by TChris

Don't ask, don't tell, and don't star in porn videos that are released to the internet.

The Army has charged seven paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division with engaging in sex acts in videos shown on a gay pornography website. Three of the soldiers face courts-martial on charges of sodomy, pandering and engaging in sex acts for money, according to a statement released by the military Friday.

The website is described as "military-themed."

Sen. Arlen Specter has introduced a "guest worker" bill for immigrants that would allow many undocumented workers to legally remain in the U.S.

The draft circulated by the lawmaker, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, would also authorize millions of illegal immigrants who arrived in this country before Jan. 4, 2004 to remain here indefinitely, along with their spouses and children, as long as they registered with the Department of Homeland Security, paid back taxes and remained law-abiding and employed, among other conditions.

At today's hearing in the Scooter Libby case, Patrick Fitzgerald told the defense the White House recently had turned over to his office 250 pages of e-mails from Dick Cheney's office.

Is Cheney in trouble? Jason Leopold reports:

The emails are said to be explosive, and may prove that Cheney played an active role in the effort to discredit Plame Wilson's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a vocal critic of the Bush administration's prewar Iraq intelligence, sources close to the investigation said.

Sources close to the probe said the White House "discovered" the emails two weeks ago and turned them over to Fitzgerald last week. The sources added that the emails could prove that Cheney lied to FBI investigators when he was interviewed about the leak in early 2004. Cheney said that he was unaware of any effort to discredit Wilson or unmask his wife's undercover status to reporters.

At today's hearing on Lewis "Scooter" Libby's motion to compel discovery, Libby won one round and lost another. While he prevailed on his request to have his handwritten notes turned over to him, he lost his attempt to learn the identity of a government official who told two reporters that Valerie Plame Wilson worked for the CIA.

To defend himself against criminal charges, however, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby does have the right to copies of all the classified notes he took as Cheney's chief of staff from spring 2003 to spring 2004, U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton said. Libby sought the notes to refresh his memory about matters he was handling while discussing Plame with reporters and when questioned by investigators about those conversations.

....Walton's decision to continue to protect the anonymity of one administration official, whom Libby's attorneys described as a confidential source about Plame for two reporters, one of them apparently Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward, is a blow to Libby's case. Defense attorneys had said they needed to know the official's identity and the details of his conversations with the two journalists to show that Libby was not lying when he testified that many reporters knew about Plame's identity. But Walton said the source's identity is not relevant, and there is no reason to sully the source's reputation because the person faces no charges.

So, Woodward's source talked to two reporters. Was the second reporter Walter Pincus or Bob Novak?

Both houses of the South Dakota legislature have now passed a near-ban on abortion. This was done deliberately, in an effort to set-up a Roe v. Wade review by the Supreme Court.

South Dakota lawmakers approved a ban on nearly all abortions Friday, setting up a deliberate frontal assault on Roe v. Wade at a time when some activists see the U.S. Supreme Court as more willing than ever to overturn the 33-year-old decision. Republican Gov. Mike Rounds said he was inclined to sign the bill, which would make it a crime for doctors to perform an abortion unless it was necessary to save the woman's life. The measure would make no exception in cases of rape or incest.

....Under the measure, doctors could get up to five years in prison for performing an illegal abortion. The House passed the bill 50-18 on Friday, and the Senate approved it 23-12 earlier this week. If signed, it would become law July 1.

Reactions? Molly Saves the Day has decided to blog instructions for performing a dilation/curettage abortion. She will follow-up with directions for performing "vacuum aspiration for first-trimester pregnancies and inducing miscarriages for later ones." Dadahead wonders if this is dangerous to put on the internet.

Amanda at Pandagon thinks it's okay to publish this information. She comments on Dadahead:

...women will do it anyway. Just because the government cuts off their best option doesn't mean they should be forced to take the worst option. Without spreading the knowledge of how to do it, many women will resort to even more dangerous methods.

The she-pundit with long blond hair gave another inflammatory speech last night, this time at Indiana University. As usual, it was filled with insults, such as calling one student "gay boy" and referring to Iraqis as "brown boys."

One comment that drew strong audience reactions came from a young man who asked her if she didn't like Democrats, wouldn't it just be better to have a dictatorship? Coulter responded with a jab at the way the student talked.

"You don't want the Republicans in power, does that mean you want a dictatorship, gay boy?" she said.

Some more Coulterisms:

A few weeks ago, Knights Ridder reported on a reorganization within the State Department, led by Fred Fleitz and Robert Joseph, which bypassed career weapons experts.

Jason Leopold reports today that among those frozen out were whistleblowers in the Valerie Plame investigation. These experts, who prefer to remain anonymous, say their cooperation with Fitzgerald led to their changes in status.

Sen. Bob Dole should have known better than to accept a job lobbying for the Dubai ports deal. His wife, Sen. Elizabeth Dole, is one of those who must be convinced of the propriety of the deal. And now, his hiring has become a headache for him.

The chairman of the North Carolina Democratic Party, Jerry Meek, yesterday called on Sen. Dole to remove herself from "any congressional oversight" of the Dubai port deal. "The fact that Dubai is paying her husband to help pass the deal presents both a financial and ethical conflict of interest for Senator Dole," Meek said.

Sen. Dole, amazingly (or maybe not so) is defending her husband's hiring.

The ACLU has released the results of a new poll by conducted by the Washington-based firm Belden, Russonello & Stewart, measuring voters' attitudes toward the NSA warrantless surveillance of Americans. The full report is available here. Among the poll's findings:

• A majority of voters want Congress to "demand that the warrantless eavesdropping be stopped because it is illegal."
• A majority of voters believe "the president should not be acting on his own in deciding how to fight terrorism without the checks and balances of the courts or Congress."
• A majority of voters oppose the government eavesdropping on Americans' calls to people overseas without a court warrant.
• A majority of voters are skeptical that the President acted within the law:
• A majority of voters express the view that the President can "effectively combat terrorism and follow the law and get court warrants to spy on Americans."
• A majority of voters believe the President is wrong to assume that "the Congressional resolution to go to war in Afghanistan to fight terrorism also gave him permission to eavesdrop on Americans without a warrant."
• Also, at least a third of Republican voters consistently expressed viewpoints that they are concerned that the president is operating outside the law.

The poll also found that American voters have serious concerns about the Patriot Act. Specifically, the poll found that:

Senators Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) and Ken Salazar (D-CO) have teamed up to request that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales appoint a special counsel to investigate Jack Abramoff's Pacific dealings and the demotion of Frederick Black, former U.S. Attorney for Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands.

In a letter made public Thursday, Sens. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico and Ken Salazar of Colorado also asked Gonzales to provide the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee with a secret Justice Department report on security risks in Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. Bingaman and Salazar serve on the committee, which has oversight of the island territories.

While lawyers for Lewis "Scooter" Libby yesterday moved to dismiss the Indictment against him claiming irregularities with the appointment of special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, the Judge yesterday issued an order asking both sides for more information related to Libby's motion to compel documents, scheduled to be heard today.

In response to the court order, this morning Libby's attorneys filed this response. They also asked to supplement the record with this letter from Kathleen Kedian, deputy special counsel.

One thing I noted in a brief review of the Libby's pleadings on the document issue is the continued emphasis on Libby's faulty memory. Team Libby says it has spent months researching the principles of memory. It sounds like there could be a battle royale at trial between psychological memory experts discussing the three phases of memory -- the acquisition stage, the storage phase and the retrieval phase. I'm looking forward to this, having studied it extensively with two of the nation's leading experts, Elizabeth Loftus and Gary Wells, as it relates to eyewitness identification.

As for Libby's motion to dismiss, Reddhedd at Firedoglake analyzes it here and here.

TChris wrote about the proposed South Dakota bill, introduced in the wake of the Supreme Court decision to rehear a case involving the legality of a partial-term abortion law, that would ban all abortions, except for those in which the life of the mother was in danger.

Jane at Firedoglake Lake devoted Thursday to abortion law posts. You should read them all. Markos of Daily Kos picked up on one of Jane's posts and ran with it.

With the news out of South Dakota, it's obvious that a woman's right to choose is in graver danger today than it has been in decades. (SD has passed an outright ban on abortion, as opposed to the "partial birth" case which the court will hear in the next session.) And one of those reasons is the replacement of pro-choice Justice Sandra Day O'Connor by Samuel Alito.

Joe Lieberman had the chance to take a stand on behalf of critical privacy issues, but abdicated.