Atrios reports on his discussions on the Sam Seder Show today regarding Iraq and the 2008 race:

Just finished chatting with Ellen Ratner and Lawrence O'Donnell on Seder's show. O'Donnell's under the impression that a year from now the Republican candidate for president will be against the war, or at least talking about getting out of it. I disagree, as I don't think there's any way they can climb out of the rhetorical trap they've placed them selves in (surrender dates, defeatocrats, have to fight them there, etc...) given that George W. Bush won't provide them with an opening for that. O'Donnell's comparison point was Nixon in 1968 . .

I think Nixon in 1968 is an apt comparison, to the Democratic Presidential candidates. You see, I don't expect whomever is elected President to end the Iraq Debacle for many years after 2008. After all, who wants to run for reelection having "lost Iraq?"

Of course they are ridiculous to fear being labelled as having lost Iraq, but fear it they will. They all fear what the Beltway Gasbags will say.

Here's one more reason to shake your head in disgust at the beleaguered Texas Youth Commission:

The agency that runs Texas' juvenile prison system said it will release 226 inmates after a review found their sentences were improperly extended. Advocates for Texas Youth Commission inmates and their families have complained that sentences are often extended inconsistently or in retaliation for filing grievances.

Jay Kimbrough, who is heading an investigation into allegations of physical and sexual abuse at the agency's facilities, formed a panel to review the records of nearly all inmates with extended sentences. The six-member panel, which included community activists and prosecutors, reviewed the cases of 1,027 inmates.

CNN reports the U.S. says seven soldiers were killed in Iraq yesterday, six by roadside bombs.

The Times Online has a feature article today saying time is running out on the two clocks running in Iraq -- the clock to beat the insurgents and the clock on the U.S. public's willingness to put up with Bush and his war.

Australian detainee David Hicks was flown back to Australia yesterday on a chartered jet.

He will serve 7 months in an Australian prison and then be freed.

The Australian Government says it will not enforce the ban on Hicks telling his story when his sentence ends in December -- he just won't be allowed to profit from it.

Australia was being mum on the details of the flight, no John Mark Karr moments disclosed of champagne and gourmet food -- but it did leak that the movie he watched was "The Departed."

Professor Jack Balkin has a fascinating post discussing Bruce Ackerman's theory of Constitutional moments, hos own theory of Constitutional change by partisan entrenchment and the possible Constitutional referendum of 2008. Balkin writes:

Both we [Balkin and his co-theorist Sanford Levinson] and Ackerman agree that if the public keeps returning a party to the White House, eventually this will result in changes in constitutional doctrine. For Ackerman, however, something more is needed-- a self-conscious mobilization on the part of the electorate demanding a constitutional transformation. Our explanation of the New Deal transformation is that the public kept reelecting Franklin Roosevelt to the White House and Democrats to the Senate, so that Roosevelt was able to replace eight Justices by the time the Court decided United States v. Darby and Wickard v. Filburn. If you keep returning the same party to the White House over and over again, eventually you are going to get significant changes in constitutional doctrine. Ackerman agrees, but argues that what was crucial was that the American public in the 1936 election self consciously sought and approved of constitutional transformation.

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The Washington Post re-invents former Attorney General John Ashcroft, casting him as a protector of civil liberties in comparison to Alberto Gonzales.

Who are they kidding? John Ashcroft may have had a moment on his hospital sick bed in which he balked at re-authorizing the warrantless NSA surveillance program, and he may have expressed reservations about indefinite detentions at Guantanamo, but he was just as abominable as an Attorney General, and in my opinion, more so than Alberto Gonzales.

From his push on the Patriot Act, to his initiating warrantless monitoring of attorney-client conversations, to his many failed terrorism cases, his connection to Abu Ghraib, his insistence on prosecuting medical marijuana cases even in states that had legalized it, his attempt to keep tabs on federal judges, his belief that the undocumented could be held indefinitely and most spectacularly, his crusade to increase the use of the death penalty in federal cases, over the objections of his own prosectors and a federal judge, he should not be re-evaluated for his one moment of lucidity.

He was the worst Attorney General ever.

A blast from the past: The criticisms of Senators at his confirmation hearings.

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The New York Times has an editorial today, "Their Master's Voice" about Bush's loyalty to his yes-men.

It’s a familiar pattern: Mr. Bush sticks by his most trusted aides no matter how evident it is — even to the Republican Congressional chorus — that they are guilty of incompetence, bad judgment, malfeasance or all three. (George Tenet, the director of central intelligence; Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld; and the Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers spring to mind.)

And, of course, Alberto Gonzales.

The last thing Rudy Giuliani needs is praise from Bernie Kerik. But, that's what he's getting.

With friends like these....

Keep it up Bernie.

Another take: The New Republic on Giuliani.

Giuliani is now pursuing the same strategy of sowing division, only this time on a national level. To hear him tell it, the election will pit weak-kneed Democrats against hard-line Republicans. "I listen a little to the Democrats, and, if one of them gets elected, we are going on defense," he recently told an audience in New Hampshire. "We will wave the white flag on Iraq. We will cut back on the Patriot Act, electronic surveillance, interrogation, and we will be back to our preSeptember 11 attitude of defense."

The New Republic piece cautions not to count Rudy out of the race. It says his sowing of dissent among Republicans is a planned strategy. One can only hope it's a strategy doomed to fail.

Matt Yglesias, also known as "what's his name," cracks Atrios-like on Peretz-Singer, who wrote this about Matt:

Actually, that's how [he] makes a living: by writing about people who are smarter than him and know more about the world than him. And since neither smarts not knowledge carry much cachet; with the left blogosphere (also not with the right blogosphere) its stars like what's his name ridicule the writers whose arguments he can't quite grasp.

Ha! A little vitriol from TNR. What's Chait got to say about that? Anyway, Matt busts on Peretz-Singer:

In my next life, maybe I'll try to take a more respectable path to media prominence, something like using my wife's money to buy an established magazine.

Snap!

This unsurprising news about Justice Clarence Thomas' silence in oral arguments has inspired some negative comments:

Justice Clarence Thomas sat through 68 hours of oral arguments in the Supreme Court's current term without uttering a word. In nearly 16 years on the court, Thomas typically has asked questions a couple of times a term.

This is much ado about nothing. Yes Thomas is particularly quiet in oral arguments but, given a nine member Court, this seems rather unremarkable to me. My problems with Thomas have nothing to do with this.

It is when he writes and votes that my objections emerge.

We didn't do an open thread yet this week, so here you go. What are you thinking about or reading that's of interest today?

• Via Mike at Crooks and Liars, take a look a the groups the police had under surveillance before the 2004 Republican Convention.
• Via Lindsay at Magikthise, Max Blumental takes a look at Jerry Falwell's segregationist and intolerant record.
• Via Avedon Carol at Sideshow, Max's father Sidney Blumenthal writes about the unraveling Bush presidency, taking a look at the changing role of loyalty.
• Via Sentencing Law and Policy, Scotus Blog examines how the 2008 election could affect the Supreme Court.

And in the news, two of the three kidnapped soldiers in Iraq may be alive. One is believed to have been killed.

There were three days of testimony this week in the terrorism trial of Jose Padilla. The prosecution's evidence may or may not be what it claims.

My interest was piqued by the testimony of one the Lackawanna (formerly known as Buffalo) Six defendants. He's testifying for the Government in hopes of reducing his own ten year prison sentence. You may recall in that case there were threats to have the defendants declared enemy combatants and moved to Guantanamo if they didn't plead guilty.

The issue now: Is miltary training at a camp in Afghanistan necessarily terrorist training?

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