A federal judge ordered the Government to make three al Qaida witnesses, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh, who are being held overseas in secret prisons where they likely have been tortured, available to Zacarias Moussaoui for interviews because they might have evidence that would show he was not part of the 9/11 attacks and might have evidence favorable to him on the issue of whether, if convicted, he should receive a sentence of life imprisonment or death. The Judge felt so strongly about this issue, that she ordered the Government be precluded from seeking death or introducing 9/11 evidence at his trial unless the Government made the three al Qaida members available for personal interviews.

The Government appealed and the Fourth Circuit agreed, but said written questions could take the place of live interviews. Moussaoui appealed to the Supreme Court which ultimately agreed that the witnesses should have been made available, but ruled the striking of the death penalty was too harsh a remedy.

Moussaoui then pleaded guilty to being a member of al Qaeda and providing material support to it, while denying he conspired to commit the 9/11 attacks and reserving the right to argue for life versus death at sentencing. The sentencing phase of the trial is set for January.

It's the same old song with Jose Padilla.

Next week will see the 1,000th execution of a U.S. prisoner since 1976 when the death penalty was reinstated. What a shameful statistic.

Robin Lovitt, 41, will likely be the one to earn that macabre distinction next Wednesday. He was convicted of fatally stabbing a man with scissors during a 1998 pool hall robbery in Virginia. Ahead of Lovitt on death row are Eric Nance, to be executed Monday in Arkansas, and John Hicks, to be executed Tuesday in Ohio. Both executions are likely to proceed.

That's one person executed every ten days in the last twenty-eight years.

The best way to end Thanksgiving...Live at Denver's Pepsi Center. They don't come on until 9:15 so I won't be posting again until very late.

For those of you online tonight, here's an open thread.

Update: Unbelievably great show. Every time I think they can't play better than the last time I saw them, they prove me wrong. This was the best I've ever seen them.

Michael Isikoff has a new piece on Karl Rove. He writes that Karl Rove recently took out a $100,000 line of credit and speculates it is for legal fees, even though Rove insists the credit line is for other purposes. Jane thinks Isikoff is trying to make Rove look sympathethic.

I have no doubt that Karl Rove's legal fees are huge. They probably topped a million some time ago. But does anyone really think he is paying them himself? I don't know anything about campaign finance laws but I suspect Rove's lawyers have found a legal way for huge corporations to pay the fees, either directly or by funneling the money to radical right organizations who pay the fees. Karl Rove is not Scooter Libby. Karl Rove wins elections for the Republicans, Scooter Libby is a policy guy for Cheney. Scooter's legal team is on its own having to raise legal fees. I suspect when Karl Rove puts out the call, a line forms as long as the one at Wal-Mart this Tuesday for the X-box 360.

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson admitted today that he was not, as his official bio has stated for many years, drafted by the Kansas City A's baseball team in 1966.

The claim was included in a brief biography released when Richardson successfully ran for Congress in 1982. A White House news release in 1997 mentioned it when he was about to be named U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. And several news organizations, including The Associated Press, have reported it as fact over the years.

How serious, if at all, is this in terms of casting doubt on his integrity as a future national political candidate?

My favorite Thanksgiving ritual is to tune in to Boulder's KBCO radio station at noon to hear the 25 minute version of Arlo Guthrie's Alice's Restaurant, about his trip down to White Hall St. in lower Manhattan to sit on the bench and wait until he was told if he was fit for induction into the Army to go fight in Vietnam.

It's a tradition not only in Boulder, but at many progressive stations from New York to San Francisco and in between. So check your local listings, but if it's not playing in your neck of the woods, you can listen live at KBCO online. Ira Chermus, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, explains why the song is so loved by 60's liberal activists -- and I might add, their progeny. [since it's Thanksgiving, I'm hoping Ira won't mind my quoting so much of his explanation]:

TalkLeft has a yearly Thanksgiving ritual of giving thanks to bloggers and others who most have helped and supported our efforts during the year. In compiling this year's list, I was surprised, because it's the first time that there are mainstream media organizations and writers to thank. It's clear that the MSM has embraced blogs this year, and that's a great thing for both blogs and the public.

I hope readers will check out every one linked below - and consider giving thanks to your favorite bloggers by putting a little something in their tip jars.

First, thanks to the bloggers who have sent the most traffic to TalkLeft:

• Crooks and Liars
• Atrios
• Daily Kos
• Raw Story
  

by TChris

This is profoundly sad:

Relatives of Tracey Dyess, a teenage girl they say was repeatedly sexually abused since age 4 by father figures, cringed at the news that she will be locked up for at least 17 years, but they hope that the long prison sentence means she'll at least get good psychiatric care.

Dyess set fire to her home in Griswold, Iowa. She told the judge that she intended to kill her stepfather so that he could no longer molest her. Instead, the fire killed her sister and nephew.

by TChris

What’s keeping the Ocean County, NJ board from passing a resolution that would permit a law enforcement officer’s death benefits to be paid to her domestic partner?

At the center of the dispute is Lt. Laurel Hester, 49, a 23-year investigator for the Ocean County Prosecutor's office who is fighting lung cancer. Hester wants the county to pass a resolution as provided for by New Jersey's 18-month-old Domestic Partners Act, which gives counties and cities the power to extend pension and health care benefits to the gay partners of employees if they so choose.

Hester, of Point Pleasant, fears that without her $13,000 death benefit, partner Stacie Andree, 30, will be forced to sell the house they now share after Hester die.

More than a hundred other governmental entities in New Jersey have adopted domestic partnership benefit resolutions. And more than a hundred supporters of Hester who attended a rally on her behalf are wondering why Ocean County hasn’t taken that step.

TChris has an excellent post on Attorney General Gonzales' comment on Jose Padilla.

How does Attorney General Gonzalez explain the administration's change of heart? He claims the administration's decision to hold Padilla for more than three years, first as a material witness and then as an uncharged "enemy combatant," as well as the administration's previous accusations of wrongdoing, are "legally irrelevant to the charges we're bringing today."

Lawyer Glenn Greenwald powerfully explains how the Padilla decision represents the true tyranny of the executive branch. He also ties the power grab into the upcoming Alito hearings.

The decision yesterday by the Administration to finally bring charges against U.S. citizen Jose Padilla -- who has been kept incarcerated in a military prison for three years solely on George Bush's order, in solitary confinement and indefinitely -- was done not in order to signal a retreat by the Administration with regard to its claimed right to imprison U.S. citizens without any judicial processes, but instead, to protect and solidify that power by ensuring that its patent unconstitutionality cannot be ruled upon by the U.S. Supreme Court in the pending Padilla case.

by TChris

McLennan County, Texas, hoping to protect the president from the negative publicity that attended Cindy Sheehan’s protest outside the grounds of his Crawford ranch, enacted new ordinances that prohibit parking and camping along roadsides within several miles of the ranch. The ordinances didn’t deter the dozen anti-war protestors who were arrested today, bringing a new wave of the very publicity that the president’s local supporters hoped to avoid.

The arrests were made by more than two dozen deputies who calmly approached the demonstrators in their tents and asked if they wanted to walk out on their own or be carried. Two chose to be carried. They were to be taken to jail for booking.

Happy Thanksgiving, courtesy of McLennan County.

The Daily Mirror (UK) reports that it has been gagged by Britain's top law chief from publishing more of the secret memo detailing a threat by President Bush to bomb al-Jazeera tv network.

The Attorney General warned that publication of any further details from the document would be a breach of the Official Secrets Act. He threatened an immediate High Court injunction unless the Mirror confirmed it would not publish further details. We have essentially agreed to comply.

The five-page memo - stamped "Top Secret" - records a threat by Bush to unleash "military action" against the TV station, which America accuses of being a mouthpiece for anti-US sentiments.

Background here. [hat tip Patriot Daily.]