NYU Journalism Professor and blogger Jay Rosen has high praise for the team Firedoglake put together to cover the Scooter Libby trial:

"What happens? One blog puts more boots on the ground than any commercial news operation. The writers bring more background, savvy and commitment to the case. And they dominate in coverage of a big news event. Journalists themselves use it to keep up and get their bearings."

How did they do it? With help from their readers.

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Grits for Breakfast reports on the blooming sex scandal at Texas' youth prisons. Hearings are underway and Grits has been live-blogging. From yesterday's update:

What does it say about the criminal justice system that, with all the sex offender hype going on last year during the campaign season, Texas' elite state police couldn't get an alleged pedophile running a youth prison indicted?

Grits provides these links to others following the story: Houston Chronicle, the Dallas News, the Brownsville Herald, KEYE-TV (with video of the Ranger's testimony), and the Washington Post. From the blogs, see Capitol Annex, Texas Politics, the Texas Observer blog, Kuff, Patricia Hart at BurkaBlog, and Rep. Peña's A Capitol Blog. though the best blog headline of the day goes to In the Pink Texas: "T Why C." Here's information about the new 24/7 TYC Abuse Hotline discussed at the hearing.

In telling us that Rudy the megalamaniac should not be President, Jim Sleeper perpetuates the myth that Rudy was some kind of Super Mayor. Why must this myth persist? Sleeper writes:

He forced New York, that great capital of “root cause” explanations for every social problem, to get real about remedies that work, at least for now, in the world as we know it.

You see, before Rudy, New York was not "real about remedies that work." I have one question for Sleeper - what was Rudy's remedy for the public education system in New York City?

Sleeper is just making it up, perhaps to improve his "not a liberal" creds on the issue. He does his argument no favors.

Congressman David Obey is a terrific, hardworking, committed Congressman who wants to end the Iraq Debacle. He had a bad moment with some citizens working to end the war.

As one of the "idiot liberals" (actually I am not a liberal at all, I'm an anti-Debacle Centrist) Obey references, I want to take a moment to defend Congressman Obey. Was he uncivil? Of course. Was he inappropriate?" Perhaps. But do you think Obey does not care? Or does not want to end the Debacle? Of course he does.

I have an op-ed today in the Rocky Mountain News, Scooter Libby Takes One for the Team. It's about why I was rooting for both sides in different ways, and why, although I think the verdict was correct, I feel cheated. Hope you'll read it.

I've written a lot about the "Doogie Howser of terrorism cases", the Albany, New York sting prosecution of pizza owner Yassin Aref on charges of providing material support to terrorists, because Terry Kindlon, an excellent criminal defense attorney and frequent commenter at TalkLeft, represented him. Terry also filed the first motion in the country in Aref's case challenging the NSA warrantless wiretapping program. (U.S. News Article here in which Terry credits TalkLeft for giving him the idea for the challenge.)

The case is known as the Doogie Howser of Terrorism cases because the Government's terrorism expert has been compared to Doogie.

Aref was convicted at trial and the sentencing range was 30 years to life in prison. The Government asked for 30 years. At sentencing Thursday, the Court sentenced Aref to 15 years.

"Obviously 11-years is a significant sentence, but 11-years is a whole lot better than 30-years, or even life," says Terry Kindlon, Yassin Aref's attorney.

11 years is no walk in the park, yet but for Terry's exceptional advocacy skills, I'm sure it would have been a lot worse. Terry was able to establish to the Judge's satisfaction, that his client wasn't motivated by wanting to help terrorists.

Judge Thomas McAvoy told Hossain, "you submitted to crimes out of greed, not a desire to support terrorism."

A lawsuit brought on behalf of mentally ill prison inmates states what should be the obvious: solitary confinement and mental illness make a combustible match.

After 13 inmate suicides and suicide attempts by isolated inmates in Massachussetts, including mentally ill inmate Mark Cunningham,lawyers have filed suit in federal court.

Mr. Cunningham’s case is one of 18 suicides and suicide attempts by inmates in solitary confinement described in a federal lawsuit filed Thursday by advocates for inmates and the mentally ill. They are seeking to prevent Massachusetts from placing mentally ill inmates in such segregated cells.

“We aren’t saying these folks should go free; we aren’t saying they shouldn’t be under high security conditions,” said Stanley J. Eichner, executive director of the Disability Law Center. But Mr. Eichner said putting prisoners in solitary conditions and denying them adequate mental health services was “literally the fatal flaw in the system.”

It's time to end the habit of putting mentally ill inmates in solitary confinement. It should be a no-brainer that confining a mentally ill person to 23 hours a day of isolation is going to be a death sentence, albeit one inflicted by his own hands.

The Washington Post reports that an Inspector General's review of FBI secret requests for personal records found 22 instances where internal DOJ and FBI regulations were violated.

A Justice Department investigation has found pervasive errors in the FBI's use of its power to secretly demand telephone, e-mail and financial records in national security cases, officials with access to the report said yesterday.

The inspector general's audit found 22 possible breaches of internal FBI and Justice Department regulations -- some of which were potential violations of law -- in a sampling of 293 "national security letters." The letters were used by the FBI to obtain the personal records of U.S. residents or visitors between 2003 and 2005. The FBI identified 26 potential violations in other cases.

In 2005, the FBI issued more than 19,000 National Security letters (background here.) Inspector General Fine said the abuse could be more widespread than the 22 cases, which were found during a review of 293 such requests.

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Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) and Congresswoman Jane Harman (D-CA) just introduced House bills to restore habeas corpus and other rights to the detainees. They are the The "Habeas Corpus Restoration Act of 2007" and "Restoring the Constitution Act of 2007.

The ACLU says:

"Congressman Nadler and Congresswoman Harman are true patriots for standing up for Constitutional rights and the rule of law," said Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. "We urge Congress to act quickly to restore due process and correct the mistake it made in passing the Military Commissions Act last year. The Nadler-Harman bills reaffirm America’s commitment to fairness and freedom."

As to the two bills:

Newt Gingrich comes clean and tells Focus on the Family that while he was calling for President Clinton's impeachment, he was in the midst of an extra-marital affair. (He has since married his flame, Callista, pictured with him above.)

"The honest answer is yes," Gingrich, a potential 2008 Republican presidential candidate, said in an interview with Focus on the Family founder James Dobson to be aired Friday, according to a transcript provided to The Associated Press. "There are times that I have fallen short of my own standards. There's certainly times when I've fallen short of God's standards."

How does he differentiate himself from Clinton? He says he didn't commit perjury.

David Corn has a new article in The Nation, "Cheney on Trial."

Using testimony from the Scooter Libby trial, Corn shows:

....beyond resolving whether Libby had mounted a criminal cover-up to hide his--and perhaps Cheney's--involvement in the leak episode, the trial exposed the inner world of Cheney's crew. The proceedings also proved, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the Bush White House was neck-deep in the Valerie Wilson leak (even if Novak's original source was then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage) and that the White House lied when it claimed otherwise.

While Cheney wasn't on trial, he was often front and center.

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Update: Valerie Plame will testify at the hearing.

*****

Via Tim Grieve at Salon's War Room:

House Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman announced today that he will hold a hearing on March 16 to determine whether "White House officials followed appropriate procedures for safeguarding" Plame's identity.

Rep. Waxman's announcement is here.

Waxman also wrote this letter to Patrick Fitzgerald (pdf), inviting him to share his thoughts and perhaps testify.

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