Bump and Update (by TChris): President Bush will announce the nominee in a live telecast tonight, at 9:00 Eastern time.

Update: WaPo says the White House will announce Bush's Supreme Court nominee today.

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Scott McClellan today:

"The president is closer today than he was yesterday on naming a nominee."

Speculation is centering on 5th Circuit Justice Edith Clement.

White House officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly about the process, said Bush's timetable appears to have been accelerated and that a choice could come as early as Tuesday. They said Clement is a leading candidate, but cautioned that the president had not made a final decision and that there were other prospects still in the mix.

Known as a conservative and a strict constructionist in legal circles, Clement has eased fears among some abortion-rights advocates. She has stated that the Supreme Court "has clearly held that the right to privacy guaranteed by the Constitution includes the right to have an abortion" and that "the law is settled in that regard."

Some good news: All the finalists are judges, which means no need to fret about Sen. John Cornyn, Fred Thompson, Alberto Gonzales - for this particular vacancy.

Even better news: Also missing from the final list: former Solictor General Ted Olson.

by TChris

The United States government is still arguing that any citizen it labels an "enemy combatant" may be detained indefinitely. The government claims that Jose Padilla (TalkLeft coverage collected here) intended to activate a "dirty bomb" and to blow up apartment buildings in the United States. The reaction of Padilla's lawyers, arguing his case before the Fourth Circuit: prove it in court.

"I may be the first lawyer to stand here and say I'm asking for my client to be indicted by a federal grand jury," Padilla's lawyer, Andrew Patel, told the three-judge appeals panel.

It's strange to think that a U.S. citizen arrested on U.S. soil isn't entitled to the protection of the U.S. Constitution, but that's the claim our government, yet again, has advanced.

by TChris

TalkLeft reported (here and here) the ordeal of Richard Paey, who, although wheelchair-bound, is serving a 25 year sentence for possessing Percocet and other medication that he used to control his relentless pain. His tragic story ends with an ironic note, reported by John Tierney:

The odd thing, [Paey] said, is that he's actually getting better medication [in prison] than he did at the time of his arrest because the State of Florida is now supplying him with a morphine pump, which gives him more pain relief than the pills that triggered so much suspicion. The illogic struck him as utterly normal.

"We've become mad in our pursuit of drug-law violations," he said. "Generations to come will look back and scarcely believe what we've done to sick people."

I'll probably be offline when the announcement is made, so here's a place to alert everyone with updates on the impending announcement and your reactions to it.

For the latest news, stay tuned to Scotus Blog and How Appealing.

Update: American Progress has just launched a new blog as an offshoot to Think Progress, called Clerks, written by former U.S. Supreme Court clerks, which will be devoted to issues surrounding Supreme Court nominations.

Since Republicans say all signs point to Fifth Circuit Judge Edith Brown Clement, let's take a look at her. What do you think?

From the Washington Post:

Clement was nominated by President George H.W. Bush to serve as a judge on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana in 1991 and was elevated to her current post by the current President Bush in 2001.

Clement, a graduate of the University of Alabama and Tulane University Law School, worked as a lawyer in private practice in New Orleans for 16 years before beginning her tenure on the federal bench. She specialized in civil litigation involving maritime law, representing oil companies, insurance companies and the marine services industry in cases before federal courts. She is a member of the Federalist Society, an influential conservative legal organization.

The New York Times reports:

Administration officials said on Monday night that President Bush's selection process for a Supreme Court nominee was moving far faster than they expected, a signal that there could be a candidate within the next few days.

Just as I predicted earlier today:

Prediction: Bush will announce his Supreme Court pick earlier than scheduled - within the next few days - to deflect attention from this scandal. Will the furor erupting over RoveGate make him play nice and give us a mainstream moderate to placate us?

Now just cross your fingers and hope Bush decides he can't take any more heat and he'd rather scr*w the radical right than America.

In the "you can't make this up" department, Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo, who will try and run for President in 2008 on his illegal immigration plank, made an utter fool of himself on the radio Friday while discussing the possibility of future terror attacks. Crooks and Liars has the audio.

The Rocky Mountain News has the transcript, here's a snippet:

Campbell: Worst case scenario, if they do have these nukes inside the borders and they were to use something like that — what would our response be?

Tancredo: ....Well, what if you said something like — if this happens in the United States, and we determine that it is the result of extremist, fundamentalist Muslims, um, you know, you could take out their holy sites . . .

Campbell: You're talking about bombing Mecca.

Tancredo: Yeah. ..... I mean, I don't know, I'm just throwing out there some ideas because it seems to me . . . at that point in time you would be talking about taking the most draconian measures you could possibly imagine and because other than that all you could do is once again tighten up internally.

What a jerk.

This will be of more interest to lawyers...Post Conviction expert Alan Ellis has a new article on the Bureau of Prisons' early release drug programs. You can download it here (pdf) from Sentencing Law and Policy.

Entitled "Getting Out Early: BOP Drug Program," the article now available for download below describes the Federal Bureau of Prisons' Comprehensive Residential Drug Abuse Program (RDAP). As explained in the article, RDAP is "the only mechanism by which federal inmates can now potentially receive a reduction in their sentences beyond earning good conduct time credit."

San Diego's acting mayor and a councilman were convicted today of taking illegal campaign contributions from strip club owners.

Acting Mayor Michael Zucchet and Councilman Ralph Inzunza were convicted Monday on federal corruption charges, with a jury finding the politicians conspired with a strip club owner to ease restrictions on such clubs. The panel convicted Inzunza on nine counts of wire fraud, one count of conspiracy and three counts of extortion. Zucchet was convicted of one count of wire-fraud conspiracy, five counts of wire fraud and three counts of extortion.

....Zucchet and Inzunza had contended they accepted only legitimate campaign contributions and were just doing their jobs. But jurors accepted the prosecution's case that the contributions and cash the councilmen accepted came in exchange for their promises to scale back the rules.

This LA Times report has an interesting twist to the trial.

Trial began today in London in the libel case fugitive Roman Polanski brought against Vanity Fair. Vanity Fair's lawyers are pulling out all stops. They called him a "fugitive from morality" today.

Polanski is suing Vanity Fair for libel over an article published in July 2002 in which it claimed he made sexual advances to a Swedish woman in Elaine's, a fashionable New York restaurant bar, on the way to his wife's funeral.

He denies that he went to the bar on his way to Tate's funeral, and although he admits he went there shortly afterwards, he denies the incident ever took place.

Mia Farrow will testify tomorrow.

She was with Polanski at Elaine's on the night in August 1969 on which the incident is alleged to have taken place.

It's no picnic for Judith Miller in the Alexandria Detention Center, reports Bill Keller of the New York Times in an interview.

She's not eating due to stomach problems from the food. For more on the conditions, check out this former prisoner's diary.

It doesn't sound like Miller is about to change her mind, though.

Via AmericaBlog and Billmon, Bloomberg News is reporting that Ari read the State Department memo on Air Force One during Bush's July 7 to 12 trip to Africa.

The memo, prepared by the State Department on July 7, 2003, informed top administration officials that the wife of ex- diplomat and Bush critic Joseph Wilson was a CIA agent. Seven days later, Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was publicly identified as a CIA operative by syndicated columnist Robert Novak.

On the same day the memo was prepared, White House phone logs show Novak placed a call to White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, according to lawyers familiar with the case and a witness who has testified before the grand jury. Those people say it isn't clear whether Fleischer returned the call, and Fleischer has refused to comment.

The Novak call may loom large in the investigation because Fleischer was among a group of administration officials who left Washington later that day on a presidential trip to Africa. On the flight to Africa, Fleischer was seen perusing the State Department memo on Wilson and his wife, according to a former administration official who was also on the trip.