The ACLU says it could have been worse.

The New York Times reports:

The bill approved Friday by the Senate makes permanent 14 of the 16 antiterrorism provisions of the Patriot Act that were set to expire at the end of the year. The two remaining sections - particularly controversial provisions that allow the government to conduct roving wiretaps and to demand records from institutions like libraries - are to expire in four years unless Congress acts to reauthorize them.

The legislation also puts in place several new restrictions on the government's powers, including a higher standard of proof for the government in demanding library and business records, greater judicial oversight and increased reporting to Congress on antiterrorism operations, time restrictions on the use of secret searches, and limits on roving wiretaps. Civil rights advocates saw the new limits as welcome steps.

Horror story of the day:

About 30 children, some as young as 3 months old, were left without their parents after immigration agents raided a poultry plant and took the parents away to face possible deportation. While some of the arrested workers were able to call and arrange care for their children, others were not and a local church had to help make arrangements.

..."A lot of those families had kids in day care in different places, and they didn't know why Mommy and Daddy didn't come pick them up," Arkadelphia Mayor Charles Hollingshead said

.....Jose Luis Vidal said his sister and brother-in-law left behind children aged 10, 5 and 1 as they were deported to Laredo, Mexico. "The children are very sad, especially the baby. She cries all the time," Vidal said in an interview conducted in Spanish.

The Secret Service has responded to an inquiry by Sen. Ken Salazar and Reps. Diana DeGette and Mark Udall as to whether criminal charges will brought against the unidentified Republican operative who posed as a Secret Service agent and ejected three Denver activists from President Bush's social security event at Wings Over the Rockies in March.

According to the letter, which you can read here, (pdf) the matter was presented to the U.S. Attorneys' office for investigation of a possible violation of this federal law making it a crime to impersonate a federal official. The U.S. attorneys' office declined the prosecution.

Salazar, DeGette and Udall have responded with this statement, which I received by e-mail.

This just in via e-mail....36 Senate Democrats including all leadership just signed this letter:

Dear Mr. President:

In light of the fact that John Bolton was not truthful to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the questionnaire he swore was truthful, we ask that you do not make a recess appointment of Mr. Bolton to be the Ambassador to the United Nations and instead submit a new nomination to the Senate.

Mr. Bolton’s excuse that he “didn’t recall being interviewed by the State Department’s Inspector General” is simply not believable. How can you forget an interview about an issue so important that the United States Senate unanimously passed an amendment stating that Congress supports “the thorough and expeditious investigation by the Inspector General of the Department of State and the Inspector General of the Central Intelligence Agency into the documents . . . that the President relied on to conclude that Iraq had attempted to obtain uranium from Africa”? The amendment was cosponsored by the Chairmen of both the Foreign Relations Committee and the Intelligence Committee.

Mr. President, we know you are engaged in an effort to strengthen our relationships throughout the world. Sending someone to the United Nations who has not been confirmed by the United States Senate and now who has admitted to not being truthful on a document so important that it requires a sworn affidavit is going to set our efforts back in many ways.

Received from my terrific Congresswoman, Diana DeGette:

U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO), co-author of H.R. 810, the Castle-DeGette Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act that passed the House in May and is now awaiting consideration in the Senate, released the following statement on Senator Bill Frist's (R-TN) announcement this morning that he supports expansion of federal funding for embryonic stem cell research:

"Until today, there had been an ideological logjam in the Senate preventing stem cell research from coming up for a vote. Senator Frist's speech this morning gives new hope for everyone who supports medical research. He is a welcome ally in our bipartisan effort to change the current policy. The ideas and concerns he raised today about H.R. 810 are all minor. I believe they can be worked out to everyone's satisfaction."

You go, Diana. If anyone can get this bill passed, you can.

by TChris

Death and physical impairment are not the only consequences that befall our soldiers in Iraq. Many who return with no physical harm have nonetheless been damaged.

Thirty percent of U.S. troops surveyed have developed stress-related mental health problems three to four months after coming home from the Iraq war, the Army's surgeon general said Thursday. The survey of 1,000 troops found problems including anxiety, depression, nightmares, anger and an inability to concentrate, said Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley and other military medical officials. A smaller number of troops, often with more severe symptoms, were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, a serious mental illness.

...

The 30 percent figure is in contrast to the 3 percent to 5 percent diagnosed with a significant mental health issues immediately after they leave the war theater, according to Col. Elspeth Ritchie, a military psychiatrist on Kiley's staff.

Among the many costs of this unnecessary war:

[S]such reactions can lead to problems with spouses and children, substance abuse and just day-to-day life, [military medical officials] said.

It's your turn to pick the topics and opine.

Former National Security Council staffer (under Johnson and Nixon) Roger Morris has developed a timeline in the leak of the identity of Valerie Plame, that puts Condoleezza Rice smack in the middle of the scandal.

She alone among senior officials was knowing and complicitous at every successive stage of the great half-baked yellow cake fraud. She alone was the White House peer—and in national security matters the superior—to Rove and Libby, who never could have acted without her collusion in peddling Plame’s identity. She as much as anyone had a stake in smearing Wilson by any and all means at hand. If Rove and Libby are to be held criminally or at least politically accountable for a breach of national security, our “mushroom cloud” secretary of state should certainly be in the dock with them

It's time to keep our eye on the ball - what is Fitzgerald after? The answer: information about Judith Miller's sources. Arianna writes yet another informative post about Miller, How Deep Do Her Connections Go? Many of Arianna's assertions are confirmed in this June, 2004 New York Magazine article. Arianna, graciously, left out the worst of the dirt.

Coincidentally, I've been working on the same question, trying to cull down the mass of information out there to points I think are significant, using some deductive reasoning and Lexis. I had hoped to avoid the WMD and national security issues, because I don't know that much about them, but I've now decided it's not possible to do that and get anywhere.

So here's my shortened list:

The Wall Street Journal has this free article today on how Time Magazine's Matthew Cooper decided his interests were not the same as those of New York Times reporter Judith Miller. It's true that Cooper cooperated about Libby early on, as did Russert, Walter Pincus and Glenn Kessler, and then balked at getting a second subpoena for other sources. I've reported Judith Miller's take on that several times, most recently here.

The Wall St. Journal article mostly focuses on Cooper's lawyer's point of view, but this quote from Floyd Abrams, who originally represented both Cooper and Miller, is key:

But the deposition, held in the Washington office of Mr. Abrams's law firm, only whetted Mr. Fitzgerald's appetite. "Matt's testimony about Libby led Pat Fitzgerald to decide he wanted more information about others," Mr. Abrams explains. Specifically, the prosecutor wanted Mr. Cooper to confirm that Mr. Rove was a source of information about Ms. Plame. Within weeks, Mr. Cooper had a second subpoena in hand.

So, Fitzgerald knew it was Rove. He wasn't fishing.

5280, Denver's sole glossy monthly and nationally acclaimed magazine, for which I and several others blog daily on Colorado issues from politics and crime, particularly Tom Tancredo and Ken Salazar, to restaurants and cool events, got a great bloglift (yes, I coined that phrase, as Skippy would say) today -- if you get a minute, or if you are interested in Colorado goings-ons, check it out.

[Disclosure: I do get paid by 5280 for blogging. But I've been carping for months about their need to get a new look, and they more than exceeded my expectations.]

Scott Peterson, who is on death row at San Quentin after being convicted of killing his wife Laci, just got a website courtesy of Canadians Against the Death Penalty, which provides free sites to more than 500 death row prisoners.

The Website has Peterson's first public statement since arriving on death row. He says keep those letters coming.

His lawyer, Mark Geragos, maintains an investigative website for him here.