The Bush Administration knows no bounds when it comes to violating our civil liberties. Here's the latest:

The Justice Department is completing rules to allow the collection of DNA from most people arrested or detained by federal authorities, a vast expansion of DNA gathering that will include hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, by far the largest group affected.

The new forensic DNA sampling was authorized by Congress in a little-noticed amendment to a January 2006 renewal of the Violence Against Women Act, which provides protections and assistance for victims of sexual crimes. The amendment permits DNA collecting from anyone under criminal arrest by federal authorities, and also from illegal immigrants detained by federal agents.

Arrestees who have not been convicted of a crime should not be required to have their DNA sampled and collected. It's just the latest step down the slippery slope of over-intrusion into our privacy without just cause.

As Innocence Project co-director Peter Neufeld points out:

What a tragic story. Orlando Valle, 35, who worked in the mailroom at the New York Public Libary, was celebrating his birthday with family at the trendy nightclub BED in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan.

The maitre-d'/ manager is 43 year old Granville Adams, who played Muslim inmate leader Zahir Arif on HBO's prison series "Oz."

[Valle] got into a scuffle with Adams and was thrown against the elevator with such force that the doors opened and he plunged four stories to his death, cops said.

Adams was arrested and charged with criminally negligent homicide.

Sentencing Law and Policy reports on New Jersey's proposed plan to abolish the death penalty.

When a state commission recommended last month that New Jersey abolish the death penalty in favor of life imprisonment without parole, some lawmakers called it the latest example of going soft on crime. But a Star-Ledger analysis of trials since August 1982, when capital punishment was reinstated, shows scores of murderers would have been punished more harshly under the life-without-parole bill proposed by the Death Penalty Study Commission.

Here's what's wrong with the bill:

Here's the transcript from this morning's Reliable Sources on CNN in which Howard Kurtz, Slate's John Dickerson, Newsweek's Michael Isikoff and I discuss the Libby trial in the context of what it says about journalists.

On today's edition of CNN's "Reliable Sources," Howard Kurtz spoke about journalists and the Scooter Libby trial. Joining him were John Dickerson, Slate’s chief political correspondent; Michael Isikoff, Newsweek investigative correspondent; and Jeralyn Merritt, a defense attorney and blogger.

Using electronic monitoring and tight supervision, California could tackle the crisis of overcrowded prisons by returning nonviolent offenders (including nonviolent drug offenders) to to their homes. Instead, the state announced a "temporary" plan to ship inmates to other states, removing them from the families and support systems that are critical to rehabilitation.

The plan, which inmate advocates say is illegal and might be challenged in court, calls for transferring as many as 5,000 inmates to private facilities in Arizona, Oklahoma and Mississippi, beginning as early as April 2. First to go would be illegal immigrants already scheduled to be deported after serving their sentences, and low-risk offenders.

To entice prisoners to volunteer for a transfer, the state touts the comparatively luxurious conditions available in distant prisons, including access to ESPN. Reminding inmates that California prison conditions are crappy hardly seems like a sound prison management strategy. In any event, the recruitment program failed, forcing the state to transfer large numbers of inmates against their will.

Even if you have no interest in the teams playing in today's Superbowl, you may be intrigued by a panel discussion of the NFL's inclusionary hiring practices which are credited with increasing the number of black coaches and general managers in professional football. The American Constitution Society offers a streaming video of the discusson, featuring "a senior NFL official, a legendary NFL player, a leading civil rights attorney and a respected sports journalist."

An ACS email explains the significance of today's coaching matchup and its broader implications for inclusionary hiring practices.

For the first time in NFL history, the winning coach of the Super Bowl will be African-American. While the history of African-American coaches in the NFL dates back to Frederick Douglass “Fritz” Pollard in 1921, the next African-American head coach of an NFL team was not hired until 1989, when Art Shell was hired by the Oakland Raiders.

Another Republican Representative from California is under investigation, according to the NY Times.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating whether Representative Gary G. Miller, Republican of California, improperly used an unusual tax provision to avoid paying capital gains taxes on profits from land sales to California cities, law enforcement and government officials said.

Miller avoided taxes on the sale of property in Monrovia by obtaining a letter from the City "suggesting that the land could be condemned." There was no apparent risk that the City would use its power of eminent domain to take the property. Miller may have used the same scheme to avoid taxes on the sale of property in Fontana.

The deadliest suicide bombing to date occurred in Iraq today. More than 100 were killed and 300 were injured, many of whom are expected to die.

The pick-up truck that exploded was left at the entrance of a market in Sadriya, a low-income, predominantly Shiite area, police said. The truck was driven by a suicide bomber and packed with at least a ton of explosives, Major General Jihad al-Jabiri, director of the Interior Ministry's explosives division, told Iraqi TV.

The blast destroyed at least 10 buildings, Jabiri said, including two that were completely leveled.

Meanwhile, a new U.S. Intelligence report predicts a bleak future for Iraq:

Former New York police officer Charles Schwarz, convicted in the brutal sodomy case of Haitian immigrant Abner Louima, has been released from federal prison to a halfway house. He served less than five years.

His plans for the future: to move to the "northern part of the country" and seek outdoor work, perhaps becoming a carpenter.

After a conviction, reversal and two more trials that ended in hung juries, Schwarz pleaded guilty to perjury. To this day, his lawyer argues the memory defense.

“The worst that Chuck did is that he saw Mr. Volpe walking Mr. Louima toward the bathroom, and when he was asked about that, a cop being a cop, he said he didn’t remember it,” Mr. Fischetti said.

The New York Times has an interesting article in the travel section on Cuba's Jewish population, now estimated at 1,500. I thought this was interesting:

[Adela Dworin, president of the Jewish community in Cuba]...had the opportunity to meet Mr. Castro in 1998, and asked him why he had never visited the Jewish community, to which he replied: “Because I was never invited.” Ms. Dworin promptly invited him to the coming Hanukkah celebration at the Patronato. When Mr. Castro asked what Hanukkah was, Ms. Dworin explained that the holiday celebrates the “revolution” — a word Castro likes — of the Jewish people.

To her surprise, Mr. Castro showed up at the party of 200, sat next to her in the front row and addressed the congregation in a lengthy speech.

In my continuing campaign of disagreeing with Left bloggers and writers, I now turn to everybody's favorite (but my favorite first) blogger, Digby, who appears to endorse the very line of argument I find infuriating:

Deciding what to do next about Iraq is hard — on the merits, and in the politics. . . . By comparison, Iran is easy: on the merits, in the politics. . . . While the Congress flounders about what, exactly, it can do about Iraq, it can do something useful, while it still matters, in making clear that it will authorize no money and provide no endorsement for military action against Iran.

. . . It may be just this possibility that has the administration carrying on so about how Iranians are behind the killing of Americans even though it is an absurdity. They would like to create the conditions where they can say that anyone failing to back action in Iran is failing to protect the troops.

In a sane world, the congress would move very quickly on this before that notion jells. But it won't, because they believe they must allow the president to have all "options on the table," --- . . . Still, that seems to be where they are, at least with respect to Iran. Not only are they not prepared to stop it, they are either silent on the issue or actively supporting the premise upon which the president's argument is built.

First, Digby appears to implicitly endorse the Fallows "put Iraq on the back burner" proposal which is simply unacceptable. Second, Digby simply ignores the very strong statements Democrats have made against attacking Iran, including the most crucial argument - Bush has no authority to attack Iran:

It may be Saturday, but Fitzgerald and Team Libby have filed new briefs arguing about the admission of two Washington Post articles from October, 2003 by Walter Pincus and Mike Allen, both of which were contained in Libby's files and had been underlined in part. They argued about this in court this week and Judge Walton told them to file briefs. [Note: This post is ridiculously long because it contains detailed quotes from the briefs.]

Fitz's brief is here and Libby's brief is here.

Government Exhibit 422 is a copy of a three-page article by Walter Pincus and Mike Allen entitled, “FBI Agents Tracing Linkage of Envoy to CIA Operative,” which was published in the Washington Post on October 12, 2003.