In January, I wrote about Albany, New York defense lawyer (and frequent TalkLeft reader and commenter) Terry Kindlon being the first lawyer in the U.S. to file a motion challenging the Bush Administration's NSA warrantless electronic surveillance program.

U.S. News and World Reports this week has this article describing the several legal challenges mounted since. If I had any doubt that the Government might monitor TalkLeft, it's now erased:

The government has two weeks to respond to Kindlon's motions, which he says were inspired by a popular liberal criminal defense website, TalkLeft.com, created by Denver, Colo., defense attorney Jeralyn Merritt--one of Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh's principal trial lawyers. Now others, like Chicago public defender Mary Judge, are learning from Kindlon.

Mary Judge submitted a letter to the Government as I predicted lawyers would do here, and her opponent is none other than Patrick Fitzgerald:

The latest driving under the influence craze is upon us. Driving while Ambien'ed. I've heard of sleep-eating while Ambien'ed and amnesia from Ambien, but sleep-driving? Apparently, it's happening more and more.

Ambien, the nation's best-selling prescription sleeping pill, is showing up with regularity as a factor in traffic arrests, sometimes involving drivers who later say they were sleep-driving and have no memory of taking the wheel after taking the drug. In some state toxicology laboratories Ambien makes the top 10 list of drugs found in impaired drivers.

26.5 million Ambien scripts are written every year.

Ambien's maker, Sanofi-Aventis, says the drug's record after 13 years of use in this country shows it is safe when taken as directed. ...A spokeswoman for the F.D.A. said the drug's current label warnings, which say it should not be used with alcohol and in some cases could cause sleepwalking or hallucinations, were adequate.

The Government's March 2 response to Lewis "Scooter" Libby's request for presidential daily briefings was unsealed today. It consisted of an affidavit (pdf) by CIA information review officer Marilyn Dorn alleging that the request was too burdensome and could be subject to executive privilege. Dorn said it could take the CIA 9 months to compile the materials sought in Libby's original request and 3 months to assemble those for the restricted time period suggested by the Judge. Libby had sought the information to refresh his memory about the specific matters with which he was so preoccupied that he was unable to remember details about discussions with reporters concerning Valerie Plame.

Reddhedd at Firedoglake analyzes the filing.

Libby's lawyers have responded with this filing (pdf). They say Libby needs the material in the PDB's to show that the matters he was concerned with "dwarfed in importance the snippets of conversations about Valerie Plame that form the core of the Indictment."

Embattled Tom DeLay won his primary race by a wide margin.

Update: John Nichols provides analysis at The Nation, and says maybe Texas will mess with Delay.

Congress has passed the Patriot Act Renewal legislation:

The law makes it easier for federal agents to secretly tap phones, obtain library and bank records, and search homes of terrorism suspects. Bush has called it a vital tool in protecting the country. But numerous civil libertarians and librarians said it allows abuse of innocent Americans' privacy, and lawmakers agreed last year to add several safeguards before renewing provisions that were scheduled to expire.

The Meth Bill was included in the legislation:

The reauthorized Patriot Act includes new tools to combat the manufacture and distribution of methamphetamine. It will require retailers to place cold medicines with pseudoephedrine -- a key ingredient of the illegal drug -- behind counters, and will set limits on each person's monthly and daily purchases. Buyers will have to identify themselves and sign for their purchases.

The "safeguards" are largely cosmetic. The ACLU explains.

I'm deep in wiretap motions for a hearing tomorrow, so if something is going on in the world, here's a place to discuss it. And if you haven't voted in the Koufax awards yet, TalkLeft is nominated for Best Single Issue blog. I'd really appreciate your vote so TalkLeft makes it to the semi-finals. We haven't had any votes in days.

You can vote by leaving a comment that simply says "TalkLeft" here -- or if you'd like your ballot or identity to be secret, you can e-mail Dwight or Mary Beth and just say "TalkLeft for Best Single Issue Blog."

And 'round the Bloggerhood, check out:

• Law Prof Doug Berman on South Dakota sentencing laws and the new abortion ban.
• Part II of Larisa Alexandrovna's series on neo-con Michael Ledeen at Raw Story.
• USA Today: 8,000 desert during Iraq War
• Thoughts of an average woman on Wal-Mart using bloggers [hat tip Patriot Daily.]
• Avedon Carol of Sideshow and Digby and Tena at First Draft on abortion and sex and the radical right.

Dutch teen Joran van der Sloot finally decided to publicly answer missing woman Natalie Holloway's mother, who has had more face time on tv than anyone in recent memory, and more often than not uses it to to denigrate him and accuse him of lying or having something to do with her daughter's Aruba disappearance. The networks, eager to cater to the public's lust for missing white woman stories, have been only too eager to go along. [For the best interviews with Joran, see last week's with Greta, available here and here and here.]

Joran, who is in college in Amsterdam (after for all intents and purposes being run out of the country by the negative media blitz against him), came to New York a few weeks ago to go on tv and defend himself in the court of public opinion. He may have wished he stayed in Amsterdam. While in New York, the Holloways had him and his father served with a civil lawsuit (text here, html) with claims of injuring a minor, false imprisonment and interfering with custodial relations.

So now, Joran has lawyered up -- with my good pal and New York heavyweight defense lawyer Joe Tacopina.

Investigative journalist Dahr Jamail, who spent eight months in Iraq, has a long article today in Mother Jones on how the Bush Administration has embedded torture as policy in Iraq and Guantanamo.

Testimony from Afghan prisons and Guantanamo, the photos and video from Abu Ghraib, evidence of extraordinary renditions to the far corners of the planet -- all of this doesn't even encompass the full reach of Bush administration torture policies or the degree to which they have been set in motion at the highest levels of the American government. But what simply can't be clearer is this: horrific methods of torture have been used regularly against detainees in U.S. custody in countries around the globe, while an American President, Vice President and Secretary of Defense, among others, openly advocated policies that, until recently, would have been considered torture in any democratic country.

In the meantime, the Bush Administration has twisted the law just enough to allow authorities to potentially pick up more or less anyone they desire at any time they want to be held wherever the government decides for as long as its officials desire with no access to lawyer or trial -- and now, for the first time, the possibility has arisen, at least in the military trials in Guantanamo, that testimony obtained by torture will be admissible.

S.D. Governor Mike Rounds has signed the bill banning abortions passed last week by the state legislature.

The bill would make it a crime for doctors to perform an abortion unless the procedure was necessary to save the woman's life. It would make no exception for cases of rape or incest.

The bill carries a five year prison sentence for doctors performing illegal abortions.

There will be no lengthy sentencing delay for Jack Abramoff. A judge today refused that request by his lawyers. Abramoff lawyer Abbe Lowell told the court,

Abramoff attorney Abbe Lowell warned that critical information about the ongoing corruption investigation could be publicly disclosed in order to demonstrate the level of Abramoff's cooperation in that probe. That information could affect Abramoff's sentence in the fraud case.

"We will name names," Lowell said by telephone at a hearing before U.S. District Judge Paul C. Huck.

Update: Sentencing is March 29, but Abramoff likely will be allowed to remain free while he continues to cooperate.

Amnesty International issued a new report today, Beyond Abu Ghraib: detention and torture in Iraq.

US and UK forces in Iraq have detained thousands of people without charge or trial for long periods and there is growing evidence of Iraqi security forces torturing detainees, Amnesty International said today.

From the report's introduction:

In a unanimous opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the Supreme Court today upheld the "Solomon Amendment" and ruled that military recruiters must be allowed on campus. Scotus Blog has more details.

Upholding the so-called "Solomon Amendment," the Court ruled that the military must be given access to those campuses even though it violates the law schools' policy against facilitating discrimination against homosexuals. The military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy bars homosexuals who are publicly identified from serving in any of the services.

In a part of the decision rejecting a non-constitutional argument for avoiding the "Solomon Amendment," the Court declared that law schools could not exclude the military even if they also excluded all other potential employers that similarly declined to hire gays and lesbians. "Applying the same policy to all recruiters is insufficient to comply with the statute if it results in a greater level of access for other recruiters than for the military. Law schools must ensure that their recruiting policy operates in such a way that military recruiters are given access to students at least equal to that 'provided to any other employer.' "