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.

Tom DeLay may have the best lawyer around, but he's shooting himself in the foot. He needs to stay off the airwaves. The latest:

In his radio comments on Tuesday, Mr. DeLay offered a new insight on the case, saying he made a mistake in a voluntary interview with the prosecutor's office a few weeks ago that helped prompt the indictments.

He would not discuss his mistake in detail, but it apparently concerned the $190,000 check that is central to the case. Mr. Earle charges that the money, which included money from corporate interests in Texas, was turned over to the Republican National Committee with instructions to return $190,000 to designated candidates for the Texas Legislature. The accusation is that the transaction was intended to circumvent a prohibition on the use of corporate money in state races.

Many of the quotes the White House is using to persuade conservatives that Harriet Miers is one of them seem to be coming from Texas Supreme Court Judge Nathan Hecht, who describes himself as a 30 year friend and sometimes date of Ms. Miers. He was a junior colleague at the law firm she co-managed, and according to him, in large part responsible for her conversion to born-again Christianity.

The White House included Hecht on at least one of the conference calls it conducted Monday to shore up support for Miers Monday.

by Last Night in Little Rock

The pundits, even the late night talk show hosts, are harping on Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers' lack of judicial experience. Everyone should know that this is NOT a disqualification if she has the mind for and the ability to handle the job. What are her skills as a legal thinker? Has she proved them? Those should be the primary questions, not whether she knows the right person or asked Bush for the job.

About half of all Supreme Court Justices lacked prior judicial experience. Most of the recent ones had some judicial experience, but some significant ones did not. Let's just work backwards:

Law Prof Doug Berman of Sentencing Law and Policy found this commentary written by Harriet Miers and published in the Texas Lawyer in July, 1992. Read the whole thing, it should bring some measure of comfort to criminal defense lawyers. Here's some of it:

All lawyers, not just those involved in the criminal justice system, should have an interest in efforts to improve the functioning of the criminal justice system. The State Bar and the Texas Young Lawyers Association conducted 15 hearings across the state concerning pro bono issues. These hearings provided a clear picture that inadequacies exist in the resources available to provide constitutionally required indigent criminal defense.

Here's something new: A copy of Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's letter(pdf) to Libby's lawyer Joseph Tate, dated September 12, 2005. [Via How Appealing.] Some points from the letter, old and new:

• Libby was interviewed in October and November, 2003. He testified twice before the grand jury in 2004.
• Libby testified about his recollection of conversations with Judith Miller that occurred during their July 8 meeting and their July 12 phone call.
• Libby was the indiviual specified as "an identified government official" in Miller's subpoena.
• Fitzgerald assumed Miller remained in jail either in spite of the subpoena or because Libby thought it was not in his best interest to encourage her to testify.
• As a result of reading recent press articles, he now thinks there might have been a communication between Libby and Miller regarding the waiver.
• He wants Libby to know that he can reach out to Miller and assure her the waiver is valid and encourage her to testify and it will not be considered obstructive conduct.

It probably was bound to happen now that three lawyers are writing for Talkleft. The National Journal's Blogometer quotes me as saying:

"Miers falls into the black hole of controversial nominees that "Advise and Consent" should reject.

Not so. I do not think Harriet Miers is controversial or should be rejected. That particular post clearly states it was written by Last Night in Little Rock, who is John Wesley Hall.

For those of you who are new to TalkLeft, all posts are written by Jeralyn Merritt unless they say at the top "by TChris" or "by Last Night in Little Rock." TChris is T. Christopher Kelly. The Blogometer has graciously agreed to correct its post, but it probably has already gone to Lexis as being written by me so I wanted to correct the record.

As to things I did say, here's an audio interview (mp3) that Matt Margolis of Blogs for Bush and I did yesterday for BBC World News Radio on Ms. Miers.

by TChris

Why should there be a deadline to correct an unjust loss of freedom? An editorial in the Palm Beach Post praises the Florida Supreme Court for extending (for the third time) the deadline by which wrongfully convicted inmates must seek DNA testing that might exonerate them. It also argues that the state legislature should eliminate the deadline.

Why? Ask Wilton Dedge, whom DNA evidence freed in August 2004 after the state wrongfully imprisoned him for 22 years. Ask Luis Diaz, whom DNA evidence freed last August after wrongful conviction stole 26 years from his life. In both cases, the crime was rape. Ask the men who have been released from Death Row and exonerated. Ask the family of the man whom DNA evidence cleared after he had died of cancer while on Death Row.

The Tallahassee Democrat agrees that "any deadline runs contrary to the interest of justice."