If you are going to be in New York City this weekend, check out the second and final installment of the Commission hearings against Bush for crimes against humanity, to be held at the Riverside Church and Columbia Law School. It is organized by the Not in Our Name Statement of Conscience and is endorsed by: Center for Constitutional Rights, National Lawyers Guild, After Downing Street.org and others. You can register online.

Among the witnesses at the tribunal (full schedule here):

• former commander of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski,
• former British ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray who exposed the use of information gathered through torture,
• former arms inspector Scott Ritter,
• ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern,
• Dahr Jamail (journalist who has reported extensively from Iraq),
• Guantanamo prisoners’ lawyer Michael Ratner,

Bush was indicted at the first session. Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern delivered the Indictment to the White House on January 10. The Bush White House has been invited to defend itself at this weekend's hearing.

Michael Fortier, who pleaded guilty to knowing about plans to bomb the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995 and not reporting the plans to authorities is set to be released from prison, having finished 85% of his 12 year sentence. Fortier testified against McVeigh and Nichols.

Fortier, who served in the Army with bombing conspirators Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols....also pleaded guilty to helping McVeigh and Nichols move and sell stolen guns, and for lying to federal authorities after the Oklahoma City bombing.

Fortier could have been sentenced to 23 years but because of his cooperation against McVeigh and Nichols, was sentenced to only 12. His wife received immunity from prosecution in exchange for her testimony.

Fortier's plea agreement is here.

Statement today by Al Gore (received by e-mail):

The Administration’s response to my speech illustrates perfectly the need for a special counsel to review the legality of the NSA wiretapping program. The Attorney General is making a political defense of the President without even addressing the substantive legal questions that have so troubled millions of Americans in both political parties.

There are two problems with the Attorney General's effort to focus attention on the past instead of the present Administration's behavior. First, as others have thoroughly documented, his charges are factually wrong. Both before and after the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was amended in 1995, the Clinton/Gore Administration complied fully and completely with the terms of the law.

by Last Night in Little Rock

With Brokeback Mountain winning the Golden Globe for Best Drama, it is "a solid front-runner for the Academy Awards, whose nominations come out Jan. 31, with the Oscars handed out March 5," according to CNN. The Golden Globes always have been a strong indicator of the Academy Award winners.

The fact that "Brokeback Mountain" has found eager audiences across the country, including the conservative heartland, shows that Americans are willing to embrace stories of love in all forms, [Director Ang] Lee said.

Before that, one can predict that the Right will again attack the movie industry for its values, centering on the fact that it is a "love story" that happens to involves (horrors) men.

Arianna writes that yesterday's speeches by Al Gore and Hillary Clinton, both of which criticized the Bush Administration, are like coming attractions to the 2008 Democratic presidiential nomination.

Arianna notes that while Hillary has been a terrific Senator, it's hard to go from sitting Senator to President (she lists John Kerry as a prime example) and says right now, she thinks Gore has the edge.

We'll see how the race develops, but right now I'd put my money on Gore. He didn't just get rid of the beard, he also got rid of the mitigating, the qualifying, and the equivocating that plagues sitting senators.

I'll give the edge to Gore for another reason. Half the country thinks the 2000 election was stolen from him, and they will want to right the wrong that was done to him. Had Gore been elected in 2000, he'd be on his second term. There would have been no war in Iraq, no John Roberts or Sam Alito on the Supreme Court and there would be a lockbox on our social security.

On the other hand, we'd still have mandatory minimum sentences and the death penalty. But Hillary supports those too. And the Clinton-Gore Administration pushed new wiretapping powers and habeas restrictions in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing. (See my 1996 article for more on this.) I'm not ready to pick either one right now.

Bump and Update: The ACLU press release is here. There is a webpage with documents and statements. The text of the complaint is here (pdf.)

The Center for Constitutional Rights press release is here.
The complaint is here. (pdf)

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Original Post (1/17 5:00 am)

The ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights will be filing federal lawsuits today over Bush's warrantless NSA electronic surveillance program. The ACLU will file its suit in Detroit and CCR will file in New York.

Both groups are seeking to have the courts order an immediate end to the program, which the groups say is illegal and unconstitutional....officials said the Justice Department would probably oppose the lawsuits on national security grounds.

by Last Night in Little Rock

As TalkLeft reported here, for a price, Locatecell.com will try find a way to steal your cellphone number, particularly from Cingular. I first read about this story on AOL a few days ago. One should be surprised at the lack of news coverage of such a gross invasion of privacy by one citizen against another. A PI told me a few years ago he could get this information. I thought he was kidding; apparently not.

Cingular obtained a TRO in U.S. District Court in Atlanta against Locatecell late last week in a story that seemed to escape the news, except for USAToday.com. Cingular is the victim of its own employees and what it calls "data burglars." Verizon is also going after them.

by TChris

The Supreme Court today delivered a blow to the Bush administration’s desire for an all-powerful federal government, ruling in favor of Oregon’s right to enact and implement a physician-assisted suicide law despite the administration’s insistence that federal drug laws prohibit physicians from dispensing federally regulated drugs for that purpose. When TalkLeft wrote about the case here, the outcome looked bleak for Oregon, particularly in light of the Court’s unwillingness to let state medical marijuana laws trump the federal prohibition of marijuana use. By a vote of 6-3 (with Chief Justice Roberts joining Thomas and Scalia in dissent), however, the administration went down to defeat.

As we said earlier:

Janet Reno declined to prosecute Oregon doctors who acted in accordance with state law, but John Ashcroft quickly changed course when he became Attorney General. He issued the Ashcroft Directive, concluding that "assisting suicide is not a legitimate medical purpose."

The Court’s response delivered a nice slap to Ashcroft:

Tuesday's decision is a reprimand of sorts for Ashcroft. Kennedy said the "authority claimed by the attorney general is both beyond his expertise and incongruous with the statutory purposes and design."

Did you know about the 9 Chinese detainees at Guantanamo? They are Uighurs, Muslims from western China, who are now in their 5th year of imprisonment. The Bush Administration acknowledged in 2004 they had been imprisoned by mistake and should be released since they are not enemy combatants. But they are still there. And Bush won't let them go.

They can't go back to China because they would be persecuted there. No other country will take them. Even though other Uighurs have been granted asylum in the U.S., Bush won't allow them to stay here. And so, they must stay at Guantanamo indefinitely, perhaps for life.

At a Martin Luther King gathering Monday, Hillary Clinton unleashed on President Bush.

Sen. Hillary Clinton on Monday blasted the Bush administration as "one of the worst" in U.S. history and compared the Republican-controlled House of Representatives to a plantation where dissenting voices are squelched.

.... Clinton also offered an apology to a group of Hurricane Katrina survivors "on behalf of a government that left you behind, that turned its back on you." Her remarks were met with thunderous applause by a mostly black audience at the Canaan Baptist Church of Christ in Harlem.

The House "has been run like a plantation, and you know what I'm talking about," said Clinton, D-N.Y. "It has been run in a way so that nobody with a contrary view has had a chance to present legislation, to make an argument, to be heard."

"We have a culture of corruption, we have cronyism, we have incompetence," she said. "I predict to you that this administration will go down in history as one of the worst that has ever governed our country."

Go, Hillary. We need more of this.

Rep. Bob Ney is trying to talk the feds out of indicting him.

Mr. Ney is working intensely to convince Justice Department prosecutors that he was tricked by Mr. Abramoff into doing favors for the lobbyist's clients. He and his lawyers are presenting evidence they hope will counter allegations by Mr. Abramoff, who agreed to testify in the corruption case in exchange for a reduced sentence.

Mr. Ney has shown credit card receipts to prosecutors to demonstrate that he paid for his own meals at Signatures, the restaurant that Mr. Abramoff once owned, participants in the case have said. His lawyers have gone through thousands of Mr. Ney's e-mail messages in an effort to determine that he did not put his involvement in any bribery scheme, if there was any, into writing.

That's very nice that he paid for some meals at Signatures. But that's the least of his problems.

The New York Times has another first on the warrantless NSA electronic surveillance program Bush used after 9/11. Turns out, it was a flop.

In the anxious months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the National Security Agency began sending a steady stream of telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and names to the F.B.I. in search of terrorists. The stream soon became a flood, requiring hundreds of agents to check out thousands of tips a month.

But virtually all of them, current and former officials say, led to dead ends or innocent Americans.

FBI agents complained: