The Bush Administration drug warriors are about to become apoplectic. Bolivia elected a new President Sunday, Evo Morales, an Aymaran Indian, of the Movement towards Socialism, who garnered more than 50% of the vote. For the first time in 500 years, Bolivia will revert to indigenous rule.

Among Morales' promises:

Señor Morales, who used to lead a coca-growers’ union, has promised to legalise the cultivation of coca, the primary ingredient in cocaine — to the horror of the US, which has pursued a big coca eradication effort in Bolivia in recent years. Bolivia is the world’s third largest producer of cocaine.

My view: Bolivia has been a democracy since 1982. Since Bush is so fond of bringing democracy to other countries, and insistent that once they get their government set up their people should rule, I think he wholeheartedly should endorse Mr. Morales and his policies.

On July 17, 2003, following a briefing by Cheney, Sen. Jay Rockefeller responded with a handwritten letter (pdf). How prescient. Markos at Daily Kos has the text version. Here's a portion of it:

Clearly the activities we discussed raise profound oversight issues. As you know, I am neither a technician or an attorney. Given the security restrictions associated with this information, and my inability to consult staff or counsel on my own, I feel unable to fully evaluate, much less endorse these activities.

As I reflected on the meeting today, and the future we face, John Poindexter's TIA project sprung to mind, exacerbating my concern regarding the direction the Administration is moving with regard to security, technology, and surveillance. Without more information and the ability to draw on any independent legal or techical expertise, I simply cannot satisfy lingering concerns raised by the briefing we received.

I am retaining a copy of this letter in a sealed envelope in the secure spaces of the Senate Intelligence Committee to ensure that I have a record of this communication.

Patriot Daily has a great round-up of liberal blogger reaction to the unauthorized spying.

by TChris

It's good to see the AP calling out the president when he fails to tell the country the rest of the story.

President Bush is making selective use of an opinion poll when he tells people that Iraqis are increasingly upbeat.

The same poll that indicated a majority of Iraqis believe their lives are going well also found a majority expressing opposition to the presence of U.S. forces, and less than half saying Iraq is better off now than before the war.

The AP also notes the president's dismissive attitude toward polls that tell him things he doesn't want to hear (like the percentage of Americans who think he's doing a lousy job) -- an attitude that makes it odd for him to embrace (albeit selectively) a poll of Iraqis.

Seventeen Democrats who are members of the House Judiciary Committee today called on Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner to convene hearings to investigate President Bush's ordering the National Security Agency to conduct electronic surveillance of persons within the United States without obtaining court-ordered warrants. They noted in their request that Sen. Arlen Specter has called for similar hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee. (More on that here.)

From the letter (received by e-mail):

...we ask that you, too, convene hearings to investigate why the President circumvented the system established under current law, which permits him to seek emergency warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to conduct domestic surveillance. It is imperative we understand the legal authority upon which it is claimed these activities are based and the scope of the activities undertaken.

by TChris

The North Texas Innocence Project will bring together faculty and students from six universities who will join defense lawyers in investigating the possible innocence of convicted inmates.

The project will be based primarily at the University of Texas at Arlington and the Texas Wesleyan University School of Law, with 40 criminal-justice and law-school students working with lawyers on the cases. The UT-Arlington students, who have been meeting for almost a year, have identified a murder in Tyler, a sexual assault in Dallas and a robbery in Fort Worth for further review.

Under the direction of licensed lawyers, the local students will work with law students from Texas Tech University, Texas Southern University and the University of Houston as well as journalism students from the University of St. Thomas in Houston.

Innocence projects are always needed. This one had the support of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which successfully urged the Texas legislature to provide funding.

National Law Journal has selected Patrick Fitzgerald, the prosecutor in the Valerie Plame leaks case, as Lawyer of the Year.

Runner-up is Navy Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, for his challenge to the Guantanamo Review tribunals.

Both are excellent choices in my opinion. The articles are outside the subscription wall and available to all.

President Bush held a news conference today that was dominated by recent news that after 9/11 he ordered electronic surveillance without a warrant or court order.

President Bush offered a vigorous and detailed defense of his previously secret wiretap program today, calling it a legal and essential tool in the battle against terrorism and saying that whoever disclosed it had committed a "shameful act."

Mr. Bush said the surveillance would continue, that it was being conducted under appropriate safeguards and that Congress had been kept informed about it. He rejected any suggestion that the surveillance program was symptomatic of unchecked power in the presidency.

It's important to note here that people in this country have been subjected to the warrantless surveillance, not just foreign nationals.

Yes, this is TalkLeft. It's our new design. We hope you like it.

The new graphic is by Monk of Inflatable Dartboard. I designed the layout (colors, font styles and sizes, columns and content arrangement) based upon a Wordpress theme named Relaxation.

The indefatigable Mike Ditto did the lion's share of the work over the past week. He converted the Wordpress coding to Movable Type, writing approximations where there was no equivalent. He converted and created a total of 17 templates and modules, while I insta-messaged him every 15 seconds over the past 8 hours asking "Can we do this?" and "Can we change that?" Then he made everything work across IE, Firefox and Safari.

Now, there are going to be undocumented features ( "bugs" is a politically incorrect term.) Feel free to point them out in comments. The new design may take some getting used to. But I hope you like it and agree it's an improvement over our previous look.

Webmaster Mike Ditto and I are almost done with TalkLeft's redesign which we have spent dozens of hours on this past week. I'm hoping it will be finished tonight. It really looks good. But, as with any major site overhaul, and this one has turned out to be really major, there are tests and retests and kinks to iron out.

While I continue to work on that, here's an open thread for you.

Time Magazine has chosen U-2's Bono and Bill and Melinda Gates as persons of the year:

For being shrewd about doing good, for rewiring politics and re-engineering justice, for making mercy smarter and hope strategic and then daring the rest of us to follow, Bill and Melinda Gates and Bono are TIME's Persons of the Year.

Michelle Malkin thinks it's a lame choice.

And, sorry, but Melinda Gates? She marries the software mogul after he has done his greatest work...and that makes her a co-person of the year.

How mean-spirited to suggest that Melinda Gates is being honored for being married to her husband as opposed to the thousands of hours she spends working on the Foundation. Michelle needs to do a little research on Melinda Gates' contributions in creating and co-running the largest philanthropic organization in America, one that is dedicated to reducing world poverty, saving lives by discovering global health cures and providing educational opportunities for children in our own country.

What greater work could there be?

The New York Times has a good editorial today on Bush's insistence that his executive orders allowing domestic warrantless monitoring of conversations was in accord with the Constitution and our nation's laws.

President Bush defended the program yesterday, saying it was saving lives, hotly insisting that he was working within the Constitution and the law, and denouncing The Times for disclosing the program's existence. We don't know if he was right on the first count; this White House has cried wolf so many times on the urgency of national security threats that it has lost all credibility. But we have learned the hard way that Mr. Bush's team cannot be trusted to find the boundaries of the law, much less respect them.

Mr. Bush said he would not retract his secret directive or halt the illegal spying, so Congress should find a way to force him to do it. Perhaps the Congressional leaders who were told about the program could get the ball rolling.

What section of FISA do the Bush advisors not understand? Glenn Greenewald makes his case here .

The only way to argue that the Bush Administration’s warrantless eavesdropping on suspected terrorists, including U.S. citizens, complied with the law is by misquoting the law in order to change its requirements.

As to the credibility of Bush officials on this issue, Think Progress points out:

Senator Russ Feingold has issued a response to President Bush's admissions during his radio address today that he authorized domestic intelligence wiretaps without a warrant or court order. It is available as a radio actuality at the following number: 800-511-0763, Code 4945:

"The President believes that he has the power to override the laws that Congress has passed. This is not how our democratic system of government works. The President does not get to pick and choose which laws he wants to follow. He is a president, not a king."

Here is a fact sheet I received from Sen. Feingold's office on domestic intelligence wiretaps: