The wall between federal and state law enforcement agencies continues to crumble.

The Justice Department is building a massive database that allows state and local police officers around the country to search millions of case files from the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and other federal law enforcement agencies, according to Justice officials.

The system, known as "OneDOJ," already holds approximately 1 million case records and is projected to triple in size over the next three years, Justice officials said. The files include investigative reports, criminal-history information, details of offenses, and the names, addresses and other information of criminal suspects or targets, officials said.

The Justice Department is preparing to take the breakdown of the wall even further:

In the new apple of the Left leaning eye, Bolivia, a black mark is given to left wing Bolivian President Evo Morales' professed commitment to progressive views. A Cuban dissident's criticism of Bolivia's close ties to Castro is met with a deportation order by the Bolivian government:

The Bolivian government has announced plans to deport a prominent Cuban dissident who publicly criticized President Evo Morales' close ties to Havana. Dr. Amauris Samartino, a Cuban who holds permanent residence status in Bolivia, will be expelled under a 1996 law forbidding immigrants to ''intervene in any form in internal politics or incite by any means the alteration of the social and political order,'' according to a government statement on Sunday. Samartino was arrested Saturday in the eastern city of Santa Cruz, a center of anti-Morales opposition, and later transferred to the Bolivian capital of La Paz. He will be flown home to Cuba once his case has been processed, the statement said.

Flown back to Cuba? Well, so much for the freedom loving Bolivian government. This is disgraceful.

This is a Christmas shout-out to all those who are spending the holidays behind bars, and to the friends, families, and lawyers who visit them.

John Prine:

The search light in the big yard
swings round with the gun
and spotlights the snowflakes
like the dust in the sun.
It's Christmas in prison
there'll be music tonight
I'll probably get homesick
I love you. Goodnight.

James Brown, the "Godfather of Soul" has died at 73.

Along with Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan and a handful of others, Brown was one of the major musical influences of the past 50 years. At least one generation idolized him, and sometimes openly copied him. His rapid-footed dancing inspired Mick Jagger and Michael Jackson among others. Songs such as David Bowie's "Fame," Prince's "Kiss," George Clinton's "Atomic Dog" and Sly and the Family Stone's "Sing a Simple Song" were clearly based on Brown's rhythms and vocal style.

The TL kid is with friends watching the Bronco game. He'll be back soon, we've got fresh tamales and homemade chicken enchilladas and green chile for dinner, with margaritas to accompany them.

The fireplace is turned on, it just started snowing heavily (again) and I'm glad to be warm and safe in my humble abode.

Best wishes to all of you for a happy holiday and let's hope next year at this time, our soldiers will be home from Iraq.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger broke his leg skiing in Sun Valley, Idaho yesterday.

The 59-year-old former movie star broke the femur bone in his right leg and was taken to a local hospital for X-rays and later discharged, Adam Mendelsohn, the governor's deputy chief of staff for communications, said in a statement.

"When the governor returns to Los Angeles from his scheduled Christmas trip, he will have surgery to repair his femur. No one else was involved in the skiing accident," Mendelsohn's statement said.

Congratulations to Monica Lewinsky, who just graduated from the London School of Economics with a master of science degree in social psychology. Her thesis topic was: In Search of the Impartial Juror: An Exploration of the Third Person Effect and Pre-Trial Publicity."

You Go. Girl. More power to you. I spent years on tv night after night sticking up for you (and trashing Linda Tripp) and I'm glad it turned out so well for you. Your mother may have gotten the rawest deal of all, getting called to a grand jury to disclose mother-daughter secrets, but she was there for you. Your parents got you good lawyers, once you got past the Ginsberg guy who wanted to be on every sunday news show every Sunday.

You came out of this classy and rose above it and came out in tact. If you are pondering what to do next, let me suggest law school.

I expect we'll be reading more about you in the years to come. Kudos for rising above the media nastiness and going to a better place with a stronger sense of self. Good luck to you in the future.

Frank Rich has been a very good columnist of late. But he was not always so. And it is columns like his most recent that remind us that he is still capaable of extreme fatuousness:

[I]n Time’s defense, let me say that the more I reflected on its 2006 Person of the Year — or perhaps the more that Mylar cover reflected back at me — the more I realized that the magazine wasn’t as out of touch as it first seemed. Time made the right choice, albeit for the wrong reasons. As our country sinks deeper into a quagmire — and even a conclusive Election Day repudiation of the war proves powerless to stop it — we the people, and that includes, yes, you, will seek out any escape hatch we can find. In the Iraq era, the dropout nostrums of choice are not the drugs and drug culture of Vietnam but the equally masturbatory and narcissistic (if less psychedelic) pastimes of the Internet. Why not spend hour upon hour passionately venting in the blogosphere, as Time suggests, about our “state of mind or the state of the nation or the steak-frites at the new bistro down the street”? Or an afternoon surfing from video to video on YouTube, where short-attention-span fluff is infinite? It’s more fun than the nightly news, which, as Laura Bush reminded us this month, has been criminally lax in unearthing all those “good things that are happening” in Baghdad.

Who does Rich think he is describing there? His Johnny Come Lateliness to understanding what Bush is is great and all, but he was part of the problem when Bush was [s]elected. Bob Somerby has documented it and asked this:

Why has a “liberal” like Rich been so tough on Gore through the years? Why did he invent Love Story in 1997? Throughout the course of Campaign 2000, why did he keep pretending that Bush and Gore were a perfectly-matched pair of bumblers? When Gore spoke out on Iraq in 2002, why did Rich attack him again (inventing his facts as he went)? And in his new column, just two weeks ago, why did he nit-pick those ludicrous complaints about Gore? For example, why did he pretend—in that pathetic example—that Gore “waffled” on creationism in 1999? For the most part, readers have no way to evaluate such claims. Why does Rich just keep making them up?

So we DO know the blogs are good for calling exhalted columnists on their hypocritical nonsense at the least. You won't get THAT in the MSM, Frank.

Phill Kline was voted out of office as the Attorney General of Kansas by citizens who rejected his mindless crusade against abortion providers and their patients. He should have spent his last weeks in office sitting quietly or taking some vacation time. At the very least, he should have respected his successor's request not to file abortion-related charges before leaving office.

Instead, Kline filed charges (pdf) against an abortion provider for performing unlawful late term abortions. The charges were the culmination of a controversial investigation that relied on subpoenas to review private medical records.

Fortunately for the doctor, a judge ruled that Kline exceeded his authority and almost immediately dismissed the charges. The district attorney argued that Kline could not act as a prosecutor in her county without being invited. Translation: go away, Phill.

Here's a gift idea for your local pot dealer:

A one-time Texas drug agent described by a former boss as perhaps the best narcotics officer in the country plans to begin selling a video that shows people how to conceal their drugs and fool police.

Barry Cooper, who once worked for police departments in Gladewater and Big Sandy and the Permian Basin Drug Task Force, plans to launch a Web site next week where he will sell his video, "Never Get Busted Again," the Tyler Morning Telegraph reported in its online edition Thursday.

A promotional video says Cooper will show viewers how to "conceal their stash," "avoid narcotics profiling" and "fool canines every time."

Cooper says he made the video "because he believes the nation's fight against drugs is a waste of resources."

Busting marijuana users fills up prisons with nonviolent offenders, he said.

Brian Williams wuz robbed!:

. . . Mark Halperin claimed that the "old media" -- broadcast news outlets and major newspapers -- were "biased against conservatives; there's no doubt about it." He stated, "I think we've got a chance in these last two weeks [before the then-upcoming midterm elections] to prove to conservatives that we understand their grievances. We're going to try to do better." But if "try[ing] to do better" to not appear "biased against conservatives" meant offering viewers conservative misinformation, Halperin shouldn't have worried; a review of dozens of items by Media Matters for America identifying and correcting conservative misinformation from ABC suggests that Halperin's network was "try[ing] to do better" throughout 2006. . . . These examples, and many more, earned ABC the distinction of being named Media Matters' Misinformer of the Year for 2006.

I'm sure Williams will be in the running for 2007.

The NY Times blames “some Democrats and Internet bloggers” for “stirring up talk of a ‘secret plan’ by the Bush administration to resume the draft.” The stirring was prompted by a press report of a Selective Service plan to stage a mock draft “to determine how, if necessary, the government would get some 100,000 young adults to report to their local draft boards.” The exercise, the Service assures us, is unrelated to recent proposals to send a “surge” of new troops to Iraq. Heck, they schedule and cancel mock drafts all the time. Nothing to see here.

Speculation about a draft is actually stirred by surge proponents, who have yet to explain where they will find the surging troops without drafting them, by the secretary of veterans affairs, who recently opined that a draft might benefit the country, and by the president, who wants a bigger Army despite the military’s struggle to meet existing enlistment quotas. When the Selective Service director complains that “you have people trying to create fear when there’s nothing there” – referring, like the Times, to Democrats – he’s talking past the disconnect between Republican support for plans that require more troops and the absence of any meaningful plan to find them. If Republicans don’t want the country to worry about a draft, they should give us a realistic plan for increasing the size of the military without one.