Great job announcement over at Josh Marshall's Talking Points and TPM cafe. I really like the last line:

No deadline for applications. We'll hire when we've found the right person.

CNN announced yesterday that Aaron Brown is leaving and Anderson Cooper will be taking his 10:00 PM ET timeslot. I like Anderson Cooper's reporting a lot, but I also liked Aaron Brown's show. He was an oasis of calm and reason among the sea of frenetic spin shows.

Armando likes him too. It doesn't appear that Mr. Brown has lined up a new gig yet, but I wish him well.

How do reporters know whom to call for information on Judge Alito? The professionals do their own research. Others apparently rely on the White House "Office of Political Affairs."

TalkLeft friend Peter Goldberger has given several press interviews on Alito, a law school classmate. He has expressed his views here on TalkLeft.

Yesterday, Peter got a telephone call from Mike Davis at the White House Political Affairs office asking whether he could put Peter's name on a contact list for journalists. Davis said they were looking for people who may not share Alito's views but who support his nomination.

by TChris

Goose, meet gander.

Two days after U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay won a fight to get a new judge in his case, prosecutors on Thursday succeeded in ousting the Republican jurist responsible for selecting the new judge. Administrative Judge B.B. Schraub recused himself after District Attorney Ronnie Earle filed a motion asking for his removal from the case.

DeLay succeeded in removing a judge who had donated more than $5,000 to Democratic campaigns. Earle discovered that Judge Schraub has contributed more than $5,000 to Republican candidates, including DeLay's friend, Gov. Rick Perry.

Schraub will ask the chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court to name a judge to preside over DeLay's case. You can bet that both sides already know whether the chief justice has been a generous supporter of political campaigns.

Work beckons for me, so here's an open thread for you.

The Washington Post reports White House aides are debating whether Karl Rove should resign and that Rove is not out of Fitzgerald's cross-hairs.

Fitzgerald is considering charging Rove with making false statements in the course of the 22-month probe, and sources close to Rove -- who holds the titles of senior adviser and White House deputy chief of staff -- said they expect to know within weeks whether the most powerful aide in the White House will be accused of a crime.

Jonathan Alter at Newsweek writes that Rove's security clearance is in jeopardy. Jane at Firedoglake provides a perceptive analysis of these developments, including this quote about the use of the term "Official A" from the WAPO article:

Howard Bashman of How Appealing was on Radio Times the other day discussing Judge Alito's nomination. The audio is here.

During the segment, a caller who identified himself as a former law clerk for a 3rd Circuit Judge and a current law professor in Kentucky, noted that the judge he clerked for worked with Alito on a capital case in which Alito was in dissent. The caller said:

"It seemed like he put his thumb on the scale for the prosecution. ... He pored over the record to find facts and arguments the prosecution had never raised in its brief..."

Lewis Libby's new lawyers made their appearance at his arraignment today. They are Ted Wells and William Jeffress.

Wells won acquittals for former Agriculture Secretary Michael Espy and former Labor Secretary Raymond Donovan. He is a partner at the New York-based firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison.

Jeffress is from the firm Baker Botts, where Bush family friend and former Secretary of State James A. Baker is a senior partner. Jeffress has won acquittals for public officials accused of extortion, perjury, money laundering, and vote-buying, his firm's Web site says.

I am not familiar with Jeffress. Ted Wells is an excellent choice.

by TChris

Even some Republicans are growing weary of the administration's efforts to stonewall any investigation that might shed light on its poor performance. Rep. Thomas Davis III leads a Congressional panel investigating the administration's response to Hurricane Katrina. On Sept. 30, the panel asked for "e-mail and other correspondence between officials in the White House and other agencies during the response to the hurricane, as well as agency documents dealing with specific preparations for and responses to Hurricane Katrina." A month would seem more than adequate to collect and produce that information, but the administration has stalled.

To his credit, Davis "threatened to issue subpoenas to compel administration officials to release the documents if they did not comply with the committee's request." The emails disclosed to date reveal that Michael Brown and his deputy director of public affairs at FEMA were more interested in Brown's dining plans and attire than the disaster at hand.

The Justice Department released a new report today.

Nearly 7 million adults were in U.S. prisons or on probation or parole at the end of last year, 30 percent more than in 1995, the Justice Department said Wednesday.

That was about one in every 31 adults under correctional supervision at the end of 2004, compared with about 1 in 36 adults in 1995 and about 1 adult in every 88 in 1980, said Allan J. Beck, who oversaw the preparation of the department's annual report on probation and parole populations.

Sentencing "reforms" of the 1990's reportedly are the cause.

The Justice Department's press release is here. The full report is available here.

This is sad.

The 25-year-old son of Miami police Chief John Timoney was arrested for trying to buy 400 pounds of marijuana from an undercover federal agent, the Drug Enforcement Administration said Wednesday.

A court complaint said Sean Timoney of Philadelphia gave the agent a gym bag filled with approximately $450,000 in cash.

Raw Story reports that it has confirmed that Fred Fleitz, then the Chief of Staff for John Bolton and also a senior CIA WINPAC official, is the "Senior CIA Offical" who first disclosed Valerie Plame Wilson'identity after Bolton requested information about Wilson's trip. Raw Story reports that Libby requested information about Wilson's trip from John Bolton; Fleitz gave Bolton the name. Bolton then passed it on to David Wurmser who passed it on to John Hannah.

As has been reported previously, David Wurser and John Hannah have been cooperating with Fitzgerald in the probe.

Upon receiving this information, Libby asked Bolton for a report on Wilson's trip to Niger, which Wilson presented orally to the CIA upon his return. Fleitz was one of a handful of officials who was in a position to know Plame's maiden name, the sources said.