VP Dick Cheney told CNN he may be a witness at the Scooter Libby trial.

Libby is "one of the finest men I've ever known," Cheney said, then declined further comment. "I may be called as a witness."

There's a lot of discussion about Cheney in this May 5 Libby hearing transcript.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales outlined the case against the wannabe warriors busted yesterday in Liberty City, Florida. You can watch the video here. The only al-Qaeda member they met with was an undercover informant posing as one.

According to the court documents, a man identified as Narseal Batiste was the recruiter who wanted to organize "soldiers" to build an Islamic army to wage holy war. The others were identified as Patrick Abraham, Stanley Grant Phanor, Naudimar Herrera, Burson Augustin, Lyglenson Lemorin, and Rotschild Augustine.

The New York Times reports on Operation Swift, through which the Bush Administration in the aftermath of 9/11 obtained bank records without court authorization:

Under a secret Bush administration program initiated weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, counterterrorism officials have gained access to financial records from a vast international database and examined banking transactions involving thousands of Americans and others in the United States, according to government and industry officials.

FBI agents today, armed with search and arrest warrants, busted 5 or 7 people in Miami's Liberty City for involvement in a domestic terrorism group.

Authorities are saying those arrested posed no immediate danger to Miami. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and the FBI will explain tomorrow at a press conference.

No explosives or weapons were seized in the raid. Judging from the repeated references to a "domestic terror scheme" and the comments of neighbors who said they recognized photos of the 8 men shown to them by agents, it sounds like those arrested are homegrown, not middle-Eastern or al-Qaeda.

CNN tv report: One of those arrested had a Haitian background. It was a preventive bust, after a year's investigation. They were not at a stage to act. The Sears Tower in Chicago and FBI building in Miami were long range targets. There was an undercover informant who convinced the group that he was an Islamic radical.

Update: A local teenager interviewed in a Fox News report who recognized the arrested men said they were "black men" whom he thought were opening a karate studio. In other words, these are Americans not middle-easterners. The AP: Suspects mainly American with no apparent connection to al-Qaeda.

There was a hearing in the Duke lacrosse players' alleged rape case today. Reade Seligman's bond was reduced.

DA Mike Nifong confirmed he had not turned over a toxicology report to the defense -- but he refused to say whether toxicology tests had been performed. Update: Fox News is reporting Nifong said no toxicology tests were conducted. So why did Nifong put out the date rape drug theory?

Among the items Nifong has yet to turn over is an analysis of the accuser's computer, which he said was still pending, and records from the mental health facility where authorities took the woman before she told police she had been raped. The only record from the facility, Nifong said, is a single page from a log book he is still working to obtain.

Also, the judge ordered Nifong to turn over reports from the accuser's 1993 gang rape allegation.

Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake has been in Oklahoma all week at her mother's bedside in the hospital. Her mother passed away this afternoon. If you are a reader of FDL (and what progressive blog reader isn't), it would be nice to visit FDL and leave her your condolences. Christy says she is (quite understandably) devastated.

The ACLU filed a freedom of information lawsuit request today seeking information on the Haditha killings of 24 Iraqi civilians, including women and children.

The request seeks information about the Haditha incident, about the alleged cover-up of that incident by senior officers, and about other incidents involving the killing of civilians by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. The request also seeks to ascertain whether military officers attempted to suppress information about these deaths.

Specifically, the request seeks the release of all records relating to the killing of civilians by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan since January 1, 2005, including death certificates, autopsy reports, investigative files, documents related to criminal and administrative proceedings, witness interviews, statistics, policy documents (including "rules of engagement"), paperwork for compensatory payments to relatives of victims, photographs and videos.

As expected, both Senate proposals for a timed exit plan from Iraq were defeated.

The votes, 87 to 13 on one measure and 60 to 39 on the second, reflected not only deep divisions between Republicans and Democrats but within the Democratic ranks as well.

Kerry's bill was the first one voted on. It would have required all troops to be out of Iraq by July 1, 2007.

The second, more generally worded measure was also intended to scale down the American commitment in Iraq. It declared that it was "the sense of the Senate" that redeployment of United States troops from Iraq begin by the end of this year.

Here are the 13 Senators who voted for Kerry's proposal.

Bump and Update: Just in from Newsweek: A new poll shows that Europeans really, really don't like Bush.

A Harris Interactive/Financial Times survey released Monday found that 36 percent of Europeans view the United States as the world's greatest threat to "global stability." By comparison, 30 percent of those polled named Iran as the biggest threat, while 18 percent named China.

In Austria, that unpopularity is particularly acute: a recent poll by the Vienna-based News magazine found that 72 percent of those surveyed found Bush to be unlikable and a danger to world peace.

Shorter version: Bush can't escape his unpopularity by running off to Europe.

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Original Post:
Bush Protests in Austria:

From Austrian tv/radio, here's the video of Bush protesters in Austria. Cindy Sheehan is front and center. At the end, there's a flag burning. [hat tip Scribe]

7 Marines and one sailor were charged with first degree murder and other crimes this week as the result of the killing of an Iraqi civilian.

In the case of the April killing of an Iraqi civilian, the allegation is that Marines pulled an unarmed man from his home on April 26 and shot him to death without provocation.

That makes 11 members of the military this week charged with murders in Iraq. The investigation into the Haditha killings of 24 civilians is still underway.

Here's an open thread for you all (except Duke which will get it's own.)

80 workers today were kidnapped from a Baghdad factory.

The abduction took place at a state-owned factory complex at Taji where dozens of insurgents commandeered buses taking employees home after work. A source quoted by Reuters news agency said the number of those kidnapped was at least 100 and possibly many more.

It is the latest of a series of mass abductions of workers in Iraq, many of whom have been ransomed or killed.

[hat tip Patriot Daily.]