I'm beginning to see some people, including at least one news service, misapply the term "target letter." Just so it's clear, a "target letter" is what the prosecutor provides to a witness who has been subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury. It is an advisement of rights, particularly the right to counsel and the right to not testify.

Once the investigation is complete and the grand jury has heard all the evidence and is about to return Indictments, target letters are no longer used. [ Addition by LNILR: They are not re-issued everytime a witness/target comes in. Any competent defense lawyer has already met with the prosecutor to learn the client's status and role in the alleged offense under investigation. Target letters go out after the targets and subjects are identified by the prosecutor and investigators. The investigation may be years old before target letters go out. A "target letter" is just what it implies: You are likely going to be indicted, and you better act accordingly.]

Once an indictment is returned, the Prosecutor may notify the lawyer for the indicted person to make agreements on whether a summons will issue or arrest warrants, and, if it's going to be an arrest warrant, whether the person will be allowed to surrender at the courthouse or FBI office rather than be arrested at home or at work and bail amounts can be agreed upon. At this point, the case is past the "target letter" stage. The notification of indictment and arranging surrender can be formal (by letter) or by a telephone call.

by Last Night in Little Rock

When Kenneth Starr was running around the Arkansas and D.C. woods like a hound dog in heat looking for the non-existent goods on Clinton, he insisted that everybody address him as "Judge Starr," even though he resigned his lifetime appointment to have a better shot at the Supreme Court and then blew it by being a neo-con witchhunter. He no longer had the right to even suggest he be called "Judge," unless he wanted his wife, children, and maid to do it.

Today, as Dean of the Pepperdine Law School, he moved the admission of several lawyers into the Bar of the Supreme Court. The Chief Justice referred to him as "Dean Starr." Finally, somebody humbled the unhumbleable.

How's this for an attention deflector?

Both the FBI and CIA are calling it the first case of espionage in the White House in modern history. Officials tell ABC News the alleged spy worked undetected at the White House for almost three years. Leandro Aragoncillo, 46, was a U.S. Marine most recently assigned to the staff of Vice President Dick Cheney.

Aragoncillo was caught last year, arrested a month ago and began cooperating. Why break the story today? Did he steal secrets and give them to the Russians? Not quite.

Officials say the classified material, which Aragoncillo stole from the vice president's office, included damaging dossiers on the president of the Philippines. He then passed those on to opposition politicians planning a coup in the Pacific nation.

Bump and Update: The DC Rumor Mill says 22 Indictments are about to be handed down in the Plame investigation:

The D.C. Rumor mill is thrumming with whispers that 22 indictments are about to be handed down on the outed-CIA agent Valerie Plame case. The last time the wires buzzed this loud — that Tom DeLay would be indicted and would step down from his leadership post in the House — the scuttlebutters got it right.

Can it be a coincidence that the White House appears to be distancing President Bush from embattled aide Karl Rove? “He’s been missing in action at more than one major presidential event,” a member of the White House press corps tells us.

And just in time, Arianna has a new Judy Miller blog roundup.

*****
Original Post:

Daily Kos and AmericaBlog say Karl Rove has been absent from many recent White House events and wonder why. Is he expecting bad news from Fitzgerald and being put in time out so Bush can distance himself from him?

by TChris

Roy Blunt, who took over as House majority leader for the twice-indicted Tom DeLay, turns out to be DeLay's mini-me.

Tom DeLay deliberately raised more money than he needed to throw parties at the 2000 presidential convention, then diverted some of the excess to longtime ally Roy Blunt through a series of donations that benefited both men's causes.

When the financial carousel stopped, DeLay's private charity, the consulting firm that employed DeLay's wife and the Missouri campaign of Blunt's son all ended up with money, according to campaign documents reviewed by The Associated Press.

Why is this significant?

New York Times reporter Judith Miller gave her first post-jail interview last night to Lou Dobbs on CNN. Crooks and Liars has the video.

Here's Judy the martyr (from the transcript, available on Lexis.com):

You know, Lou, I knew and I know they wasn't covering for anybody. I was protecting the confidentiality of the source to whom I had given my word. I was keeping my word. And until I knew that that source genuinely wanted me to testify, and I heard that from him, I was willing to sit in jail. I didn't want to be in jail, but I knew that the principle of confidentiality was so important that I had to, because if people can't trust us to come to us to tell us the things that government and powerful corporations don't want us to know, we're dead in the water. The public won't know....That's why I was sitting in jail. For the public's right to know.

We haven't had one of these in a while and I need to get back to work. Have fun.

Via NPR:

A federal court in New York has ruled that the Salvation Army may hire and fire employees according to their religious beliefs -- even though it receives most of its money for social services from the government. The ruling earlier this week is considered a major court victory for the Bush administration.

[Hat tip to The Heretik]

Raw Story reports that the mainstream press has yet to pick up on the fact that Senators Brownback, Lott and Warner are all suddenly challenging Frist's control of the Senate -- which may spell trouble down the road.

What was once a hairline fracture in party cohesion is now a broken bone. Whether Republicans in Congress can reform a disciplined cavalcade behind the party’s agenda and its leadership – as the Democrats did on Social Security – may be the difference between holding onto the presidency and Congress and losing control in the years to come.

Also, the Gang of 14 is meeting at 4:30 today.

Via Sentencing Law and Policy and How Appealing, comes more evidence that Harriet Miers has long been a strong supporter of legal services to the poor. Professor Berman asks:

These issues are, of course, interesting as a matter of criminal justice policy, but they are also potentially significant as a matter of constitutional doctrine. More than a few academics have forcefully advocated that some indigent defense systems are per se constitutionally ineffective because of a lack of adequate funding. Might a Justice Miers be more sympathetic to claims of this sort — or ineffective assistance of counsel claims more generally — than some of her future colleagues?

Related post on published letter on the topic here.

This is an incredibly engrossing and important article from Der Spiegel on Abu Ghraib. It's very long, so you might want to bookmark it or print it out for when you have time to read the whole thing. By putting the story in the personal context of Jamal Davis, the prison guard, and Hajj Ali, a prisoner and Iraqi community leader, and showing how both of their worlds were destroyed, it brings the horror of what U.S. soldiers did there into much sharper focus.

There are new details of the pervasive sadism of the U.S. prison guards and the higher-ups who endorsed it.

Hajj Ali believes he is the one in this picture.

"How can it be," he asks, "that the victims are not being called as witnesses, that no one wants to hear their version of the story? How can it be that someone like Davis gets only half a year in prison?" "Davis and the others," he says, "killed our souls."

Atrios brings back the memories of Sandra Day O'Connor's pre-confirmation beliefs on abortion.