Via Josh Marshall,

We're hearing that Sen. Rockefeller, ranking member of the Senate intel committee, has just come out for declassifying and releasing the April NIE. We're trying to confirm.

Late Update: Confirmed.

Later Update: Hillary just came out for it too.

David Corn has more in his Nation column on why the NIE should be declassfied.

The immigration laws we have had on the books since 1996 are the toughest in 100 years. The last thing we need are more punitive ones.

Ask Gurdev Gill.

The expanding definition of an aggravated felony raises a troubling question: is the government's immigration policy of "one strike, you're out" tipping the scales of justice, and ruining people's lives? If ever there was someone symbolic of the American dream, it's Gurdev Gill.

The 1988 deportation law was changed in 1996.

This law as written in 1988 was meant to deport only felons who'd committed serious crimes like murder or drug trafficking. But in 1996 Congress broadened the law. And worse, they made it retroactive. Which means now immigration authorities can look back twenty, thirty, even forty years -- and virtually any minor offense, like drunk driving, even shoplifting, is enough to get a longtime resident deported.

The L.A. Times reports:

The Army's top officer withheld a required 2008 budget plan from Pentagon leaders last month after protesting to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that the service could not maintain its current level of activity in Iraq plus its other global commitments without billions in additional funding.

The decision by Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army's chief of staff, is believed to be unprecedented and signals a widespread belief within the Army that in the absence of significant troop withdrawals from Iraq, funding assumptions must be completely reworked, say current and former Pentagon officials.

The Army's budget this year is $98,2 billion. Next year Schoomaker projects it will need a 41% increase to $138.8 billion. That's way too much money and just another reason we should start bringing troops home and let the Iraqis deal with their civil war. Without our unwanted intervention, they'll figure it out. Let's use the $98.2 billion budget money for reparations resulting from damage we've caused to Iraq and its citizens and for the medical, mental health and vocational benefits our returning vets surely will need instead of continuing to wage an unnecessary, futile war and cause more damage.

When do we admit Bush's vision of democracy in Iraq was a bad acid trip?

(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat)

When we last heard comprehensively from Joe Lieberman on Iraq in December 2005, this is what he said:

Does America have a good plan for doing this, a strategy for victory in Iraq? Yes we do.

Thus Lieberman fully embraced the Bush plan for the Iraq Debacle, as he has since Day One. Today, after months of silence on Iraq, Lieberman, like Garbo, will talk:

TalkLeft went down this morning for a few minutes. The hosting company says they are moving it to a new server tonight after 9pm ET. If you have difficulty reaching it after that, clear your cache and refresh. Site moves usually take about 48 hours for the glitches to go away.

This is separate from the redesign to Scoop which will fix the commenting problems. That redesign is taking longer than the Scoophost folks expected and it has to be tested. I'll keep you posted.

WorldCom founder Bernie Ebbers, age 65, will report to federal prison tomorrow to begin serving his 25 year sentence for fraud. For Ebbers, it is a life sentence.

In the category of longest prison sentence, WorldCom Inc. founder Bernard J. Ebbers recently bested the organizer of an armed robbery, the leaders of a Bronx drug gang and the acting boss of the Gambino crime family.

Also on Tuesday, Enron's former Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow will be sentenced. He cooperated with the Government and faces no more than ten years in prison.

Exercising one's constitutional right to a jury trial has never been more perilous. Ebbers' cohort, Scott Sullivan, the architect of the WorldCom scheme, was sentenced to only five years after he decided to cooperate and testify against Ebbers. Ken Lay was facing 25 years after his conviction, and Jeff Skilling is looking at the same, after they went to trial and were convicted, in large part due to Fastow's testimony against them.

The Washington Post article focuses on this issue:

From SuperMax to GitMax. The U.S. is finalizing plans for the newest maximum security prison at Guantanamo. The Associated Press reports we are spending $37.8 million on the facility to house a maximum of 220 prisoners. That doesn't even include the upkeep or cost of confinement.

Underscoring the military's toughening stance, a jailhouse in the final stages of construction on a cactus-studded plateau overlooking the Caribbean is being "hardened" into a maximum-security facility. Camp 6 was to have opened in August as a medium-security lockup. The modifications have pushed back the completion date of the $37.8 million jailhouse, which has a capacity for 220 inmates, to Sept. 30. It will take its first detainees in mid-October, Army Capt. Dan Byer said.

How long will they be there? Forever.

"I think what we have here is an orange. What we're doing is squeezing out the juice and what we're left with at the end of the day is pulp that will just stay here," said Navy Capt. Phil Waddingham, lead officer here for the Office for the Administrative Review of the Detention of Enemy Combatants.

From a flawed policy to a disasterous policy. As op-ed contributor and former military man Paul Reikoff writes in the New York Times today, Do Unto Your Enemy...

(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat)

The plot thickens:

Three former college football teammates of Sen. George Allen say that the Virginia Republican repeatedly used an inflammatory racial epithet and demonstrated racist attitudes toward blacks during the early 1970s.
"Allen said he came to Virginia because he wanted to play football in a place where 'blacks knew their place,'" said Dr. Ken Shelton, a white radiologist in North Carolina who played tight end for the University of Virginia football team when Allen was quarterback. "He used the N-word on a regular basis back then."

A second white teammate, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared retribution from the Allen campaign, separately claimed that Allen used the word "nigger" to describe blacks. "It was so common with George when he was among his white friends. This is the terminology he used," the teammate said.

A third white teammate contacted separately, who also spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of being attacked by the Virginia senator, said he too remembers Allen using the word "nigger," though he said he could not recall a specific conversation in which Allen used the term. "My impression of him was that he was a racist," the third teammate said.

Deep macaca indeed.

by TChris

New York isn't the only jurisdiction to vest significant power in judges who have little acquaintance with the law. The problems exposed by the NY Times' investigation of municipal courts (inaptly named "justice courts") abound in other states. Still, some of the Times' examples of injustice are particularly egregious:

People have been sent to jail without a guilty plea or a trial, or tossed from their homes without a proper proceeding. In violation of the law, defendants have been refused lawyers, or sentenced to weeks in jail because they cannot pay a fine. Frightened women have been denied protection from abuse. ...

A mother of four ... went to court in that North Country village seeking an order of protection against her husband, who the police said had choked her, kicked her in the stomach and threatened to kill her. The justice, Donald R. Roberts, a former state trooper with a high school diploma, not only refused, according to state officials, but later told the court clerk, "Every woman needs a good pounding every now and then."

Former Senator Gary Hart, writing at Huffington Post today, opines that the October surprise may be that Bush launches a pre-emptive war against Iran before the November elections.

The steps will be these: Air Force tankers will be deployed to fuel B-2 bombers, Navy cruise missile ships will be positioned at strategic points in the northern Indian Ocean and perhaps the Persian Gulf, unmanned drones will collect target data, and commando teams will refine those data. The latter two steps are already being taken.

Then the president will speak on national television. He will say this: Iran is determined to develop nuclear weapons; if this happens, the entire region will go nuclear; our diplomatic efforts to prevent this have failed; Iran is offering a haven to known al Qaeda leaders; the fate of our ally Israel is at stake; Iran persists in supporting terrorism, including in Iraq; and sanctions will have no affect (and besides they are for sissies). He will not say: ...and besides, we need the oil.

by TChris

Arlen Specter is irked because he wasn't a part of the "compromise" bill authorizing the military trials of detainees. He always likes to be asked before his party deprives people of their civil rights. As long as he's asked, he'll gladly work to implement his president's plans, whether they involve torture or domestic wiretapping. If he's not made to feel that he's an important part of the process, he whines about the Constitution. Thankfully, Specter is whining now.

President Bush is pushing Congress to put the agreement into law before adjourning for the midterm elections, but Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said Sunday he "vigorously" disagrees with the habeas corpus provision of the bill. ... "The courts have traditionally been open to make sure that individual rights are protected, and that is fundamental," Specter said on CNN's "Late Edition. "And the Constitution says when you can suspend the writ of habeas corpus, in time of rebellion or invasion. And we don't have either. So that has to be changed, in my opinion."

If Democrats need the cover of Republicans to stand up for the Constitution, Specter is their shield, at least for the moment. But why are we reading about Arlen Specter's opposition, rather than the opposition of Democrats?

by TChris

The First Amendment protects both religious and political speech. Preachers are free to encourage their congregations to take sides on the moral issues of the day, but religious organizations risk losing their tax exempt status when they advocate political support for a particular party or candidate. LA Times columnist Steve Lopez asks why the IRS is investigating the All Saints Episcopal Church, where Rev. George Regas imagined a debate between John Kerry, George Bush and Jesus, while the agency ignores the New Revelation Missionary Baptist Church, just two miles away.

[Pastor William Turner Jr.] has proudly boasted to President Bush about converting 80% of his congregation from Democrat to Republican.

If Turner is entitled to preach the church's position on gay marriage and stem cell research, shouldn't Regas be permitted to apply the teachings of Jesus to tax cuts that benefit the wealthy, to a war that slaughters the innocent, and to the torture of prisoners?