Jane Fonda says she can't take it anymore. She's planning a bus tour to oppose the Iraq War. The bus will be fueled by vegetable oil. Fonda made the announcement in Santa Fe on her book tour.

Prompted by a question from the audience, Fonda said war veterans that she has met on a nationwide book tour have encouraged her to break her silence on the Iraq war. "I've decided I'm coming out," she said.

Hundreds of people in the audience cheered loudly when Fonda announced her intentions to join the anti-Iraq war movement.

by TChris

Three Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee -- John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and John Warner -- are unhappy that "the Pentagon has failed to hold senior officials and military officers responsible for the abuses that took place" at Abu Ghraib and other prisons. They intend to introduce legislation that would prohibit the military from concealing prisoners from the Red Cross, ban degrading treatment of detainees, and require interrogators to use only approved techniques. All very reasonable, and so of course the Bush administration wants none of it.

In an unusual, 30-minute private meeting on Capitol Hill on Thursday night, [Vice President Dick] Cheney warned three senior Republicans on the Armed Services Committee that their legislation would interfere with the president's authority and his ability to protect Americans against terrorist attacks.

The proposed legislation could be tacked onto the $442 billion Pentagon authorization bill, which will be debated on the Senate floor next week.

by TChris

Sen. Arlen Specter provides a not-very-helpful user's guide to judicial confirmation hearings in today's NY Times. Senators can ask any question they like, Specter reminds us, and the nominee can evade the question as he sees fit. Any controversial question will be met with "I don't want to give the impression that I've prejudged any issue that might come before the Court," a shorthand way of saying "If I answer that, half the country will think I'm unfit for this job."

Specter suggests that process based questions are more appropriate, but coaxing a nominee to assure the Senators that he respects precedent isn't likely to provide much insight into the kind of Supreme Court Justice John Roberts might be. More useful questions the Senators should consider asking: Did anyone in the White House ask you about Roe v. Wade? If the word abortion came up during any conversation with a member of the White House, please repeat that conversation for us. Was Guantanamo mentioned during your job interview? If given the chance, would you go duck hunting with Dick Cheney? Who should decide elections: voters or the Supreme Court?

Mark Feldstein in the New York Times has an article on the Washington Press Corp's affinity for anonymous sources.

Despite the widespread fixation on this political scandal, there is also an important journalistic one: the conflict of interest that reporters routinely have with high-level sources who leak sensitive information. It is the dirty little secret of the Washington press corps, a kind of unspoken conspiracy in which reporters conceal not only their sources' identities but more importantly the underlying motives for the leaks. This Faustian pact can be a disservice to the public, which learns only a part of the larger truth, a version that may be accurate as far as it goes but is by definition deficient.

Kevin Drum makes some good points about it, and has a recommendation:

I can see from the comments people are itching to go off-topic. I'm headed to the jail to visit a client for the afternoon, so here's an open thread. Please play nice.

Bump and Update: Attorney General Alberto Gonzales appeared on CBS's Face the Nation this morning and responded to Frank Rich's column about a connection between his delay of 12 hours in notifying white house officials of their need to preserve e-mails and records in the Plame investigation and Bush's decision to pass over him for the Supreme Court. In doing so, he disclosed for the first time that the night he got the order, he passed it on to White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card. Crooks and Liars has the video.

”After getting notification from the Justice Department about 8 p.m. that night, he asked if he could inform staffers at the White House early in the morning , and that was okayed. Schieffer then asked if he at least informed anyone at the White House that first night to “get ready” for the order. Yes, Gonzales said, he told the president’s chief of staff that night, and then the president himself “first thing” the next day.

[hat tip to Patriot Daily.]

So, Gonzales told Card immediately. Did Card tell anyone else? He's known as a straight shooter, but one has to ask. Think Progress has a lot more.

by TChris

Accountability is a distraction, and the Justice Department doesn't want to be bothered with it. After all, whenever the government has been honest about its efforts to gather data about the American public -- most notably in its development of the Total Information Awareness program -- Congress has overwhelmingly disapproved. And so the Justice Department would prefer to bypass Congress, which is why it opposes a provision in the House bill to renew the Patriot Act that "would require the Justice Department to report to Congress annually on government-wide efforts to develop and use data-mining technology to track intelligence patterns."

[A] set of talking points distributed among Republican lawmakers as the measure was being debated warned that the Justice Department was opposed to the amendment because it would add to the list of "countless reports" already required by Congress and would take time away from more critical law enforcement activities.

Translation: the provision would require accountability, and that's something the Justice Department hates. So, apparently, does Rep. Peter Hoekstra, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, who fears (despite a provision that would permit classified information to be disclosed in a separate, confidential report) that classified information "would be shared with the judiciary committees instead of the intelligence committees." Hoekstra apparently doesn't regard any committee other than his own as trustworthy. But every committee with oversight responsibility should have the information it needs to do its job, and oversight is exactly what the Justice Department fears.

Everyone knows by now that the man shot and killed by British police Friday was from Brazil and unconnected to the subway bombings. The BBC reports:

Met Police chief Sir Ian Blair has apologised to the family of the Brazilian man shot dead by police in south London on Friday.

He said the death of Jean Charles de Menezes was a "tragedy", but admitted more people could be shot as police hunt suspected suicide bombers. (my emphasis)

Heretik has more.

The New York Times today reports on the case of Bronx documentary filmaker and four time Emmy award winner Edward Caraballo, convicted along with Jack Idema and Brent Bennett, after a farce of a trial in Afhanistan. Details from the trial are available here.

TalkLeft's good pal, New York lawyer Bob Fogelnest, represented Caraballo. Bob had gone to Kabul for two months, pro bono, to teach Afghan lawyers how to defend people under their new constitution. Bob is a great writer, and chronicled some of his experiences at his blog Mullah Bob.

Back to the Times article. Caraballo is serving his eight year sentence in Pul-i-Charkhi prison in Kabul. He is interviewed for the article, and describes his life in jail. He also describes his fellow prisoners and their, get this, adoration of Bush and America.

While the Armed Services Committee in Congress has been working hard to draft a bill that would end some of the worst abuses of the Bush Administration such as torture and hiding detainees from the Red Cross, Dick Cheney made a personal visit this week to committee members to kill the planned bill.

The legislation, which is still being drafted, includes provisions to bar the military from hiding prisoners from the Red Cross; prohibit cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees; and use only interrogation techniques authorized in a new Army field manual.

...In an unusual, 30-minute private meeting on Capitol Hill on Thursday night, Mr. Cheney warned three senior Republicans on the Armed Services Committee that their legislation would interfere with the president's authority and his ability to protect Americans against terrorist attacks.

.......The three Republicans are John McCain of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John W. Warner of Virginia, the committee chairman. They have complained that the Pentagon has failed to hold senior officials and military officers responsible for the abuses that took place at the Abu Ghraib prison outside of Baghdad, and at other detention centers in Cuba, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Amendment could be tacked on to the $442 billion Pentagon spending bill scheduled to be debated next week in the Senate. Bush's advisors are threatening a veto if the Senate approves the Amendment.

Bump and Update: Khalid Jarrar has been released and is on his way to Jordan. [Via Crooks and Liars.]

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Original Post 7/19/05

Raed of Raed in the Middle reports his brother Khalid Jarrar, the blogger who writes Tell Me A Secret , who had been missing, has turned up...in an Iraqi jail - jailed by the new Iraqi mukhabarat..

On another note, my brother is spending his 6th night in jail. He's just one of the thousands of people in Iraq who disappeared and ended up in one of the many jails and prisons around the country without a clear reason.

by TChris

The Roanoke Wal-Mart tried to turn its store into the retail version of a singles bar, designating "flirt points" and providing shopping cart bows to identify shoppers on the prowl for love, but enough customers complained to spoil the fun for everyone else. The Bentonville HQ ordered the Roanoke store to shut down its cruising night.

"I'm disappointed," said Firebaugh, 63. "Where can someone over 40 who doesn't smoke or drink or go to bars meet someone?"