What difference did the Iraq war make in terms of human rights advancements? None, according to former prime minister Iyad Allawi.

Abuse of human rights in Iraq is as bad now as it was under Saddam Hussein, if not worse, former prime minister Iyad Allawi said in an interview published on Sunday. "People are doing the same as (in) Saddam Hussein's time and worse. It is an appropriate comparison," Allawi told British newspaper The Observer.

"We are hearing about secret police, secret bunkers where people are being interrogated," said Allawi in an apparent reference to the discovery of a bunker at the Shi'ite-run Interior Ministry where 170 men were held prisoner, beaten, half-starved and in some cases tortured. "A lot of Iraqis are being tortured or killed in the course of interrogations."

This is scary stuff. From Walter Pincus at the Washington Post:

The Defense Department has expanded its programs aimed at gathering and analyzing intelligence within the United States, creating new agencies, adding personnel and seeking additional legal authority for domestic security activities in the post-9/11 world.

The moves have taken place on several fronts. The White House is considering expanding the power of a little-known Pentagon agency called the Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA, which was created three years ago. The proposal, made by a presidential commission, would transform CIFA from an office that coordinates Pentagon security efforts -- including protecting military facilities from attack -- to one that also has authority to investigate crimes within the United States such as treason, foreign or terrorist sabotage or even economic espionage.

Bump and Update: I'll be arguing to save Tookie's life on Los Angeles KKLA radio station (99.5 FM)tonight at 9:00 pm PT. You can listen live online here. It's a Christian radio network -- you would think that if they really believed in choosing life, they would oppose the death penalty, but apparently the show's host, who I'll be sparring with, does not.

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A positive sign today for Stanley "Tookie" Williams -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is considering his clemency petition and will meet with Tookie's lawyers on December 8, five days before his scheduled execution.

by TChris

This sums up nicely the Bush administration's policy regarding the detention of those it suspects of terrorism:

"The position of the executive branch," said Eric M. Freedman, a law professor at Hofstra University who has consulted with lawyers for several detainees, "is that it can be judge, jury and executioner."

In the wake of the Padilla flip-flop, Adam Liptak explores the secret (or absent) standards the Bush administration uses to designate detainees as enemy combatants rather than criminal defendants. The prospect of indefinite detention as an enemy combatant is so frightening that it might induce someone in Padilla's shoes to plead guilty to a serious criminal charge with the hope of remaining under the jurisdiction of the criminal justice system.

by TChris

Catherine Crier discusses her top five books about crime (a list that suffers from the omission of Crime and Punishment). What's on your list?

by TChris

The Washington Post reports that the Jack Abramoff inquiry has morphed into an investigation of corruption in Congress and the Bush administration. The most immediate target is Rep. Robert Ney. (TalkLeft background on the Ney investigation is collected here.)

Ney's lawyers have been denying that Ney is a target of the investigation, but the Post's sources disagree.

[T]he sources said that during the third week of October prosecutors told Ney and his former chief of staff, Neil Volz, that they were preparing a bribery case based in part on activities that occurred in October 2000. Abramoff and another business partner, Adam Kidan, were also told that they are targets in that case, the sources said.

The five-year statute of limitations for filing charges based on those events expired last month; the prosecutors sought and received a waiver of the deadline from all four men while they continue their investigation, the sources said. Prosecutors are often able to obtain such waivers by giving the targets a choice of being indicted right away or granting more time to see if information might surface that exonerates them.

Also under scrutiny are Tom DeLay (are you surprised?), Sen. Conrad Burns, and Rep. John Doolittle.

Can a gay defendant invoke the marital privilege to prevent his partner-spouse from testifying against him in a criminal proceeding? Stephen Signorelli, a defendant in New York is raising the issue.

A gay man charged with helping his lover loot a wealthy school district has asked a judge to rule that state law protecting spouses from having to testify against each other also applies to same-sex partners.

"Mr. Tassone and I have been loving partners for 33 years," Signorelli said in an affidavit, adding that the two had participated in "a solemn religious ceremony" conducted while they were on a Caribbean cruise "to memorialize our relationship and love for one another." The two registered as domestic partners in New York City, where they live, in 2002. "It's our position that the statute should be read gender-neutral," Signorelli's attorney, Kenneth Weinstein, told Newsday. "If a heterosexual couple can assert marital privilege, then a homosexual couple should be able to do the same."

From the facts provided, this does not seem to be a good test case. When both spouses are involved in the criminal scheme, the "crime fraud" exception to the marital privilege kicks in. Maybe there's more to the story.

President Bush made telephone calls to the families of 10 soldiers on Thanksgiving. Congressman Jack Murtha has visited the wounded at Walter Reed almost every week since the beginning of the Iraq War.

The President is on another vacation in Crawford, using Thanksgiving as a cover. While most Americans were able to get off work Thursday, and some were lucky enough to get both Thursday and Friday off, I bet not many got off from Tuesday through Sunday, the period Bush is spending at the ranch.

I'm no math whiz, so clue me in. Between his trips to Latin America, Asia and the Ranch this month, how many days has he spent working for us in Washington?

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.