The New York Post has an incredible story today alleging that Al Pirro, Jeanine's husband, was behind the recent requests by Republican higher-ups for Jeanine to drop the Senate race and run for Attorney General instead. [Via Kevin Drum]

Jeanine Pirro's own husband is working against her in her bid for the U.S. Senate, sneaking around behind her back to lobby a state Republican leader to get her to drop out of the race, sources told The Post. Gov. Pataki also was part of the extraordinary plot to get the Westchester County DA — whom he endorsed for the race before becoming convinced she wasn't up to the effort — to throw in the towel and run for attorney general, not for Senate against Hillary Rodham Clinton, The Post has learned.

Details of the request are here. TalkLeft background on Al Pirro is here. Also see TChris's Pirro Plays the Crime Card.

If you missed my post on why I'm covering Jeanine's run, it's here.

Jane's on fire today with questions for Viveca Novak about her relationship with Karl Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin.

...what exactly was your relationship with Robert Luskin? We will do you the courtesy of presuming you were not buttering each other's toast at the St. Regis like Scooter and Judy, but where does it fall along the continuum, say, from narc/snitch to "let's load up on Manhattans and hit the handbag sale at Barney's?"

Jane has 15 detailed questions for Viveca. I'll add one more:

Why did Bob Woodward choose you and Time Magazine over his own paper and every other reporter in town for his exclusive story on why his source came clean to Fitzgerald?

A feisty defendant, an outspoken defense lawyer and a judge trying, and failing in large measure, to maintain control of the courtroom. Day one of the witness testimony in the trial of Saddam Hussein did not go exactly as planned. Some highlights:

Defense lawyers staged a short walkout when the Judge didn't allow them two minutes to attack the legitimacy of the court. Later, they were allowed to make their argument. Saddam insisted he is not afraid of execution but lost his temper several times.

After the defense lawyers left, Saddam, shaking his right hand, told the judge: "You are imposing lawyers on us. They are imposed lawyers. The court is imposed by itself. We reject that."

Saddam and Ibrahim then chanted "Long live Iraq, long live the Arab state." Ibrahim stood up and shouted: "Why don't you just execute us and get rid of all of this!"

When the judge explained that he was ruling in accordance with the law, Saddam replied: "This is a law made by America and does not reflect Iraqi sovereignty."

If you were arrested in Broward County (Fort Lauderdale area)for a misdemeanor and strip-searched, you should find out more about this class-action lawsuit. [Note: Link removed at request of Miami Herald on 7/09/08.] Miami had a policy of strip-searching almost everyone arrested which is not allowed.

State statute allows strip searches in cases that are violent in nature or involve a weapon or illegal drugs, not for most misdemeanor arrests.... a policy of searching everyone who walks in the door of the jail is illegal, Fort Lauderdale attorney Kevin Kulik said.

BSO detention Deputy Susette Bryant stated in a deposition that she strip-searched detainees when asked between 1999 and 2002. And, she said, ``every person that walked in that door was strip-searched.''

Nguyen Tuong Van, the Vietnamese-Australian hanged in Singapore on Friday had an American father from the Vietnam War period. Van met his father for the first time in 2002, just one month before his ill-fated trip to Singapore when he smuggled drugs to pay off his twin brother's accrued debts.

The twins were born in a refugee camp in Thailand while their mother, Kim, was on her way to Australia from Vietnam. Nguyen stated after his arrest that he did not know his father until a month before he was caught at Changi International Airport in December 2002.

"He came from America to look for my brother and I," he said. "My mother married in 1987 to a Vietnamese Australian. M

Nguyen Tuong Van is now the first individual of American lineage to be hung in Singapore.

Condi Rice leaves for a trip today to four European countries. The New York Times reports she is prepared to defend America's use of secret renditions. I don't think she will get off that easy. Other countries are rightfully losing patience with our President's unilateral policy of kidnapping people, whisking them off to secret detention centers outside the U.S., and subjecting them to harsh interrogation techniques that may amount to torture.

The European Union, often more antagonistic to the United States than its individual member states, has vowed to press the issue during Rice’s visit. [German Justice Commissioner Franco]Frattini said the 25-nation alliance has “an institutional and moral duty to promote and defend fundamental rights of people.”
Even America’s closest allies are demanding answers. At least eight European nations have launched inquiries into allegations that the US may be operating a “ghost gulag” with scores of detainees shunted from one detention facility to another, mainly in the Middle East and Central Asia, via transit points in Europe.

This Japanese editorial sums up the flak Condi will face very well.

Update: 5/27/2009: Since this post was written, the state of Missouri appealed the granting of the writ and got the order granting bail reversed. The 8th Circuit reinstated Dale's murder conviction and the U.S. Supreme Court denied cert. America's Most Wanted will feature Dales' case Saturday, May 30, 2009.

*****

This is the best news I've heard all day. Dale Helmig, who has spent 8 years in prison in Missouri as a result of being convicted of killing his mother, may be out of jail as early as tomorrow.

His attorneys claim the murder trial was tainted by an incomplete police investigation, an inept defense and a prosecutor looking to score political points in an election battle for Congress. That now-former prosecutor, Republican U.S. Rep. Kenny Hulshof, has rejected any link between the campaign and trial. But a judge in September reversed the conviction after hearing arguments that a highway map jurors used during deliberations contradicted evidence they had seen in court while considered whether Helmig had time to dispose of the body.

The overturning of the conviction is largely due to the work of a law student at the Illinois State University Innocence Project which made a documentary about Dale's case.

John Amato of Crooks and Liars has a few questions over at Huffington Post for David Corn who reported on December 2 that Viveca Novak and Robert Luskin were friends, but wrote a day later that Viveca was just a source for Luskin.

I agree that Corn's article yesterday was just a Viveca puff-piece and disappointing. It also didn't solve any mysteries.

When friendship conflicts with reporting, it's not enough to state that you happen to know the person you are writing about. It's important that you also state your bias. Here are some examples from when I've been in that situation:

One of the five judges in Saddam Hussein's trial, scheduled to resume tomorrow, has stepped aside after reviewing a document showing that one of Saddam's co-defendants was linked to the murder of his brother. A replacement judge will be brought in.

Testimony is scheduled to start tomorrow with five witnesses.

The trial, due to resume at around 10 a.m. (0700 GMT), may continue for up to three days, the U.S. official said, with up to 11 witnesses appearing in all, although eight of those will have their identities concealed.

While further charges may be brought against Saddam and others, the current trial relates to the deaths of 148 men from the town of Dujail, north of Baghdad, after an attempt to kill Saddam there in 1982.

In other trial related news, a plot to fire rockets at the courthouse has been uncovered.

The Washington Post Saturday has an article on Viveca Novak and Robert Luskin that reveals Luskin told Novak Rove was not in any trouble in PlameGate over drinks in early 2004. Viveca reportedly replied that wasn't what she had heard and disclosed, almost as water-cooler talk, that she heard Rove had been a source for Cooper.

David Corn thinks he has solved the mystery. He presents Viveca Novak's side of the story. Corn also discloses he regularly used to play basketball with Viveca Novak's lawyer-husband.

The more I read about Viveca Novak and Luskin, the more I think it's a loose end and largely irrelevant. It's a last ditch, but probably irrelevant effort by Luskin and Rove to avoid a perjury charge. The real issues as I see them are:

• Robert Novak told Karl Rove on July 8, 2003, two days after Joseph Wilson's op-ed appeared in the New York Times, that Joseph Wilson's wife worked for the CIA and had a role in sending Wilson to Africa to check on whether Iraq might be acquiring uranium from Niger. Rove responded, "I heard that too."

by Last Night in Little Rock

Tomorrow's NY Times has a significant article online tonight about the scapegoating of Hurricane Katrina: In Newly Released Documents, a View of the Storm After Katrina. It started as soon as the water leveled out in NOLA, and Bushinistas were already finding ways to blame everybody but themselves for the lack of preparation. No plan, except plan to shift blame. Worked with everything else to be thrown at Bush for the last five years, so why not then?

The gamesmanship and political posturing were, in a word, amazing. The greatest natural disaster in the history of the United States, maybe other than the 1906 San Francisco earthquake (see below), was a political tool or weapon in the hands of those who consider politics bloodsport without rules.

by TChris

Does the FBI recognize any limits on its ability to deceive the public? The FBI planted Thomas Esposito as a candidate in a primary for the West Virginia legislature. Catching Esposito on a federal corruption charge in 2003, FBI agents used him to set up a vote-buying sting.

Esposito entered the state House race in January 2004, after losing his bid for a fifth term as Logan mayor. … Investigators believed that "if Esposito were to become a candidate for elective office, a virtual treasure trove of evidence could result," Assistant U.S. Attorney R. Booth Goodwin II said in a federal court filing last month. "The undercover investigation has yielded important results."

Esposito withdrew from the race less than a month before the primary, claiming he needed to tend to an ill family member. Nobody knows whether the alleged vote buyers would have committed their crimes if Esposito, desperate for a break in his own case, hadn’t begged them to take his (that is, the FBI’s) money. In any event, the results obtained — “charges against 16 residents of Logan and neighboring Lincoln counties” — can’t justify the FBI’s tactics.