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.

It is a freaking mess out here. This blizzard looks to be worst than the last one. And it's only just begun.

The airport is already in chaos:

Lines are already hundreds deep and airlines have canceled some flights as a result of the winter storm that began to dump snow on the Front Range this morning. Snow started falling in downtown Denver shortly before 10:30 a.m. and may fall at a rate of up to 2 inches an hour. Between 8 and 18 inches will be piling up on the ground. A couple of feet can be expected in the foothills as the storm pulses into Friday and even Saturday.

More on the aiport situation here. Frontier is being particularly hit hard. If you're driving, here are the current road conditions.

This is a very good sign as well as being absolutely correct from Senator Obama:

Today, nearly three thousand brave young Americans are dead, and tens of thousands more have been wounded. Rather than welcomed "liberators," our troops have become targets of the exploding sectarian violence in Iraq. Our military has been strained to the limits. The cost to American taxpayers is approaching $400 billion.

Now we are faced with a quagmire to which there are no good answers. But the one that makes very little sense is to put tens of thousands more young Americans in harm's way without changing a strategy that has failed by almost every imaginable account.

In escalating this war with a so-called "surge" of troops, the President would be overriding the expressed concerns of Generals on the ground, Secretary Powell, the bipartisan Iraq Study Group and the American people. Colin Powell has said that placing more troops in the crossfire of a civil war simply will not work. General John Abizaid, our top commander in the Middle East, said just last month that, "I believe that more American forces prevent the Iraqis from doing more, from taking more responsibility for their own future." Even the Joint Chiefs of Staff have expressed concern, saying that a surge in troop levels "could lead to more attacks by al-Qaeda" and "provide more targets for Sunni insurgents." Once again, the President is defying good counsel and common sense.

Well done Senator.

Saddam Hussein remains in a U.S. military prison. Today, his lawyers are asking the U.S. not to hand him over to the Iraqis for execution, saying it would be a violation of the Geneva Conventions.

"According to the international conventions it is forbidden to hand a prisoner of war to his adversary," Saddam's lawyer, Khalil al-Dulaimi, said in Amman, Jordan.

"I urge all the international and legal organizations, the United Nations secretary-general, the Arab League and all the leaders of the world to rapidly prevent the American administration from handing the president to the Iraqi authorities," he told The Associated Press.

An official close to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has said that Saddam would remain in a U.S. military prison until he is handed over to Iraqi authorities on the day of his execution.

al-Dulaimi also says the sectarian violence in Iraq will escalate it Saddam is executed.

Here we go again. The snow is expected to begin falling around noon. I'm off to get as much done as I can before the snow gets too heavy to drive in and the roads ice up. Just little things, like going to the office to get the mail, the grocery store to stock up on food and pick up some fresh flowers to brighten a gray day.

Here's an open thread for you.

Update: John Edwards will be live-blogging at his campaign blog at noon ET.

Former Senator and vice-presidential candidate John Edwards is running for President. We all knew that yesterday, but today he made the official announcment in New Orleans.

In addition to his campaign against poverty, he's blasting the war in Iraq, particularly John McCain's plan to increase troops in Iraq.

Edwards says we can bring 40,000 troops home now.

From the setting to the words, Edwards is using the day to signal that he intends to run a grassroots, insurgent campaign with an anti-Washington flair. He directly criticized Arizona Sen. John McCain, seen as a leading candidate for the Republican nomination, for recommending that more troops be sent to Iraq to help quell the violence there.

"We need to reject this McCain doctrine of surging troops and escalating the war in Iraq," he said in his campaign video, recorded on Wednesday. "We need to make clear we're going to leave and we need to start leaving Iraq."

I have resisted buying either a Blackberry or a Treo for years. I'm not part of a corporate structure and I'm online at a computer more hours than offline anyway. I also don't use text messaging. I mostly use my cell phone for outgoing calls and very few people have the number. The plan I'm on costs $39 a month and I never go over the limit. So, what's the advantage?

Well..the TL kid was home for the holidays this week and semi-complaining about his age-old Nokia cell phone. And it is a real dinosaur. I've been using a Motorola Razor phone, which I've never liked -- it's an awkward thumb movement and I like popup keys rather than the Razor's flat keys -- so we went to a Cingular store in the mall the day after Christmas.

I ended up buying the new Treo 680 for me, and giving him my Razor. It was a simple switch of Sim cards.

Woodward says:

Former president Gerald R. Ford said in an embargoed interview in July 2004 that the Iraq war was not justified. "I don't think I would have gone to war," he said a little more than a year after President Bush had launched the invasion advocated and carried out by prominent veterans of Ford's own administration.

In a four-hour conversation at his house in Beaver Creek, Colo., Ford "very strongly" disagreed with the current president's justifications for invading Iraq and said he would have pushed alternatives, such as sanctions, much more vigorously. In the tape-recorded interview, Ford was critical not only of Bush but also of Vice President Cheney -- Ford's White House chief of staff -- and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who served as Ford's chief of staff and then his Pentagon chief.

"Rumsfeld and Cheney and the president made a big mistake in justifying going into the war in Iraq. They put the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction," Ford said. "And now, I've never publicly said I thought they made a mistake, but I felt very strongly it was an error in how they should justify what they were going to do."

Public defenders toil daily in the courtroom trenches protecting constitutional rights for very little money and even less glory.

Now there's a blog awards just for them. Sentencing Law and Policy explains here.

But don't take our word for it, head on over to the Inaugural 2006 Public Defender Blog Awards and check out the diverse and thoughtful blogs and cast a vote.

The 2006 Blawg Awards didn't include a category for public defenders, an oversight that will be remedied next year. But there are some good sites there, so mosey over there too and check out the winners. TalkLeft won the Best Politico Law Blog Award this year.