Huffington Post has launched its Contagious Festival. The creativity in the entries is enormous. There's satire, humor and more. Here are some of my favorites so far:

• Al Qaeda caller-id by Edward Current.

• Iraq the Musical

• Once You Go Blackberry

Here's what it's all about and how to enter:

Time Magazine has the details of a third person seized at SOTU -- an Indian guest of Sen. Alcee Hastings. Read this and see if it doesn't make you sick.

But on the same evening that President Bush was lauding democracy and freedom, there was one other person in attendance whose rights were infringed upon. The man, who did not want his identity revealed after the disturbing incident, was a personal guest of Florida Democrat Alcee Hastings. He is a prominent businessman from Broward County, Florida who works with the Department of Defense-and has a security clearance. After sitting in the gallery for the entire speech, he was surrounded by about ten law enforcement officers as he exited the chamber and whisked away to a room in the Capitol.

Bump and Update: Time Magazine outlines how Gonzales plans to defend Bush's warrantless NSA electronic surveillance program Monday. Time has received a copy of Adminstration documents outlining his defense:

According to the documents, Gonzales plans to assert in his opening statement that seeking approval for the wiretaps from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court could result in delays that "may make the difference between success and failure in preventing the next attack." He will compare the program to telegraph wiretapping during the Civil War. In accompanying testimony, the Attorney General plans to leave open the possibility that President Bush will ask the court to give blanket approval to the program, a step that some lawmakers and even some Administration officials contend would put it on more solid legal footing.

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Original Post:

Senate Judiciary Committee hearings begin Monday on Bush's warrantless NSA domestic electronic surveillance programs. The star witness is Alberto Gonzales. Here's some background and topics you can expect him to be grilled on:

by Last Night in Little Rock

The 2006 proposal of the so-called "Defense of Marriage" Amendment in red state Florida failed to garner enough signatures by the February 1 deadline according to the Secretary of State's Division of Elections website to make it to the 2006 election. DOMAWatch.org does not even mention it, yet.

The proponents in a statement said, however, they are still working because Florida law provides that the signatures submitted remain valid for the next election cycle in 2008.

And I still do not understand how a gay partnership, marriage or otherwise, has the slightest potential for the demise of a straight marriage. Constitutional amendments by initiative, however, do not have to make sense. Neither does legislation, for that matter.

by Last Night in Little Rock

Late Thursday night, the Senate concurred in a House bill to extend the Patriot Act until March 10. The previous extension was to have ended Friday.

This was a mere skirmish and retreat in the war on civil liberies, which is continued to be waged with greater vigor than the War in Iraq.

A second criminal defense lawyer has filed a motion challenging the NSA warrantless wiretaps. Talkleft wrote here about Albany lawyer Terry Kindlon who filed the first such motion. David Smith of Alexandria, VA, another excellent defender is now representing Iyman Faris, the trucker from Ohio who pleaded guilty to planning to take down the Brooklyn Bridge.

A motion filed by Faris' attorney David Smith in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., argues that investigators improperly obtained evidence against Faris and that his trial lawyer was ineffective.

Given the likelihood that Faris' phone conversations or e-mails had been electronically monitored, Faris' trial lawyer, Frederick Sinclair, should have asked for evidence of such surveillance, Smith said in the motion. "Had he done so, the government would have been in a real bind and this would have enabled Faris to, at a minimum, negotiate a much more favorable plea bargain," the motion said.

....At his sentencing, prosecutors acknowledged that federal agents were led to Faris by a telephone call intercepted in another investigation.

The challenges are going to be multiplying rapidly. Here's who reportedly is next on deck:

The media must have censored President' Bush's State of the Union Address. Here's what we missed, from The Onion.

"Tonight, by executive order, I am creating a permanent department with a vital mission: to ensure that the political scandals, underhanded dealings, and outright criminal activities of this administration are handled in a professional and orderly fashion," Bush said.

The centerpiece of Bush's plan is the Department Of Corruption, Bribery, And Incompetence, which will centralize duties now dispersed throughout the entire D.C.-area political establishment.

Tomorrow, the Associated Press will release 200 pages of government documents it has received concerning debates in the Ford Adminstration over conducting warrantless surveillance for national security purposes.

The roughly 200 pages of historic records obtained by The Associated Press reflect a remarkably similar dispute between the White House and Congress fully three decades before President Bush's acknowledgment he authorized wiretaps without warrants of some Americans in terrorism investigations.

Among those named in the documents: George H.W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. As one analyst says, "It's deja-vu all over again."

FISA was passed in 1978, during the Ford Administration. Papa Bush and other Republicans were afraid the law would diminish presidential powers.

by TChris

This NYTimes article reminds us that internet use isn't as private as it might feel.

[Even though] companies that provide Internet service and run Web sites ... promise to protect the privacy of their users, they routinely hand over the most intimate information in response to legal demands from criminal investigators and lawyers fighting civil cases. ...

When it comes to e-mail and Internet service records, "the average citizen would be shocked to find out how adept your average law enforcement officer is at finding information," said Paul Ohm, who recently left the Justice Department's computer crime and intellectual property section.

Read the article to learn what information you leave behind when you surf the net, and how easy it is for others to find it.

by TChris

As TalkLeft discussed here, Ken Starr is trying to persuade Gov. Schwarzenegger to spare the life of Michael Morales. The judge who sentenced Morales to death now thinks he shouldl live. Today, the Mercury News weighs in:

Innocence is not at issue in Morales' case. He committed a terrible crime. But the state appears to have wrongfully condemned him to death, under false pretenses. If so, killing him would be an injustice.

Lewis Libby had a court hearing today. His trial is set for January, 2007.

Raw Story analyzes the Libby filings from January 31 and reports that Libby's lawyers say his superiors authorized the Valerie Plame leak.

Former federal prosecutorElizabeth de la Vega opines why Rove is not off the hook.

Continuing from my post below, here is today's unsealed information in the Judith Miller case from the newly revised opinion (pdf):

With respect to Miller, the special counsel seeks evidence regarding two exchanges with I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's Chief of Staff and National Security Adviser: first, an in-person meeting in Washington, D.C. on July 8, 2003, and second, a telephone conversation on July 12, 2003. Before the grand jury, Libby testified that although he had previously learned about Wilson's wife's employment, he had forgotten it by July 8 and recalled no discussion of Wilson during his meeting with Miller. (I-105, 134-35, 279.) As to the July 12 conversation, Libby stated, "I said to her that, that I didn't know if it was true, but that reporters had told us that the ambassador's wife works at the CIA, that I didn't know anything about it." (I-208.) Because other testimony and evidence raises oubts about Libby's claims, the special counsel believes Miller's testimony is "essential to determining whether Libby is guilty of crimes, including perjury, false statements and the improper disclosure of national defense information." (8/27/04 Aff. at 28; see also id. at 1-2.)