A new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds Americans want Bush to disclose his contacts with Jack Abramoff:

A strong bipartisan majority of the public believes that President Bush should disclose contacts between disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff and White House staff members despite administration assertions that media requests for details about those contacts amount to a "fishing expedition," according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

The survey found that three in four -- 76 percent -- of Americans said Bush should release lists of all meetings between aides and Abramoff; 18 percent disagreed. Two in three Republicans joined with eight in 10 Democrats and political independents in favoring disclosure, according to the poll.

Bush fares almost as badly on the questions about his Administration's ethics:

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has rejected the last four clemency bids that came before him, that of Crips co-founder Stanley Tookie Williams, the 76 year old Clarence Ray Allen, Donald Beardslee and Kevin Cooper. Now he has another decision to make. But, in this case, that of Michael Morales, both Kenn Starr and the sentencing judge are petitioning for clemency.

The Judge says he's concerned that the jailhouse snitch who testified against Morales lied. Apparently, the snitch said his coversation with Morales took place in Spanish, but now it's been discovered that Morales speaks only English.

Kenn Starr helped prepare the clemency petition.

Their petition describes Morales as "a deeply repentant sorrowful Christian who has accepted full responsibility for a terrible crime that will haunt him forever."

"Unlike some who express no remorse for their offenses against humanity, Michael has not fled from his responsibility for the deed committed so many years ago in his reckless and drug-saturated youth," the petition says.

NCADP's action alert for Mr. Morales is here.

Here's the story so far. Arianna takes a few swipes at Tim Russert. NBC attacks Arianna, but instead of going after her on the facts, dregs up a 12 year old false claim by GOP'er Ed Rollins in his memoir, "Bare Knuckles and Back Rooms" that she hired a private investigator to dig up dirt on Russert's wife, Vanity Fair author Maureen Orth.

Richard Bradley, an editor of George Magazine in 1996, writes today about an article in the November, 1996 issue of the magazine written by John B. Roberts II, a former Reagan speech-writing assistant who did research for Rollins' book, in which Roberts said Rollins falsified information in his memoir.

Sen. Harry Reid, Hillary Clinton, Diane Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Dick Durbin, Russ Feingold, Debbie Stabenow, Ted Kennedy all have come out in support of John Kerry's filibuster plan.

E-mail them your appreciation. And keep working on those who resist. Sen. Feinstein said last week she'd oppose a filibuster and yet changed her mind. Others can as well.

Those Democrats opposing the filibuster, like Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, use reasoning like this:

Democratic officials said Mikulski had said during this week's closed-door caucus that the 2006 and 2008 elections were more important than a symbolic last stand that would fail to prevent Alito's confirmation.

Let your Senators know that if they support the filibuster, you will work even harder for a Democratic majority in 2006. Show Mikulski she's wrong.

The Justice Department today issued this long press release in an attempt to debunk what it calls "myths" about Bush's warrantless NSA surveillance program.

Shorter version: We're at war and the President is King. The legal arguments are still based on the questionable assumption that the President's Article II constitutional power and the Iraq war authorization gave Bush the power to engage in the program.

FISA expressly envisions a need for the President to conduct electronic surveillance outside of its provisions when a later statute authorizes that surveillance. The AUMF is such a statute.

The NSA activities come from the very center of the Commander-in-Chief power, and it would raise serious constitutional issues if FISA were read to allow Congress to interfere with the President's well-recognized, inherent constitutional authority. FISA can and should be read to avoid this.

DOJ also argues that the 72 hour emergency window isn't enough time for it to prepare a FISA application, but does not address why it didn't ask Congress to amend the law to give them more time.

by TChris

Technically speaking, Tim Russert continues to mislead the public by claiming that the Abramoff scandal is bipartisan. Now, technically speaking, Katie Couric and Matt Lauer are pedaling peddling the same false story. (Arianna has more on Russert.)

by TChris

Lawyers rarely ask a federal judge to recuse himself or herself on the ground that the judge appears to be prejudiced. The judge will almost always say no, and the lawyer worries for the rest of the case (or career) that the judge's offense at being accused of prejudice against the client will result in even more prejudice against the lawyer. That is often not a risk worth taking.

Federal prosecutors took that risk when they sought the recusal of Judge Shira Scheindlin, who has presided in the perjury case against Osama Awadallah. The Second Circuit yesterday rejected their claim that Judge Scheindlin's remarks demonstrated an appearance of partiality in favor of Awadallah.

During oral arguments in December, prosecutors cited a 2004 article written by Scheindlin for a legal publication in which she said it was the duty of judges to protect individual rights in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. They argued such public statements and pretrial rulings in Awadallah's favor had created an appearance of injustice in the case.

by TChris

Writing in Christianity Today, Prof. David Gushee explains why torture is always wrong. He calls on his fellow Christians to stand up to the Bush administration on one of the profound moral issues of our time.

It is past time for evangelical Christians to remind our government and our society of perennial moral values, which also happen to be international and domestic laws. As Christians, we care about moral values, and we vote on the basis of such values. We care deeply about human-rights violations around the world. Now it is time to raise our voice and say an unequivocal no to torture, a practice that has no place in our society and violates our most cherished moral convictions.

by TChris

The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law worries (with good reason) that Judge Alito, if confirmed, would further erode the Supreme Court's willingness to interpret civil rights laws as Congress intended: to benefit victims of discrimination.

During his 15 years on the bench and participation in thousands of cases, Judge Alito has never written an employment discrimination opinion in favor of an African American on the merits of their race claim. Judge Alito attempted to downplay this point by referencing five cases where he was supposedly supportive of race-based claims. However, our research revealed that these five cases do not support the argument made by Judge Alito and his supporters.

The full text of the Lawyers' Committee's Senate testimony is here (pdf).

Update: The e-mail spammers hit the comments. Registration is back on. If anyone has trouble getting their comment posted, please email Mike Ditto. Also, I don't like anonymous comments because you can't tell if it's ten people or one person commenting ten times. Thanks.

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by TChris

Senator Feingold wants the White House to disclose information about its domestic spying so that a meaningful hearing can be held on Feb. 6, when the Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to investigate the administration's illegal actions.

Specifically, Feingold asked President Bush to make his staff available to discuss the program, as well as the use of automated data analysis, or "data mining," of domestic communications.

"In addition," Feingold wrote in the letter to Bush, "please provide information about who within the executive branch reviewed, approved or otherwise knew about your authorization of wiretaps in the United States without a FISA order, and when."

The (predictable) response:

The White House suggested it wouldn't meet Feingold's request.

No kidding.

Not only did President Bush defend the pictures of him and Jack Abramoff yesterday, he reaffirmed that the White House will not release them to the public.

Abramoff raised at least $100,000 for Bush's re-election campaign. The White House has said Abramoff participated in meetings with staff members.

Our Imperial President is once again trying to set the rules. This is the third investigation in which he is asserting "presidential perogative," the other two being the NSA surveillance program and Katrina.