What should they be? Argue for your views here.

Grits for Breakfast has the scoop on the memo that went out to federal judges asking them to consider sealing the records of those who cooperated with the government to get leniency in their own cases. The full memo is here (pdf).

What's behind the request? Their fear the snitches will turn up on the internet site Who's a Rat.

Among the items perceived as appropriate for sealing: Plea agreements of the cooperators. The Judicial Conference says they look forward to working closely with the Department of Justice in this matter.

Neil Young is releasing his Live at the Fillmore East show cd, recorded March 9 and 10, 1970.

Tomorrow we will get our first glimpse of his hidden library, a single-disc live recording of Neil Young and Crazy Horse, recorded about a year and half after they got together and recorded their first album, “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere.” It is blaring, primitive and in parts very, very good.

Ann Althouse was there, I wasn't. So I've put it on my Amazon wishlist.

In outlining her legislative agenda today, Hillary Clinton said she's open to thoughts about a 2008 presidential run.

"I will look at the possibilities, but I ... haven't really had the time to talk to people about it," Clinton told a breakfast gathering hosted by the Association for a Better New York. "It's been a busy election season that worked out well, so I will think about it. I'm open to thoughts."

She also re-affirmed her centrist position.

"We are ready to roll up our sleeves and work with our Republican counterparts. Our country works best when we govern from the vital, dynamic center," she said.

Taking a look back at when she went public with her decision to run for the Senate in 2000: June, 1999: She announced her exploratory committee would form in July.

November 11, 1999 (Adam Nagourney, New York Times, available on Lexis.com),

Paul Craig Roberts has a provocative article in Counterpunch today (scroll down) about whether the Dems will do anything about the Bush Administration's destruction of the Bill of Rights and freedom in the name of the war on terror.

He asks:

Do Pelosi and the incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have the intellect and character to deliver the leadership required for Americans to remain a free people? Instead of bemoaning the damage Bush has done to civil liberty, Democrats are up in arms over one child in five being raised in poverty. The more important question is whether children are being raised as a free people protected by civil liberties from arbitrary government power.

What is the most unfair, draconian law passed during the Reagan Administration that is still law today? The one that makes the the penalties for crack cocaine offenses 100 times more severe than those for powder cocaine.

Eric Sterling has an op-ed in the LA Times today on the topic. Tomorrow, the U.S. Sentencing Commission will hold hearings on the disparate penalties.

ONE OF OUR MOST infamous contemporary laws is the 100-1 difference in sentencing between crack cocaine and powder cocaine. Under federal drug laws, prison sentences are usually tied to the quantity of drugs the defendant trafficked. For example, selling 5,000 grams of powder cocaine (about a briefcase full) gets a mandatory 10-year prison sentence, but so does selling only 50 grams of crack cocaine (the weight of a candy bar).

Working for the House Judiciary Committee in 1986, I wrote the House bill that was the basis for that law. We made some terrible mistakes.

Sterling observes:

Michael Skakel, convicted of the murder of Martha Moxley for which he is serving a 20 year to life sentence, lost his bid for Supreme Court review.

The principal issue was the expiration of the Statute of Limitiations at the time Skakel was charged. Former Solicitor General Ted Olson represented Skakel, the nephew of Ethel Kennedy, in the appeal.

At the time of Moxley's killing, Connecticut had a five-year statute of limitations on murder cases that did not involve the death penalty. One year later, in 1976, the state legislature removed the five-year deadline in such cases.

The Connecticut Supreme Court upheld Skakel's conviction, overturning its earlier holding that the new law did not apply to crimes committed before its enactment. The legislature intended to remove the deadline for prosecution for all crimes, like Moxley's killing, for which the statute of limitations had not yet expired, the state court said.

On Sunday, Contessa of MSNBC and I discussed whether the Dems can deliver on their promises in Congress and on Russ Feingold's statement he won't run for President in 2008.

The LA Times has an interesting article about the expectations of progressive groups, members of which worked hard for the Dems in the election and are expecting action, not compromise, on their issues. Among them: the repeal of the worst provisions of the Patriot Act.

Turning off those new voters could undermine Democrats' hopes of solidifying their new majorities and taking the White House in 2008. But to the leaders of interest groups who are core supporters of the Democratic Party, and who had been barred under Republican rule from the inner sanctums of power, the new Congress means a time for action, not compromise.

"We are not going to let them off the hook," said Caroline Fredrickson, the ACLU's legislative director, of the newly empowered Democratic leaders in Congress. "We will hold their feet to the fire and use all the tools we can to mobilize our members."

Other issues and groups with high expectations:

WaPo:

Speaking in Hartford last Wednesday, Lieberman remained unwavering in his opposition to Democrats' calls for withdrawing troops from Iraq. "What we are doing now there is not working, but that doesn't mean in any sense that it is time for us to retreat," he said. "This is a test in a very difficult and dangerous hour in our history." . . . "The voters spoke on Tuesday that they're unhappy with the status quo," Lieberman said. However, he added, "I don't believe they want us to pick up and leave."

Yet Senate Democratic leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) and other Democrats called yesterday for the Bush administration to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq in the next few months. The new Congress, said Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), in line to chair the Armed Services Committee, "is willing to implement the people's will and to put some pressure on this president to change course in Iraq, forget the stay-the-course policy that is no longer viable." Levin said on ABC's "This Week" that redeployment should begin within four to six months.

What Joe Lieberman has to say on Iraq is simply irrelevant. What Reid, Levin, Pelosi and Murtha say matters from the Congress. And of course what Bush says from the Executive. Joe Lieberman is not part of the conversation.

The Democrats have been far from aligned on an exit strategy from Iraq. But they now seem to be agreeing that the troops should start coming home in four to six months.

The Democrats — the incoming majority leader, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada; the incoming Armed Services Committee chairman, Senator Carl Levin of Michigan; and the incoming Foreign Relations Committee chairman, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware — said a phased redeployment of troops would be their top priority when the new Congress convenes in January, even before an investigation of the conduct of the war.

“We need to begin a phased redeployment of forces from Iraq in four to six months,” Mr. Levin said in an appearance on the ABC News program “This Week.” In a telephone interview later, Mr. Levin added, “The point of this is to signal to the Iraqis that the open-ended commitment is over and that they are going to have to solve their own problems.”

I'll agree, this needs to be a top priority. And how out of touch is John McCain, who on Meet the Press Sunday morning, said we need to stay the course and send more troops?

In some ways, it is unfortunate that the Media is waking up to the silliness of their "Conservative" Dems meme. But they are. And Jon Tester is leading the way:

For all the talk about the new Democrats swept into office on Tuesday, the senator-elect from Montana truly is your grandfather's Democrat -- a pro-gun, anti-big-business prairie pragmatist whose life is defined by the treeless patch of hard Montana dirt that has been in the family since 1916.

It is a place with 105-degree summer days and winter chills of 30 below zero, where his grandparents are buried, where his two children learned to grow crops in a dry land entirely dependent on rainfall, and where, he says, he earned barely $20,000 a year farming over the last decade.

. . . "You think of the Senate as a millionaire's club -- well, Jon is going to be the blue-collar guy who brings an old-fashioned, Jeffersonian ideal about being tied to the land," said Steve Doherty, a friend of Mr. Tester's for 20 years. "He's a small farmer from the homestead. That's absolutely who he is. That place defines him."

Paul Krugman also understands. More on the flip.