Who's working behind the scenes for a compromise?

Democratic Sen. Ken Salazar of Colorado had attended at least 13 private meetings over the previous 24 hours with senators trying to craft a deal, a spokesman said.

Graham and Salazar, along with Sens. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., John McCain, R-Ariz., Mark Pryor, D-Ark., and others, were working to try and find six Republicans and six Democrats to block Frist from banning judicial filibusters and block Reid from filibustering all of Bush's controversial judicial nominees.

I don't want to see this happen. My source tells me they are talking about agreeing to allow up or down votes on all but two of the nominees and that Janice Rogers Brown would no longer be blocked. I am calling Sen. Salazar's office right to protest this compromise.

Frist does not have 51 votes, even with Cheney. The Dems should hang on and fight.

Update: I just got through and left a voicemail at Senator Salzar's office. If you are from Colorado, the number is (202) 224-5852. It was easy. Call your Senator, you can find your Senator's number here.

Democratic bloggers just finished a conference call with Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) on the nuclear option. The Dems are being very careful. They will not leave the Senate floor unattended even to go to the bathroom in case someone tries to start a vote on Patricia Owen. We learned this because Sen. Schumer had to leave the call for a few minutes while he took the place of a Senator who did need a restroom break.

Sen. Schumer was emphatic in his remarks to us. He said the hard right, both economic and religious, has decided that the only way to push their agenda through is to control the courts. If they win and gain control of the courts, both economically and socially, they will roll back America to the 1930's or the 1890's.

He said that the hard right made a deal with George Bush during the election. It would support him and "not hound him", but he had to cede control of his judicial nominations to the Federalist Society.

The Senate hearings are live now on C-Span2. Sen. Patrick Leahy is speaking right now. You can watch on the Internet here. Feel free to use the comments to live-blog the action along with your comments.

Sen. Russ Feingold made this statement on the Senate Floor yesterday. Sen. Harry Reid's speech is reproduced here.

Think Progress reports that Republican Senator Bill Frist imploded on the Senate Floor today when Sen. Schumer asked him a simple question about a filibuster he participated in five years ago. TP says Frist's tortured response undermines his entire argument for the nuclear option.

I'll be participating in a small conference call with Sen. Chuck Schumer at 12:10 ET. If you have any suggestions for questions to ask him, you can leave them in the comments.

REID FLOOR SPEECH ON USE OF FILIBUSTER

Mr. President, yesterday morning I spoke here about a statement the Majority Leader issued calling the filibuster a “procedural gimmick.”

The Websters dictionary defines “gimmick” as - - “an ingenious new scheme or angle.” No Mr. President, the filibuster is not a scheme. And it is not new. The filibuster is far from a “procedural gimmick.” It is part of the fabric of this institution. It was well known in colonial legislatures, and it is an integral part of our country’s 217 years of history.

The nuclear option begins this morning. Bill Frist has announced he will seek a vote on Priscilla Owne - an extremist whom Texans say wants to rewrite law from the bench. The Washington Post has this script for how it will play out.

At 9:30 a.m. today, the Senate will begin debating Bush's nomination of Priscilla R. Owen, an abortion opponent on the Texas Supreme Court who was nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, based in New Orleans.

On Thursday or Friday, Frist and other Republican senators are likely to file a motion seeking cloture, or an end to debate. One session day must pass before a vote to end debate, so a vote would be held and Republicans would expect to get fewer than 60 votes to confirm Owen.

As we first reported Sunday, for two years the media has published allegations by detainees that interrogators at Guantanamo and Kandahar desecrated the Koran, threw it in the toilet and worse. Today, the Washington Post recaps some of the claims. So does The Age (Australia); The Associated Press; Daily Times (Pakistan).

The New York Times calls upon Sen. John Warner, Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee to investigate the claims. The LA Times calls on the Administration to close Guantanamo and provide detainees with legal protections. The Star Tribune calls the White House "Nixonian" and tells Newsweek to "resist."

We continue to call on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to appoint a special counsel to investigate. Someone should be listening to these 51 members of Congress, not Scott McCellan.

Update: Thanks to Ian at Political Teen for posting the video to today's MSNBC Connected Coast to Coast show that showed a screen shot of this post and talked about it. It was a good segment, also highlighting Daily Kos and Volokh on the nuclear option.

Bump and Update: Sabrina Harman's gamble to go to trial paid off. She was sentenced today to six months in prison, less than what the Government had last offeredl

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Original Post 5/16

Sabrina Harman was convicted by a military jury today of six of the seven counts against her. The six counts are conspiracy to maltreat detainees, four counts of maltreating detainees and one count of dereliction of duty. She was acquitted of one count of maltreatment. The sentencing phase begins tomorrow. The maximum she can receive is five and one half years.

The prosecutor's version:

"They were all acting together for their own amusement," said Capt. Chris Graveline. "There was no justification for what they did that night."

The defense version:

A few weeks ago, the FBI announced it would exhume the body of Emmett Till as part of its reopening of the teen's murder case. Today it disclosed that it had located a copy of a copy of the original trial transcript--missing for decades.

Justice for Emmet Till may be getting closer.

Racial profiling is alive and well in Texas. First there was Driving While Black. Now, a new report shows that in San Antonio, African American pedestrians were three times more likely to be stopped last year than whites or hispanics.

On a more positive note, Grits for Breakfast reports that the Texas Senate has followed the House and approved a bill establishing a central registry of data pertaining to racial profiling. Here's a statistic for you:

The data gathered under Texas' racial profiling law, though isn't just about race, but also about police practices like consent searches. This data contributed to the decision by the Austin Police Department to begin requiring written consent at traffic stops, then documented a 63% decline in drivers' consent to search after the policy was implemented.

The Justice Department passed new p0rnography rules today--shifting the burden of proof to the producer of the material. The producers will have to establish that those depicted in photos and films are adults.

....producers who violate the new requirements would be subject to prison terms of up to five years on the first offense and up to 10 years for subsequent offenses.....producers must keep detailed records that verify the identity and age of each individual depicted.

The regulations also expand the definition of "producer" to include those who publish on the Internet. All of the new rules are intended to implement the Child Protection and Obscenity Enforcement Act, enacted in 2003.

The U.S. agreed to waive the death penalty for accused terrorist Babar Ahmad if Britain would extradite him. Today, a British Court agreed he could be extradited, and Ahmad will become the first terror suspect to be extradited under its 2003 terror law, if he does not win an appeal. The law does not allow the suspect to challenge evidence presented by the US government.

Today, senior district judge Timothy Workman, sitting at Bow Street magistrates' court, in central London, said he accepted assurances by the US authorities that they would not seek the death penalty. He said he also accepted assurances that the US would not declare Mr Ahmad an "enemy combatant" - a category applied to prisoners at the US naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where detainees have questionable legal rights.

Ahmad is charged in a Connecticut Indictment with:

by TChris

Kylleen Hargrave-Thomas had a moment of hope. A federal district judge decided that Kylleen was the victim of inadequate representation. The court ordered a new trial that might have saved Kylleen from an unjust sentence of life imprisonment.

U.S. District Judge Paul Gadola, who ordered a new trial for Hargrave-Thomas, called the case a travesty and said she is likely innocent of the murder. Gadola said Hargrave-Thomas' attorney failed to investigate, interview or call witnesses, or present evidence. Nevertheless, she is on her way back to prison because a federal appeals court disagreed with Gadola. The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to review the case.

A Detroit Free Press editorial calls upon the prosecutor to agree to give Kylleen a new trial. The prosecutor, of course, has opted instead to ask for Kyllen's return to prison.