President Bush says the U.S. does not engage in torture. Not in Iraq, and not at home. Then why did the U.S. agree to pay $300.000 to two detainees to settle their torture lawsuit?

The federal government has agreed to pay $300,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by an Egyptian who was among dozens of Muslim men swept up in the New York area after 9/11, held for months in a federal detention center in Brooklyn and deported after being cleared of links to terrorism.

....In the settlement agreement, which requires approval by a federal judge in Brooklyn, lawyers for the government said that the officials were not admitting any liability or fault. In court papers they have said that the 9/11 attacks created "special factors," including the need to deter future terrorism, that outweighed the plaintiffs' right to sue.

But are they are settling the case with money just to make it go away? Or because they are afraid a Brooklyn, NY jury might award the detainees much more money?

I just finished watching "Exspuditious:" Two Rotten Potatoes (Bush and Cheney),a new entry in the HuffPo contagious festival. I really liked the photos and music and soundbites. One example, check out page 20. And this Bush quote on page 18.

by TChris

The Texas redistricting Tom DeLay masterminded in 2003 might be his political undoing. Wouldn't the irony be insanely rich? (Of course, DeLay's indictment and corrupt behavior also play a role in his fate.)

When the new maps were drawn, Mr DeLay allowed some of the reliably Republican areas in his district to be included in neighbouring areas, "so he could get more Republican districts around him", said Gary Keith, a government professor at the University of Texas at Austin. "It has made him more vulnerable."

Recent polls confirm this, with Mr DeLay struggling against Nick Lampson, his Democratic challenger. Mr Lampson knows better than most what is at stake in the redistricting battle. He was one of the Democrats who lost his House seat after the Republican redistricting.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments Wednesday in a challenge to the redistricting scheme.

The Judge issued three orders in the Lewis "Scooter" Libby case today. The first two are no big deal. One set a schedule for subpoenaing jounalists, filing objections to the subpoenas and holding a hearing in April on the objections. No further court permission must be sought before either side issues the subpoenas.

The second order denied a request by Libby that Fitz not be allowed to continue filing ex parte affidavits with the court. (Ex parte means one-sided -- only the party who files it and the judge get to see it.)

The third order indicates to me that Libby is going to lose his request for being provided with the Presidential Daily Briefings, and even the documents he will receive will be for a much shorter time period than he had requested. I have uploaded the two page order here.

At a senate committee hearing today, it was disclosed that the Coast Guard had provided earlier warnings on gaps in intelligence with respect to port security and the UAE:

Citing broad gaps in U.S. intelligence, the Coast Guard cautioned the Bush administration that it was unable to determine whether a United Arab Emirates-owned company might support terrorist operations, a Senate panel said Monday. The surprise disclosure came during a hearing on Dubai-owned DP World's plans to take over significant operations at six leading U.S. ports.

``There are many intelligence gaps, concerning the potential for DPW or P&O assets to support terrorist operations, that precludes an overall threat assessment of the potential'' merger,'' an undated Coast Guard intelligence assessment says. `The breadth of the intelligence gaps also infer potential unknown threats against a large number of potential vulnerabilities,'' the document says.

My earlier post on security doubts regarding the UAE is here.

A new Rasmussen Reports poll finds that 36% of the respondents believe the terrorists are winning the terror war, while 39% believe we are winning.

Last month, 44% thought we were winning and only 26% believed the terrorists were winning.

A plurality of women and a majority of Democrats now believe the terrorists are winning. In December, 50% of all Americans thought the U.S. and its allies were winning. Just 25% took the opposite view.

The reason for the decline? Rasmussen says it likely is the Dubai deal:

Andrea Yates will be retried March 10 for the drowning deaths of her five children. Her lawyer said today she turned down a 35 year plea offer. She is now on bond and residing at a mental hospital.

As I opined here, she should be found not guilty by reason of insanity. As one doctor put it:

If Andrea Yates had been in any state other than Texas, she would have been found insane," said Dr. Robert Miller, [a forensic psychiatrist and the former chief of psychiatry for the state Department of Corrections] who is now a professor at the University of Colorado medical school and treats patients at Pueblo.

A Sunni Mosque was bombed today in Eastern Baghdad.

Four people were killed and 15 wounded in the attack outside a Sunni mosque in eastern Baghdad as the faithful were leaving evening prayers, security officials said. The attack was the latest strike against Iraq's ousted Sunni elite since Shiite mobs unleashed a wave of vengeance against the embittered minority after a revered Shiite shrine was blown up north of Baghdad last Wednesday.

Think Progress explains why the compromise over the Dubai Port deal is a sham.

The deal is political, not substantive. It's designed take some heat off the White House, not protect the security of the United States.

I think the compromise a delay tactic. Does anyone expect a real investigation by the Treasury Department, another agency in the executive branch of government? I don't. As for none being needed, check out Steve Soto's post at Left Coaster on why the UAE should not be trusted with our security.

...just last year in front of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, in which our own Chief of Staff to the US Mission to the United Nations, told Congress that the UAE was participating in the ferrying of prohibited goods to and from Saddam Hussein in violation of the UN sanctions.

The death penalty trial of James Sullivan, a Georgia millionaire accused of hiring a hit man to kill his wife 19 years ago, begins today. Court TV is airing it live.

On the day of a crucial hearing in her divorce, Atlanta socialite Lita Sullivan opened her door to a deliveryman who handed her a box of roses and fired a gunshot into her head. Almost 20 years later, her millionaire husband James Sullivan will stand trial for her murder.

Sullivan was previously acquitted of lesser related charges in a federal court, and then fled to Thailand from where he fought extradition for two years and ultimately was returned to the U.S. to stand trial on the murder charge.

Sullivan's defense lawyers are top-notch: Don Samuel and Ed Garland of Atlanta. Opening arguments are set for this afternoon. If you're by a tv and want to see good lawyering in a case involving everything from "wealth, greed and sex to class warfare, international intrigue and a fugitive on the run.", this is it.

A photo intern at the Birmingham News was looking for a camera lens in an equipment closet and found a box marked "Keep, don't sell." Inside were dozens of previously unpublished photos from the Civil Rights movement era. The paper published them in a Sunday supplement, and you can view many of them online here.

Sen. Arlen Specter has introduced a bill supposedly to require judicial oversight of NSA electronic surveillance applications. But, as Marty Lederman of Balkinization and Glenn Greenwald point out, it's anything but.

It is, of course, so disorientingly bizarre to hear about a proposed law requiring FISA warrants for eavesdropping because we already have a law in place which does exactly that. It's called FISA. That's the law the Administration has been deliberately breaking because they think they don't have to comply with it and that Congress has no power to make them. Reading this article about Specter's proposed legislation is somewhat like hearing that a life-long, chronic bank-robber got arrested for robbing a bank over the weekend and, in response, a Senator introduces legislation to make it a crime to rob banks.