I'll be out for the afternoon so I may miss the Tookie clemency announcement. Here's a place to discuss it, or anything else you want.

Kevin Drum has an interesting post up about our secret laws. Arthur covers torture. Avedon Carol of Sideshow has her usual excellent roundup of the blogoshpere, as does Memeorandum.

Viveca Novak's first person account of what transpired between her and Karl Rove's lawyer is up (free link) at Time. It's a biggie. Shorter version (my interpretation): If Karl Rove doesn't get indicted for perjury, it will be because of Viveca Novak. Viveca tipped Luskin off that Karl Rove had talked to Matthew Cooper in either March or May, 2004, after his February grand jury appearance. That sent Luskin on the hunt for documentation, and when he found the Hadley e-mail, he turned it over to Fitz.

What's astonishing about the article is that Viveca didn't tell Time Magazine editors what she had done until after she had hired her own lawyer and debriefed with Fitzgerald. She didn't tell them until she got a formal subpoena. She's now on a "mutually agreed upon" leave of absence from the magazine.

Lawyers for Stanley "Tookie Williams" have gone back to the California Supreme Court with a habeas petition to stay his execution. The grounds are:

• Tookie was drugged through his trial as a form of behaviorial management and incompetent to stand trial
• The prosecution withheld critical evidence about one of the witnesses against him who is now serving time for a different murder. Had the proseution disclosed his violent and criminal past, Tookie would have been able to argue that he, not Tookie, was the killer of one of the four victims.

Mexico has abolished its death penalty. While no one has been executed there since 1961, the law was still on the books.

"Mexico shares the opinion that capital punishment is a violation of human rights," [Presidente]Fox said. "Today, the death penalty has been abolished."

Winds of Change. May they blow up north soon.

While the New York Times Magazine touts the effectiveness of conservative blogs, the LA Times Magazine writes about the liberal blogs "truth squad" and profiles John Amato of Crooks and Liars.

For political junkies, must-see TV once meant sitting through hours of "Crossfire," "Hannity & Colmes" and "Meet the Press," hoping for the occasional gem. Nowadays, to catch Robert Novak turning the air blue on "Inside Politics" or work yourself into an apoplectic lather over our politicians' latest truth-challenged utterances, you can point your browser to Crooks and Liars , the brainchild of 47-year-old West L.A. musician and liberal-Democrat John Amato. Since last fall, he has been serving up political dish from a decidedly blue-state perspective with daily posts of video and audio streams. Amato, who turned to blogging after an injury scotched his saxophone career during a hiatus from a reunion tour with Duran Duran, currently is receiving between 100,000 and 200,000 hits on the site per day and has even done a few original interviews. We pried him away from his computer for questions from the mainstream media.

Condi Rice was not a hit on her European vacation. From Hungary's The Index, which calls the CIA's secret prisons concentration camps:

For weeks I've been wondering what the difference is between a Soviet and an American gulag. What's to like about an American concentration camp, or even accept, pardon or explain? Why do they hold terrorists there? How do we know who's a real terrorist if a confession can be beaten out of anyone. And they complied with the law; they just took their subject on a little Egyptian study tour.

by TChris

The NY Times examines the military’s propaganda effort:

The 1,200-strong psychological operations unit based at Fort Bragg turns out what its officers call "truthful messages" to support the United States government's objectives, though its commander acknowledges that those stories are one-sided and their American sponsorship is hidden.

Another sad death to report. Former Senator Eugene McCarthy has died at 89.

Former Minnesota Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy, whose insurgent campaign toppled a sitting president in 1968 and forced the Democratic Party to take seriously his message against the Vietnam War, died Saturday. He was 89.

McCarthy died in his sleep at assisted living home in the Georgetown neighborhood where he had lived for the past few years, said his son, Michael.

Actor comedian Richard Pryor has died. He was 65. May he rest in peace, his comedy will be remembered forever.

by TChris

A federal judge presiding over a criminal trial may "vacate any judgment and grant a new trial if the interest of justice so requires." Northern District of New York Judge Lawrence Kahn exercised that power to assure that a second jury would review the dubious evidence of Steven Robinson's guilt.

Robinson is accused of committing a drive-by killing in connection with a dispute among drug dealers. A wounded victim, Aukland Dubery, "identified Robinson as being present on the scene, and Dubery only did so after telling police at the crime scene and two days later at the hospital that he did not know who had shot him."

Via Wonkette:

Executions are planned, down to the smallest detail. Barring a clemency grant or last-minute stay, Stanley "Tookie" Williams will be executed Monday night (12:01 am Tuesday, Pacific time.)

The LA Times today recaps the major major provisions of San Quentin Operational Procedure No. 770, which is 43 pages in length.

The death chamber will be equipped with 12 rolls of adhesive tape, 20 syringes, 10 needles, 15 tubes of varying sizes, four bags of saline solution, scissors, six tourniquets, two boxes of surgical gloves and one box each of surgical masks and alcohol wipes. There will be handcuffs and leg irons. Nothing is left to chance.

As for Tookie: