• Mr. Populist at Daily Kos has a nightmare to share.

• Chris at Southern Studies asks why Colorado could save the cattle using helicopters but no helicopters were used to save the Katrina Victims.

• What was the civil rights movement in the South in the 60's like? A new site presents the recollections of lawyers and activists who were there.

• Scotusblog reports on late-breaking news that the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear seven cases.

The use of SWAT team tactics to execute search warrants, a growing phenomenon decried in this editorial, can lead to tragic results. The death of Kathryn Johnston, an elderly woman who was killed when police forced their way, unannounced, into her home, is one example. This story provides another example. Here’s another:

[Gilbert, AZ police officers] say they were [at Salvador Celaya’s residence] to execute a search warrant for evidence they assumed to be on the premises. They hoped to find some stolen goods because they thought a truck a crook had used was registered to that address.

The details will take a long time to sort out, but the bottom line is, by the time the cops were done, they had burned the Celayas' house down. The instrument of destruction was a flash-bang diversionary grenade the cops now admit they tossed into the house before they found an armed Salvador Celaya trying to defend his property from intruders. The grenade, which is not supposed to be deployed near anything flammable, landed on a bed.

So long, house.

And here's still another:

There's another major snowstorm in Denver today. What's going on in the rest of the world? Here's an open thread.

Death sentences dropped last year to the lowest number since the death penalty was reinstated by the Supreme Court 30 years ago.

Executions dropped to the lowest level in a decade.

"The death penalty is on the defensive," said Richard Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a Washington organization that looks at problems with the capital punishment system.

Death sentences fell in 2006 to 114 or fewer, according to an estimate from the group. That is down from 128 in 2005, and even lower than the 137 sentences the year after the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. It is also down sharply from the high of 317 in 1996.

A total of 53 executions were carried out in 2006, down from 60 in 2005. Executions over the past three decades peaked at 98 in 1999.

Fear of executing an innocent person, more state laws allowing life without parole as an option, decreases in violent crime and the high cost of prosecuting a death case are believed to be contributing factors.

We need one more factor to make a critical difference: moral opposition to the death penalty. We're not quite there:

If you have been following the Right Wing Blogs' campaign against an AP report of a November burning of a mosque in Iraq where 6 Iraqis died, you wil have learned that the campaign was discredited today when the Iraqi Interior ministry admitted that AP's source did exist.

But what is interesting to me is why did this story of literally hundreds of reports of Iraqis being killed cause such a stir? I suppose it was because the US military and the Iraqi interior ministry denied that AP's source Jamil Hussein, worked for the Iraqi police. But the AP strongly and unequivocally stood by its story and insisted Hussein not only existed, but was in fact an Iraqi police officer, even naming the station where he worked.

The Right Blog campaign on this always struck me as odd, to say the least. It seems hard to understand why AP would manufacture a story of violence in Iraq. Did the Right think there was not enough true stories of Iraqi violence?

Which gets to my point. Forget about the decision to go to Iraq, whether intelligence was ginned up, no WMD, corners turned, purple fingers and all the rest, can the Right NOT accept the mess that Iraq is now? Is the Right incapable of accepting reality? More.

The FBI has released its files on the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist. Among the details:

The documents also reveal that while Rehnquist was hospitalized for back pain in 1981, he experienced withdrawal symptoms related to his use of Placidyl, a powerful prescription pain medicine. Rehnquist had taken the medication for ten years, the documents show, but doctors refused to give it to him while he was hospitalized. According to the FBI documents, Rehnquist became agitated and experienced hallucinations during his withdrawal from Placidyl. He attempted to leave the hospital in his pajamas and told doctors that he believed the CIA was plotting against him.

I wrote a long post about Rehnquist's use of Placidyl and the implications in 2005.

Harriet Miers, who once opined that President Bush was one of the most brilliant men she'd ever met and who was rewarded with an unsuccessful Supreme Court nomination, has had enough. She resigned from her position as White House Counsel, effective at the end of the month.

Asked why she was leaving, Snow said: "Basically, she has been here six years."

That's reason enough.

A postal law enacted in December allows the Government to open our mail.

President Bush has quietly claimed sweeping new powers to open Americans' mail without a judge's warrant, the Daily News has learned.The President asserted his new authority when he signed a postal reform bill into law on Dec. 20. Bush then issued a "signing statement" that declared his right to open people's mail under emergency conditions.

This is but another example of Bush's unitary theory of Government, that he as executive can trump the will of Congress and the judiciary.

The accuser in the Duke lacrosse players' alleged sexual assault case has given birth, a month early, by cesarian section.

Will she be ready to testify at the Feb. 5 eyewitness identification hearing?

I think she should be.

The options? She will ask Nifong to drop the case saying she doesn't want to pursue the case or Nifong will ask for a continuance on medical grounds or the hearing will proceed.

Any bets?

Blogger Betsy Newmark has an op-ed on the racial aspects of the case and Nifong's conduct in today's Washington Examiner.

What do you think about this Op Ed?:

This past Election Day, the American people sent a clear message to Washington: Clean up your act.

. . . It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that this message was intended for only one party or politician. The votes hadn't even been counted in November before we heard reports that corporations were already recruiting lobbyists with Democratic connections to carry their water in the next Congress.

. . . Americans put their faith in Democrats because they want us to restore their faith in government -- and that means more than window dressing when it comes to ethics reform.

. . . The truth is, we cannot change the way Washington works unless we first change the way Congress works. On Nov. 7, voters gave Democrats the chance to do this. But if we miss this opportunity to clean up our act and restore this country's faith in government, the American people might not give us another one.

. . . and they would be right. But he is a malignant airhead. In a return to the misleading GOP serving shill that we have all come to know and detest, David Brooks serves up a sexist screed that would have you believe that since Dems like FDR and Nancy Pelosi and buffoons like George Bush were/are rich, that they are all the same:

I have a dream, my friends. I have a dream that we are approaching the day when a ranch-owning millionaire Republican like George Bush will make peace with a vineyard-owning millionaire Democrat like Nancy Pelosi.

I have a dream that Pelosi, who was chauffeured to school as a child and who, with her investor husband, owns minority shares in the Auberge du Soleil resort hotel and the CordeValle Golf Club, will look over her famous strand of South Sea Tahitian pearls and forge bonds of understanding with the zillionaire corporate barons in the opposing party.

Furthermore, I dream of a great harmonic convergence among the obscenely rich — between Randian hedge fund managers on the right and helipad environmentalists on the left. I dream that the big-money people who seem to dominate our politics will put aside their partisan fury and discover the class solidarity that Karl Marx always said they shared, and their newfound civility will trickle down to the rest of us. I dream that Berkeley will make peace with Buckhead, Streisand with DeVos, Huffington with O’Reilly.

What a liar. The rest of us Brooks? You are the common man? FDR was just a rich guy like George Bush? What a lying snake.

Of course this is part of the new GOP civility offensive and a shot across the bow at the Democrats' newfound commitment to populism.

Brooks did not always think of himself as The Common Man:

The New York Times recounts the conversations recorded on the wiretaps in the Jose Padilla case. Shorter version:

Tens of thousands of conversations were recorded. Some 230 phone calls form the core of the government’s case, including 21 that make reference to Mr. Padilla, prosecutors said. But Mr. Padilla’s voice is heard on only seven calls. And on those seven, which The Times obtained from a participant in the case, Mr. Padilla does not discuss violent plots.

What's the prosecution's strongest evidence?