Spoiler Alert: Don't read until after you've seen the show.

The second episode of the new Sopranos season is about to begin. The only hint from the show's website so far is this, "A west-coast business trip turns into a case of mistaken identity."

Toronto Sun columnist Bill Harris, who has seen tonight's show, reports that A.J. has a starring role and a chilling scene. Edie Falco is also excellent.

You will definitely see the most eerie episode of The Sopranos. Parts of it may stick with you for a long, long time....The episode tonight is a weird one, with plenty of imagery and symbolism and outright spookiness.

Reactions, anyone? I'll be back with mine after the show.

Dick Cheney was on Face the Nation today.

Cheney chuckled when asked if he himself had ever considered resigning amid low poll numbers and suggestions by commentators that he was a liability for the administration.

"It's been a highlight of my career to be a part of this administration," he said. "I've now been elected to a second term, and I'll serve out my term."

Cheney also said no one has suggested to him that he resign. And, he's back to joking about his shooting accident:

On March 18, 2003, 100,000 gathered in New York to oppose the invasion of Iraq. Yesterday, only a few thousand gathered at Times Square to protest the third anniversary of the war. Only a few hundred turned out in Boston. London police expected a turnout of 100,000 but only 15,000 showed up.

What happened? The latest Newsweek poll shows a whopping 65% of Americans disapprove of the way Bush is handling Iraq. One in four Americans think he should be impeached.

Are we beaten down, anesthetized, convinced it is hopeless to protest our Government, one which increasingly has more in common with an autocracy or an oligarchy than a democracy?

We have a President who believes he can trump the Constitution and Congress at will and we aren't doing anything about it. Democrats in Congress won't even stand up for Sen. Russ Feingold's censure motion. Congressional elections are six months away and while Newsweek says 50% of Americans think the Democrats would do a better job, we're not hearing much fire and brimstone. What gives?

Here's a gloomy portrait of Iraq on this third anniversary of war.

In Scooter "Lewis" Libby's latest motion for discovery (pdf), Team Libby names the witnesses it expects the Government to call at his trial. Note that this is not an official witness list, but an attempt by Libby to provide grounds for the Judge to order documents concerning them to be produced to the defense. The AP lists them as:

• Richard Armitage, former deputy secretary of state.
• Ari Fleischer, former White House press secretary.
• Marc Grossman, former undersecretary of state for political affairs.
• Colin Powell, the former secretary of state.
• Karl Rove, the deputy White House chief of staff.
• George Tenet, the former CIA director.
• Joseph Wilson, a former U.S. ambassador.
• Valerie Plame Wilson.
• Stephen Hadley

U.S. News & World Report's article on secret, warrantless physical searches, which many in the blogosphere, us included, anxiously have been awaiting since MSNBC's Keith Olbermann reported on it last night is online here.

The lawyer who believes his office and home were surreptitiously searched is Thomas Nelson of Oregon. Nelson represents Soliman al-Buthe, indicted in 2004 on charges he illegally took al-Haramain charitable donations out of the country. The Government charged al-Haramain had al Qaeda connections.

Nelson's story begins on the second page of the article and is frightening. In essence, he believes the FBI conducted "black bag searches" on his home and office to retrieve classified documents it had given al-Buthe by mistake. Nelson also thinks the documents may establish that al-Buthe was one of those subjected to NSA warrantless surveillance.

Earlier this week I took Jerry Falwell to task for his divisive comments that Jews and Muslims can't go to heaven.

With Easter and Passover approaching, there's an inclusive message Christians and Jews, as well as Muslims, Buddhists and those of every other religion, can get behind. From the National Religious Campaign Against Torture: Torture is a Moral Issue.

If you thought that "Let It Bleed" was just a Rolling Stones song, think again. In what seems like Chapter 22 in the book I hope someone will write, "President Bush Says the U.S. Does Not Engage in Torture," the New York Times introduces us to Task Force 6-26 and describes what it was doing both before and after the abuse at Abu Ghraib came to light in the the "Black Room" at Camp Nama, a converted Baghdad military installation located at the Baghdad airport.

There, American soldiers made one of the former Iraqi government's torture chambers into their own interrogation cell. They named it the Black Room.

In the windowless, jet-black garage-size room, some soldiers beat prisoners with rifle butts, yelled and spit in their faces and, in a nearby area, used detainees for target practice in a game of jailer paintball. Their intention was to extract information to help hunt down Iraq's most-wanted terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, according to Defense Department personnel who served with the unit or were briefed on its operations.

They even had a slogan, "No Blood, No Foul."

Newsweek has released a new poll on President Bush.

President Bush's approval rating has dropped to new lows on domestic issues and public anger is rising over his handling of Iraq and homeland security, according to NEWSWEEK's latest poll. ...His image as an effective leader in the war on terror is tarnished, with less than half the public (44 percent) approving of the way he's handling terrorism and homeland security. Despite a series of presidential speeches meant to bolster support for the war in Iraq, as well as the announcement of a major military offensive when the poll was getting under way, only 29 percent of the people questioned approved Bush's handling of the situation in Iraq. Fully 65 percent disapprove.

What's more, 50% think the Democrats should take control of Congress.

With the advent of electronic filing in the federal courts, lawyers can now file pleadings 24/7 and they take advantage of it. I thought the news today would be over Team Libby and Fitz fighting about whether Fitz was properly appointed as Special Counsel.

Now I see Team Libby moved on to the next front, filing a late-night discovery pleading (pdf). (The documents he is requesting are summarized in this proposed order attached to his request.) This issue is far more interesting, as AP reporter Pete Yost explains.

"If the jury learns this background information" about finger-pointing, "and also understands Mr. Libby's additional focus on urgent national security matters, the jury will more easily appreciate how Mr. Libby may have forgotten or misremembered ... snippets of conversation" about Plame's status, the defense lawyers said.

Shorter Libby: My memory is bad because I was so embroiled in internal fighting and finger pointing at the White House about why we didn't find any WMD's that the Plame/Wilson matter was a trifling detail in comparison.

The story so far: On March 11, the New York Times identified Ali Shalal Qaissi as the hooded detainee in this photograph and wrote a long article on how Qaissi became a prison rights' activist after his release from Abu Ghraib. (synopsis here.) Salon then challenged the identification.

Today the New York Timess issued a correction: Salon was right, it was wrong.

The Times did not adequately research Mr. Qaissi's insistence that he was the man in the photograph. Mr. Qaissi's account had already been broadcast and printed by other outlets, including PBS and Vanity Fair, without challenge. Lawyers for former prisoners at Abu Ghraib vouched for him. Human rights workers seemed to support his account. The Pentagon, asked for verification, declined to confirm or deny it.

U.S. News & World Report, according to its press release read on-air Friday night by MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, will report on its website Saturday night that Bush Administration lawyers advocated the President had the power to authorize warrantless physical searches two weeks after September 11, using the same arguments adopted by Bush for his NSA warrantless surveillance program.

Crooks and Liars has the Olbermann video. Raw Story has the text of the press release that Olbermann read on the air.

U.S. News reported in December, 2005, that the U.S. engaged in physical monitoring of mosques and homes without warrants. [Via Think Progress.]

In search of a terrorist nuclear bomb, the federal government since 9/11 has run a far-reaching, top secret program to monitor radiation levels at over a hundred Muslim sites in the Washington, D.C., area, including mosques, homes, businesses, and warehouses, plus similar sites in at least five other cities, U.S. News has learned. In numerous cases, the monitoring required investigators to go on to the property under surveillance, although no search warrants or court orders were ever obtained, according to those with knowledge of the program.

From our compassionate Department of Homeland Security, via Duke at Daily Kos: The AP reports:

China is refusing to take back an estimated 39,000 citizens who have been denied immigration to the United States and have clogged detention centers at federal expense, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said yesterday.... Currently, 687 Chinese are being held in federal detention facilities, at a daily rate of $95 each, while some 38,000 have been released on bond or under a monitoring program, such as wearing an electronic surveillance bracelet, the Homeland Security Department said later yesterday. Illegal immigrants can be held for 180 days before they are released.

Chertoff also said Homeland Security would open detention facilities in the next few weeks to house entire families of illegal immigrants who hope to bring their children along in order to avoid jail time. "It'll be humane, but we're not going to let people get away with this," he said.