Bump and Update: Arianna thinks we should cut Gingrich some slack and accept his repentence. I understand where she's coming from, but I can't agree. Newt Gingrich was one of the most dangerous men in politics. Don't ever forget his 1995 Contract On America and the Taking Back our Streets Act. He cannot be allowed back into the fray. He will tool us again. We're lucky we got rid of him once. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice.... (sorry about the unintended rhyme.)

Also refusing to cut Gingrich any slack: Jane at Firedoglake, Glenn Greenwald at Alternet, Matt at My DD.

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Original Post 4/11/06

Jane and Think Progress say Newt Gingrich's speech yesterday saying continued war in Iraq is a mistake and that we should leave Iraq now is not to be trusted. I agree. Here's Newt yesterday:

by TChris

A reservist, anxious to return to Minnesota after serving eight months in Iraq, was detained in Los Angeles for more than an hour because his name appeared on a "watch list" of suspected terrorists. Marine Staff Sgt. Daniel Brown's name was listed after TSA discovered gunpowder residue on his boots last June -- "likely left over from a previous two-month tour in Iraq."

by TChris

Vernon, California consists of five square miles of "warehouses, meatpacking plants, fuel tanks and an occasional vacant lot." No parks, no schools. The city's motto is "Exclusively Industrial."

Vernon wouldn't seem like an ideal place to live, but the city owns almost all the houses within its borders, and it offers cheap rents compared to the cost of living in bordering Los Angeles. The catch: most of the renters work for the city, and therefore have an interest in perpetuating the political careers of those responsible for providing them with inexpensive housing. As a result, Vernon hasn't had an election since 1980, despite what seems to be profligate municipal spending, including employment of a city administrator who was paid $600,000 annually and given the use of a leased Cadillac Escalade, a city-owned apartment, and $120,000 for limousine services. Perhaps not coincidentally, the administrator, who retired last year, was the city clerk's father.

Don Huff thought he could do better, so he joined two others in a run for city council. Huff says city crews cut off his power before he was evicted in retaliation for opposing the entrenched government. But how did the election turn out? We don't know, because the city clerk refuses to count the ballots.

The propoganda never stops. Bloomberg reports a State Department official is saying Iran could produce a nuclear bomb in 16 days, "if it goes ahead with plans to install thousands of centrifuges at its Natanz plant."

Josh Marshall:

Via Raw Story, Robert Scheer at Truthdig has interviewed Colin Powell about the decision to go to war in Iraq.

On Monday, former Secretary of State Colin Powell told me that he and his department's top experts never believed that Iraq posed an imminent nuclear threat, but that the president followed the misleading advice of Vice President Dick Cheney and the CIA in making the claim. Now he tells us.

by TChris

The Sixth Circuit has cleared the way for William Gregory to sue Louisville for acts that caused his wrongful conviction. Gregory was imprisoned for eight years before DNA tests demonstrated that he wasn't the man who raped one woman and threatened to rape another. Gregory contends that the police withheld evidence that would have helped him prove his innocence.

A three-judge appeals panel said Gregory presented evidence that the police department encouraged one-on-one "show-ups" -- in which police present one person to a witness and ask if he's the suspect -- knowing they are inherently suggestive, and that it failed to train officers on their duty to disclose evidence suggesting a suspect may be innocent.

"Show-ups" -- presenting the suspect to the victim and asking "is this the guy?" rather than including him in a line-up -- have long been recognized as unduly suggestive, but some police departments continue to use them, creating serious risks of misidentification.

by TChris

Finding a silver lining in the Supreme Court's refusal to review Jose Padilla's claim that his detention as an enemy combatant was unconstitutional, Michael Dorf speculates that "Chief Justice Roberts may be more committed than most observers would have guessed, to a substantial judicial role in defending civil liberties against executive encroachment." Dorf is heartened by Roberts' decision to join the concurring opinion of Justice Kennedy, which "warn[ed] the government that the Supreme Court and the lower courts stand ready to enforce Padilla's rights--including the right to a speedy trial and to habeas corpus review--should the government continue to dither with Padilla."

These are, of course, nothing more than speculations. What is not speculation is the fact that the new Chief Justice--like every one of his predecessors--has already put substantial distance between himself and the positions of the Administration that just months ago nominated him to the Court.

by TChris

Another Bush administration effort to spread information it knew to be false has been exposed. This happens so frequently, it hardly seems like news.

On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush ... declared, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction."

Bush was referring to two small trailers that were anointed as mobile "biological laboratories."

But even as Bush spoke, U.S. intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true. A secret fact-finding mission to Iraq -- not made public until now -- had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president's statement.

Adam Liptak of the New York Times reports that judges are becoming increasingly skeptical over the lethal injection cocktail used in executions and are imposing more hurdles, some of which may be impossible to overcome.

Their decisions are based on new evidence suggesting that prisoners have endured agonizing executions. In response, judges are insisting that doctors take an active role in supervising executions, even though the American Medical Association's code of ethics prohibits that.

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in one case this month. Human Rights Watch will issue a new report on the drugs used this month. What's changed?

[Scroll down for updates}

Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald has written a letter to the Judge in the Scooter Libby case correcting a sentence in his filing last week discussing Libby's disclosure of portions of the NIE report to Judith Miller.

That sentence said Libby "was to tell Miller, among other things, that a key judgment of the NIE held that Iraq was 'vigorously trying to procure' uranium." Instead, the sentence should have conveyed that Libby was to tell Miller some of the key judgments of the NIE " and that the NIE stated that Iraq was 'vigorously trying to procure' uranium."

In other words, if I'm reading this correctly, Libby didn't tell Miller that the portion of the report referring to Iraq attempting to acquire uranium was a "key judgment" of the report. As many have pointed out, it wasn't a key judgment of the report. It was not mentioned until page 24. The "key judgments" are at the beginning.

We discussed the meaning and relevance of "key judgment" here, quoting the New York Times:

Republicans and Democrats appear to have made some progress on an immigration reform bill. Republicans now seem ready to drop two provisions from Sensenbrenner's bill : the one that would have made it a felony to be in the U.S. without proper documentation and another that exposed humanitarian workers to criminal liability for aiding the undocumented. The latter provision read:

"whoever -- assists, encourages, directs or induces a person to reside in or remain in the United States (illegally) -- shall be punished ...."

But there is no promise by Republicans not to make undocumented presence a misdemeanor -- nor to drop the other punitive measures in Sensenbrenner's bill.

In related news, 21 immigrants were fired from their meat-packing jobs at Wolverine Packing in Detroit for attending a March 28 immigration rally in Detroit that drew 20,000 people. The company's response:

TalkLeft hit 12 million visitors and 20 million page views yesterday.

But I was just as excited to see that my post on Sensenbrenner's immigration bill, H.R. 4437: A Bad, Bad Border Border Bill --including the comments--has made it onto the curriculum of a class at UC Irvine.