Greg Sargent catches George Will being a dishonest boor:

Will omitted the pissy and rude quote spoken by the President which originally provoked Webb. Will cut out the line from the President where he said: "That's not what I asked you." In Will's recounting, that instead became a sign of Bush's parental solicitiousness: "The president again asked `How's your boy?'" Will's change completely alters the tenor of the conversation from one in which Bush was rude to Webb, which is what the Post's original account suggested, to one in which Webb was inexplicably rude to the President, which is how Will wanted to represent what happened.

Will Will correct himself and apologize to Webb? Of course not. Dishonest boors never do.

The government claimed a fingerprint linked Brandon Mayfield to a terrorist attack in Spain. That claim was false, as Spain said all along. "Sneak-and-peek" warrants, issued pursuant to the Patriot Act, were used to search for evidence against the innocent Mayfield. When no supporting evidence was found, Mayfield was arrested and detained as a material witness.

Mayfield sued the government. The suit has been settled for $2 million together with a rare apology for the government's misbehavior. The settlement does not bar Mayfield from moving forward with a challenge to the Patriot Act.

Mayfield's case called attention to the myth that fingerprints are an infallible method of identification:

Michael Kinsley today:

There is something about the Web that brings out the ego monster in everybody. It's not just the well-established tendency to be nasty. When you write for the Web, you open yourself up to breathtakingly vicious vitriol. People wish things on your mother, simply for bearing you, that you wouldn't wish on Hitler.

Yep, Crossfire Kinsley decries the incivility. He defended Crossfire when Jon Stewart criticized:

A moment of surprising resonance in the campaign was Jon Stewart's Oct. 15 appearance on "Crossfire." Taking just a tad too seriously his recent appointment by acclamation as the Walter Cronkite of our time, Stewart begged the show's hosts to "stop hurting America" with their divisiveness. I used to work on that show, and I still think the robust, even raucous, and ideologically undisguised hammering of politicians on "Crossfire" is more intellectually honest than more decorous shows where journalists either pretend to neutrality or pontificate as if somebody had voted them into office.

Kinsley is a great writer no doubt but please no more decrying of the "incivility."

In an outstanding post that is must reading, Digby discusses the role of the Media in enabling the incompetence and dishonesty of the current Administration and the price we pay for their abject failure:

What mattered, by default, was the President's "instinct" to guide America across the fresh, post-9/11 terrain�a style of leadership that could be rendered within tiny, confidential circles. America, unbound, was duly led by a President, unbound.

I blame the media for this. After 9/11 they lost their minds and became unthinking hagiographers and adminstration cheerleaders to an absurd extent. The man's halting, incoherent first press conference after 9/11 scared me more than the attacks and yet the press corps behaved as if they were in the presence of a God whose stuttering, meandering gibberish were words uttered from on high. He was called a genius and compared to Winston Churchill. Paeans to his greatness were turned into best sellers. His "gut" was infallible. It was patently obvious that he was in over his head and yet this bizarre, almost hallucinogenic image of the man emerged in the media that actually made me question my sanity at times. It took years for this trance to wear off with a majority of the public and even longer in the media. It was one of the strangest phenomenons I've ever observed.

And this genuflection to the "character" of George W. Bush continued until Katrina, the unquestionable turning point. Digby's point highlights why it is so important that the Media be the watchdog and skeptic for our nation even if Bill O'Reilly accuses you of treason. That a Bill O'Reilly is treated as a respectable person by the Media is a disgrace of course but beside the point. The Media MUST do its job.

The reason is that the American People will rally round the flag in times of crisis, they will suspend disbelief and hope for the best from their leaders. I know I did after 9/11. As Digby writes, in the days immediately after 9/11, President Bush seemed alarmingly inept. It was frightening. But when Bush gave his great address to a joint sesion of Congress on September 20, 2001, I wanted to believe and suspended my own disbelief. I wanted to believe he was up to the job. It was the inexplicable drive to invade Iraq that awoke me from my slumber. Before that, I took the one piece of evidence that could indicate that Bush was up to the job and ignored everything else.

I'm off to Key West for the annual NORML legal seminar where I'll be speaking Saturday on Terrorism and the War on Drugs. The full agenda is here.

It's just about my favorite seminar of the year, between getting together with other drug defense lawyers, the Pier House Resort and Spa (check out my favorite room) and the free-spirit, laid back style of Key West itself.

Prison Nation set a new record. It is a record in which we should take no pride.

A record 7 million people - or one in every 32 American adults - were behind bars, on probation or on parole by the end of last year, according to the Justice Department. Of those, 2.2 million were in prison or jail, an increase of 2.7 percent over the previous year, according to a report released Wednesday.

More than 4.1 million people were on probation and 784,208 were on parole at the end of 2005. Prison releases are increasing, but admissions are increasing more.

Drug offenders accounted for 49 percent of the growth in the federal prison population from 1995 to 2003.

The ranks of the Republican right-wing superstars who thought they'd follow the Bush/Rove plan to win the presidency in 2008 are dwindling. Don't expect George Allen or Rick Santorum to run after failing to hold their Senate seats. Today Bill Frist, who tried to solidify his extremist credentials by diagnosing Terry Schiavo via videotape, announced that he won't seek the presidency.

"In the Bible, God tells us for everything there is a season, and for me, for now, this season of being an elected official has come to a close," he said in a written statement. "I do not intend to run for president in 2008."

Halleluiah.

"Values":

Keith Ellison, D-Minn., the first Muslim elected to the United States Congress, has announced that he will not take his oath of office on the Bible, but on the bible of Islam, the Koran. He should not be allowed to do so — not because of any American hostility to the Koran, but because the act undermines American civilization. . . . Forgive me, but America should not give a hoot what Keith Ellison’s favorite book is. Insofar as a member of Congress taking an oath to serve America and uphold its values is concerned, America is interested in only one book, the Bible.

James Joyner discusses rights:

I would point Mr. Prager to Article VI of the Constitution of the United States, specifically the third paragraph:

. . . [N]o religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

Nothing in the Constitution requires the taking of the Oath on a Bible, or any other book. Indeed, doing so would obviously constitute a “religious test.” There’s also the little matter of the 1st Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion . . . .

What would Jim Wallis say?

Khaled el-Masri reasonably believes he's entitled to an explanation, or at least an apology, for the U.S. government's decision to kidnap him, fly him to Afghanistan, and torture him before realizing he wasn't a terrorist. His lawsuit was thrown out, however, on the theory that the government can't be held accountable without revealing "state secrets." How shockingly illegal conduct can legitimately be kept secret, particularly after it's been revealed, is a mystery.

"I think courts are beginning to recognize that this administration is using secrecy to avoid accountability," says ACLU attorney Ben Wizner, who argued El-Masri’s appeal Tuesday in Richmond.

Don't expect the Fourth Circuit to be one of those courts.

Masri is thinking about suing Boeing (which presumably has no state secrets since it isn't a state), because one of its subsidiaries apparently played a role in his rendition.

After the Radical Right spent years attacking progressives as the "Loony Left" and "moonbats," I can't say this is not making me smile:

It's the wrong strategy, being pursued and driven by all the usual suspects: social conservatives; immigration fanatics; ethically-challenged pork addicts who the former two groups are now calling "moderates" in a fatuous and cynical attempt to portray themselves as the party's real standard bearers, which they are not (please remind me just when Barry Goldwater or Ronald Reagan proposed amending the Constitution to deal with a social concern, or when either claimed that there was simply no more fat to trim from the federal budget). As Silver suggests in his post, too many moderate and libertarian-leaning Republicans are staying silent on this subject, instead of standing up and pointing the finger for our loss squarely where it belongs: not with the Arnold Schwarzeneggers, John McCains, Rudy Giulianis, Susan Collinses, Jim Kolbes or Mary Bonos of this world, but rather with the Tom DeLays, Rick Santorums, Marilyn Musgraves, John Kyls, Jim Inhofes and Conrad Burnses-- a.k.a., the loss-makers.

The extremist elements of the GOP hoisted on its own petard. Delicious.

Today David Ignatius discovers the virtues of opposing the Iraq Debacle, if you are a Republican:

What would make a Hagel candidacy interesting is that he can claim to have been right about Iraq and other key issues earlier than almost any national politician, Republican or Democratic. Though a Vietnam veteran and a hawk on many national security issues, he had prescient misgivings about the Iraq war -- and, more important, the political courage to express these doubts clearly, at a time when many politicians were running for cover.

Apparently that is a good thing if you are a Republican but not if you are a Democrat. You see, Ignatius wrote this in January 2003:

[General Wesley] Clark's argument, in simple terms, is that unless the United States can bring a strong coalition into a war against Iraq, it may put itself in greater danger. The chief threat to U.S. security right now is al Qaeda, he argues. Disarming Iraq is important too, he says, but it's not the most urgent task.

The Bush administration's mistake in Iraq, says Clark, is one of priorities. "They picked war over law. They picked a unilateralist approach over a multilateral approach. They picked conventional forces over special-operations forces. And they picked Saddam Hussein as a target over Osama bin Laden."

Clark worries that the Iraq policy is fatally flawed because it's likely to create new recruits for America's main enemy -- the Islamic fundamentalists who destroyed the World Trade Center and attacked the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. He recalls a military dictum from his days as commander of the Army's National Training Center: "There are only two kinds of plans -- ones that might work and ones that won't work. You have to avoid a plan with a fatal flaw."

. . . Clark doesn't doubt that overwhelming U.S. military power would quickly crush Saddam Hussein's relatively weak forces. Indeed, he gave a dazzling briefing for global leaders at the World Economic Forum here this week about how U.S.-led forces will move toward Baghdad. His concern, instead, is about what comes after -- "the unpredictability of consequences," as he puts it. Clark fears that the new dangers generated by a war in Iraq might outweigh any gains from disarming Saddam Hussein.

How come Ignatius has never extolled the virtues of a Clark candidacy? This appears to be the Ignatius corollary to IOKIYAR theory - Republicans against the Iraq Debacle are Presidential timber, Democrats against it are part of the Loony Left. I wonder if Ignatius realizes how brainwashed he has become - you would think he would favor Presidential candidates named Romney.

Duane Chapman, aka Dog the Bounty Hunter and his wife Beth, will be on Larry King Live tonight discussing the extradition proceedings lodged against him in Mexico.

The Mexican federal courts will hear all of the evidence gathered by Bollard’s team at the Constitutional Hearing beginning on Monday, December 4, 2006 in Guadalajara. The district court will have to decide whether the charges against Duane, Leland and Tim Chapman should be dismissed or whether the extradition case should proceed further.

Dog says he is "haunted" by the proceedings and he's dying inside.

28 members of Congress are behind Dog, and have written to Condoleeza Rice asking her to help spare him from extradition. It's probably the only constructive request Tom Tancredo has ever made.