Yesterday, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was asked by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee about his sworn testimony that "the Terrorist Surveillance Program had aroused no controversy inside the Bush administration, despite congressional testimony Tuesday [by James Comey]that senior departmental officials nearly resigned in 2004 to protest such a program."

Gonzo's response? "The Justice Department said yesterday that it will not retract . . ." Must have been talking about some different illegal surveillance program. But these questions still stand; does Gonzales still stand by these statements?

I take my responsibilities very seriously in respecting the role of the Department of Justice, given to the department by Congress, to decide for the executive branch what the law requires . . .

I understand and it's my judgment that I don't get to decide for the executive branch what the law is. Ultimately, that is the president, of course. But by statute, the Department of Justice is given the authority to provide advice to the executive branch.

And so, while I certainly participate in discussions about these matters, at the end of the day, that opinion represents the position of the department and therefore the position of the executive branch.

James Comey testified that Gonzales did not accept the Justice Department as the "decide[er] for the executive branch what the law requires." Surely then either Gonzales' above testimony requires clarification at the least or Gonzales needs to refute Comey's testimony.

Paris Hilton hasn't started serving her sentence yet, but it's already been halved to 23 days with time off for good behavior. What's good behavior? It includes showing up for her sentencing.

She'll be in a special housing unit, and that is not synonymous with special treatment. It means isolation from the general public for her protection. Her fellow inmates:

Hilton will stay in a unit that contains 12 two-person cells reserved for police officers, public officials, celebrities and other high-profile inmates, he said.

Like everyone else in the 2,200-inmate facility, Hilton will get at least an hour outside her cell each day to shower, watch television, participate in outdoor recreation or talk on the telephone, he said.

In other words, she'll be in 23 hour lockdown. That's ridiculous. She's being treated more harshly because of who she is. Her sentence was for violating probation by driving with a suspended license. She didn't drive drunk on probation. She didn't hurt anyone. I really doubt anyone else in that situation would have gotten more than five or ten days.

23 days in isolation (2 pairs of underwear a week) is absurd.

Ok, I've only watched American Idol for the past four weeks since Bon Jovi was on and they did their Africa benefit. Tonight was the selection for the finals and one of the final three contestants, Melinda, Blake or Jordin was going home.

Melinda was the most accomplished singer by miles, in my opinion. Jordin had the best personality and is a really good singer. Blake left me cold.

So how could Melinda get sacked? Because America voted. 60 million votes in 24 hours. And they selected Blake and Jordin.

What does this mean?

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Via mcjoan, Sens. Schumer, Feingold, Kennedy and Durbin are concerned about discrepancies in Gonzales' Congressional testimony concerning the objection of then Deputy Attorney General James Comey to the BushCo warrantless surveillance program:

In very dramatic testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, former Deputy Attorney General James Comey testified . . . that you and former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card went to Mr. Ashcroft's bedside at George Washington Hospital, where he was in intensive care, in an effort to get him to agree to certify the legality of a classified program that he and Mr. Comey, who was serving as acting Attorney General at the time, had concluded should not be so certified. . . .

. . . You testified last year before both the Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Judiciary Committee about this incident. On February 6, 2006, at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, you were asked whether Mr. Comey and others at the Justice Department had raised concerns about the NSA wiretapping program. You stated in response that the disagreement that occurred was not related to the wiretapping program confirmed by the President in December 2005, which was the topic of the hearing.

. . . We ask for your prompt response to the following question: In light of Mr. Comey's testimony yesterday, do you stand by your 2006 Senate and House testimony, or do you wish to revise it?

I have one more for the Senators. During his confirmation hearings in January 2005, Gonzales testified that:

British authorities have decided it's too dangerous for Prince Harry to go to Iraq -- his face has been too well-publicized and he's too big a target.

Prince Harry is said to be very disappointed. I can only think about how relieved Diana would be, if she were alive. A smart decision. If he is a individualized target, there's also a much greater risk of danger to his team members traveling with him.

I don't think it's a question of valuing his life more than others. I think it's a question of whether sending him amounts to state-assisted suicide because he'd be such a trophy for the insurgents.

The World Bank meeting on Paul Wolfowitz has adjourned at the request of the U.S. until 2:30 pm ET.

Speculation is he will resign today. From ABC's The Blotter:

World Bank officials say the bank's board is completing an "exit strategy" that will allow World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz to resign this afternoon and "still save some face" over the issue of his efforts to seek a promotion and pay raise for his girlfriend at the bank.

The officials say the bank's board will accept Wolfowitz's resignation but will also acknowledge that the World Bank's Ethics Committee bears "some responsibility" for giving him bad advice on the issue of his girlfriend.

Good riddance to him.

Today's vote on Reid-Feingold should have a salutary effect on the creeping hometeamism that had captured progressive activists and the Netroots and brings into stark relief what still ails the Democratic Party - political cowardice.

For months the cheerleading from progressives and the Netroots for the House Supplemental and all the noisemaking coming from the Democratic Party has been a serious impediment to efforts to truly end the Iraq Debacle.

We kept hearing about the need to "ratchet up the pressure" on Bush and the Republicans. I think it is clear now that the pressure needs to be placed on those segments of the Democratic Party that likes to talk a lot about ending the war but clearly has felt no pressure from its base to do what is necessary to end this catastrophic war.

Jim Webb told President Bush, Democrats would show the way, as did others. It is clear that Jim Webb, Jon Tester, Claire McCaskill, Jack Reed, Carl Levin, et al, have no intention of leading on Iraq.

Yet again, as in 2006, it will require the base of the Democratic Party to lead its leaders. This vote today leaves no doubt what must be done by progressives, the Democratic grassroots and the Netroots. We must all take on those segments of our Party who do not want to end the war, but rather merely say they want to end the war.

And for this important insight, today was a good day.

It was an ugly, brutal crime, the murder of two young children, one of whom was raped and the other had nails driven into his skull. Byron Halsey served 19 years in prison for the crime. But, he didn't do it. DNA proved it and yesterday, a New Jersey Judge ordered him released.

Barry Scheck, co-director of the Innocence Project, the Manhattan legal clinic that revived the case, said: “It’s a miracle that Byron is here with us, because if ever there was a case where there was a risk of executing an innocent man, it was this case. Because the facts of the case were so horrible.”

Here's what the DNA showed:

The Amendment to cut off funding for the Iraq War went down to defeat today. Here's the roll call vote. 67 to 29, with 4 not voting.

[Via Think Progress.]

Politics TV has the video of James Comey's testimony yesterday about his rush to the hospital to pre-empt Alberto Gonzales and Andy Card's attempt to get former Attorney General John Ashcroft to sign off on the extension of the warrantless NSA wiretap program.

Update: Don't miss Marcy Wheeler on Comey in The Guardian today, The Constitution is in Intensive Care.

Via Jane at Firedoglake, Glenn Greenwald provides context and the Washington Post editorial calls the White House actions alarming.

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Yes, I lived through 9/11 too. Oh, Rudy meant he was in NYC during 9/11. So did 8 million other people. But those 8 million people were not the bonehead who put the City's emergency response headquarters in the World Trade Center over the objections of experts - who objected to Rudy's plan because, maybe Rudy did not know this, the WTC was attacked by terrorists in 1993:

"Your director of emergency management suggested, recommended, that you not put it [in the World Trade Center] because it had been a target in 1993. Why did you do that?" asked Wallace.

"My director of emergency management recommended 7 World Trade Center," replied Giuliani.

"I've got a copy right here of Jerry Hauer's directive to you," Wallace came back, "and I -- there were meetings in which Jerry Hauer said that it's a bad idea and the police chief, Howard Safir said it was a bad idea."

As someone who lived through 9/11, I have to question the sanity of the notion that a blustering fool whose only talent is self-promotion and whose most important decision related to 9/11, where to put his command center, was as idiotic as one could imagine, is running for President on the strength of his stupidity. Yes, for it was his stupidity in placing the command center precisely where it was recommended NOT to be that made his endless 9/11 press conferences necessary.

Rudy is a poster boy for the absurdity of politics.

I haven't been excited about the U.S. Sentencing Commission's long awaited report urging a slight reduction in crack cocaine penalties, because the reduction is just that: slight.

The report was forwarded to Congress today. You can read it here.

From a policy perspective, as the ACLU says, it's a good first step, but that's all it is.

But 2007 marks the fourth time in 20 years that the commission has issued such a report, and Congress has yet to address the problem. Years of medical and legal research have shown no appreciable difference between crack and powder cocaine, and no justification for allowing the vast sentencing gap between them to stand. We urge Congress to put aside politics and act now to fix this discriminatory federal drug sentencing policy."

From the practical standpoint of my clients and everyone else's clients doing double-digit sentences, it only takes a year or two off.

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