by TChris

Judith Miller and the NY Times have reached a severance agreement that ends Miller's checkered career at the Times.

Under the agreement, Ms. Miller will retire from the newspaper, and The Times will print a letter she wrote to the editor explaining her position. Ms. Miller originally demanded that she be able to write an essay for the paper's Op-Ed page refuting the allegations against her, the lawyers said. The Times refused that demand - Gail Collins, editor of the editorial page, said, "We don't use the Op-Ed page for back and forth between one part of the paper and another" - but agreed to let her to write the letter.

Miller's farewell letter will appear in tomorrow's Times -- although not in the funny pages, where it will likely belong.

Breaking: Suicide bombers at Western hotels in Jordan have killed 20 57. Blame is being levied at al-Qaida.

One of the bombs may have been placed in a false ceiling.

Update: here.

by TChris

Andrea Yates, convicted of drowning her children, earned a new trial when an appellate court ruled that an expert witness for the prosecution testified falsely.

Dr. Park Dietz ... told jurors Yates may have been influenced by a "Law & Order" epidsode, but the episode did not exist.

TalkLeft background on the decision is here.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals let that decision stand, prompting Harris County District Attorney Charles Rosenthal to complain that the case set a "frightening precedent." It would be frightening if prosecutors could get away with using lying witnesses to obtain convictions. Rosenthal's whining should be directed at his dishonest witness, not at a process that assured Yates the chance of a fair trial.

Alliance for Justice warns not to be fooled by the "Alito charm campaign" which is promoting Judge Alito's belief in stare decisis. It is no guarantee that he’ll follow it as a Supreme Court justice.

They have put together a document (pdf) showing what happened during Justice Thomas’s nomination process and what happened after he ascended to the High Court.

Laura Rozen of War and Piece writes about why the Bush-Cheney proposal to exempt the CIA from the torture amendment should be rejected. Among her arguments:

I was in a torture chamber once, in the basement of a police station in Kosovo days after it was abandoned by Serb forces defeated by Nato. It was hideous as you would imagine. The British soldiers who were with me were equally shocked. A lot of the instruments and interrogation drugs I saw there also suggest they were not designed to cause organ failure or death in their victims, just pain and terror, as Mr. Cheney and his office mates suggest is what they are going for in terms of legal wiggle room. And like Mr. Cheney and his office mates, Mr. Milosevic and his Serb troops didn't seem to overly concern themselves with the Geneva conventions, until it was a bit late. Having laid my eyes on what such a scene looks like, I just associate such activities with the forces of not only the pathological and depraved, but those who are headed for defeat. If you've seen it, you realize in a way that's hard to explain, it's the tactics of the losers.

All four ballot initiatives backed by Calif. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger failed at the polls yesterday.

Voters turned down his plans to curb state spending, redraw California's political map, restrain union politics and lengthen the time it takes teachers to get tenure. Voters also rejected four other statewide initiatives, including one requiring parental approval for a minor's abortion.

Bump and Update: I can't believe I took the time to do this, but I did. At the end of the post you will find all of the same day appearances, times included, for 2002 for Joseph Wilson and Paul Vallely. [Source: Lexis.com] With the possible exception of one date, September 12, when they were on different segments of Studio B with Shepard Smith, they would not have been in the green room within hours of each together. And even that date is dubious unless Vallely arrived very early for his segment.

Update: Left Coaster has more.

****
Original Post (11/8)

Crooks and Liars has a roundup of blogger reaction to the right wing's attempt to smear Joseph Wilson by claiming he leaked his wife's identity in 2002 to Paul Vallely in the Green Room of Fox News. The smear tactic won't work.

It looks like President Bush officially begins his lame duck status this morning.

The New York Times:

...everyone from political consultants to the leaders of countries in the remote corners of Asia and Africa are going to assume the same thing from the results of yesterday's balloting: Mr. Bush's political capital has turned into a deficit.....

The issue right now is a national fear that the White House has no plan, and no capacity to carry one out even if it existed.

Associated Press:

Texans voted to amend their state constitution yesterday to ban gay marriage. The amendment passed overwhelmingly. Texas follows 18 other states that have done the same.

Like every other state except Massachusetts, Texas didn't permit same-sex marriages previously, but the constitutional amendment was touted as an extra guard against future court rulings.

That's what this is all about. Decreasing the power of the judiciary. We are supposed to have three equal branches of Government. By abusing the constitutional amendment process, we are weakening our independent judiciary.

This is the radical right at work. They herd people like sheep into believing their evangelical brand of bigotry.

The papers may be full of election news tomorrow, but hopefully they will also cover the arrival of Ahmed Chalabi. If they don't, you can catch what you're missing over at Huffington Post, where Arianna is staying on the story.

• Rub Elbows With Judy Miller, Just $375!
• Ahmad Does D.C.: An Alternative Chalabi Itinerary
• Dick Durbin Tees Off

Durbin's speech today to the Senate on Chalabi is a must-read:

by TChris

The teaching of science in Kansas is no longer dictated by science. Responding to demands that science classes reflect religious belief in addition to conclusions drawn from scientific evidence, the Kansas Board of Education voted to require science teachers to tell high school students "that aspects of widely accepted evolutionary theory are controversial." That the controversy was created by religious groups, not from any debate raging within the scientific community, doesn't seem to matter. The first fact that teachers impart to students in compliance with the directive should be this: the "controvery" is grounded in politics, not science.

Some Board members were realistic about the image the Board created of Kansas:

by TChris

An Italian news channel today aired a documentary that "accused the United States of using chemical weapons against the civilian population during a November 2004 bombardment of Fallujah."

RAI says the use of white phosphorus in built-up areas amounts to the illegal use of chemical weapons, although the BBC notes that such bombs are considered incendiary devices. The US military admits to using the weapon to illuminate battlefields in Iraq, and says it did so in Fallujah, but insists it did not use it in civilian areas.

The military denies that video in the documentary shows the indiscriminate use of white phosphorus "on both insurgents and the civilian population," as the documentary alleges. The description of photographs posted by the news service is gruesome: