Arianna's there, and she says so.

....even with Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis, Penelope Cruz, Jamie Foxx, and Halle Berry here for the film festival, the hottest star in town is Al Gore. In Cannes for the European premiere of his powerful global warming documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," Gore has been surrounded by adoring crowds and deluged with interview requests. He told me that he gave 23 back-to-back-to-back interviews on Sunday, Hollywood junket-style (all on only one hour's sleep), and had another 23 scheduled for Monday.

Even though Gore has said he's not running:

MSNBC reporter David Shuster said on Hardball tonight. Crooks and Liars has the video:

Rove's legal team and former prosecutors tracking the investigation expect Patrick Fitzgerald to announce a decision at any time.

Rove's legal team tells me differently. Rove spokesman Mark Corallo told me a few minutes ago that as they have been saying for weeks, the timing is still unknown and there is nothing new to suggest it will be tomorrow or even this week. In fact, "we have no expectation on timing anymore. "

Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, earlier today confirmed to me that "there has never been any discussion of any plea under any circumstances whatsoever." He added, "as a defense lawyer, you'll understand that if a prosecutor hasn't figured out whether or not he thinks a charge is appropriate, plea discussions are a bit premature."

Wired Magazine today published the documents of whistleblower Mark Klein, the chief witness for EFF in its suit against AT&T for furnishing customer records to the NSA.

AT&T claims information in the file is proprietary and that it would suffer severe harm if it were released. Based on what we've seen, Wired News disagrees. In addition, we believe the public's right to know the full facts in this case outweighs AT&T's claims to secrecy.

As a result, we are publishing the complete text of a set of documents from the EFF's primary witness in the case, former AT&T employee and whistle-blower Mark Klein -- information obtained by investigative reporter Ryan Singel through an anonymous source close to the litigation. The documents, available on Wired News as of Monday, consist of 30 pages, with an affidavit attributed to Klein, eight pages of AT&T documents marked "proprietary," and several pages of news clippings and other public information related to government-surveillance issues.

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.