Update: The jury is seated and testimony will begin this afternoon.

Update: The prosecution gave it's opening today. Moussaoui was calm.

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Testimony begins today in the death penalty trial of accused 9/11 co-conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui.

Zacarias Moussaoui may be the defendant, but it's the FBI that will likely be on trial once testimony begins Monday in the confessed al-Qaida conspirator's death penalty trial.

Both prosecutors and defense lawyers have indicated that FBI agents will provide key testimony at Moussaoui's sentencing trial, which will determine whether the 37-year-old Frenchman is sentenced to life in prison or death.

Zacarias is his own worst enemy. He won't talk to his lawyers. He didn't participate in 9/11. He was in jail when it happened. The current theory is that he was going to used in a future attack. The rationale for executing him is that he knew of al-Qaeda plans to attack the U.S. and did nothing to stop it. Michael Fortier got 11 years, not death, for a similar failure to alert authorities to the Oklahoma City Bombing. Moussaoui has been denied the potentially exculpatory testimony of Ramzi Binalshibh and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed at his trial. Both are being held by the U.S. in overseas prisons.

The Justice Department now has two units targeting pimps-- the Human Trafficking Task Force and the Innocence Lost initiative. It has initiated 140 investigations in 14 cities and convicted 14 pimps.

The first pimp tried in the District under the federal statute, Carlos Curtis, will be sentenced March 17. He could face life in prison for prostituting a 12-year-old runaway he recruited from New York and a 17-year-old he brought to the District from Maryland.

In New York, James Colliton, the lawyer nick-named the "Lolita Lawyer", who until his firing last week was a partner at the swanky firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore earing $500k a year, is charged in state court and faces 7 years for allegedly "pimping out" two sisters, age 13 and 15.

Bump and Update: The New York Times reports here. My DD's Jonathan Singer weighs in here.

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Original Post 3/4/06

Could Tom DeLay get voted out of office by Texans before his criminal trial? It's possible. The Texas Republican primary is Tuesday and DeLay has challengers. He needs 50% of the vote to avoid a run-off election.

It will not help DeLay that his district is more Democratic, ironically by his own making. DeLay's legal and ethical entanglements stem from his efforts to redistrict Texas to elect more Republicans to the U.S. House....In that same Chronicle poll, 68 percent of respondents said they were undecided on a candidate in the Republican primary, a potentially worrisome sign for DeLay, who enjoys near universal name recognition in the district.

On the other hand, his challengers seem pretty light-weight:

Winners of the night: Crash! I'm so glad. Jon Stewart, George Clooney, and Three-Six Mafia for "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp." Chris "Ludicris" Bridges as presenter. Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Anistan and Jessica Alba. Reese Witherspoon for Best Actress in Walk the Line. The New York Times has the best photospread.

Who should have won: Terrence Howard or Joaquin Phoenix.

Other takes:

• Atrios weighs in on John Stewart
• HuffPo
• James Wolcott
• AP Oscars articles and pix.
• Red Carpet pictures
• Digby
• More Jon Stewart Media Reviews

Your thoughts?

Update: Jon Stewart is getting great reviews in after-Oscar interviews from those in attendance. Example: Steven Spielberg.

They are about to start. If anyone's online while watching, here's a space for you to live blog in the comments.

Good luck, Jon Stewart, I know you will be great.

So far, all the dresses have been goregous.

I think I"m rooting the most for Terrence Howard in Hustle & Flow.

The best part of the pre-Oscar shows: No Joan and Melissa Rivers.

As for what's different about the Oscars this year for me, it's the movies. So many movies with liberal themes...so many great performances and a great choice for host.

Update: Arianna has a bunch of threads going, all worth reading. I've included links below.

It's time to start the countdown to the Oscars. Some of today's coverage:

• WAPO: And This Year's Oscar Goes to Social Issues. WAPO full coverage is here.
• The LA Times has an awesome site up. Also check out their Oscar Beat.
• BBC is already on site live-blogging.
  
• Arianna's got an Oscar Watch going. Look for updates as she is attending the Vanity Fair events.

What fun is the Oscars without predictions? Here's a printable version of the full list of Nominees. Here are the top six categories plus Best Original Music.

Update (5:30 pm) As for my picks: Best Picture: Brokeback Mountain will win but I prefer Crash. Best Actor: Terrence Howard. Best Supporting Actor: George Clooney; Best Actress: Reese Witherspoon; Best Supporting Actress: Rachel Weisz; Best Director: Ang Lee; Best Song: It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp

If you're not watching the Oscars tonight, or if you have a tivo, check out 60 Minutes' airing of The Prince of Pot.

A Canadian who calls himself the "Prince of Pot" could wind up in a U.S. prison for life for selling marijuana seeds, but says he would be "blessed" because such a plight could help legalize the drug. ....The last place he wants to be is in jail, but Emery says if the Canadian courts allow the U.S. government to extradite him and a U.S. jury puts him away, he still sees a silver lining.

"I am blessed by what the DEA has done," he tells Simon. "I would rather see marijuana legalized than me being saved from a U.S. jail. I hope that if I am incarcerated, I can influence tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of young people to take up my cause."

An interview with Marc Emery is here. He wrote about his plight here. Background is here.

First, President Bush dragged his feet in nominating chairs and members of the Civil Liberties Protection board recommended in the 9/11 Commission Report. In June, 2005, he announced his appointments:

Bush picked Texas lawyer Carol Dinkins, who was deputy attorney general under former President Reagan, to chair the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, and Alan Charles Raul, an administration official in the former Bush and Clinton administrations, to be vice chairman.

The other members chosen by Bush were: Lanny Davis, once a crisis manager in the Clinton White House; former Solicitor General Ted Olson; and General Electric Co. executive Francis X. Taylor, a former head of diplomatic security and counterterrorism coordinator at the State Department.

National Journal has more on the Board here. Michael Isikoff in Newsweek today reports the board is finally going to meet.

Crooks and Liars has the video. Also, check out the video of David Gergen on Howard Kurtz's Reliable Sources this morning:

This administration has engaged in secrecy at a level we have not seen in over 30 years. Unfortunately, I have to bring up the name of Richard Nixon, because we haven't seen it since the days of Nixon. And now what they're doing -- and they're using the war on terror to justify -- is they're starting to target journalists who try to pierce the veil of secrecy and find things and put them in the newspapers.

Now, in the past what the government has always done is go after the people who leak, the inside people. That's the way they try to stop leaks. This is the first administration that I can remember, including Nixon's, that said -- and Porter Goss said this to Congress -- that we need to think about a law that would put journalists who print national security things to...bring them up in front of grand juries and put them in jail if they don't -- in effect, if they don't reveal their sources.

Howard Fineman of Newsweek takes a look at whether Rudy Giuliani will run for President in 2008. Just the thought makes me cringe.

I hope he decides against it. He has nothing to offer except more of the same and worse than we've endured the last four years.

I'm not taking a Rudy candidacy seriously at this point. For one thing, he's touted as a social liberal (have they never looked at his civil liberties record as Mayor of New York?) because he has supported choice and gays in the past -- and that will make him unacceptable to hard core rightists.

More importantly, personal politics and ethics still count in the heartland and he'll never get past his Donna Hanover divorce issues and her allegations of infidelity and humiliation. His attempt to take credit for the drop in crime in New York will be revealed to be not his doing, but Bill Bratton's. Their long standing feud will play out. Rudy's support of Bernie Kerik for HSA chief will come back to haunt him and reflect poorly on his judgment when it comes to making cabinet appointments. Even many of the 9/11 victims don't support him.

The Inspector General of the Pentagon has asked the army to open a criminal investigation into Pat Tillman's death in Afghanistan.

The request, which came out of the inspector general's review of four previous investigations of the April 22, 2004, shooting, will likely lead investigators from the Army Criminal Investigation Command to return to Afghanistan and conduct a monthslong investigation into whether Tillman's death may have been a homicide, the result of criminal negligence or an accident, said an Army official who asked to remain anonymous.

Tillman's mother says:

"The Army used him. They knew right away he was killed by fratricide and used him for their own purposes to promote the war, to get sympathy for the war, for five weeks."

Why would the military do that? All one has to do is go back in time to April, 2004 when Tillman was killed and look at the headlines coming out of Iraq. Here are a few:

About every six months, the folks at Neuro Politics take out an ad on TalkLeft, asking readers to take a psychological test based mostly on politics. It's that time again, and I really had fun taking this one. I'm always trying to figure out where they are going with their questions, and I never can. Plus, this time, you get an analysis back. I'm not sure what most of mine means, so I hope I'm not embarrassing myself by publishing it, and I'd be curious for others to post their results in the comments. Besides, what else is there to do this Sunday besides wait for the red carpet to open at the Academy Awards? Here goes:

Your responses are consistent with the following attributes: You have a higher propensity for large-group social bonding. You have a stronger tendency to align your beliefs with your respective social groups. Your social behavior is consistent with stronger serotonergic activity and a reduction in submissive behaviors. Your right prefrontal cortex is more involved in your political decision making than your left. Indicators of enhanced right prefrontal and bilateral temporal activity in humor detection. Color preferences may indicate an enhanced dopamine level in your visual cortex. You have a higher tolerance for ambiguity in your thinking styles, and a greater inhibition of your left inferior parietal cortex. Your responses indicated a tendency to classify facial expressions as more threatening, and an elevation in activity in your right amygdala. Overall, your cognitive style is balanced between your left and right hemispheres.

Here's the test, and I bet you will find it intriguing.