period for filing all discrimination cases.

Only in America, folks. Like Cookie Jill at Skippy, I'm at a loss for words:

Previously, a soldier who lost a limb almost automatically received a quick discharge, a disability check and an appointment with the Veterans Administration.

But since the start of the Iraq war, the military has begun holding on to amputees, treating them in rehab programs like the one here at Fort Sam Houston and promising to help them return to active duty if that is what they want.

"The mindset of our Army has changed, to the extent that we realize the importance of all our soldiers and what they can contribute to our Army. Someone who loses a limb is still a very valuable asset," said Lt. Col. Kevin Arata, a spokesman for the Army's Human Resources Command at the Pentagon.

They aren't just returning to desk jobs.

More...

Think Progress reports that Karl Rove's buddy Tim Griffin, at the heart of the U.S. Attorney firing scandal, has resigned as acting U.S. Attorney for Arkansas.

There's great speculation he will join Fred Thompson's presidential campaign.

This isn't a big surprise. He announced in February he wouldn't accept the permanent U.S. Attorney position. One of the reasons was Sen. Mark Pryor's opposition to him.

Raw Story has Sen. Mark Pryor's statement on Griffin's resignation.