Bump and Update: Raw Story has the full transcript. Analysis: Georgia10 at Daily Kos, Firedoglake and Glenn Greenewald. Sen. Feingold has a fact sheet up on his site detailing the illegalities of the NSA program. Crooks and Liars has the video of Frist's response.

My view: Great move by Feingold. I'm against wasting time and energy on a doomed impeachment mission. The censure motion will continue to heap bad press on Bush and his autocratical presidency. More and more Republicans will fear being aligned with him in 2006. It might even sway some voters.

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This morning, on "This Week with George Stephanopolous", Sen Russ Feingold announced he would introduce a censure resolution against President Bush for his warrantless NSA surveillance program. He said the program is tantamount to high crimes and misdemeanors. Crooks and Liars has the video. From the transcript:

by TChris

Karl Rove's strategy of pandering to religious extremists helped the GOP take control of the White House, Congress, and a number of state legislatures. Now the monster he nurtured may be coming back to devour the party that fed it.

Missouri Republicans are divided in their response to a proposed amendment to the Missouri Constitution that would protect stem cell research. Apart from the potential that stem cell research has to improve the lives of people afflicted with injuries and disease, some fruits of the research are sure to be lucrative. That's one reason the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry backs the ballot measure.

SAS soldier Ben Griffin spent three months in Baghdad fighting along with Americans and then told his commander he wanted out:

He said he had witnessed "dozens of illegal acts" by US troops, claiming they viewed all Iraqis as "untermenschen" - the Nazi term for races regarded as sub-human.

It immediately brought to an end Mr Griffin's exemplary, eight-year career in which he also served with the Parachute Regiment, taking part in operations in Northern Ireland, Macedonia and Afghanistan

Speaking at a fundraiser in Ohio, Karl Rove told those assembled Bush will not pull troops out of Iraq until we've won the war.

Abandoning Iraq now would signal to U.S. allies that America can't be trusted, Rove said. "Tyrants in the Middle East would laugh at our failed resolve," he said. "To retreat before victory would be a reckless act."

On the NSA warrantless surveillance program, Rove went for the fear factor:

"President Bush believes that if al-Qaida is calling someone inside the United States, we should know who they are calling and what they are saying," he said.

The Independent reports:

Donald Rumsfeld has made a killing out of bird flu. The US Defence Secretary has made more than $5m (£2.9m) in capital gains from selling shares in the biotechnology firm that discovered and developed Tamiflu, the drug being bought in massive amounts by Governments to treat a possible human pandemic of the disease.

Rumsfeld used to be on the board of Gilead Sciences, the company that makes the drug.

A whopping 300,000 to 500,000 persons took to the streets in Chicago Friday to protest the anti-immigrant border patrol bill pending in Congress (H.R. 4437). It's great to see that so many haven't forgotten that America is a nation of immigrants.

For once, state and local officials took a stand for the immigrants:

"Whether their names are Gutierrez or Lozano, Lipinski or Blagojevich; it doesn't matter," said Gov. Rod Blagojevich. "This is a country build by immigrants."

Mayor Richard M. Daley said: "This is a fight that includes every American. Those who are here undocumented, we're not going to make criminals out of them. That is not what America has ever stood for and will not stand for."

U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez told the crowd that immigrants are here to stay, and pledged to work to block the bill.

I just wish someone had worn a sign saying, "Tom Tancredo, go home."

Major Kudos to Markos and Jerome--check out the New York Times' great review of their book, Crashing the Gates:

Much of the authors' criticism of the party establishment is dead-on. They rail against political consultants who take 15 percent commissions on media buys while giving bad advice. They are especially incensed by what they see as the self-defeating role of special interests, notably Naral Pro-Choice America's decision to endorse Senator Lincoln Chafee, a Rhode Island Republican, over two pro-abortion-rights Democrats. If Mr. Chafee wins, he could ensure that the Republican Party, which has an aggressive anti-abortion agenda, keeps control of the Senate.

This would be just laughable if it weren't so serious. The CIA is not very good at keeping its own secrets, according to a new investigation by The Chicago Tribune. The paper was able to track covert and other CIA employees using commercially available databases.

When the Tribune searched a commercial online data service, the result was a virtual directory of more than 2,600 CIA employees, 50 internal agency telephone numbers and the locations of some two dozen secret CIA facilities around the United States.

Even though not all of the employees are covert, there is ample concern that those who are could become the targets of terrorists. Not only that:

Denver blogger, journalist, author and TalkLeft pal Dave Cullen of Conclusive Evidence has taken netroots activism to another dimension. First, he started a Brokeback Mountain forum on his blog which spiraled into the largest Brokeback site on the web.

Then, when Brokeback didn't win for best picture, he spearheaded a collection drive to take out a full page ad in Daily Variety thanking those who supported the film. The ad ran yesterday and you can view it here. From the forum's press release:

A 330 page report (pdf version here) by the Inspector General for the Department of Justice was released yesterday on the FBI's erroneous fingerprint analysis in the Brandon Mayfield case. Mayfield is the Oregon attorney who was detained pursuant to a material witness warrant after the Madrid, Spain train bombings.

In addition to criticizing the FBI for its errors in fingerprint analysis, the report examines the role of the Patriot Act in the investigation. The enhancement of Government power in the Patriot Act did contribute to the unjust treatment of Mayfield....and but for some of its provisions, a different result might have been obtained. While finding that the Patriot Act changes to FISA did not contribute to the errors, other provisions did, specifically those that (1) allow information sharing between intelligence and law enforcement agencies and (2) provide for relaxed standards for the issuance of National Security letters. (See page 14.)

[larger version]

Ali Shalal Qaissi is the former Abu Ghraib prisoner in the photo of the hooded prisoner standing on a box connected to electrodes. He's still angry and doing something about it.

There is the mangled hand, an old injury that became infected by the shackles chafing his skin. There is the slight limp, made worse by days tied in uncomfortable positions. And most of all, there are the nightmares of his nearly six-month ordeal at Abu Ghraib prison in 2003 and 2004.

Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has been found dead in the detention centre at The Hague tribunal. An investigation has been ordered, but authorities do not believe it was suicide. He had heart problems, and while his lawyers had asked for him to be transferred to Russia to obtain treatment, that request was denied.

Mr Milosevic faced charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his alleged central role in the wars in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo during the 1990s. He also faced genocide charges over the 1992-95 Bosnia war, in which 100,000 people died.

His lawyer comments in this article.