Patrick Doyle of Denver's premier monthly magazine 5280 takes a long look at what holding the Democratic convention in the Denver means for Democrats winning the West in 2008. It's good news.

By holding their convention in Denver, they’ve signaled to the country that they’re marching, knees high, into the West. It’s a bold move, and it’s long overdue: The last time the Dems held a convention in Denver was 1908, and it’s been 80 years since they held a convention west of Chicago or east of California. Over the next six pages, we’ll look at what the West means to the political left.

Among the Topics:

Atrios (who I am not calling stupid here), wonders about the fixation on the Clenis:

Bill Clinton is an incredibly popular person and only our Beltway press could imagine that he would somehow be a "liability" to his wife. Though, to be fair, the subtext of the "concerns" of the Beltway chatterers is that they're really talking not about Bill Clinton, but about the Clenis . . . Why Bill Clinton's past infidelity is more relevant to his wife's candidacy than Rudy Giuliani's own infidelity is to his own candidacy is an exercise left to the reader.

I think that Atrios misses the point here, it is about potential SPOUSAL embarrassment, not about the character of the candidates themselves. I think the press figures as long as we really are going to be counterproductive and trivial in this campaign, why not go whole hog.

So the question is what skeletons are there in Mrs. Rudy Giuliani's closet? Hmmm. Here's one:

The mayor said he and Ms. Hanover would be seeking a legal separation, not a divorce, and that she would not be moving out of Gracie Mansion, the mayor's official residence. Giuliani added that Judith Nathan, a woman he has publicly been seen with, is a good friend. Recent tabloid reports have linked the mayor and Nathan, raising some eyebrows in the New York GOP. "We're very good friends and she and her family are entitled to privacy," Giuliani said last week to reporters who began writing about Giuliani-Nathan sightings around Manhattan. Neither he nor Nathan have elaborated further on their relationship.

So Giuliani's spouse has her own history. Wonder if the Media will speculate about that?

In his last column, Frank Rich did something remarkable, he called someone a liar:

All of this was already going on when Mr. Bush said just before the election that “absolutely, we’re winning” and that “Al Qaeda is on the run.” What’s changed in the few months since his lie is that even more American troops are tied down in Iraq, that even more lethal weapons are being used against them, that even more of the coalition of the unwilling are fleeing, and that even more Americans are tuning out both the administration and the war they voted down in November to savor a referendum that at least offers tangible results, “American Idol.”

In today's semi-mea culpa from John Harris of Politico, he is afraid to say the L word about Republicans on the "slow bleed," while explaining that is precisely what happened:

With a mixture of pride and remorse, I have a confession: I am the author of the Democratic Party's "slow-bleed strategy" for ending the war in Iraq. . . . "Slow bleed" is my phrase. Murtha had nothing to do with it. . . . Republicans['] . . . willingness to wrest words from context -- and to attribute the phrase to Democrats even though it was not theirs -- was demagogic on the part of Republican operatives.

No Mr. Harris, it was lies on the part of Republican operatives. And your refusal to correctly report them as lies is another bit of bad journalism from you. That it is done by every other reporter in Washington does not make it right.

You are "dissembling" when you refuse to accurately describe lies as lies. Shame on you.

As noted here, the jurors' question concerned the false statement charge against Scooter Libby with respect to Count 3 of the Indictment. The jurors were unsure whether they had to find that Libby lied to the FBI in October, 2003 when he said he told Matt Cooper in July, 2003 that reporters were telling the Administration that Joseph Wilson's wife worked for the CIA but he didn't know if that was true.

It's interesting to me that the jury didn't have a question on Count 2 of the Indictment, a similar false statements charge with respect to Tim Russert.

To find Libby guilty on count 2, they must agree that (either or both):

A 96 year old mobster pleaded guilty in Florida today. It's a total trophy conviction (no one, thankfully, is anticipating he will go to jail.)

Albert "The Old Man" Facchiano used a cane in court and needed a special headset to hear the questions from U.S. District Judge James Cohn.

...."Is your mind OK?" Cohn asked Fracchiano, who will be 97 on March 10, in court at one point, a question Facchiano appeared to have trouble hearing. "Oh, yes," he eventually responded. "I can't hear, but I can understand, your honor."

Why did he plead guilty? The Government intended to try him in both New York and Florida. His lawyer says he couldn't have withstood both trials.

What a waste of criminal justice resources.

From the Campaign 4 Youth Justice Organization, a group dedicated to ending the practice of trying, sentencing and incarcerating children under 18 in the adult criminal justice system:

The Virginia legislature recently passed a bill by Delegate Dave Marsden (D-Fairfax) that amends Virginia's "once an adult, always an adult" law so that it is applied more fairly to youth.

Previously, merely transferring a youth to adult court was enough to trigger the "once an adult, always an adult" law. This meant that youth transferred to the adult system were treated as an adult in all future proceedings, no matter how minor the charge, even if they were acquitted or had their case dismissed.

There was much waiting this morning as the Court decided how to respond to yesterday's jury note.

Here is yesterday's note. It was a question about what was required on Count 3 of the Indictment, pertaining to former Time reporter Matthew Cooper. The count alleges Libby made a false statement to the FBI about his conversation with Cooper in the fall of 2003. This is not the perjury count.

Update: Jane of Firedoglake reprints the text version:

We would like clarification on the charge as stated under Count 3 specifically:

Page 74 of the jury instructions, "Count three of the indictment alleges that Mr. Libby falsely told the FBI on October 14 or November 26, 2003, that during a conversation with M. Cooper of Time Magazine on July 12, 2003, Mr. Libby told Mr. Cooper that reporters were telling the administration that Mr. Wilson's wife worked for the CIA but that Mr. Libby did not know of this was true.

(i.e., is the charge that the statement was made or about the content of the statement itself)

Judge's note at the bottom — I am not exactly certain what you are asking me. Can you please clarify your question?

After the Judge responded, the jury sent back this note, indicating it now understood what it was supposed to do.

Firedoglake is live-blogging deliberations again. I agree with Marcy that the Cooper counts are the weakest in the Indictment.

Yesterday I wrote about the new Human Rights Watch report on the missing CIA prisoners who were whisked off to secret prisons on Ghost Air.

Today, the Washington Post publishes its series of interviews with Marwan Jabour, a prisoner seized in 2004 who was released in 2006.

First note: Jabour, HRW and intelligence officials say the number of secret prisoners far exceed the 14 President Bush said were transferred to Guantanamo. HRW has 38 unaccounted for, an intelligence official says more than 60 were held.

On to Jabour's account of his detention and torture. First, there's the "villa at Islamabad."

An enlightened legislator in Florida has introduced a bill to ban the phrase "illegal alien" from state documents.

"I personally find the word 'alien' offensive when applied to individuals, especially to children," said Sen. Frederica Wilson, D-Miami. "An alien to me is someone from out of space."

She has introduced a bill providing that: "A state agency or official may not use the term 'illegal alien' in an official document of the state." There would be no penalty for using the words. In Miami-Dade County, Wilson said, "we don't say 'alien,' we say 'immigrant.'"

The better phrase, as I've used here on TalkLeft for years, is "undocumented resident." I hope this bill passes...and spreads.

Some new details on the Scooter Libby jury deliberation process:

• The jurors wore jeans today. Certainly a sign they knew they weren't going to finish today...otherwise they would have dressed up.

• Ted Wells is buying courtroom sketches of himself from the sketch artists. His advice: "Always buy your sketches before the verdict."

• Libby's wife, lawyer Harriet Grant and Libby attorney Bill Jeffress hit the park across from the courthouse during the wait to grab a smoke.

• Both sides have waiting rooms in the courthouse. The Government's is bigger.

From Melinda Henneberger:

Before their Iraq briefing at the White House yesterday, the nation's governors were instructed that they were not to ask any pesky questions about a timetable for bringing the troops home. So by the time California's Arnold Schwarzenegger was on his third question about a timetable for bringing the troops home, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Peter Pace was just the tiniest bit out of patience . . .

I got news for General Pace, the American People are out of patience.

TPM Central interviews Tom Andrews on Iraq and the Dems:

The antiwar leader, Tom Andrews, the head of Win Without War . . . is warning that Congressional Dems are at risk of badly botching the public relations battle over Iraq and is urging Congressional Dems to move more aggressively to confront the Republicans in the political showdown over ending the war.

. . . "Democrats have to fight," Andrews tells us. "Where are the voices in Congress reflecting the majority view of the American people?"

. . . "The Republicans should be on their heels," Andrews says. "They have put the troops in these conditions -- and they're the ones on the offensive! There should be a relentless attack" from Dems, Andrews continues. "Dems in Congress should be talking relentlessly about the lack of equipment, the lack of training, the multiple deployments, every day. There should be a relentless demand for accountability."

While I think Andrews has to face the fact that defunding is the way to do it, I'm am with his sentiment.