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.

Will people listen now that it is the Pentagon, not the ACLU or Human Rights First that is confirming American soldiers in Iraq abused detainees?

United States Special Operations troops employed a set of harsh, unauthorized interrogation techniques against detainees in Iraq during a four-month period in early 2004, long after approval for their use was rescinded, according to a Pentagon inquiry released Friday.

The abuse by special-ops forces detailed in the report continued after the allegations at Abu Ghraib came to light. As for the particular abusive techniques used,

I'm very glad to see that Marc Ash of Truthout yesterday published a "stand down" on Jason Leopold's May 13 article reporting that Karl Rove had been indicted.

Yesterday, most Mainstream Media organizations published reports about a letter supposedly received by Karl Rove's attorney Robert Luskin. As an example of the supposed letter's contents, TIME Magazine stated that, "Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald said or wrote, 'Absent any unexpected developments, he does not anticipate seeking any criminal charges against Rove.'"

Truthout of course published an article on May 13 which reported that Karl Rove had in fact already been indicted. Obviously there is a major contradiction between our version of the story and what was reported yesterday. As such, we are going to stand down on the Rove matter at this time. We defer instead to the nation's leading publications.

Ash also, appropriately in my view, defends Jason Leopold:

The House of Representatives copped out again.

In a vote charged with election-year politics, the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday passed a symbolic resolution that wrapped the Iraq conflict into the war on terrorism and rejected a deadline for U.S. troop withdrawal.

The war on terror is not the war in Iraq. 2,500 American troops have died. Instead of instilling the fear of terrorism in the heart of every American, it's time to instill grief at the loss of life and the failure of our misguided U.S. policy in Iraq.

Here's the roll call vote. Set a deadline and bring the troops home.

Senator Hillary Clinton delivered the opening address at the American Constitution Society Convention in Washington this morning. [Update: I just watched her speech on C-Span 2, it's a good one, catch a repeat if you can]

She announced new proposed legislation to address the security of private information. Declaring privacy to be "synonymous with liberty," Senator Clinton called for greater federal protection for personal data from theft or misuse by private commercial actors, as well as great Congressional and judicial oversight over domestic surveillance and data-mining programs unilaterally crafted by the executive branch.

You can watch her speech here.

Anderson Cooper 360 featured a long segment on how the Chinese are taking and selling organs from prisoners condemned to death. Doctors have testified at hearings that sometimes the prisoners are still alive. Americans and other foreigners who can't get an organ in time from being on a donor list are flying to China to receive the organs, justifying their decision by saying they aren't told anything about the organ donor, so they don't know their new liver, kidney or eyes, whatever the case may be, came from a person who was killed in order that the organ be harvested and sold.

CNN referred to the "death vans" I wrote about here, which are used both to execute the prisoner by lethal injection and then, within 15 minutes, take their organs.

In an editorial Wednesday, a Chinese newspaper defends its death penalty and organ harvesting program.

The defense filed another challenge to DA Mike Nifong Thursday. Remember when he told America on national tv that his reading of the accuser's rmedical eport indicated a rape had taken place? Turns out, the report hadn't been printed as of that date.

"On March 29, 2006, Mr. Nifong claimed to have read a medical report that, according to discovery, was not printed until March 30, 2006, or retrieved by law enforcement pursuant to Mr. Nifong's own subpoena until April 5, 2006," read the filing from lawyers Joseph Cheshire and Bradley Bannon.

As to the accuser's injurie that might be consistent with a sexual assault, what injuries?

According to the defense, the only injuries noted by the doctor who performed the 33exam were "three small scratches" on her right knee and ankle.

Happy blogiversary to us! With traveling, I forgot it's TalkLeft's birthday. 4 years old.

13 million plus vistors, 22 million plus page views, 14,500 entries and 192,000 comments.

Wow. Thanks to all of you for sticking with us.

Update: Thanks to Kevin for his blogiversary praise for TalkLeft -- no chopped liver here!

by TChris

The police have little incentive to obey the constitutional requirement to knock and announce their presence before busting down doors to serve search warrants, thanks to a 5-4 Supreme Court decision issued today. Justice Alito provided the tie-breaking vote.

The Court ruled that suppression of the results of the search -- the usual remedy when evidence is acquired in violation of the Constitution -- is too extreme when police fail to knock-and-announce. The dissent voiced the obvious response:

"The court destroys the strongest legal incentive to comply with the Constitution's knock-and-announce requirement,'' Breyer wrote for the four dissenters.

by TChris

By sneaking in and out of Iraq, the president avoided adding himself to this tragic statistic:

The number of U.S. military deaths in Iraq has reached 2,500, the Pentagon said on Thursday, more than three years into a conflict that finds U.S.-led forces locked in a struggle with a resilient Sunni Arab insurgency. ...

In Washington, the Pentagon also said 18,490 U.S. troops had been wounded in the war, which began in March 2003 with a U.S.-led invasion to topple President Saddam Hussein.

Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed.

Update: Here's the compassionate response from the White House:

Reacting to the new milestone on combat deaths, White House press secretary Tony Snow said, ''It's a number.''