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.

AOL news reports the passenger killed by air marshals in the jetway of an American Airlines plane in Miami was an 44 year old American citizen. His wife said he was mentally ill and hadn't taken his meds.

A witness said that the man frantically ran down the aisle of the Boeing 757 and that a woman with him said he was mentally ill. The passenger, who indicated there was a bomb in the bag, was confronted by air marshals but ran off the aircraft, Doyle said.

The marshals pursued and ordered the passenger to get on the ground, but the man did not comply and was shot when apparently reaching into the bag, Doyle said. Authorities did not immediately say whether any bomb was found.

CNN reports no bomb was found. Although the plane had arrived from Colombia, it was en route to Orlando. The man boarded in Miami.

• Bin Laden appears, at least as of three months ago, to be alive and well.
• Saddam refused to attend his trial today, which is now adjourned until December 21.
• Tookie Williams' lawyers will be meeting with Gov. Arnold S. tomorrow.
• Patrick Fitzerald was back at the grand jury this week.
• It's the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack.

I've got some work to do, so feel free to chat about these or your own topics.

And you can vote once a day in the weblogs awards. TalkLeft is coming in second to Americablog for now, so your votes really count.

The New York Observer analyzes Bob Woodward's relationship with the Washington Post as one of economics - Woodward has become so much of a cash cow for the paper, and so rich himself, that there is no controlling him. Nor, it seems, does the paper have any idea what he's working on. There are some juicy tidbits and quotes. Here are a few, but go read the whole thing.

Publisher Leonard Downie:

Asked to explain why he’d been out of touch, Mr. Downie replied, “Because he’s a rich man, who has an entire floor of his house as his office, and he has a staff of his own working for him. He doesn’t come into the office so much. We have to take the initiative to talk to each other.”

The Chancellor of Germany has told the world what the the Bush Administration has tried to keep secret: The U.S. admitted making a mistake in kidnapping Khaled al-Masri (also spelled el-Masri) and detaining him for five months. The U.S. made the admission to Germany's then interior minister, Otto Schily.

The Germans became aware of his case in May 2004, when the White House dispatched the U.S. ambassador in Germany to pay an unusual visit to the interior minister, Otto Schily. Ambassador Daniel Coats told Schily the CIA had wrongfully imprisoned one of its citizens, al-Masri, for five months and would soon release him, according to several people with knowledge of the conversation.

There was also a request: that the German government not disclose what it had been told even if al-Masri went public. The U.S. officials feared legal challenges and exposure of a covert action program designed to capture terrorism suspects abroad and transfer them among countries.

TalkLeft noted here that it was Condi Rice who ordered the release of al-Masri. As the New York Times said at the time,