Eric Alterman is angry at Gary Hart for giving Eric's book, When President's Lie, which Eric spent ten years writing and researching, a less than favorable review in the New York Times. Here's the letter to the editor exchange, one by Eric, one by Hart, that followed the review.

I hate it when two people I respect have a public tiff. I hope they make up soon.

President Bush has selected Ken Mehlman to head up the RNC. Mehlman was Bush's campaign manager and is a protege of Karl Rove.

There has been speculation in the media that Mehlman, who is 37 and single, is gay. He won't say.

When asked if he was gay last week, Mehlman hung up the phone. Deputy communications director Steve Schmidt, reached by telephone, asserted that Mehlman was not gay but refused to say so on the record.

AmericaBlog asks:

by TChris

Having chased the "insurgents" out of Falluja, the U.S. military dropped two 500-pound bombs on Baquba, where "insurgents attacked a police station and U.S. troops at a traffic circle." Violence has spread to other cities, as well.

Earlier in the day, gunmen stormed the police station in the nearby town of Buhriz using machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, police said. A gunbattle ensued and four police cars were burned, police said.

Explosions and sporadic gunfire rang out across Mosul on Monday, a day after Iraqi and U.S. troops battled to retake a police station overrun by insurgents. Violence has also spiked in Samarra and Baiji, both Sunni cities north of the capital.

New York Senator Charles Schumer announced today he will not run for Governor in 2006. That leaves the way clear for New York Attorney General Elliott Spitzer to run on the Democratic ticket. Spitzer has long been considered a favorite of Dems for the race.

Schumer will head up the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee through 2006. He also has been given a seat on the Senate's Finance Committee, considered one of the most powerful in Congress.

by TChris

Deborah Trautwine didn't mean to commit a crime when she paid for her purchase at a Pennsylvania Fashion Bug using a $200 bill bearing the picture of President Bush. According to her attorney, Trautwine didn't know that the bill wasn't actual legal tender.

Neither did the clerk, who gave Trautwine $100.58 in change.

The back of the phony bill depicted the White House with several signs erected on the front lawn, including those reading "We Like Broccoli" and "USA Deserves A Tax Cut."

Charges against Trautwine were dropped after she paid for her clothes with real currency.

The Supreme Court today threw out a Texas death sentence in the case of Smith v. Texas, 04-5323. There were two dissenters: Anton Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

The problem in the case was that under Texas law at the time, the jury was not allowed to consider all of the evidence in determining a life or death sentence. The Supreme Court ruled that the jury should have been allowed to consider Smith's learning disability and other mitigating evidence.

Smith argued that jurors weren't allowed to consider evidence including that he was 19 at the time of the Taco Bell robbery, that he had a troubled home life and that he had a low IQ and learning disabilities. A Texas court rejected the claim, saying that wasn't relevant because there was no link between the murder and his diminished capacity.

... "There is no question that a jury might well have considered (Smith's) IQ scores and history of participation in special-education classes as a reason to impose a sentence more lenient than death," the court wrote in Monday's decision

Texas has since modified its statute and now allows for juries to consider such evidence. But, we're told, over 100 prisoners were executed under the old, now unconstitutional statute. [we'll try and find a link to support this.]

Via Cursor, check out these profiles of five new Republican Senators who "hope to make your worst nightmares come true."

• Tom Coburn (OK): Keeping us safe from condoms and the ‘gay agenda’
• Jim DeMint (SC): ‘The Family’ values, homophobia, and tax chicanery
• David Vitter (LA): Putting young men and women in harm’s way
• Richard Burr (NC): Corporate errand boy scoops up PAC money
• John Thune (SD): A simple-minded campaign of flag-waving and heterosexuality

Secretary of State Colin Powell has submitted his resignation to President Bush. So have Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, Education Secretary Rod Paige and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham.

Powell is expected to leave when Bush names a successor. He could leave in January. The names under consideration so far: Condi Rice and U.N. Ambassador John Danforth.

Update: Reuters reports Condi Rice is the White House favorite replacement candidate.

Bump and Update: Via Cursor, Christian Parenti in the Nation charges that Bush has made a deal with the Afghan warlords in exchange for their support of Hamid Karzai that allows them to continue trafficking.

**********************

U.S. troops in Afghanistan are about to get new marching orders: Assist law enforcement in fighting heroin trafficking by providing intelligence information and airlift support and increasing border security.

The cost? $700 million, to be taken from other programs. The amount spent in 2004 by the Pentagon and State Department was $123 million.

We wonder, will the troops also be recruited as jail guards for the newly snagged Afghan drug offenders?

At least we're not sending the troops in as drug cops, which is what some members of Congress had pushed for:

by TChris

Bunnatine Greenhouse will not go gently into retirement -- much to the displeasure of the Army Corps of Engineers. Greenhouse is the Corps' contracting director, and she continues to criticize the network of "good ole boys" who funneled government funds to Halliburton to repair oil fields in Iraq, bypassing procedures that require competitive bidding.

With the bluntness and rectitude that has angered some of her superiors, she explained why she was not taking the vested retirement her commander had pointedly dangled. "When our officers don't understand that a decision is giving one company an exceptional advantage," she said, "when they don't understand that a decision doesn't protect the public trust, then it's my job to make them understand it."

In addition to questioning the $7 billion contract to repair oil fields, Greenhouse expressed displeasure that the Corps went behind her back to approve the inflated prices a Halliburton subsidiary charged for fuel that was transported to Iraq. She also questioned the extension of an expiring Halliburton contract in the Balkans, at a cost of $165 million.

Remember Oregon lawyer Brandon Mayfield was detained for two weeks when the FBI claimed his fingerprint was on a bag linked to the Madrid train bombings? Remember when the FBI said they had received information from Spanish officials that led them to conclude Mayfield's fingerprint was a match? And then when it turned out they were wrong, they tried to blame it on the quality of the image received from the Spanish authorities?

Not true. A new report by independent forensic experts who investigated the debacle finds that FBI agents made up the claim.

Chicago Tribune investigative reporters Maurice Possley and Flynn McRoberts write:

Top FBI fingerprint examiners gave in to peer pressure when they rushed to link an Oregon lawyer to a terrorist attack in Madrid this year, according to a panel of forensic experts convened to explain the highest-profile mistake in the history of modern fingerprint comparison. The finding contradicts the initial explanation given by the FBI, which had blamed the quality of a digital fingerprint image sent by Spanish police in the wake of the March 11 train bombings that killed 191 people.

Instead, the panel found that human error, defensiveness and a failure to follow some fundamental scientific practices, such as proper peer review, led to four of the nation's top fingerprint experts wrongly tying Brandon Mayfield, a Portland-area lawyer and a Muslim, to the bombings. Spanish national police later matched the print to an Algerian man.

....Despite earlier FBI attempts to blame the quality of the fingerprint image--a digital representation e-mailed to the U.S. by Spanish authorities--the report states that "all of the committee members agree that the quality of the images that were used to make the erroneous identification was not a factor."

The report was undertaken at the request of the FBI. An isolated instance? Probably not.

by TChris

A criminal justice system that desparately needs reform will be under the microscope Tuesday as experts converge in Detroit to discuss "responses to urban violence, including the roles of law enforcement and community involvement, education, the economy and the politics of justice reform." Panels will mix liberals and conservatives "to explore ways to fix a U.S. justice system that relies on imprisoning more and more people."