The New York Daily News reports Fox News Anchor Bill O'Reilly is thinking of challenging Hillary Clinton for the U.S. Senate. [link via Say Anything.]

There must have been some good news for John Kerry today. The Bush administration has come out with another pre-election terror warning.

Terrorists still hope to disrupt the U.S. democratic process even though the presidential nominating conventions and other high-profile gatherings this summer went off without incident, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said Tuesday. Threat reporting over the last several months has been "consistent, general and credible" and indicated the al-Qaida network is trying to push ahead with its plans, Ridge said.

Is anyone even listening any more? As to good news for Kerry, Daily Kos has some:

This is a sad day. The number of military persons killed in Iraq topped 1,000. That's 1,000 families who will never see their loved ones again, 1,000 lives cut mercilessly short for an unnecessary, ill-conceived war.

And two female Italian aid workers were kidnapped in Baghdad when 20 armed men stormed the aid office.

Say hello to Derelection, 2004 campaign coverage by the superb Cursor.

Also say hello to AltWeeklies, providing news reporting from more than 100 alternative weekly papers.

There's simply no excuse any more for being uninformed.

Now it's not just Michael Moore alleging a White House cover-up of Saudi links to September 11:

Former Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob Graham accused the White House on Tuesday of covering up evidence that might have linked Saudi Arabia to the Sept. 11 hijackers. Graham's charges, made in a new book and at a news conference arranged by the John Kerry campaign, were rejected by Republicans as "bizarre conspiracy theories." The Saudis said Graham's claims were unsubstantiated and reckless.

Kerry has called for an independent investigation into the charges made by Graham, his former rival for the Democratic nomination.....Graham's statements support Kerry's claims that Bush is too close to the Saudi royal family and unwilling to pressure it to crack down on the financing of terrorists.

What about the 9/11 Commission report finding no evidence to support the claim that the Saudi Government financed al Qaida?

Graham said the commission "has given us its conclusions without giving us the facts upon which those conclusions were established."

The Cincinnati Enquirer reports:

The University of Cincinnati's Center for Law and Justice is being awarded a $1 million endowment from local benefactors Lois and Richard Rosenthal. The gift will be announced today at the start of Innocence Week. Other events include a speech by attorney Barry Scheck, a member of the O.J. Simpson defense team, and the local opening of the play The Exonerated.

The Center for Law and Justice, to be renamed the Lois and Richard Rosenthal Institute for Justice today, was founded at the University of Cincinnati in 2002. The institute approaches many social-welfare projects in the city but is best known for the Ohio Innocence Project started in 2003, which seeks to exonerate wrongly imprisoned inmates by using new information and new technologies such as DNA identification.

"The Innocence Project is truly a passion we have," said Lois Rosenthal. "When you are of (financial) means, you can hire careful representation. But when you are poor or not knowledgeable about the law, you are not represented as well."

At the performance of the Exonerated today, talk-show host and former Cincinnati mayor Jerry Springer will read one of the roles.

Here's an issue we should be talking about more than George Bush's cocaine use--Bush and Kerry's different stances on the death penalty.

Should Sen. John F. Kerry be elected in November, the United States would have as president its strongest opponent of the death penalty in at least the last half-century, capital punishment opponents believe. Kerry would be "the most anti-death penalty president elected in the modern era," according to David Elliot of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

...As governor of Texas, Bush signed off on 152 executions. As president, he has maintained his support for the death penalty. Three men have been executed under federal law while he has been in office, the first federal executions since 1963.

....Kerry has said he opposes capital punishment except in cases involving terrorism. While he may have voted in favor of some omnibus crime bills that included expansions of capital punishment, on stand-alone legislation Kerry has opposed the death penalty in a variety of ways.

The Washington Post takes Ashcroft and the Justice Department to task for it's abysmal handling of the Detroit terror case that ended with DOJ asking the Judge to overturn the convictions. The editorial provides a succinct description of the case and its failures, and then asks,

.... how did errors so fundamental go undiscovered for so long in such a high-profile case? Why were the department's counterterrorism officials not more closely supervising the work of prosecutors in the field? Why were red flags not raised when officials of different agencies -- as the department now reports -- became concerned that Mr. Convertino was interested only in analysis that supported his case? Mr. Ashcroft needs to answer these questions and make sure that future terrorism cases are not plagued by such dangerous errors again.

Law Prof Eric Muller of Is that Legal? picks up on an important glitch in the FBI's computer files, one we mentioned too briefly last March. Eric provides some crucial follow-up and this issue needs to get more attention.

First, the problem as Eric describes it:

...the FBI's computer system has a drive onto which agents dump their raw reports, and from which supervisors upload and review them, and quite possibly edit them, before saving them as the official reports on a different drive. The "official" reports are made available, as required by law, to defendants, but the raw reports on the so-called "I" drive have never been. Indeed, the very existence of the "I" drive has been hidden until very recently.

Now the effect:

...this computer infrastructure is a flagrant violation of the Jencks Act, 18 U.S.C. sec. 3500, which requires that the government turn over to defendants all "recorded statements" of witnesses who testify at trial. Specifically, it requires disclosure of any "stenographic, mechanical, electrical, or other recording, or a transcription thereof, which is a substantially verbatim recital of an oral statement made by" a government trial witness and "recorded contemporaneously with the making of such oral statement."

Eric asks,

Why have we not heard more about this large-scale statutory (and, as to material exculpatory evidence, possibly also constitutional) violation by the FBI?

Maybe now we will.

President Bush's alleged cocaine use was an issue in the 2000 election. It fizzled. He refused to either admit or deny using the drug. Now, bloggers are writing about it because of Kitty Kelly's new book, The Bush Family. Kelly is a tabloid-type biographer who previously has targeted the Reagans, Princess Diana and others. In her book, Kelly claims Bush used cocaine at Camp David when his father was President and in the mid- 60's. Her source is Bush former sister-in-law Sharon Bush.

Personally, I could care less what drugs Bush did in college. College is a time of experimentation, of youthful indiscretions. I mostly share the views of Drug War Rant on the issue.

There is another issue though, and that is, did Bush use cocaine later in life? What does Kelly say about Bush's 40th birthday party at the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs? Was he coke-fueled then, dancing on the bar as rumors at the time suggested? It was after this party that he gave up alcohol for good--even though, he says, he wasn't an alcoholic. Did he also give up cocaine then....at the age of 40?

Why is this an issue?

After the release of the 9/11 report, President Bush created a civil liberties commission. Good news? Not exactly. It appears Bush has pulled a bait and switch. Richard Ben-Venistem a member of the Commission and Lance Cole, a law professor and consultant to the 9/11 commission, write in the New York Times:

Since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the government has acquired powerful new legal tools, including those provided by the Patriot Act, to collect intelligence on Americans. Government agencies are using "data mining" and other techniques to identify potential terrorists and cut off sources of terrorist financing. As the commission's report noted, the shift of power and authority to government must be tempered by an enhanced system of checks and balances to protect the personal liberties that define our way of life.

One of the ways the commission sought to balance these competing objectives was to recommend the creation of a board within the executive branch to protect civil liberties and privacy rights. Unfortunately, the board created by the president has neither the right makeup nor the right powers to accomplish this objective.

Bush's board is fundamentally defective, beginning with its composition.

A table is set up at New York Presbyterian/Columbia Hospital with four microphones. The surgeons who performed bypass surgery on President Clinton are expected momentarily for a press conference on his condition.

Press Conference:

The President of the Hospital Dr. Herbert Pardes is moderating. Also present: Dr. Robert Kelly, hospital chief operating officer; Dr. Allen Schwartz, Chief of Cardiology; Dr. Craig Smith, chief of surgery at the hospital and lead surgeon.

First a statement from Hillary and Clesea is read. Summary: Chelsea and I thank G-d and the the incredible medical team for taking such good care of my husband. We stayed up late last night talking, playing games and just being with each other. The last few days have been an emotional roller coaster. Open heart surgery is a serious procedure. That's why we are so grateful to the hospital and to the thousands of people who have sent us messages of support. We have welcomed your prayers. We are thankful for good news. His faith and optimism will carry him through.

Dr. Schwartz, begins with President Clinton's medical history. Had episode of constriction that lasted 15 minutes. No damage to heart. Because of extensive blockage, they decided to operate. They waited several days due to blood thinning medication he had been taking. They thought it was safest to wait to cut down bleeding.