Very bad news from Iraq. The AP reports that a farmer in Iraq witnessed the kidnapping of two U.S. soldiers missing from Yusufiyah, a mostly Sunni town about ten miles south of Baghdad.

The White House promised to do everything it could to find the soldiers and said it had a message for anybody who may have taken the two men: "Give them back."

Gunmen, meanwhile, kidnapped 10 bakery workers in Baghdad, and a mortar attack killed four people in the capital. Police also found 17 bodies around the city, including four women and a teenager handcuffed and shot in the head - apparently the latest victims of sectarian death squads.

It has been more than two years since a U.S. soldier has been kidnapped in Iraq.

Observer reporter David Rose was en route to Guantanamo when the suicides occurred and the Pentagon cancelled his pass. He has a very powerful article on what happened and what might have happened.

Here are some snippets from Rose's report:

Newsweek has a new detailed analysis of the Duke lacrosse players' alleged rape case, asking whether it has collapsed. The facts revealed to date don't seem to support the charges. But DA Nifong is sticking to his guns:

Asked for an interview last week by NEWSWEEK, Nifong declined, but sent an angry e-mail accusing the national media of getting spun by defense lawyers and sticking to his earlier comments to the press. "None of the 'facts' I know at this time, indeed, none of the evidence I have seen from any source, has changed the opinion that I expressed initially," he wrote. He lashed out at "media speculation" (adding, "and it is even worse on the blogs"). He said that he was bound by ethics rules against commenting any more about the case or evidence.

There's a good editorial in the Des Moines Register on our vanishing privacy rights:

President Bush dismisses the privacy implications of this government spying by calling it a "terrorist surveillance program." That suggests only those guilty of something are affected. But there's no way to know for sure in advance of a search that the party is guilty of anything. Besides, that makes a mockery of the American system of criminal justice, which contains elaborate safeguards that protect even the guilty from unconstitutional searches.

Even if government spying is intended to be directed only at criminal or terrorist plots, there is no way to guard against abuses when the process is done in total secrecy and there are no checks by either Congress or the courts.

Is this enough to make you sick, or what? I take it with a grain of salt, since Joe DiGenova seems to be the one pushing it.

To put this out in the media through DiGenova now, Team Libby (the p.r. team, not the lawyers) is either testing the waters or hoping to demoralize Team Fitz by making them wonder if Libby's prosecution is all for naught.

One thing I agree with: If the Dems take the House and Senate in the 2006 midterm elections, a pardon before his last day in office may be too dangerous for Bush -- it could have severe adverse consequences for the Republicans in 2008.

If you have any doubts about DiGenova's rooting for Libby, check out Libby's website, which touts these quotes by DiGenova and his wife, Victoria Toensing:

As if it's not bad enough that at least one of the Guantanamo detainees who committed suicide last week didn't know he had been cleared for release, now we find out some of them didn't even know they had lawyers.

The Yemeni captive who killed himself at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had an attorney arranging to visit him in August, but did not know it when he committed suicide. One of the Saudis, Mani Shaman al Utaybi, 30, had been approved for transfer to a jail back home, but also had never been told he was cleared to depart the U.S. detention center.

The military first maintained the men who hanged themselves did not have lawyers.

Jamison Foser of Media Matters has the must read article of the day. He writes about why progressives should make the media the defining issue of our times.

I just finished being on a panel "Leakers and the Press" at the American Constitution Society convention in D.C. There was one conservative law professor, Maimon Schwarzchild, on the panel, which also included Law Prof Geoff Stone, 9th Circuit Justice Stephen Reinhardt and Constitutional and Media Law attorney Laura Handman.

Professor Shwarzchild asserted the mainstream media has an overly liberal bias. I challenged him on thatand asked him if he had read Lapdogs or What Liberal Media? I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to get a third reference in....it would have been to Media Matters.

The point being, it's a myth that there is liberal bias in the media. Read Media Matters and learn how to refute the myth with facts.

TL readers may remember that my first foray into investigative reporting occurred after Jason Leopold's May 13 article stating that Karl Rove had been indicted. After Byron York reported that Mark Corallo, Karl Rove's media spokesman, denied speaking with Jason, I spoke with Jason and published his account of his conversations with Corallo. Then I spoke with Corallo and published his denials.

Corallo said Jason had misrepresented himself as Sunday Times (London) reporter Joe Lauria.

In Sunday's Washington Post, Joe Lauria details his encounter with Jason and conversations with Mark Corallo, which he says he learned about from my post on Corallo's statements.

The Washington Post paints a fairly glowing portrait of Karl Rove today. His involvement in PlameGate? No big deal. His position as chief architect of Bush's failed social security revamp? Water under the bridge. Bush's low poll numbers while he was in charge? So what? And no one will remember Harriet Who by 2006.

Now that we have the non-negatives out of the way, here is what uber-strategist Karl is planning for his 2006 election strategy:

He hopes to make the election a choice between the philosophies of the two parties, especially on national security, rather than a referendum on Bush's performance. He also aims to stoke the Republican base with such issues as tax cuts, same-sex marriage and judicial appointments.

The grand jury returned a "no true bill" for Cynthia McKinney Friday. That means they decided not to indict. But, were they asked to indict?

Prosecutors declined to say whether they asked the grand jury to return an indictment, noting court rules that bar them from disclosing such matters.

How else would the grand jury have returned a "no true bill" unless they had been asked to vote?

I had dinner with Murray Waas in DC tonight. While we've talked on the phone a bunch and e-mailed about PlameGate, we had never met in person. He was suffering from a really bad bout of bronchitis, so we just ate at my hotel. Then we walked to the Capitol building where I took some pix on my cell phone, but I haven't figured out how to get them from the phone to the email (or set up email in the phone -- one of those high-tech razors,) so it will be next week before I get them posted and you all can see Murray standing in front of the U.S. Capitol.

Yesterday's Duke lacrosse thread generated 300 comments, so it's time for another. And a commenter got banned and had all his/her comments deleted because of repetitive insults to other commenters. So be forwarned, disagreement is fine, name-calling and personal attacks are not.