Writing in the Independent, Ali Allawi, former Iraqi Defence Minister provides a blueprint for peace in Iraq.

It's a five part plan, the components of which he lists at the end.

The result of his plan, he writes, would be "three interlinked outcomes":

The first would be a decentralised Iraqi state with new regional governing authorities with wide powers and resources. Devolution of power must be fair, well planned, and executed with equitable revenue-distribution. Federal institutions would have to act as adjudicators between regions. Security must be decentralised until such time as confidence between the communities is re-established.

The second essential outcome would be a treaty that would establish a confederation or constellation of states of the Middle East, initially including Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan. The main aim of the confederation would be to establish a number of conventions and supra-regional bodies that would have the effect of acting as guarantors of civil, minority and community rights.

Independent reporter Patrick Cockburn says of the plan:

Comedian Chevy Chase has an oped in Saturday's New York Times about his making fun of Gerald Ford on SNL and how he got to know the former President and Mrs. Ford. It ends with a very funny comment by Mr. Ford. I won't spoil it, go read.

Nicely done, Chevy.

In the House today:

• By 280 to 152, the Democratic-controlled House voted to require sponsors of the pet spending items to be publicly identified, a move that sponsors say will do away with some of the most egregious waste of the taxpayers’ money.
• [A separate] vote to reinstate the “pay as you go” rule [passed] 280 to 154. It requires that increases in spending on entitlement programs be offset by savings elsewhere, so as not to raise the budget deficit.

And yesterday:

• The new House rules bar members from taking gifts, meals or trips paid for by lobbyists, or the organizations that employ them. The rules also ban lawmakers from using corporate jets and reimbursing the owners.

It's time for the Senate to agree to abide by similar restrictions. And quickly, to avoid distraction from the overarching issue of the new year: resisting an escalation of the war in Iraq. It's encouraging to see the Democratic party credited with "fierce opposition" to the president's senseless and stubborn desire to do more of the same.

A ten year old political quiz is making its rounds, courtesy of Andrew Sullivan. Instapundit and Ann Althouse reveal their moderate scores.

I remember this quiz very well from 1994. It was in the Sunday USA weekend magazine section of the Denver paper. The TL kid, then in his early teens, came home from school a day or so later and said the teacher had assigned them to take the test with their parents.

Admittedly, at that time he attended an affluent private school where one wouldn't expect to find that didn't have many liberals among the parents. But the results were disturbing nonetheless. Here's why.

• 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.