Via Atrios, Adam Kidan, currently charged with lobbyist Jack Abramoff in federal court in Miami, has made a deal to flip on Abramoff:

If the deal goes through, Kidan, who was looking at up to 30 years in prison, could now face a maximum of 10 years. That sentence could be reduced depending upon the extent of his cooperation as a witness, not only against his co-defendant -- embattled super lobbyist Jack Abramoff -- but also in the prosecution of three men charged in the Feb. 6, 2001, slaying of Boulis, the sources said.

Kidan would plead to two five year counts, and get a sentencing reduction for his cooperation. As Atrios says, now it's Jack's turn.

Bump and Update: AP article on the compromise is here.

A bipartisan group of Senators is also slamming the compromise. From Senators Durbin, Feingold, Salazar, Sununu, Craig and Murkowski (via e-mail):

“We are gravely disappointed that the conference committee made so few changes to the Patriot Act reauthorization package that was circulated before the Thanksgiving recess. As we said then, we cannot support a conference report that does not contain modest but critical improvements, similar to those in the Senate-passed bill, to the most controversial provisions of the Patriot Act. We indicated before Thanksgiving that we would oppose a conference report like the one filed in the House today, and we believe many of our colleagues will join us.

Original Post:

From the ACLU this morning (received by e-mail):

by TChris

Terri Schiavo's husband, vilified and demonized by members of the extreme right, is using the political process to fight back. He’s created TerriPAC to raise funds to defeat the politicians who exploited his family’s personal tragedy for their own political purposes.

Among Republicans it is targeting are Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas.

Michael Schiavo’s experience made him realize that his party has been hijacked by extremists.

"I was a lifelong Republican before Republicans pushed the power of government into my private family decisions," Schiavo said in a statement. "And it is not so simple to forget those politicians who shamelessly sought to squeeze political leverage out of my family's most emotional hour."

Say hello to Alito's America, a youth-oriented campaign to stop the nomination of Sam Alito. It's a project of Campus Progress and Center for American Progress. Sample Messages:

President Bush has nominated Samuel Alito, a judge with a long record of judicial extremism, to replace Sandra Day O'Connor, who has been the crucial moderate voice and swing vote on the Supreme Court. If Judge Alito is confirmed, his extreme right-wing ideology would endanger our basic freedoms.

and a sample letter to send to your Senators:

Samuel Alito's America is not my America. I'm opposed to the confirmation of Judge Alito to the Supreme Court. I believe that President Bush should appoint a mainstream judge in the mold of Sandra Day O'Connor.

Watch the video.

by TChris

Two New York police officers have been accused of sexually assaulting three women. In November, the officers approached a woman who was stopped at a red light in Brooklyn.

Investigators said one of the officers leaned into her car and rubbed his hand on her leg and both officers followed her home on the pretext of making sure she arrived safely, but assaulted her once they got there while her child and her brother's two children were sleeping inside.

DNA belonging to one officer was found in the woman’s apartment. A month earlier, the same officers groped two women in their apartment when they responded to a noise complaint, according to complaints the women filed after realizing the same officers had committed other assaults.

Sexual abuse of women by police officers isn’t limited to New York.

25 years ago, on December 8, 1980, John Lennon was shot and killed outside his apartment building on the upper West Side of New York. I heard about it that night from Howard Cossell while in bed watching Monday Night Football. He interrupted the program to announce that "an unspeakable tragedy had occurred in New York City."

I was nine months and three weeks pregnant, and had just returned from the hospital where they tried to induce labor and it failed, so they sent me home. The minute Cossell said John Lennon had been shot, I heard a loud pop. My water finally broke, I rushed to the hospital, and just a few hours later, the TL kid was born. I tell more about the events of that night here, and how for the past 25 years, I have told the TL kid that when John Lennon's spirit left his body, it went straight to his.

John Lennon has been a spiritual member of our family ever since then. From listening to his music, discussing his life, and at least once a year in New York traveling through the sidewalk art shows to pick up memorabilia of John that resonated with one or both of us. It's a heavy day, followed by a day of celebration.

The Washington Post reports that while Robert Luskin, Karl Rove's lawyer, had no comment on yesterday's grand jury proceedings,

"What I can say is, there's been no change in Karl's status since late October," he said. At that time, Fitzgerald told Luskin that Rove remained under investigation but that he would hold off on charging him because of information Luskin had provided late that month.

If, as the Washington Post previously reported, the information Luskin provided at the 11th hour concerned his conversation with Viveca Novak, then she is critical to Fitzgerald's decision. But perhaps she is only critical to Rove's avoiding a perjury charge for his testimony to the grand jury in February, 2004 when he didn't disclose his call with Cooper.

While Viveca may solve that problem for Rove, I don't see how she solves the problem of his failing to tell investigators in October, 2003, before the grand jury was convened, that he spoke to Robert Novak about Joseph Wilson's wife before Novak published his article. It has been reported that lawyers close to the case say that Rove told investigators he first learned of Plame Wilson when he read Novak's article.

Playwright Harold Pinter is ill with cancer. He was too ill to travel to Stockholm to give his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Literature in person, so he presented it by video. During his speech he called Tony Blair and George Bush war criminals.

In a hoarse voice, he accused America of massacring innocent people all over the world in the name of democracy. He asked: "How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand?"

...Pinter said the justification for invading Iraq was based on "a tapestry of lies" and went on: "We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people and call it 'bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East'."

He went on to accuse America of supporting "every Right wing military dictatorship in the world" since the end of the Second World War. He added: "It also has its own bleating little lamb tagging behind it on a lead, the pathetic and supine Great Britain."

Robert Clark Jr. of Georgia is about to be a free man, after serving 24 years of a life sentence for a rape DNA now shows he did not commit. In his case, the DNA not only freed him, it found the guilty person.

Kudos to the Innocence Project who took his case and got the conviction vacated. You can read the details here.

Jane asks whether George Tenet could be Bob Woodward's source? I asked a while back whether George Tenet could have been Karl Rove's source? Libby and Rove reportedly assisted Tenet with his July 11, 2003 mea culpa for the 16 words.

Before that, Digby asked whether Tenet could have been a source for Novak. I followed up here.

Time correspondent Viveca Novak has hired a heavy hitter for her grand jury deposition with Patrick Fitzgerald tomorrow: Washington, D.C. criminal defense attorney Henry Schuelke.

His Martindale Hubbell profile lists his practice areas as:

White Collar Criminal Defense; Business Crimes; International Criminal Law; Federal Grand Jury; Monetary Crimes

Among his clients:

• Greenberg Traurig, who hired Schuelke in 2004 to investigate the $11 million in lobbying fees Jack Abramoff collected from the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians.

• Enron's Ben Glison, who pleaded guilty and took a five year prison sentence, but is not cooperating with the Government.

He's also had clients in Iran-Contra and Whitewater.

CBS reports that Fitzgerald and his deputies spent three hours with the Valerie Plame grand jury today. I suspect he was presenting Viveca Novak's deposition to them, which was probably taken at her lawyer's office. Maybe now that she has testified under oath, she will write a more detailed article about her involvment or lack thereof. [Update: Novak is going to testify tomorrow at a deposition.]

In related RoveGate news, the Washington Post has a very detailed portrait of Rove lawyer Robert Luskin. He says a few times he thinks Rove will be exonerated. I like what I read about Luskin, and I never joined the bandwagon of critics who have said he talked too much or indiscriminately to the media in defending Rove, but I wonder why he thinks Rove isn't facing charges for lying to investigators in the fall of 2003 before the grand jury was convened.

Jane is not impressed with the Luskin interview.

Update: Lawrence O'Donnell weighs in at Huffpo.