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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This is the Harry Reid I admired:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid today joined Assistant Democratic Leader Dick Durbin, Democratic Conference Vice Chairman Charles Schumer, Democratic Conference Secretary Patty Murray, Senator Russ Feingold, and Senator Evan Bayh to announce a new Joint Resolution to revise U.S. policy on Iraq. Iraq has fallen into a bloody civil war, and as conditions on the ground have changed so must U.S. policy change to meet them.

The Reid Joint Resolution builds on the longstanding Democratic position on Iraq and the Levin-Reed Amendment: the current conflict in Iraq requires a political solution, Iraq must take responsibility for its own future, and our troops should not be policing a civil war. It contains binding language to direct the President to transition the mission for U.S. forces in Iraq and begin their phased redeployment within one-hundred twenty days with a goal of redeploying all combat forces by March 31, 2008.

. . . "Last November, the American people made a clear call for a new direction, and Democrats are committed to bringing stability to Iraq and bringing our troops home from a civil war."

Let's have no illusions - this has no chance of overcoming a GOP filibuster. But that does not matter. Because Dems are laying down markers - dates certain for when the troops must be out of harm's way. The Spending Power, or NOT Spending Power, as I will now refer to it, will be the key.

This is a start of a long political road. But at least it is in the right direction.

David Sirota crossposts a piece at Daily Kos arguing that Dems are ignoring the judgment of the voters in the 2006 election by not working harder to end the war in Iraq. One commenter disagreed with Sirota on the meaning of the 2006 election, saying:

Ending the war wasn't on the ballot.

Actually, very few Dems ran on "ending the war". Most of them ran on oversight of the war.

To say the vote in November was a vote to end the war is demeaning to each and every voter who voted in the fall. Each voter has their own reasons for voting, and to declare by fiat why they voted is wrong.

This seems not a true statement to me. On the eve of the November 2006 election, the NYTimes reported:

A substantial majority of Americans expect Democrats to reduce or end American military involvement in Iraq if they win control of Congress next Tuesday and say Republicans will maintain or increase troop levels to try to win the war if they hold on to power on Capitol Hill, according to the final New York Times/CBS News poll before the midterm election.

I certainly expected it.

Last August, I wrote a long post on imprisoned video blogger Josh Wolf, sent to jail for refusing to turn over footage of an anti-war demonstration to a grand jury. TChris followed up here. He was held in contempt and jailed. He has been incarcerated longer than any other journalist in U.S. history.

Attytood has the latest, and says it's time to set Wolf free. I heartily concur. As TChris noted in his post,

Journalists should inform the public; they aren't informants for the police.

Robert Novak, the columnist whose July 14, 2003 article outed Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA operative, has a new pro-Scooter Libby column.

Among his disclosures:

Actually, in my first interview with Fitzgerald after he was named special prosecutor, he indicated that he knew Armitage was my leaker. I assumed that was the product of detective work by the FBI. In fact, Armitage had turned himself in to the Justice Department three months before Fitzgerald entered the case, without notifying the White House or releasing me from my requirement of confidentiality.

Novak also complains that while Valerie Wilson's status wasn't an issue at trial,

....in his closing argument, Fitzgerald referred to Mrs. Wilson's secret status, and in answer to a reporter's question after the verdict, he said she was "classified."

Ted Wells, though, in closing argument, brought the subject up (from the transcript, not available online):

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The Out of Iraq caucus is beginning to get some movement out of the timid Dem leadership in the House, succesfully pushing back the retrograde Blue Dogs:

Under the deal, to be formally drafted by the Appropriations Committee next week, Congress would institute the same tough benchmarks for the Iraqi government that Bush detailed in a national address in January. Under those benchmarks, the Iraqi government would have to take responsibility for security in all of Iraq's provinces by November, and adopt and implement oil-revenue-sharing legislation. . . . Bush would have to certify the benchmarks are met by year's end. If not, troops would begin leaving Iraq next spring, with all troops out of combat by the fall, a senior Democratic aide said.

Now this is a terrible proposal because it allows Bush to get off the hook by "certifying" benchmarks are met. Simply unacceptable. But certainly better than just a few days ago. The pressure must continue to build from the Out of Iraq Caucus, the grassroots AND the Netroots. We need to disabuse the Blue Dog notion expressed here:

"The war is the issue, but it's the president's issue, not ours," [Rep.] Boren said.