Update: Saddam's lawyer Giovanni diStephano is on CNN right now (from Rome) saying that a petition for a temporary restraining order has been filed in federal court in DC to prevent Saddam's turnover to Iraqi authorities. It has been assigned to Judge Sullivan.

Via Raw Story and AFP:

An anonymous lawyer for Saddam was now claiming Hussein will be executed on Saturday at dawn.

I'm not buying the U.S. denial and claim that Saddam remains in U.S. custody:

Raising the tension, US authorities also cancelled a planned meeting on Saturday between Saddam and his defense team, lawyer Issam Ghazawi told AFP. "I just received an email from US authorities in Baghdad in which a security official said it has been decided to cancel our visit planned for Saturday in Baghdad with president Saddam Hussein," Ghazawi said.

"We can't have you in Baghdad tomorrow. We cannot provide any protection for you. You can't see Saddam because he is not in our physical custody anymore," said the email according to Ghazawi, who read it by phone to an AFP reporter.

The White House is denying responsibility for the execution:

The cable networks are carrying the late President Gerald Ford's first funeral service in Palm Desert, CA live. The Palm Desert Sun is live-blogging it.

Betty Ford looks so sad, yet dignified. It's very quiet in the church, not a peep from anyone. He's then going to be flown to Washington and then to Michigan for his burial.

R.I.P., Gerald Ford.

Why did David Kaczynski become a leader of New Yorkers Against the Death Penalty? Kaczynski suspected his brother Ted was the Unabomber, and he cooperated with the FBI to secure Ted's capture, fearing that if he didn't, his brother would kill again. Still, David thought the death penalty would never be imposed upon a man so mentally ill as his brother.

Ted eventually made a deal to avoid death (he's now serving a life sentence without parole), but even the possibility that the government might execute a severely mentally ill defendant was enough to turn David against the death penalty. He talked to MSNBC about the experience. The lessons he teaches deserve to be well learned.

I kind of thought once some of the investigators had said, 'We know that you're brother's mentally ill,' I thought that took the death penalty off the table. I honestly didn't realize that, you know, our system does execute the mentally ill. There's tremendous disconnect between what the law calls insanity and what medicine calls mental illness. And the end result is that sometimes we're executing people who have to be medicated to get them to the point where they're competent to be executed.

As the president's poll numbers continue to decline (and you can expect them to decline further if he announces his anticipated plan to escalate the war in Iraq), he'll probably not be comforted by the knowledge that he won at least one poll this year. Respondents in an AP-AOL News poll named Bush "the biggest villain of the year," beating out second place Osama bin Laden by a comfortable margin.

With a much smaller percentage of the total vote, Bush also won "hero of the year," laughably defeating "soldiers in Iraq." Those who die to carry out the president's failed policies are apparently less heroic to some than the architect of those policies. Go figure.

In a credibility contest between the police and almost anyone else, the police usually win. Not so in New Orleans, where a grand jury rejected the official account of police shootings on the Danziger Bridge six days after Hurricane Katrina. The police justified the slaying of two people and the wounding of four others as “an appropriate response to reports of both sniper fire and people shooting at police officers near the bridge.”

Lance Madison was arrested for shooting at cops, but a grand jury refused to indict him. Instead, it indicted seven officers for a variety of charges that include murder.

There may well have been shots fired near the bridge before the police arrived, but survivors of the shooting spree filed a lawsuit that raises serious questions about the claimed justification for gunning down the (apparently unarmed) people on the bridge.

On Sept. 4 about 9 a.m., Ronald and Lance Madison walked near the top of the Danziger Bridge, returning to their brother's dental office on Chef Menteur Highway after a failed attempt to go to their mother's home in eastern New Orleans. Ronald Madison, who was severely retarded, had insisted on staying in the city because he could not bear to leave behind the family dachshunds, Bobbi and Sushi. ... At the same time, according to the lawsuits, another group of people was walking at the base of the bridge on a trek to a nearby Winn Dixie to retrieve food and water. ...

Suddenly, the people on the bridge were confronted by a hail of gunfire coming from a group of men in "dark clothing" who had emerged from the back of a rental truck at the foot of the bridge, the lawsuits said.

The men “turned out to be the seven heavily armed, out-of-uniform police officers [who were] indicted on Thursday.”

Saddam has been transferred to Iraqi custody.

Saddam Hussein has been transferred from U.S. custody, his lawyers said, and an Iraqi judge authorized to attend the former dictator's hanging said he would be executed no later than Saturday.

The physical hand-over of Saddam to Iraqi authorities was believed to be one of the last steps before he was to be hanged, although the lawyers' statement did not specifically say Saddam was in Iraqi hands.

"A few minutes ago we received correspondence from the Americans saying that President Saddam Hussein is no longer under the control of U.S. forces," according to the statement faxed to The Associated Press.

"Saddam will be executed today or tomorrow," said Munir Haddad, a judge on the appeals court that upheld Saddam's death sentence. "All the measures have been done."

Fred Hiatt asks:

What's more, his trial was in no sense the model of civilized justice that would have showcased a new, democratic Iraq -- in large measure because that new Iraq has yet to materialize. Several defense lawyers were murdered; judges had to be replaced. Political interference was evident. Even this week, the appeals tribunal sent back one life sentence as insufficiently tough, in effect demanding death for one of the co-defendants. Still, there is something unreal about the cries of foul from human rights groups demanding perfect procedural justice from a country struggling with civil war, daily bombings and death-squad killings. The reality is that by the trial's end, there was no significant factual dispute between prosecution and defense: Saddam Hussein acknowledged on national television that he had signed the death warrants after only the most cursory look at the evidence against his victims. That, he testified proudly, "is the right of the head of state." Exactly what would a perfect trial be capable of discovering?

Well, we believe in due process for a reason I thought. We try to have it because there are things that we might not know without it. But it's Saddam, who cares about that for him?

To no avail, I've been searching You Tube since Thursday of a video of Chevy Chase on Saturday Night Live falling down in parody of former President Gerald Ford.

I suspect I have it on a VCR tape in storage somewhere, as I have most of them from the first few years of the show, but with the snow storm, I'm not about to head out to the storage locker.

Until someone else posts it on You Tube, we'll all have to make do with today's New York Times article about it.

If anyone has a video from 1975 -- the only year Chevy Chase was on the show, let me know. I'll be glad to convert it to a format You Tube will accept.

Snowed in again. You Ain't Going Nowhere. The Byrds, 1968.

John Edwards is running a different campaign this time around. It's great to see him take such a strong progressive stand:

Edwards said it's not just Iraq that it is chaos and in need of moral leadership from the United States. He said the United States should be leading an end to genocide in Sudan and to atrocities in northern Uganda. He also said the United States should be part of the International Criminal Court, something that Bush has fought against to keep Americans from facing politically motivated prosecutions.

Bump and Update: The North Carolina Bar has filed an ethics complaint against DA Mike Nifong for his improper extra-judicial comments in the Duke Lacrosse players alleged rape case. Professor KC Johnson has reviewed it and provides analysis.

The filing focuses solely on his procedurally improper public statements, which the Bar (correctly) contends violated Rule 3.8(f) of the Code of Professional Responsibility. That provision requires prosecutors to “refrain from making extrajudicial comments that have a substantial likelihood of heightening public condemnation of the accused.”

The text of the complaint is here (pdf).

Saddam was provided a jail house visit with his brothers today.

His execution will be taped by the Iraqi authorities.

There seems to be some disagreement about whether he will be executed this weekend.

He may be turned over to Iraqi authorities by Sunday. A religious holiday may prevent his execution before next week.