Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker has a new column today on the NSA warrantless surveillance program.

"This is not about getting a cardboard box of monthly phone bills in alphabetical order," a former senior intelligence official said. The Administration's goal after September 11th was to find suspected terrorists and target them for capture or, in some cases, air strikes. "The N.S.A. is getting real-time actionable intelligence," the former official said.

The Cato Institute has published a report, Power Surge: The Constitutional Record of George W. Bush. You can read it online or they will mail you a free copy. My copy came in the mail last week, and I highly recommend it. It's eminently readable, in the format of a magazine. It addresses everything from the torture memos to searches and seizures, from wiretapping to habeas corpus.

Here's the conclusion:

by TChris

The latest numbers in Prison Nation reveal a reliance on incarceration that continues unabated.

Prisons and jails added more than 1,000 inmates each week for a year, putting almost 2.2 million people, or one in every 136 U.S. residents, behind bars by last summer.

As always, black men are disproportionately incarcerated. As usual, red states lead the way.

In the 25-29 age group, an estimated 11.9 percent of black men were in prison or jails, compared with 3.9 percent of Hispanic males and 1.7 percent of white males.

The Sopranos is about to begin.

Tonight's episode is "Cold Stones":

A frenzy of borrowing money hits the crew; Carmela waxes philosophical on a trip with Rosalie; Meadow relocates.

It has to be winding down for the season, but so far there hasn't been that much action. Let us know what you think of tonight's episode.

Marc Ash, editor of Truthout, the publication for which Jason Leopold writes, has a detailed new article about what their sources told them regarding Karl Rove's purported Indictment and about activity Friday at the offices of Patton Boggs, lawyers for Karl Rove. [Added: Truthout servers are now overloaded, probably due to a link from Drudge. I have temporarily reposted today's article at the bottom of this post.]

I have just gotten off the phone with Karl Rove's spokesman, Mark Corallo, who provided me with his response to the below quoted portions of the article. (He was at an event making cotton candy with his kids and only saw my email with the quotes, not the entire article.)

First, the Truthout article: Not only is Truthout not backing down, they are flat-out calling Rove spokesman Marc Corallo and Rove Lawyer Robert Luskin's denial false.

Truthout adds a new twist: Rove "may" be cooperating and becoming a witness for Fitzgerald and Cheney may be in Fitzgerald's cross-hairs.

With over 300 comments on Friday's thread, it's time for a new one. This is for all topics related to the rape accusation against the three Duke Lacrosse players or the legal proceedings . What's in the news? I like Joanna Spilbor's take at Findlaw on the D.A. refusing the defense's attempt to provide evidence.

I can't help but believe that, were any of these defendants to assert that they had proof that a crime was indeed committed, this district attorney would be all ears. Suppose, for instance, that Seligmann or Evans were to turn on Finnerty, to try to save themselves - surely Nifong would happily hear them out. So how can the prosecutor justify, then, turning a blind eye to evidence of any of the accused's innocence?

Crooks and Liars has the video from last night's Saturday Night Live Funhouse With Bush. It's great, go give it a watch.

Every time Bush, Cheney or Rummy say something that has ultimately turned out wrong, someone, animal or thing spits water or soup on them. Karl Rove scurries into the frame each time and makes them do another take. All the audio is of course the real thing. Another excellent job by Robert Smigel and Matt O'Brien.

The FBI was busy tonight executing a search warrant at the Congressional office of William Jefferson (D-LA).

The Federal Bureau of Investigation said in a statement that the unusual raid on a Congressional office began about 7:15 p.m., when agents entered Mr. Jefferson's suite of offices in the Rayburn House Office Building, and was being conducted as part of an "ongoing corruption investigation."

An F.B.I. spokesman told the Times it is the first ever raid of a Congressperson's office. Jefferson's lawyer is angry.

Bruce Schneier has an excellent article up at Wired, The Eternal Value of Privacy, examining security and privacy in the context of the NSA warrantless surveillance program.

After examining privacy rights, and the intent of the framers of the Constitution in this regard, he writes:

How many of us have paused during conversation in the past four-and-a-half years, suddenly aware that we might be eavesdropped on? Probably it was a phone conversation, although maybe it was an e-mail or instant-message exchange or a conversation in a public place. Maybe the topic was terrorism, or politics, or Islam. We stop suddenly, momentarily afraid that our words might be taken out of context, then we laugh at our paranoia and go on. But our demeanor has changed, and our words are subtly altered.

This is the loss of freedom we face when our privacy is taken from us. This is life in former East Germany, or life in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. And it's our future as we allow an ever-intrusive eye into our personal, private lives.

Tim Grieves at Salon does an excellent job today interviewing Marc Ash at Truthout about why he only issued a partial apology for Jason Leopold's article last Saturday stating sources had told him Rove had been indicted.

Marc's partial apology stated:

The time has now come, however, to issue a partial apology to our readership for this story. While we paid very careful attention to the sourcing on this story, we erred in getting too far out in front of the news-cycle. In moving as quickly as we did, we caused more confusion than clarity. And that was a disservice to our readership and we regret it. As such, we will be taking the wait-and-see approach for the time being. We will keep you posted.

The New York Daily News reports today that former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage may be a key witness for the Government in the case against Scooter Libby and may have incriminating evidence against Karl Rove.

Raw Story adds:

The Daily News' story comes just a day after a post by Washington insider Steve Clemons and coverage by RAW STORY which signaled that Armitage's role in the CIA leak investigation had been understated. According to Clemons, Armitage testified three times before the grand jury.

Has Iraq turned into the new Bosnia? The Independent/UK reports:

Across central Iraq, there is an exodus of people fleeing for their lives as sectarian assassins and death squads hunt them down. At ground level, Iraq is disintegrating as ethnic cleansing takes hold on a massive scale.

On a related note, the New York Times has an in-depth report on how misjudgements marred U.S. plans for the creation of the Iraqi police force. It begins: