Rudy Giuliani's friends may be his undoing. First, Bernie Kerik, the subject of a federal wiretap investigation who has already pleaded guilty to a minor charge. Then Bernie surfaces in the Jeanine Pirro bugging investigation, and now, according to the New York Times:

The politics of the Pirro investigation, which was disclosed on Wednesday, seemed more tangled yesterday. Two lawyers with knowledge of the inquiry said that subpoenas had been issued to one current and one former employee of Giuliani Security and Safety, a division of the consulting firm founded by former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani.

A third man, who works at the company, has been interviewed by F.B.I. agents as part of the inquiry, the lawyers said. All three men were very close to Bernard B. Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner, whom Ms. Pirro consulted in the summer of 2005 about secretly taping her husband, Albert. In the conversations, which were recorded by authorities and detailed in reports on WNBC-TV, Mr. Kerik indicated at one point that he had asked a contact at Mr. Giuliani's firm to find him a recording device.

Mr. Giuliani, who appointed Mr. Kerik police commissioner and has been close to him, is in the midst of deliberations about whether to run for president in 2008.

Naturally, Rudy dumps on Jeanine:

The Senate has passed the military tribunals bill. [Update: Roll Call vote here.]

McJoan at Daily Kos has the list of Democrat gutless wonders who voted for it. Shame on Colorado Senator Ken Salazar. Crooks and Liars has Harry Reid's statement that the bill is probably unconsitutional. Atrios has Hillary Clinton's statement. Here is Russ Feingold's statement. Glenn Greenwald and Digby weigh in. Also see: Bruce Ackerman in the LA Times on the White House Warden.

The ACLU says it all:

by TChris

We've heard the rhetoric before. Republicans are repackaging their "tough on crime" speeches as "tough on terror" and complaining that anyone who stands in the way of increasing executive power at the expense of individual rights is "coddling" -- criminals or terrorists, your pick.

And so we have Dennis Hastert saying:

"Democrat Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and 159 of her Democrat colleagues voted today in favor of more rights for terrorists," Hastert said in a statement. "So the same terrorists who plan to harm innocent Americans and their freedom worldwide would be coddled, if we followed the Democrat plan."

The "Democratic plan" is simply to expect the government to obey existing laws rather than brushing them aside with a quick legislative assist, but what is truly offensive and disingenuous about Hastert's attack is the assumption that Democrats want to "coddle terrorists" rather than "protect the innocent." It is astonishing that the GOP, so long distrustful of the ability of government to make decisions wisely, is now populated with members who are certain that the executive branch will never err in taking custody of a suspected terrorist. The rights that protect against a wrongful conviction -- freedom from tortured confessions and a ban against the inherently unreliable evidence that coercion produces, confrontation of witnesses, discovery of evidence, judicial review and more -- can be safely withheld because of ... presidential infallibility?

(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat)

What a sad spectacle is David Broder. He has spent the last few weeks making a fool of himself - lionizing the Mealymouthed McCain, who promptly exposed Broder's foolishness by rubberstamping the Bush atrocities. In search of new "independent" heroes, necessary to avoid having to face his stupidity, this petulant, childish, stubbornly foolish Beltway buffoon traveled to California to worship at the feet of Arnold Schwarzennegger. But a funny thing happened on the way to "independence" - Broder endorsed the Democratic agenda:

Instead of the partisan assault on public employee unions and Democratic legislators (a.k.a. "girlie men") that marked his rhetoric in 2005, Schwarzenegger has negotiated agreements this year on a minimum-wage increase, higher school spending, curbing air pollution and a mega-bond sale designed to meet overdue highway, flood-control and school-construction needs.

. . . More important, his current political posture mirrors the makeup of this complex state, where the only growing political group consists of those who decline to state a party preference and where myriad competing racial, ethnic and geographic forces require political leadership with dexterity and flexibility.

Update: Never mind, they didn't move the site tonight after all. Comment away.

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TalkLeft's hosting company advises that it is moving the site to a faster server tonight. This means that once the move begins, your comments will go down the comment hole until the move is complete and your browsers are redirected to the new site. I will put an update here when the move is complete.

Tomorrow, and after that, you should clear your caches and make sure you are redirected to the new server, or your comments will still go down the comment hole.

I will have no way of retrieving comments posted on the old server after the move. Again, this is separate from the move to Scoop from Movable Type. That is progressing, and we're at the point of testing the pages. When enough bugs are ironed out, we'll make that switch and the commenting problems will be forever gone.

I apologize for the inconvenience.

by TChris

Dennis Kucinich, speaking about the White House proposal to expand presidential power while denying fundamental rights to anyone it accuses of terrorism, says it all:

"This bill is everything we don't believe in."

Even Arlen Specter objected to the White House plan to eliminate habeas corpus protections for anyone accused of terrorism. Specter proposed an amendment to permit habeas review of military tribunal decisions, but that amendment was predictably opposed by nearly all Republicans in the Senate. It failed. Will that prompt Specter to vote against the bill, or to support a filibuster? Don't count on it.

That leaves the Democrats, who need to know that their constitutents support a filibuster. Senator Feingold explains why the bill deserves to die.

by TChris

The Louisiana State Medical Society has come out in support of Dr. Anna Pou, accused of ending the lives of four bedridden patients during the aftermath of Katrina. Meanwhile, Dr. Pou protested her innocence in a 60 Minutes appearance:

"No, I did not murder those patients," said Pou, who's been practicing medicine for more than 15 years. "I've spent my entire life taking care of patients. I have no history of doing anything other than good for my patients."

Here's the TalkLeft background on this ill-advised prosecution.

by TChris

At least 110 arrests made by nine Chicago police officers won't lead to convictions, as the state's attorneys' office ordered prosecutors to drop the cases. The officers who made the arrests are no longer viewed as credible, with good reason: four of them are charged with "robbing, kidnapping and intimidating drug dealers," and the other five are under investigation.

The memo directs prosecutors to drop cases that may have been tainted by the officers' involvement, including those in which the officers made the arrest, signed a search warrant, gave information from an informant or recovered physical evidence. ... Earlier this month, prosecutors dropped at least 27 "tainted" drug and gun cases after the officers were arrested, including a case against two men who were nabbed last fall when police seized $15 million worth of cocaine, officials said.

by TChris

As TalkLeft reported here, the government had a weak case against John "Junior" Gotti, and shouldn't have been surprised when the prosecution ended in a hung jury last year. Undaunted, the government took Gotti to trial again, and got another hung jury. At that point, the judge should have told the government that enough is enough and dismissed the case, but the government instead was allowed a third chance to convict Gotti.

The government hauled out its same tired witnesses -- snitches and thugs -- and, in a trial that ended yesterday, obtained the same tired result: yet another hung jury. Rather than admitting defeat (and apologizing for wasting taxpayers' money three times), "U.S. Attorney Michael J. Garcia said prosecutors would tell the court soon how they will proceed in the case." How many chances does the government think it deserves?

by TChris

When an adversarial relationship exists, it's generally unethical for a lawyer to contact an individual represented by another lawyer without that lawyer's permission. It's particularly offensive when a prosecutor goes behind a defense lawyer's back to attempt a plea bargain with the defense lawyer's client. That misstep prompted the Tennessee Supreme Court to suspend temporarily the law license of District Attorney General Bill Gibson, who wrote to murder defendant Christopher Adams, seeking his commitment to plead to a lesser charge, without going through Adams' lawyer.

An interesting comment posted to the "story chat" section of the linked story suggests that the Herald-Citizen, like many newspapers, has been lax in reporting the poor job performance of the district attorneys' office:

If only the Herald-Citizen had been reporting on all the injustice instead of empowering Gibson and eating the pizza he drops by the newsroom on weekends.

by TChris

There's no doubt that affluent defendants who can afford to mount a strong death penalty defense will probably be spared a verdict of death, while those with fewer resources (particularly in states that don't fund an adequate defense for the indigent) are more likely to be executed. That's the message being spread by David Kaczynski, brother of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, and William Babbitt, brother of Manny Babbitt, "a grade-school dropout and paranoid schizophrenic, scarred by Vietnam, who was executed in California in 1999 after a defense lawyer mounted no defense at all."

Race is just as important as income in the inequitable implementation of the death penalty.

Study after study has shown that no matter what the offense, blacks and whites suspected of similar crimes are charged differently, convicted at different rates and sentenced differently.

In a 2000 report, for instance, Human Rights Watch analyzed U.S. Justice Department data and found that while blacks make up only 13 percent of the population, they are 30 percent of those arrested, 41 percent of those in local jails and 49 percent of those in prison. When the organization revisited the issue three years later, little had changed.

by TChris

Among those who believe that the U.S. military presence in Iraq is making life less safe -- most Iraqis.

About three-quarters of Iraqis believe U.S. forces are provoking more conflict than they are preventing in Iraq and should be withdrawn within a year, a survey released on Wednesday showed. ...

That poll found a strong majority of Iraqis wanted American forces to leave immediately. It asked whether people favored U.S. troops leaving immediately, staying until the government asked them to leave or saying until the violence stopped.