by TChris

The European Union, peeved to learn that some European countries (wittingly or otherwise) may be hosting secret prisons that warehouse detainees who have been captured or kidnapped by the Bush administration, has asked the president to reveal information about those prisons. The State Department has promised to respond to the best of its ability, a sure sign that it won’t provide meaningful answers.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack would not answer questions about whether the sites exist or whether the CIA used European airports and airspace to transport suspects. He also would not say whether the U.S. response to the Europeans will definitively answer those questions, nor whether the U.S. response will be made public.

The questions may be posed directly to Condoleezza Rice as she jets aroud Europe next week, “including a stop in Romania, which is one of the nations identified by Human Rights Watch as a likely site of a secret detention camp.”

There may be hope yet. The November cable news rankings are out. You can view the full chart here (pdf). Keith Olbermann is the highest ranked MSNBC show and he beat Nancy Grace.

But, nine of the top ten shows are on Fox News Channel. O'Reilly continues to lead, with Hannity & Colmes number two and Greta number 3.

Where is Tucker Carlson's show? I couldn't find it on the chart.

Media Bistro reports that Roger Ailes has made a lunch date with former CNN anchor Aaron Brown.

NBC News got a new chief today - 42 year old Andy Capus. He will be in charge of both NBC and MSNBC News and the MSNBC website.

by TChris

We know that the Bush administration illegally released pro-administration propaganda packaged as news, and that it gave press credentials to a Bush supporter masquerading as a legitimate reporter so that Bush could get softball questions at news conferences. Given the administration’s commitment to media manipulation, it should come as no surprise that the military took the administration's pretend news campaign on the road, to Iraq.

As part of an information offensive in Iraq, the U.S. military is secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to publish stories written by American troops in an effort to burnish the image of the U.S. mission in Iraq. The articles, written by U.S. military "information operations" troops, are translated into Arabic and placed in Baghdad newspapers with the help of a defense contractor, according to U.S. military officials and documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times.

Many of the articles are presented in the Iraqi press as unbiased news accounts written and reported by independent journalists. The stories trumpet the work of U.S. and Iraqi troops, denounce insurgents and tout U.S.-led efforts to rebuild the country.

We've all read the glowing recommendations of former law clerks of Judge Alito. Here's a non-glowing report from a former Third Circuit clerk who worked not for Alito, but for another judge.

From 1996 to 1997, I was privileged to clerk for a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Over the course of that year, my judge sat on a number of cases with Judge Samuel A. Alito, Jr. One of these cases stands out in my memory and gives me pause when it comes to Judge Alito’s commitment to judicial restraint.

One of those cases involved the murder conviction of Clifford Smith. The clerk, Michael J. Zydney Mannheimer, who is now Assistant Professor of Law at Salmon P. Chase College of Law, Northern Kentucky University, relates events establishing Judge Alito's determination to uphold the conviction. He concludes with this important observation:

The Justice Department claims a Washington Post article about the potential of national security letters for the invasion of privacy of ordinary Americans is inaccurate -- in 17 respects.

WAPO publisher Len Downie disagrees.

the "Justice Department letter does not document any inaccuracies in our story on national security letters, which revealed the widespread use and limited oversight of this investigative tool. The letter relies on words like 'implies' and 'insinuates' to assert claims the story does not make. The story speaks for itself."

I wrote at length about the WAPO article here.

Josh Marshall has a good explanation of why the "bi-partisan" scandal meme is wrong:

The Duke Cunningham scandal is a Republican scandal, which we'll soon see spreads into the Rumsfeld Defense Department. The Abramoff scandal tracks into the Interior Department and the GSA.

Then there's Tom DeLay, remember him, former House Majority Leader, now under indictment in Texas. Set aside that he's also implicated in the Abramoff scandal and quite probably the Duke Cunningham scandal as well. And then in the other body you've got Sen. Bill Frist who is at the center of a criminal investigation into his stock sales. ....
Two Republican members of Congress are under indictment.

Say Hello to News Unfiltered, a project by Daou Report's Peter Daou and U.S. Newswire, bringing you the top press releases of the day in blog format. I love it, it's a "bookmark right now" type of site.

Jeff at Protein Wisdom finds a New Zealand news article reporting that Quantas and Air New Zealand have adopted a policy that prohibits men from sitting next to unacompanied children on planes.

Political correctness gone mad? How about sheer idiocy? All men ought to be seeing red over this one. Jeff says:

....what happens when a westernized country becomes enthralled with identity politics (and overly fearful of victim litigation). Christ. Guilty until proven innocent. Hate crime legislation. Fear of giving offense. Empowering the frequently and easily offended in the name of “tolerance”. What a mess we’ve made of things.

I don't buy that the policy is grounded either in political correctness or tolerance. I'd call it blatant stereotyping that the airlines have been bullied into by one increasingly dangerous lobby: victimhood.

A new report finds that wiretaps conducted by law enforcement are subject to security breaches from readily available devices:

The technology used for decades by law enforcement agents to wiretap telephones has a security flaw that allows the person being wiretapped to stop the recorder remotely, according to research by computer security experts who studied the system. It is also possible to falsify the numbers dialed, they said.

Someone being wiretapped can easily employ these "devastating countermeasures" with off-the-shelf equipment, said the lead researcher, Matt Blaze, an associate professor of computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania.

The new finding have some serious legal implications:

Democracy Now Wednesday will feature interviews with Stanley "Tookie" Williams, awaiting a clemency meeting with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Lori Berenson, imprisoned for ten years in a Peruvian jail. Go here to listen in.

A Conversation with Death Row Prisoner Stanley Tookie Williams

Two weeks from the date of his scheduled execution, Williams speaks from death row with Democracy Now! about his case, his life and his redemption. Williams helped start the Crips street gang. But behind bars he has become a leading advocate for the end of gang violence. He has written nine books and has been nominated several times for the Nobel Peace Prize. He is scheduled to die on Dec. 13.

Rep. Randy Cunningham who resigned in disgrace after his guilty plea to bribery and related charges will cooperate with the feds in investigating others. He was a major Congressional drug warrior - in 1994 he voted for legislation carrying the death penalty for drug kingpins.

Then his son became one. In 1997, Todd Cunningham was arrested and charged in a conspiracy to fly 400 pounds of marijuana into an airport near Boston. He faced a five year mandatory minimum sentence. He cooperated with others in the conspiracy and in 1998, at a hearing that included a "tearful plea" from his father, was only sentenced to two and one half years.

In reporting on his son's sentencing, the AP noted (11/18/98) the elder Cunningham had some other trouble of his own that year:

by TChris

Robin Lovitt will not be the victim of execution 1,000. Doubts about Lovitt's guilt cannot be resolved because the government destroyed the only evidence that could establish his innocence. He was scheduled to die on Wednesday.

Acknowledging the compelling need to "reaffirm public confidence in our justice system," Gov. Mark Warner today granted clemency to Lovitt. While Lovitt will serve a life sentence without parole, he won't be executed.

Thank you, Gov. Warner.