President Bush today signed into law S. 3930, the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

The ACLU has issued a statement calling the law "one of the worst civil liberties measures ever enacted in American history."

"With his signature, President Bush enacts a law that is both unconstitutional and un-American. This president will be remembered as the one who undercut the hallmark of habeas in the name of the war on terror. Nothing separates America more from our enemies than our commitment to fairness and the rule of law, but the bill signed today is an historic break because it turns Guantánamo Bay and other U.S. facilities into legal no-man's-lands.

"The president can now - with the approval of Congress - indefinitely hold people without charge, take away protections against horrific abuse, put people on trial based on hearsay evidence, authorize trials that can sentence people to death based on testimony literally beaten out of witnesses, and slam shut the courthouse door for habeas petitions. Nothing could be further from the American values we all hold in our hearts than the Military Commissions Act."

The ACLU took out a full page ad in today's Washington Post to protest the law. You can view it here (pdf).

I can name on two hands over a half century the number of Democrats we have endorsed for public office. This year, we will do something different. . . . So, what in the world has happened? The Republican Party has changed, and it has changed monumentally.

You almost cannot be a victorious traditional Republican candidate with mainstream values in Johnson County or in Kansas anymore, because these candidates never get on the ballot in the general election.

Extremism should be a brand Democrats have stamped on the Republican Party for some time. That they have not is a frustration for me.

There goes another one. Lester Crawford, who was Bush's FDA director in 2005, has been charged with lying about stock ownership in companies regulated by the FDA. He will plead guilty tomorrow in federal court to the Information filed today.

The court papers also say that Crawford chaired FDA's Obesity Working Group at a time when he and his wife owned stock in soft drink and snack food manufacturer Pepsico Inc., based in Purchase, N.Y., and food product manufacturer Sysco Corp., based in Houston.

The panel Crawford was chairing was making decisions affecting food and soft drink manufacturers. Crawford, a veterinarian, abruptly resigned from the FDA job in September 2005 but gave no reason for his decision to step down. He had held the top position for just two months but had been acting head of the regulatory agency for more than a year.

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Update: Lynne Stewart got 28 months, not 30 years. Huge defeat for the Government. Congrats to Lynne. Now she won't die in prison.

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Original Post:

New York criminal defense lawyer Lynne Stewart faces sentencing today on her conviction for providing material support for terrorists by passing along messages from her imprisoned client, the blind Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman. The Government is asking for 30 years for the 67 year old lawyer who suffers from breast cancer and other ailments.

A psychiatric report submitted to the federal judge in Manhattan who will decide the sentence, John Koeltl, claims that several emotional events in Stewart's life suggest her actions were motivated by "human factors of her client and his situation" and not by politics, according to portions of the psychiatric report.

The psychiatrist, Steven Teich, points to 11 emotional events that he claims prompted her to want to take action on Abdel Rahman's behalf, Stewart's attorneys say. Among the events that make Dr.Teich's list are her experiences seeing Abdel Rahman incarcerated and the 1995 suicide of a drug defendant named Dominick Maldonado, whom Stewart had once represented.

The psych report is sealed, but here are some more details:

The judge has reached a verdict in Saddam Hussein's trial. Both the verdict and sentence will be announced on November 5.

A death sentence for Saddam two days before election day?

[Hat tip Patriot Daily.]

(By Big Tent Democrat)

Today at 1 p.m. EST is the first of three Connecticut Senate Debstes with Ned Lamont, the Democrat candidate, Joe Lieberman, the de facto Republican candidate and Alan Schlesinger, the forlorn and abandoned Republican candidate.

If you are as interested in this race as I am, you'll want to tune in here and you can via the Internet if you are not in Connecticut.

TalkLeft has moved to Scoop. The problems with comments are resolved. Just register once, and you will be set.

I hope you like the new ease of commenting. Once you register, you can post comments. If you want to be able to post diaries, e-mail me and I will consider re-setting your permissions to be able to do so.

TalkLeft should both load faster now and your comments (once you register) should be pretty close to instantaneous. We're on a huge server, and we're the only site on it.

It's taken 40 days and 40 nights and more than a few thousand dollars. Be kind.

If you have problems, e-mail me.

by Last Night in Little Rock

Yet another Republican House member is under investigation--for influence peddling.

AP reports today that Rep. Curt Weldon, R-PA 7, is under federal investigation for seeking lobbying and consulting contracts worth over $1M for his daughter Karen. Weldon's staff denied knowledge of an investigation with an interesting choice of words:

After yet another 20 hours of working on the site migration to Scoop yesterday and today, it looks like it will be early morning before we go live. To tide you over, here's Tom Petty and Eddie Vedder in Denver performing The Waiting (is The Hardest Part.)

From Big Tent Democrat

Arianna writes what a lot of people have been thinking, including me:

It is bitterly ironic that instead of building on that momentum by continuing to make his case against Lieberman, Lamont has let himself become enmeshed in the same consultant-driven culture of caution and blandness that has produced a steady stream of modern candidates more worried about stepping on the land mines laid out by their opponents' campaign teams than stepping forward to lead.

On 60 Minutes, Ed Bradley is interviewing the Duke Lacrosse players charged in the Duke lacrosse alleged rape case, and the second dancer.

There's lots of discussion in the TalkLeft forums, but you can comment here as well.

Is the D.A.'s case hopeless? I'll be back with my thoughts after it airs here.