The Christian Science Monitor, employer of kidnapped Jill Carrool, is publishing her account of her ordeal at the hands of Iraqi kidnappers beginning today. It's an 11 part series, which means it should be a book any time now.

Read it and remember all those who thought she might be complicit in her abduction. What fools.

The experts say the Republicans are now facing a tough battle in the Northeast.

The Iraq war and Bush's low approval ratings have created trouble for Republicans in all regions. But nowhere is the GOP brand more scuffed than in the Northeast, where this year's circumstances are combining with long-term trends to endanger numerous incumbents.

.... A Washington-Post ABC News poll this month found Bush's approval rating at 28 percent in the Northeast -- 12 points below his national average. The Republican Congress fared no better.

Democrats need a plan, and they need to get off the defensive about being soft on the war on terror. In one month, it will be five years since the U.S. has been attacked. If the Republicans want to say it's because of newly strengthened laws, then fine, they don't need any more of them.

We all know now that the bumbling warriors in Great Britain weren't ready to proceed with whatever plan they had. Yet Michael Chertoff still wants to milk it for whatever it's worth and is saying he will substitute non-skilled and non-union traffic screeners with more experienced ones from the TSA.

The fragile truce between Israel and Lebanon has begun.

Israeli still has thousands of troops deep inside southern Lebanon after expanding its ground offensive throughout the weekend. However, some Israeli forces did start withdrawing as the ceasefire came into effect.

....Hezbollah's leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, vowed over the weekend that his fighters would respect the ceasefire but would resist any continued Israeli presence in Lebanon after the deal came into force, raising fears of further clashes.

How likely is the truce to suceed?

by TChris

The second installment in the "Revolving Door" series -- "exploring what happens when convicts leave prison and return to their communities" -- appeared in yesterday's New York Times. The first installment, reporting on Iowa's onerous residency requirements for sex offenders, appeared in March.

Yesterday's story examines Rhode Island's effort to understand why "some women and many more men cycle repeatedly through the state's prisons."

Rhode Island is among the states beginning to make progress in easing offenders' re-entry to society with the goal of bringing the revolving door to a halt, or at least slowing it. But sometimes it can be hard to see much of a difference.

These efforts are a counterweight to the "tough on crime" thinking that dominated policy-making during the last quarter century. By focusing on punishment rather than rehabilitation, politicians filled the nation with prisoners who, after finishing harsh sentences, are frequently doomed to return to the unsettled lives that led them to prison in the first place.

Michael Evans spent 27 years in an Illinois prison for a crime DNA evidence later proved he didn't commit. He was released in 2003.

What did he get as compensation? $6,000. a year.

Evans left prison in 2003 and received little more than a hug from his family. No money. No training. No job placement. No therapy. No apology. It took two more years and a governor's pardon before the state coughed up $162,000 to compensate Evans for his lost life. Evans has distributed most of that sum to family members and others who helped win his release.

On Tuesday, Evans lost a $60 million civil lawsuit he brought against 10 former Chicago police officers he accused of conspiring to manipulate evidence and coerce an eyewitness in his criminal trial. So $162,000 is likely to be all he'll get for his ... inconvenience.

Shame on Illinois.

The New York Times' public editor Bryan Calame examines the timing of the Times' NSA article and publisher Bill Keller's decision not to print it just before the 2004 election. The Times published the article on December 16, 2004. Would it have made a difference in the outcome of the election?

• Empty Wheel
• Obsidian Wings
• tlhliberal at Daily Kos

The New York Times today reports on recommendations for loosening federal regulations on using experimental drugs on prison inmates made in June by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences at the request of the the Department of Health and Human Services' Office for Human Research Protections.

Under current regulations, passed in 1978, prisoners can participate in federally financed biomedical research if the experiment poses no more than "minimal" risks to the subjects. But a report formally presented to federal officials on Aug. 1 by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences advised that experiments with greater risks be permitted if they had the potential to benefit prisoners. As an added precaution, the report suggested that all studies be subject to an independent review.

This is a sensitive area, particularly for those who recall what happened at Holmesburg prison in Philadelphia between 1951 and 1974 and even worse, the Tuskegee syphilis studies, both of which prompted the current regulations.

Via Patriot Daily, NBC reports that the UK didn't want to arrest the London Terror suspects this week, but the US did.

NBC News has learned that U.S. and British authorities had a significant disagreement over when to move in on the suspects in the alleged plot to bring down trans-Atlantic airliners bound for the United States.

A senior British official knowledgeable about the case said British police were planning to continue to run surveillance for at least another week to try to obtain more evidence, while American officials pressured them to arrest the suspects sooner. The official spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the case.

This British official contradicts earlier reports that the threats were imminent.

Finally some good news from the middle east. The Wall St. Journal reports the Israeli cabinet has agreed to halt the Lebanon war at 7am Monday. Hezbollah has agreed to abide by the U.N. to cease-fire resolution.

Here is the text of the resolution. The next steps are here.

(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat)

For the past two and one half years, the Left blogs have been severe in their criticism of Senator Joe Lieberman's brand of "bipartisanship." When Ned Lamont launched his challenge to Lieberman, the Left blogs came under severe attack for their strident support of Lamont. In July, I wrote:

[S]ome in the Media do not think kindly of the Netroots involvement. That David Brooks flails in ridiculous terms against Netroots involvement in Democratic primaries and in favor of an apparently saintly Lieberman, is not surprising nor troublesome really. After all, he is a Republican.

But when Democrats like Jon Chait object one has to wonder what is going on here. . . . [Chait wrote:]

The Wall St. Journal (free link) reports on the latest Harris Poll.

When asked whom they would vote for "if elections for Congress were held today," 45% of U.S. adults said they would vote for the Democratic candidate and 30% would vote for the Republican, the Harris Interactive poll shows. In a similar poll in April, 41% supported a Democratic candidate for Congress and 37% supported a Republican.

The margin is even greater for women voters:

Glenn Greenwald has a great post today, Legal surveillance, not illegal eavesdropping, stopped the U.K. terrorist attacks.

No one objects to electronic surveillance of terror suspects per se...it's surveillance without warrants and without court authorization that is objectionable -- particularly of Americans. Glenn writes,

From the very beginning of the NSA scandal, this has been the point -- the principal, overarching, never-answered point. There is no reason for the Bush administration to eavesdrop in secret, with no judicial oversight, and in violation of the law precisely because the legal framework that has been in place for the last 28 years empowers the government to eavesdrop aggressively on all of the terrorists they want, with ease.

As I noted yesterday , the Washington Post reports: