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.]

by TChris

After Jose Padilla was arrested in May 2002, John Ashcroft “interrupted a trip to Moscow to announce on television that the authorities had foiled an effort by Mr. Padilla and other Qaeda operatives to detonate a radioactive or ‘dirty’ bomb on American streets.” Three-and-a-half years later, Padilla has finally been charged -- but not with attempting to detonate a bomb on American soil.

In June 2004, the Justice Department claimed Padilla had “plotted to blow up apartment buildings and hotels, perhaps in New York.” But he hasn’t been charged with conspiring to destroy property in the United States.

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.”

Padilla’s lawyers disagree.

The Wall Street Journal (free link) reports on a Harris poll finding that a majority of U.S. adults believe the Bush administration generally misleads the public on current issues, while only 32% believe the information provided by the administration is generally accurate.

When asked about former Vice Presidential Chief of Staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who has been indicted on charges of perjury, obstruction of justice and making false statements, more than half of U.S. adults say the situation indicates "a larger problem in the Bush administration," while 35% say it was an "isolated incident." About 82% of Democrats say it indicates a larger problem, while 70% of Republicans feel the Libby case is an isolated incident.

David Fiderer has a play by play of NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell's various comments about the Valerie Plame leak and when she first learned from a White House official that Joseph Wilson's wife worked for the CIA. Tom Maguire of Just One Minute responds to Fiderer.

Jane at Firedog Lake continues to dig into Dick Cheney's role. Crooks and Liars shares his views on Woodward and LKL here.

Congressman Murtha blogs today over at Huffington Post. 78% of the responses he's received to his call for bringing the troops home have been positive. He's now calling for a White House meeting.

A Guantanamo detainee is suing to be allowed to have a copy of the bible. The prison only allows inmates to have the Koran.

Saifullah Paracha has been held at Guanatanamo the past three years. He is a 58 year old Pakistani businessman. At his request, his lawyer sent him a bible, which is an accepted holy text in Islamic teachings, and two Shakespeare plays, Hamlet and Julius Casear. The prison blocked delivery of the books.

After review, prison officials relented on Shakespeare but not the bible.

Government lawyers said Paracha had not shown that the practice of his religion had been "substantially burdened" because he did not have a copy of the Bible.

Murray Waas' latest article concerns a presidential briefing paper written 10 days after September 11, 2001 that says,"U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda."

The highly classified CIA assessment was distributed to President Bush, Vice President Cheney, the president's national security adviser and deputy national security adviser, the secretaries and undersecretaries of State and Defense, and various other senior Bush administration policy makers, according to government records.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has asked the White House for the CIA assessment, the PDB of September 21, 2001, and dozens of other PDBs as part of the committee's ongoing investigation into whether the Bush administration misrepresented intelligence information in the run-up to war with Iraq. The Bush administration has refused to turn over these documents.

Crooks and Liars raises some good questions about Tim Russert's refusal to say whether Chris Matthews was the MSNBC host Libby called him to rant about back in July, 2003. Matthews had no such compunction about acknowledging it, according to Michael Smerconish, who interviewed Matthews about it. It seems Russert may not have called Matthews right away to tell him, but he sure heard about it from him later. I pointed out the most likely show Libby was complaining about the day of Libby's indictment.

Matthews' comments to Smerconish:

People for the American Way have launched their new anti-Alito ad, Fool Me Once. You can watch it online. From the text:

President Bush is trying to fool Americans into thinking that Sam Alito is a mainstream judicial nominee, which is why PFAW is committed to exposing the truth about Alito’s record and his judicial philosophy. This ad recounts troubling Alito rulings and legal positions, including his voting to uphold a strip search of a 10-year old girl without a valid warrant, his unsuccessful effort as an appeals court judge to declare a law regulating machine guns unconstitutional, and his declaration while in the Justice Department that the Constitution does not protect a woman’s right to choose an abortion.

Here are the reasons PFAW opposes Alito. And here's a handy guide where you can read about Judge Alito's decisions, with free links to the opinions themselves.

Fox News is refusing to air the ad.