(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat)

Barack Obama quoted Justice Brandeis:

Do you worry that people are piling too many expectations and hopes on you? Some people seem to say, "OK, there is an easy answer, it's Barack Obama."

I go back to the quote from the speech I just gave: Justice [Louis] Brandeis saying that "the most important office in a democracy is that of citizen." I come from a community-organizing background and a civil-rights background. I always believe that ultimately, if people are paying attention, then we get good government and good leadership. And when we get lazy, as a democracy and civically start taking shortcuts, then it results in bad government and politics.

Amen. More on the other side.

by TChris

This is good news, if the prediction is accurate:

Congress is unlikely to approve a bill giving President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program legal status and new restrictions before the November midterm elections, dealing a significant blow to one of the White House's top wartime priorities.

With domestic wiretapping off the table, those who care about their country can spend the rest of the week worrying about the administration's attempts to gut habeas corpus and build expensive fences.

Last week I was optimistic on Studio 60 and looking forward to the season premieres of Gray's Anatomy, Desperate Housewives.

What happened? Desperate Housewives was terrible -- over-playing the cliches by miles until it seemed like slapstick comedy. Studio 60 didn't move me last night, I didn't care for the musical number and I don't get what's so great about Harriet. She and Matt don't even have good chemistry. Brothers and Sisters was barely watchable despite Calista Flockhart, whom I really liked as Ally McBeal. It was excruciating watching Sally Field, a woman of tremendous talent, denigrated to the role of hapless, helpless aging, cheated-on mother.

What's left? Grey's Anatomy, my favorite show of last season, had a lackluster opener. Meredith and the doctor need to get it on quick, the suspense has turned to irritation, at least with me.

On September 22, an updated report by the Congressional Research Service was filed with Congress, The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations Since 9/11. From the introduction:

Through FY2006, Congress has appropriated a total of about $437 billion for military operations, base security, reconstruction, foreign aid, embassy costs, and veterans' health care for the three operations initiated since the 9/11 attacks: Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) covering Afghanistan and other Global War on Terror (GWOT) operations, Operation Noble Eagle (ONE) providing enhanced security at military bases, and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), Iraq.

In the last week of September 2006, the House and Senate are slated to consider the conference versions of the FY2007 defense appropriations bill, H.R. 5631, and the national defense authorization bill (H.R. 6122/S. 2766), both of which include an additional $70 billion for war costs. .... The Administration is expected to submit a FY2007 supplemental for additional war costs some time next year.

If the FY2007 defense appropriation bill passes, total war appropriations for all three operations would reach about $507 billion. Another $2 billion is included in other appropriations bills for foreign and diplomatic operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and VA medical costs. In its July 2006 mid-session update, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) estimates that war funding in FY2007 will total $110 billion, including bridge funding. Based on this OMB projection, cumulative war funding for all of FY2007 would reach about $549 billion. OMB also assumes a $50 billion bridge fund for FY2008.

Enron's former CFO Andrew Fastow caught a big break from the sentencing judge today. Instead of the ten year sentence he agreed to in his plea agreement, (pdf) the Judge granted him leniency and sentenced him to only six years.

As I wrote here about Bernie Ebbers (who entered prison today) and Scott Sullivan, there is something morally bankrupt about a system that allows a defendant who exercises his constitutional right to go to trial to get 25 years while a codefendant with greater or equal culpability who cooperates with the Government and tells the Government's truth at trial when testifying against that defendant gets five years.

Was Jeffrey Skilling, who faces a possible 185 years, but is likely to get far less, let's say 30 years, five times more culpable than Fastow? No. He was convicted with Fastow's testimony. purchased by the Government with promises of years of freedom.

The whole thing stinks.

A vote on the bill to build a 700 mile fence across 1/3 of the U.S. - Mexico border could come on Friday. That's because Sen. Bill Frist has attached the bill on detainee treatment to the border fence bill.

The Senate is likely to vote first on the detainee portions, and then take up the border bill.

If Democrats agree, the Senate would debate detainee treatment first and a vote on the border fence could happen Friday. Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada said he believed he and Frist could work something out.

Several key Republicans remain opposed to the border bill. The Senate passed a version of it calling for 370 miles of fence, but the House didn't act on it. Instead, the House wants the Senate to pass its bill, H.R.6061.

What a colossal waste of money. Does Congress think it grows on trees? Let's forget about border bills and punitive immigration bills and enact more important legislation. Here is the Democrat's wish list:

In an about-face, President Bush today declared he will declassify the judgments of the NIE.

Once again, there's a leak out of our government, coming right down the stretch in this campaign, you know, to trade confusion in the minds of the American people, in my judgment, is why they leaked it. So I told the DNI to declassify this document. You can read it for yourself. We'll stop all of the speculation, all the politics, about someone saying something about Iraq, you know, somebody trying to confuse the American people about the nature of this enemy. And so John Negroponte, the DNI, is going to declassify the document as quickly as possible, declassify the key judgments for you to read yourself and he'll do so in such a way that he'll be able to protect sources and methods that our intelligence community uses. And then everybody can draw their own conclusions about what the report says. Thank you.

Really? As Glenn Greenwald writes at Salon,

by TChris

Remember when we were told that the war in Iraq would be an in-and-out job, over before we knew it ("It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months"), and that post-war reconstruction would be largely funded by the newly liberated country's oil revenues? It hasn't worked out that way.

In the latest sign of pressure on troop strength from violence in Iraq, the Pentagon said Monday that it has extended the combat tour of 4,000 U.S. soldiers, the second time in as many months that an Army brigade has seen its yearlong deployment lengthened.

Many share responsibility for the lies. Yesterday, the spotlight focused on the Secretary of Deceit, Donald Rumsfeld.

"I believe that Secretary Rumsfeld and others in the administration did not tell the American people the truth for fear of losing support for the war in Iraq," retired Army Maj. Gen. John R.S. Batiste told a forum conducted by Senate Democrats.

by TChris

Judith Clark, a Weather Underground member charged with acting as a getaway driver in the 1981 robbery of an armored car that resulted in three deaths, asked to represent herself at her trial. When that request was granted, Clark refused to participate in the trial, sitting in her cell while the prosecution presented its case.

U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin ruled yesterday that Clark is entitled to a new trial. It's one thing for a court to allow a defendant to represent herself, but quite another to allow a trial to go forward when the defendant's interests are completely unrepresented. Defendants are allowed to represent themselves only if they're capable of abiding by court rules, and Clark showed herself unable to follow the primary rule: show up for the trial.

Clark was sentenced in 1983 to 75 years in prison.

I love this article at Slate by Seth Stevenson, This is Your Ass on Drugs, evaluating one of the ads by the Office of National Drug Control Policy and the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, called Pete's Couch.

The spot: A high-school kid sits on a couch in a basement rec room, next to a couple of stoner friends. Looking straight at the camera, he says, "I smoked weed and nobody died. I didn't get into a car accident. I didn't OD on heroin the next day. Nothing happened. We sat on Pete's couch for 11 hours." The couch then magically teleports into the midst of some wholesome teen scenes (kids mountain biking, ice skating, playing basketball), while the zonked-out stoners just sit there, looking bored. Our narrator concedes that you're more likely to die out there in the real world ("driving hard to the rim" or "ice skating with a girl") than on Pete's couch back in the rec room. But, deciding it's worth the trade-off, he says, "I'll take my chances out there."

The point of the ad is to make it seem like kids who smoke pot are nothing but couch potato[e]s. As if because they hang out one day getting high, all of their days will be spent that way. Stevenson writes:

(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat)

The scramble on the Right in the wake of the NIE Report that the Iraq Debacle has worsened the terrorism situation has led to some very strange contortions.

Michelle Malkin says:

If our intelligence agencies are laboring under the moonbat illusion that Muslim hatred of the infidel West didn't really start bubbling until the year 2003, we are really in deep, deep doo-doo.

So no "emboldening" by the Iraq Debacle says The Wild One. But James Joyner says:

[I]t's quite likely that an American withdrawal from Iraq without accomplishing the barest part of our mission-a reasonably stable, democratic society-would embolden the jihadists.

I see. So the Iraq Debacle could not possibly have embolden the terrorists (Malkin) but withdrawing from Iraq will embolden the terrorists (Joyner). This makes a much sense as the "safer but not safe" nonsense from Bush.

by TChris

The Justice Project reminds us that the president's attempt to strip detainees of their right to habeas corpus review is only the most visible Republican assault upon the Great Writ.

[O]ther members of the Republican leadership are trying to strip away this right for U.S. citizens convicted of crimes. With only days left before Congress adjourns for mid-term elections, some members of Congress continue to skirt regular order in an attempt to attach widely-criticized habeas repeal measures to unrelated legislation. While attempts to keep these unpopular measures off the DOD bill were initially unsuccessful, House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) is now insisting that a controversial "judiciary package" of crime legislation, which includes habeas-stripping measures, be attached to the DOD bill. We are also keeping an eye on another possible vehicle for the judiciary package -- the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, which is presently in conference and will likely be finalized in the coming days.

The details of the "judiciary package" are unclear, and Republicans appear to be tinkering with it among themselves. One of the most extreme proposals would insulate sentencing decisions from habeas review, permitting unconstitutional death sentences to escape correction by the federal courts. The package apparently incorporates elements of the dangerous Streamlined Procedures Act (more aptly known as the Kill 'Em Quicker Act), a bill that TalkLeft protested in posts collected here.