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.

The Philadelphia Inquirer has an article today about Judge Alito's rulings in death penalty cases. Frequent Talkleft commenter and appellate whiz Peter Goldberger, who went to law school with Alito and practices in the Third Circuit is quoted.

Lawyers familiar with the Third Circuit said that when it comes to death-penalty cases, Alito doesn't bend over backward to find errors just because it is a capital case - and he doesn't shy away from granting relief when he believes it is appropriate.

"He doesn't have a fixed opinion," lawyer Peter Goldberger said yesterday about how his former Yale Law classmate might view death-penalty cases if confirmed as a Supreme Court justice.

Steve Clemons of the Washington Note reports:

There will be (also TONIGHT) a devastating critique of Vice President Cheney and his key staff regarding the Plame Affair and the decision to invade Iraq tonight on Chris Matthews' Hardball. TWN has learned that David Shuster has a hard-charging report tonight that will set the VP's office on edge and add a lot to our understanding of Cheney's role.

David Schuster's reporting has been really top-notch on PlameGate. Tune in, if you can.

Update: There was no hard charging report by Schuster. He said nothing new. A big disappointment.

The Boston Globe is touting a college paper by Judge Alito suggesting he supported privacy and gay rights back then. Not exactly.

He was the advisor on the paper for a task force of 16 students who researched these issues and arrived at their, not his, recommendations. Alito wrote the introduction describing their recommendations.

A classmate, Jeffrey G. Weil, said yesterday that Alito, one of the top seniors in his class, had been selected to advise juniors writing the report, coaching them through the research and then writing an introduction explaining their recommendations.

His role was mostly advisory, said Weil, who wrote the section of the report dealing with gay rights but who said he could not remember whether Alito personally agreed with the recommendations.

by TChris

As a police detective, Jeffrey Hornoff helped send people to prison. Now he understands how easy it is for an innocent accused to end up behind bars -- it happened to him.

[Hornock] served six years, four months and 18 days for a murder he didn't commit. He was released in 2002 only after Todd Barry, a carpenter from Cranston, stepped forward and admitted to killing Victoria Cushman in August 1989.

Hornock has sued several Warwick, R.I. and state police detectives for his wrongful conviction, accusing them of "willfully mishandling and omitting evidence." The complaint alleges that State Police "ignored the possibility that Hornoff was innocent" and "failed to conduct a proper investigation," instead focusing all investigative efforts on Hornoff. The complaint also states that "beyond compensating Hornoff ... the lawsuit seeks to redress the unlawful municipal policies and practices."