A judge in Italy has ordered 26 people, most of them CIA agents, to stand trial on kidnapping charges. In 2003, Egyptian cleric Osama Mustafa Hassan was kidnapped in Italy and flown to an Egyptian prison where he alleges he was tortured.

Now the question is, will Italy seek extradition of the CIA agents from the U.S.

Lawyers say they have compiled thousands of pages of documents and testimony from Italian agents past and present, some of whom have acknowledged working with the US in planning the abduction. The trial is due to begin on 8 June.

Here's more on Ghost Air.

It's hard to buy publicity like this.

DEFENSE lawyer Joe Tacopina will be featured in a six-page profile in GQ under the headline, "1 800 Save My Ass." The story by Lisa DePaulo begins: "Suspected of murdering that blond girl in Aruba? Having some problems with your appointment as homeland-security chief? Made the mistake of having sex with Christie Brinkley's husband? Call Joe Tacopina, the best-dressed, smoothest-talking, hardest-working criminal-defense attorney going, and for a mere $750 an hour, everything will be okay."

Maybe Libby should have dialed that number.

Bad news today out of a federal court in Mexico. Duane "Dog the Bounty Hunter" Chapman has lost his appeal challenging extradition to Mexico to stand trial on charges of "deprivation of liberty" for his capture of Andrew Luster.

In October, 28 members of Congress sent a letter to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice asking her to block the extradition.

Dog had offered an apology to Mexico, pay a fine, make a donation to charity and forfeit his bond money. That should have been enough.

It's time to free Dog. And yes, he's a long-time pal.

Marcy Wheeler, live-blogging for Firedoglake today, reports on the tedious legal arguments over jury instructions. She says in tonight's video, Libby attorney Ted Wells told the Judge he wants four hours for his closing argument.

If you don't have four hours to sit through it, keep your mouse poised at Firedoglake and Huffington Post (I'll be back in D.C. live-blogging at HuffPo.)

If you want the shorthand version of Wells' defense, here is the revised "theory of defense" instruction Team Libby today requested be read to the jury:

On the flight back to Denver today, I couldn't escape the Anna Nicole Smith hearing on the plane's tv. I'd totally tuned out the story the past five days. But it just keeps getting more bizarre by the day.

An Indian tribe is expected to seek a DNA test because she applied for tribal membership in the late 1990's.

The Tejas indian nation may file papers with Broward court requesting a DNA test to determine whether Smith has the tribal genome.

If Smith, whom tribal officials say applied for tribal membership in the late 1990s, does have Tejas blood, the matters of her body and her burial could be further complicated, possibly even requiring a tribal court's ruling, said Juan Matthews, a spokesman for the Tejas nation.

The Judge appointed a guardian ad litem for the child. All sides, not surprisingly, objected, to no avail. He also appointed an "administrator ad litum" to provide a roadmap.

And the judge ordered her embalmed.

"We want to preserve the beauty and model figure of Miss Smith," said Judge Seidlin. "Beauty was important to her."

Atrios appears not to think much of Broder's prediction of a Bush Bounce:

Dean Broder says the Bush Bounce is coming!!!!!!!!! AWESUM!!!!

It may seem perverse to suggest that, at the very moment the House of Representatives is repudiating his policy in Iraq, President Bush is poised for a political comeback. But don't be astonished if that is the case.

Well, politics, like everything, is relative. What I think Broder is really talking about is that the Democratic Congress is likely to take a tumble, because of Iraq:

[Bush] minimized the stakes in the House debate by endorsing the good motives of his critics, rejecting the notion that their actions would damage U.S. troops' morale or embolden the enemy -- all by way of saying that the House vote was no big deal. . . . [B]y contrasting today's vote on a nonbinding resolution with the pending vote on funding the war in Iraq, he shifted the battleground to a fight he is likely to win -- and put the Democrats on the defensive. Much of their own core constituency wants them to go beyond nonbinding resolutions and use the power of the purse to force Bush to reduce the American commitment in Iraq.

Sure the Dems support with the base is going to suffer if that happens. But more than that, Dems will join Bush in being blamed on Iraq if that happens. The Dems must see that a position on Iraq can not be avoided. And the choices are binary - in or out. Vote funding for the war and the Iraq Debacle becomes your Debacle too. Vote against it and it does not. It is that simple.

It is "cut and run" all over again. In 2006, the Dems were smart enough not to bite on Rove's gambit. I smell them biting this time, and taking the Iraq Debacle on their shoulders. Incredibly stupid politically as well as being bad policy.

And when that happens, Bush will look better relatively in comparison. Call it an Einstein Bounce.

In a post, Matt Yglesias sparked a discussion of what exactly is the President's war power, what view did the Clinton Administration espouse and what does the War Powers Act say to the matter. In a comment, Marty Lederman expressed his view:

The big question here is not the War Powers Resolution, but the Constitution. What sorts of hostilities can the President initiate unilaterally under the Constitution? Matt is right that the Clinton Administration took a very broad view -- see Haiti, Bosnia Bosnia and Kosovo, for starters; we basically concluded that congressional pre-approval is only required for a complete, or total, war (see footnote 5 of the Bosnia opinion, hinting that the Korean War might have been unlawful because Congress had not authorized it in advance).

. . . as a practical matter, the issue is determined -- the President believes he has the power, and he won't hesitate to exercise it.

Unless. Unless Congress actually passes a statute, probably over Bush's signature, that would prohibit military action against Iran. . . .

There is much to disagree with in what Lederman writes. Mostly because he is comparing apples (Kosovo, Bosnia, Haiti) to oranges (Iran.)

Greg Sargent has the goods on the lying phony "civil" Republican David Brooks. David Brooks now:

Far be it from me to get in the middle of a liberal purge, but would anybody mind if I pointed out that the calls for Hillary Clinton to apologize for her support of the Iraq war are almost entirely bogus?... Today, the liberal wing of the Democratic Party believes that the world, and Hillary Clinton in particular, owes it an apology. . . .

David Brooks then:

Here's what Brooks wrote in The Weekly Standard back in 2003 after the Saddam statue fell:

I'm curious about how all the war opponents are going to react if things continue to go well. Sure, they opposed Saddam, they will say. They just didn't want to do anything about him. . . . They were tolerant. Tolerant of tyranny. They doubted, and continue to doubt America's willingness and ability to serve as a force for good in the world. That was their crucial mistake. I suspect they will not even now admit their errors. I doubt the people of Europe will say: We were wrong. . . . I doubt the Arab propagandists will say: We will never spread such distortions again. We will never again be so driven by resentment and dishonesty.

What a piece of work. A dishonest piece of work.

This is how the Iraq Debacle happened:

. . . But precisely because these Democrats want to avoid war with Iran that they must offer the now familiar formulation: no nukes for Iran, no options off the table. Hillary Clinton stated this today, Barack Obama gave a version of it two years ago, and John Edwards said it last month. . . . Does this mean that we should not be skeptical of the Bush Administration’s attempt to “sell” an Iran adventure? No. Does this mean that Congress should not have oversight over any such potential action (as Senator Clinton said today)? No. What it means is that the keyboard commentariat needs to come to grips with the realities of diplomacy. . . .

Kenny Baer needs to come to grips with reality that George Bush is the worst President in the history of the nation and that in such circumstances, the normal rules do not apply. As Ezra writes:

Some folks seem to think you can continually threaten Iran while never meaning to attack, an outlook that reminds me of all the liberal hawks who spent the runup to the Iraq War advocating for their personal Iraq Wars, rather than the one George W. Bush wanted to fight. In the end, of course, everyone who voted for the resolution based on giving Bush strength at the UN, or sending 600,000 troops, simply enabled the war Bush wanted to fight.

Ken Baer should shut up for a while.

Like the Right Wing blogs, as described by Blogometer, I am not comfortable with what the Politico blog describes as the Democratic strategy on Iraq, but for different reasons of course. Politico reports:

Top House Democrats, working in concert with anti-war groups, have decided against using congressional power to force a quick end to U.S. involvement in Iraq, and instead will pursue a slow-bleed strategy designed to gradually limit the administration's options.

Led by Rep. John P. Murtha, D-Pa., and supported by several well-funded anti-war groups, the coalition's goal is to limit or sharply reduce the number of U.S. troops available for the Iraq conflict, rather than to openly cut off funding for the war itself.

. . . As described by participants, the goal is crafted to circumvent the biggest political vulnerability of the anti-war movement -- the accusation that it is willing to abandon troops in the field. That fear is why many Democrats have remained timid in challenging Bush, even as public support for the president and his Iraq policies have plunged.

Unlike the deluded Right, which describes this strategy as Surrender without Responsibility!, my problem is that it does not move to end the war immediately. The contrargument is that defunding the war does not have the votes and this is the quickest way yo end the war. If that is true, then this might be defensible. I do not think it is.

The new police chief of Bunnell, Florida likes to drive around town and introduce himself to people. And if those people are black, he likes to arrest them. To his way of thinking, they must be drug dealers.

On Feb. 7, Cecil Hubbert, a 21-year-old resident of Palm Coast who grew up in Bunnell, was walking to his aunt's house with Nateshawn Royal, his sister's boyfriend. Both men are black. Hubbert says Bunnell Police Chief Armando Martinez pulled up and at first said he was just introducing himself as the new police chief in town. ... Immediately, Hubbert says, the chief then accused him and Royal of being drug dealers prowling in "a known drug area," had them arrested on a charge of loitering and prowling, and confiscated the cash they carried. No drugs were found on them.

So much for probable cause. Being black in a "known drug area" is cause enough in Bunnell.

Guantanamo has been a well documented embarrassment. John Murtha is looking for a way to force the military to close the detention center.

"We're looking at a schedule -- a reasonable schedule -- to close it down in stages," Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., said on National Public Radio's Morning Edition. "We can limit the funds for it, and that would shut it down."

Maybe, maybe not.

The Pentagon declined to respond to a query about Murtha's plan -- how feasible the proposal is and whether there is in fact Guantánamo-specific funding that Congress could cut from future appropriations.