It was a year ago, after the London mass transit bombings, that New York City initiated a policy of requiring subway riders to submit to a search of their bags. It was supposed to be a temporary measure. Guess what? It's likely here to stay. As I always say, once you give the Government power, it rarely gives it back. How successful has the program been?

The program has resulted in five arrests - not for terrorism, but for drug possession, disorderly conduct and other minor charges.

My solution: A TalkLeft Fourth Amendment Subway Tote or Messenger Bag.

Let the 4th Amendment speak for you as you hand your bag over for a search by a subway or airline security guard. It's a silent protest and reminder to authorities that you consider searches without reasonable suspicion or probable cause to be an infringement of your privacy rights. Graphically challenged as I am, I designed them myself, so you can't get them anywhere else.

Larger photo here. Order here.

Two weeks ago, the FBI was crowing about the bust of some Miami terror wannabes who aspired to blow up the Sears Tower but couldn't acquire boots, explosives or even transportation to Chicago on their own.

Now it's the New York Holland tunnel plot. The FBI, Mayor Bloomberg, Port Authority and the NYC Police Commissioner held a big news conference to announce the arrest of a man in Lebanon believed to be leading the plot. The facts, as the New York Times notes, are these:

Federal and local law enforcement authorities identified the main subject of the investigation as Assem Hammoud, 31, a Lebanese man who was arrested on April 27 in Beirut and was still being held there. The locations of the other two men in custody were not revealed. The eight "principal players" planning the attack, the authorities said, had secured no financing, had gathered no explosives and had not visited New York -- or even the United States -- to conduct surveillance. At least one of the planners has been in Canada, the authorities said.

A North Carolina Senate committee, following the lead of the N.C. House, has passed a measure that would allow a 3 judge panel to hear inmate's claims of factual innocence and order them released if they find by clear and convincing evidence they are innocent.

The House approved last year the establishment of an eight-member N.C. Innocence Inquiry Commission that would conduct inquiries into "claims of factual innocence" based on new evidence that hadn't been presented in court.

If five of the eight members agree there is enough evidence, the case would be sent to a three-judge Superior Court panel. Charges would be dismissed if all three judges determine there "is clear and convincing evidence" that the defendant is innocent.

Last week Steven Green was charged in federal court with the rape and murder of a teenage girl in Iraq and the murder of her family members. Four of the other alleged participants in the crime have now been charged and will face military trials. A fifth soldier faces charges of dereliction of duty.

The U.S. statement said the five soldiers still on active duty will face an Article 32 investigation, similar to a grand jury hearing in civilian law. The Article 32 proceeding will determine whether there is enough evidence to place them on trial.
One of the soldiers was charged with failing to report the attack but is not believed to have participated in it directly, the statement said.

The other day I wondered why others had not been charged in light of the allegations in the affidavit for the arrest warrant. Here's my shorter version from reading the affidavit of what allegedly took place:

Cyrus Kar was born in Iran but has lived in the U.S. since he was two years old. A naturalized citizen, he played high-school football in Utah and Washington and then joined the Navy. His dream was to make a movie about an ancient Persian King who championed tolerance and human rights.

When he reached the point of site selection for his film, he was 44 and traveled to Baghdad to research archeological sites. You could probably recite the rest of the story. He got arrested, supposedly because "suspected bomb parts" were in the taxi in which he was riding. He was held for two months in a Baghad jail without charges, then released.

Kar's family and lawyers describe as the frightening netherworld of American military detention in Iraq - charged with no crime but nonetheless unable to gain his freedom or even tell his family where he is being held.

The FBI searched his apartment and not surprisingly, found nothing.

Okay, here's something new. TalkLeft's Duke Discussion Boards.

I will make new threads on TalkLeft when there is news in the case. TalkLeft is a blog, not a message board. But the number of comments the Duke case has generated even when there is no news has prompted me to seek a solution other than posting a Duke open thread every day or so.

So let's try discussion boards where you can all comment to your heart's delight on any topic related to the case. I've made ten or so general topics and you can make more IF they are not covered by existing topics.

I'm in an all day journalism training program today. There are 25 bloggers attending and it's very cool.

You can use this as an open thread.

Murray Waas is blogging about Guantanamo, Colin Powell, McCaffrey, and Ignatius.

The New York Times reports Bush claims the Supreme Court backed him on Guantanamo.

"It didn't say we couldn't have done -- couldn't have made that decision, see?" Mr. Bush said at a news conference in Chicago. "They were silent on whether or not Guantánamo -- whether or not we should have used Guantánamo. In other words, they accepted the use of Guantánamo, the decision I made."

Nice try, Mr. President, but Guantanamo wasn't the issue in the case -- the use of military tribunals was, and there was no approval of them.

While I was attending a Hillary fundraiser in Denver, Bill Clinton was in Aspen speaking at the Aspen Ideas Festival. He talked about Karl Rove and PlameGate.

Clinton didn't hold back when Atlantic Monthly national correspondent James Fallows asked him what one question he would ask President Bush's highly controversial political operative.

....The 42nd president said he most wanted to know what Rove would do had Clinton's senior advisor blown the cover of a CIA agent who happened to be married to the man who refused to falsify findings about nuclear transactions taking place between Niger and Iraq (see Valerie Plame). And he openly wondered whether Rove would instruct Republican congressmen to call a White House official who would do such a thing a traitor. bqq. Lastly, Clinton wanted to know why it is that, if the Bush administration is as concerned with national security as it claims, why it would spend 20 times the amount of money it would take to shore up gaps in port security to repeal the estate tax for the nation's elite, which consists of less than one percent of the population.

A Bush in 60 seconds video, sent to me by Will Keenan, who created the TalkLeft video, great Yearly Kos promos and Mission Accomplished Man.

The doldrums of summer? Another FBI disclosure of an aspirational but not operational terror threat on the Holland Tunnel in New York -- why disclose it now?

Sandra Day O'Connor and Stephen Breyer are in Aspen at the Ideas Festival. So is Colin Powell who fell ill while diningat Campo Fiore in Aspen with Bill Clinton. He went to the hospital for a few hours. Katie Couric and Wolf Blitzer and other media luminaries are in Aspen this week as well.

Hillary Clinton will be in Denver tonight for a fund-raiser at a private home for her Senate campaign. I'll be attending, but as a guest, not a journalist, so I won't be blogging about it.

This is an open thread.

by Last Night in Little Rock

Suddam Hussein's lawyers (see Hussein trial blog) have complained to the International Criminal Court that the United States has committed violations of the Geneva Convention various ways that "amount to war crimes" according to a story on AFP on Yahoo.co.uk. This story will evoke universal apathy.

The AFP story mentions several violations of human rights: "'Saddam Hussein has been subjected to degrading treatment, including photographs taken of him unclothed,' it said."

More fundamental, however, is the allegation that Hussein is subject to a certain imposition of the death penalty in violation of international law and he was being denied full access to counsel and his family. Ramsey Clark, one of Hussein's eleven surviving lawyers, complains that the U.S. backed court is a show trial: