(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat)

Back to the stage returns the utterly discredited John Yoo as he pens one of the most audaciously mendacious columns seen on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times this side of David Brooks. The man is truly shameless:

Thus the administration has gone to war to pre-empt foreign threats. It has data-mined communications in the United States to root out terrorism. It has detained terrorists without formal charges, interrogating some harshly. And it has formed military tribunals modeled on those of past wars, as when we tried and executed a group of Nazi saboteurs found in the United States.

The Administration has gone to war? Not even the Administration claims this. They rely on the Authorization to Use Force enacted by the Congress in September 2001. Harsh interrogation? Say the word Yoo. Torture. John Yoo is simply incorrigible. In a just world, he would be hooted off the stage of public affairs. In today's BushWorld, he writes Op-Eds in the New York Times. The man is a sick joke. More on the flip.

Some things to read today if you're online:

• Matt Yglesias:

As the President readies himself to go to the map for his right to order torture in violation of America's laws and international commitments, it's worth putting this in some context.

• The Talking Dog interviews Dr. Steven Miles, medical professor at the U. of Minnesota, and author of "Oath Betrayed" discussing medical complicity in torture, prisoner abuse, et al, in the war on terror.

• Law Professor Jordan Paust's plea to Congress urging that minimum due process guarantees under customary international law must not be denied when Congress attempts to articulate forms of procedure for new US military commissions

• A report in the San Francisco Chronicle about the interesting make-up of the California lethal injection team members.

• Warren Strobel and John Walcott on how Bush is gearing up for an attack on Iran -- based once again on faulty intelligence:

Duane Chapman, aka Dog the Bounty Hunter, made bail in Hawaii yesterday.

Dog has to wear an electronic monitoring bracelet, but otherwise can go about his life as he awaits extradition hearings.

Background here.

Lawyer and pundit Victoria Toensing has gone on the attack, accusing journalist David Corn of being the first to out Valerie Plame Wilson as a covert employee of the CIA. Corn denies it.

Here is Corn's original article from July 16, 2003.

The President of Iraq , Jalal Talabani, arrived in Aspen yesterday, a guest of the Forstmann Little conference. Today he spoke with PBS moderator Charlie Rose at the Maroon Creek Club.

Talabani spoke hopefully about the prospect for peace in Iraq and estimated that the U.S. military would be needed for approximately one more year before violence abates to a level that Iraqi forces can handle it on their own, according to an attendee who requested anonymity because all discussions at the Forstmann Little conference are meant to be confidential.

What kind of security was required for Talabani?

We haven't had one of these for a while in the blogosphere, but our bloggers' lunch with Bill Clinton seems to have brought out the worst in a lot of people.

Tonight, it's Ann Althouse and her second attack on Jessica of Feministing. Jessica responds here. Read all the comments, too. And this post at Salon. I'm firmly with Jessica on this one.

Jessica's sin, according to Althouse: She is posing in the picture, you can see she has breasts, and she resembles a rather famous intern who became rather famously involved with Bill Clinton.

I was there. I think Jessica turned sideways because we were packed in like sardines. At one point I was right on top of Chris Bowers -- he had to ask me to move forward -- when I did, I probably bumped into Jessica. But even if Jessica did turn to show a flattering pose, so what? Why is Ann being so catty about it? I sat across from Jessica at the roundtable. She did absolutely nothing to call attention to herself. She was sitting directly opposite President Clinton. She did nothing flirtatious, nothing to try and grab his attention, she was just like all of us, engrossed in the conversation.

Now, on to the next blogfight which is taking place in the comments at Steve Gilliards' NewsBlog, to his post asking why there weren't any minority bloggers at the lunch. In his post, Steve, a journalist, says he wouldn't have gone even if he had been invited. Reporters don't do these kind of events. Fair enough, I'm not an impartial journalist and don't have that training, so I'll take him at his word. Liza at Culture Kitchen (whom I really like and have sincere respect for, we spent an evening together at a club in Amsterdam) is even more upset about the lack of minority bloggers. She wrote Peter Daou about it and received this response. I'll agree. There should have been a greater attempt made to include minority bloggers. But I think it was unintentional. I will bet that when there's another such event, and there will be, whether it's by President Clinton or another Democrat, there will be a greater effort to include a more diverse group of bloggers.

(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat)

How ironic. One of the main forces of Left blog detraction of the past few years, The New Republic, has joined the shrill partisan forces:

This November, control of Congress hinges upon the reelection of Republican moderates--especially those in the Northeast, such as Chafee and Connecticut Representative Christopher Shays. Inevitably, these dwindling, endangered few present their survival as an essential cause for all those who care about decency and goodwill. "I feel a moral obligation to make sure I do everything I can to make sure moderates have a place in this party," pleads Shays.

We don't want moderate Republicans to disappear, right? Surely we don't want Congress to descend irrevocably into bitter partisanship, do we? Actually, yes, we do. This November, it's time for voters to wipe out the remnants of the GOP's moderate wing--and without regrets.

Hello? Rather shrill of them no? More on the other side.

Robert Parry at Consortium News writes that Karl Rove and Richard Armitage have a long standing friendship. They worked together to secure the nomination of Colin Powell as Secretary of State. Parry writes:

The significance of this detail is that it undermines the current "conventional wisdom" among Washington pundits that Armitage acted alone - and innocently - in July 2003 when he disclosed Plame's covert identity to right-wing columnist Robert Novak, who then got Rove to serve as a secondary source confirming the information from Armitage.

This new revelation that Armitage and Rove worked together behind the scenes also lends credence to Novak's version of his contacts with Armitage and other administration officials, both as Novak sketched out those meetings in 2003 and then filled in the details in a column on Sept. 14, 2006.

Consider this in the context of the disparate versions provided by Robert Novak and Richard Armitage of Armitage's role in the leaks investigation. It also relates to the timing of Armitage's leak to Novak -- Novak said he first got a call from Armitage in June, 2003, before Joseph Wilson's July 6 op-ed:

Senators Richard Durbin and Edward Kennedy are calling for a new investigation into Bush judicial nominee William Haynes. Durbin and Kennedy sent this letter today to Sen. Arlen Specter asking for new hearings on Haynes in light of allegations he pressured military lawyers to support the Administration's military commissions bill. Here is the text of the letter, which I received by e-mail:

September 15, 2006

Dear Chairman Specter,

We recently learned of allegations that, in meeting earlier this week, the White House and Department of Defense General Counsel William J. Haynes pressured senior judge advocates general into signing a letter on the Administration's proposed revisions to the War Crimes Act and Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. It is alleged that the JAGs were kept in this meeting for several hours, until they agreed to sign the letter. That letter was subsequently used to suggest that the JAGs supported the Administration's proposals.

Good news from the Pew Research Center -- the public is strongly favoring Democrats in the November elections and a mood of anti-incumbancy and anti-Bush rules the day.

As the congressional midterm campaign begins in earnest, the mood of the electorate is sharply drawn. Voters are disappointed with Congress and disapproving of President Bush. Anti-incumbent sentiment, while a bit lower than a few months ago, is far more extensive than in the previous two midterms and remains close to 1994 levels. Moreover, there are indications that voters are viewing the election through the prism of national issues and concerns. Many more voters see their vote as being against the president than at a comparable point in 1994, and a solid majority says party control of Congress will be a factor in their voting decision.

FigureVoters are expressing strong and consistent anti-Republican attitudes. The GOP lags well behind the Democratic Party on nearly all major issues, including the economy, Iraq, education, health care, the environment and the budget deficit. And the Republicans have lost ground in recent years even on such traditional strengths as terrorism and improving the nation's morality.

Update: Great editorial from the New York Times on how fear-mongering has reached Congress -- scared to death of the November elections, they are in a stampede to throw due process out the window. Analysis here.

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Via Raw Story, Bloomberg News reports the Senate Armed Services Committee rejected President Bush 's plan for trying terror suspects in military tribunals today and passed its own bill instead, with greater protections for the rights of the terror suspects.

Update: Washington Post (Ney will use alcoholism as an excuse); CNN (deal involves plea to two charges.)

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Original post: 9/14

Via TPM Muckraker, the tentacles of the Jack Abramoff investigation continue to grow. A blog at the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports that Ohio Republican Congressman Bob Ney has reached a plea agreement with the Justice Department and will plead guilty to a criminal charge, possibly Friday.