Former Deputy Attorney General James Comey testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee today. Marcy Wheeler live-blogged it over at Firedoglake.

The MSM is reporting on Comey's testimony regarding Alberto Gonzales' and Andrew Cards' 2004 hospital visit to former Attorney General John Ashcroft to get him to sign off on an extension of Bush's warrantless NSA electronic surveillance program.

I covered that extensively here and here in January, 2006, including reporting from the New York Times and Newsweek.

Think Progress has the transcript of today's Comey testimony.

Did Comey add anything today to the story that wasn't previously known? Is it really as shocking as Charles Schumer makes it sound? Or should Schumer have done something about it back in 2006 when the story was widely reported and we were all complaining about it?

Reverand Jerry Falwell has died.

Leading US conservative evangelist Rev Jerry Falwell has died in hospital in Virginia after being found unconscious in his office, his assistants said.

Doctors gave Rev Falwell emergency treatment at Lynchburg General Hospital but could not revive him.

Update: Reactions:

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force:

“The death of a family member or friend is always a sad occasion and we express our condolences to all those who were close to the Rev. Jerry Falwell. Unfortunately, we will always remember him as a founder and leader of America’s anti-gay industry, someone who exacerbated the nation’s appalling response to the onslaught of the AIDS epidemic, someone who demonized and vilified us for political gain and someone who used religion to divide rather than unite our nation.”

The Washington Post has a longer article on Falwell and his evangelical work.

Sen. Barack Obama's "support" for Reid-Feingold is based on a phony description of what the Reid-Feingold framework is about:

Tomorrow, I expect cloture votes on two other proposals. One is the Reid-Feingold plan, which would begin a withdrawal of troops in 120 days and end all combat operations on April 1. . . . I will support both, not because I believe either is the best answer . . .

Quite simply, Senator Obama has chosen to mislead as to the critical point about the Reid Feingold proposal. It is this:

Prohibition on Use of Funds - No funds appropriated or otherwise made available under any provision of law may be obligated or expended to continue the deployment in Iraq of members of the United States Armed Forces after March 31, 2008.

Nothing in any of Senator Obama's proposals contains the concept of NOT funding the Iraq Debacle after a date certain. Senator Obama needs to be forthright on this issue- either he supports not funding the Iraq Debacle after a date certain, or he does not. His "support" of the Reid-Feingold framework is phony and false. To me, this is the WORST possible answer he could have given. I would have preferred honest disagreement. Instead Senator Obama gives us disingenuous "support." Bad show.

Senator Dodd says we can not wait for the next President to end the Iraq Debacle. He's right. And that's why I support his Presidential bid.

John Edwards says:

“It is time to end this war. The only real power Congress has to end the war is their funding power, which is why I and others have been calling on them to use it for some time. "I would actually go further than Reid-Feingold and use the funding authority, not just to set an ultimate deadline, but to force an immediate withdrawal of 40-50,000 troops, followed by a complete withdrawal in about a year. But using the funding authority to bring this war to an end is exactly the right thing to do. Every Senator who believes this war is wrong and wants to end it should support Reid-Feingold."

At the end of a good post on the failed political Presidency of George W. Bush, my friend DemfromCt writes something that I think misses the point:

What America needs is recognition of the problem and a concerted bipartisan effort (including Republicans) to minimize the damage done, rather than a pretense that 'being like Reagan and Truman' will make everything okay in the morning. . . . If Republicans and conservatives are serious about this, they'll call for the firing of Alberto Gonzales. If that doesn't happen (and I doubt it will), all these Rx for Success notes to Bush and the GOP are just so much wasted bandwidth that won't stop a GOP debacle in 2008.

Since, as DemfromCt recognizes, the GOP will not join Dems in "a bipartisan effort to minimize the damage done," what he should recognize America needs is a concerted partisan effort by Democrats to minimize the damage done, particularly on Iraq.

As I have written here many times, it is within the power of the Democratic Congress to end the Iraq Debacle. The Reid-Feingold framework, with an announced date certain, March 31, 2008, for NOT funding the war, is the concerted partisan effort that is needed to minimize the damage of the Iraq Debacle. Today, the Senate takes up the Reid-Feingold proposal. Please urge your Senators to vote in favor of ending the Iraq Debacle in the only way truly possible, by announcing a date certain for NOT funding it.

The Washington Post reports on changes to "Club Feds," the least restrictive federal prison camps. Actually, the article is a review of another article in a right-wing think tank's magazine.

Back in the good old days, when a nice, respectable white-collar criminal went to federal prison, he could do his time playing tennis with crooked pols, embezzling bankers, book-cooking accountants and other high-class folks. Not anymore. Now, Club Fed admits all kinds of lowlifes.

Yes, Club Feds have changed in the last 30 years, but not because of who they admit. It's because they have become places of forced labor with rules that turn inmates into automatons.

A much better read on how the camps have changed is this letter written in December by legendary criminal defense lawyer Tony Serra, who at 71, was serving 10 months for misdemeanor tax evasion.

Tony doesn't just describe the differences. He includes a plan for change. Here's his nine point platform:

In the blogosphere discussion on pseudonymity on the blogs, in a comment in Hilzoy's post at ObiWi, Katherine makes a modest proposal for anonymous sources used by the Media:

. . . I have a proposal: newspaper reporters' anonymous sources should at least have to use pseudonyms. That way we could determine whether to trust "SeniorAdministrationOffical12" based partly on his past track record of being either reliable or completely full of crap, and learn how many of them they were using...

I second the motion. This proposal provides for maintaining secret the identity of the source while at the same time giving the reader the chance to judge the credibility of said source. A win-win.

The Privacy and Civil Liberties Board was created as a result of the 9/11 Commission Report. First, President Bush dragged his feet and waited a year to name any members to the Board. Then, he named the members, including former Clinton official Lanny Davis.

Last week, the Board submitted its first report which was vetted by the White House.

Yesterday, Michael Isikoff of Newsweek reports that Lanny Davis resigned from the Board.

More...

Yesterday, I was filling in for Jane at Firedoglake and I wrote about the new decision by the Iraqi Government to ban the news media from covering bombing scenes.

Iraq’s interior ministry has decided to bar news photographers and camera operators from the scenes of bomb attacks, operations director Brigadier General Abdel Karim Khalaf said on Sunday (local time).

His announcement was the latest in a series of attempts to curtail press coverage of the ongoing conflict, which has already attracted criticism from international human rights bodies.

That got me thinking.

How real is the War in Iraq to Americans who don’t have a loved one fighting in the conflict? Where has the news coverage been of the gory daily details?

For those of you old enough to remember the media coverage of the Vietnam War, you’ll remember how vividly it was brought to us every evening on our television screens by the nightly news programs.

Without the internet or e-mail, a massive anti-war movement grew. I don’t think anyone doubts that it contributed to the war’s end.

More...

Senator Dodd (D-CT) released this statement on Reid-Feingold:

Senator and Presidential candidate Chris Dodd today released the following statement responding to the announcement that the Feingold-Reid legislation would be attached to the Water Resources Development Act Reauthorization:

"We should have a straight up or down vote on Feingold-Reid - not as an amendment to a water bill or any other bill. This is the most important Senate debate since the original vote to authorize the war. This simply cannot be the occasion for hiding behind procedural tactics.

That is why I am calling on all my other colleagues running for President to state clearly where they stand on this important legislation by joining me as a co-sponsor of Feingold-Reid and stating how they would vote on the bill."

Disclosure: I have endorsed Senator Dodd's candidacy for President.

Justice Department insiders use the term "freefall" to describe the agency's present state. Falling today is Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty.

McNulty, who has served 18 months as the Justice Department's second-in-command, announced his plans [to reisgn] at a closed-door meeting of U.S. attorneys in San Antonio. He told them he would remain at the department until late summer or until the Senate approves a successor, aides said. ...

McNulty has been considering leaving for months, and aides said he never intended to serve more than two years as deputy attorney general. But his ultimate decision to step down, the aides said, was hastened by anger at being linked to the prosecutors' purge that Congress is investigating to determine if eight U.S. attorneys were fired for political reasons. ... McNulty also irked Gonzales by testifying in February that at least one of the fired prosecutors was ordered to make way for a protege of Karl Rove, President Bush's chief political adviser.