Stirling Newberry, posting at Daily Kos, tells us what to remember about Ahmed Chalabi:

Bush Sr. Created the INC
Clinton fired the INC in 1996 after a failed coup attempt and bad information.
The Republican Congress brought them back.
The civilian leadership of DoD - Wolfowitz, Perle and Rumsfeld - made Chalabi the key player.
The INC had no presence in Iran until after Bush took office, and only had a relationship with Iran of any consequence after Hakim's assassination.
Chalabi and Dawa formed an alliance, causing Chalabi to shift towards Islamicism.
The attempt to cashier Chalabi is clearly attached to either building his prestige, or to distance Bush from him - either way, he needs to be pinned on Clinton.
The PNACers cannot distance themselves from him - he is the key figure in the creation of their Iraq.
Chalabi associates have a track record of getting big contracts from the Iraq war, and a track record of overpromising and under delivering.
Chalabi is a convicted felon, and no amount of seething charm will change this. Switzerland doesn't go after people at Saddam's request - so long as the money is clean when they get it, they will do business with almost anyone.

The latest scandal to hit the Bush Administration following Abu Ghraib is that of the fall of Ahmed Chalabi. Josh Marshall of TalkingPoints Memo is covering it, his latest is here and here.

Alexander Cockburn has an in-depth, insightful review at Counterpunch.

Why the US Turned Against Their Former Golden Boy -- He was Preparing a Coup! What He Did as a Catspaw for Tehran: How He Nearly Bankrupted Jordan; the Billions He Stands to Make Out of the New Iraq.

The story becomes more important following the Bush Administration's decision to raid Chalabi's home and seize his files and amidst reports that Chalabi was giving American military secrets to Iran. As to the connection between Rumsfeld and Chalabi, go here.

TChris has been following Chalabi as well, here, here and here.

Kevin Drum at Political Animal forecast Chalabi's demise in April.

This story has legs, keep an eye on it.

Michael Moore's new anti-Bush film, Fahrenheit 911, has won the coveted Cannes Film Festival Palme D'Or award:

Michael Moore's controversial polemic Farenheit 9/11 became the first documentary for nearly 50 years to win the Palme d'Or at the Cannes film festival last night. The film, which contains scathing attacks on the business dealings of President George Bush as well as the first footage of American soldiers torturing prisoners in Iraq, beat off competition from more famous directors, including Wong Kar-Wai, Emir Kusturica and the Coen brothers to scoop top prize. Moore, who was given a standing ovation by the Cannes crowd, told them: 'I'm completely overwhelmed by this. Merci.'

More here. The official Cannes festival website news of the award is here.

by TChris

The NY Times argues that proposed changes in the Model Code of Judicial Conduct would make it easier for judges to follow the lead of Justice Scalia by declining to remove themselves from cases in which they would appear to have a bias, so long as they pronounce themselves to be fair.

The bar panel's newly unveiled proposals for revamping the Model Code of Judicial Conduct would actually weaken the core provision that requires judges to avoid not just actual impropriety in all their activities, but also the appearance of impropriety. Although the new version retains the appearance standard, it waters it down by saying that violations will not "ordinarily" lead to professional discipline unless there are charges of other rule violations. Intentionally or not, as Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont aptly noted last week in a letter to the bar association's president, Dennis Archer, that transforms a crucial ethical mandate into "an ancillary add-on" and significantly diminishes its moral force and deterrence value.

The proposed revisions give judges some other breaks. They would weaken the requirement that judges refrain from deciding cases in which they have an economic interest, often through ownership of stock in one of the corporate parties to a suit.

Even more baffling, the commission has deleted the current instruction to judges to resolve any ambiguity in the Code of Conduct in a way that advances public trust in the judiciary's "integrity, independence and impartiality." Practically and symbolically, that deletion is a real mistake.

by TChris

What do you think about when you're stuck in traffic?

A third of German motorists fantasize about sex when stuck in traffic while only 10 percent think of finding an alternate route, according to a motor club survey published Thursday.

Common (more than 5 percent) but less stimulating thoughts: how much fuel is left, what am I going to eat next, my job sucks, and I've really gotta go to the bathroom.

by TChris

Law students at Berkeley aren't happy that a law professor helped the Bush administration find a loophole in treaties and conventions that prohibit the abuse of prisoners.

A legal memo written by law professor John Yoo "contributed directly to the reprehensible violation of human rights in Iraq and elsewhere," according to a petition being circulated among students and faculty at Berkeley's Boalt School of Law.

Yoo drafted the memo during his service as deputy assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel.

The Jan. 9, 2002, memo co-written by Yoo ... argued that the normal laws of armed conflict didn't apply to al-Qaida and Taliban militia prisoners because they didn't belong to a state.

The student petition says that Yoo should resign if he doesn't repudiate the memo, declare his opposition to torture, and encourage the Bush administration to comply with the Geneva Conventions. Boalt's interim dean, Robert C. Berring Jr., says that Yoo's work as a lawyer outside of the school won't affect his academic position, contends that faculty members are entitled to take extreme positions, and notes that Yoo isn't the only conservative on a diverse faculty.

Via Atrios, who just saw some of the runners go by his local Starbucks, check out the Run Against Bush movement --find one in your area and sign up.

Run Against Bush is a grassroots campaign dedicated to removing George W. Bush from office. Members all across the country are wearing t-shirts that proclaim "Run Against Bush" as they:
-Go for walks
-Go for jogs
-Run in road races
-Go for bike rides
-Volunteer for other political organizations
-Run their weekend errands

When you join, you get this t-shirt.

We're hoping to raise some money for them. You can join through our page here.

Renowned author and photographer Susan Sontag has an excellent article in the Sunday New York Times Magazine, "The Torture of Others." Some highlights:

The issue is not whether a majority or a minority of Americans performs such acts but whether the nature of the policies prosecuted by this administration and the hierarchies deployed to carry them out makes such acts likely.

....So, then, is the real issue not the photographs themselves but what the photographs reveal to have happened to ''suspects'' in American custody? No: the horror of what is shown in the photographs cannot be separated from the horror that the photographs were taken -- with the perpetrators posing, gloating, over their helpless captives. German soldiers in the Second World War took photographs of the atrocities they were committing in Poland and Russia, but snapshots in which the executioners placed themselves among their victims are exceedingly rare, as may be seen in a book just published, ''Photographing the Holocaust,'' by Janina Struk. If there is something comparable to what these pictures show it would be some of the photographs of black victims of lynching taken between the 1880's and 1930's, which show Americans grinning beneath the naked mutilated body of a black man or woman hanging behind them from a tree. The lynching photographs were souvenirs of a collective action whose participants felt perfectly justified in what they had done. So are the pictures from Abu Ghraib.

by TChris

Muslim head scarves have been in the news recently, as an Oklahoma school district settled a lawsuit attacking a dress code that prohibited Muslim students from wearing a hijab. The Constitution protects students from the government's interference with the free exercise of their religions, while federal legislation provides private employees with more limited protection against religious discrimination. Using that law, a Muslim employee of Walt Disney World sued Disney, alleging that she was fired because she wouldn't remove her head scarf at work.

Aicha Baha says she was fired after her religious faith compelled her to defy Disney's policy prohibiting employees from wearing anything other than their uniforms. The only head coverings Disney allows are Disney hats (and possibly mouse ears). Federal law requires employers to reasonably accommodate an employee's need to practice a religion. Baha says Disney offered to accommodate her religious needs by allowing her to wear the hijab in private, but not when she was in contact with the public.

Baha has good reason to believe that it would be reasonable for Disney to let her practice her religion on more than a part-time basis.

by TChris

As TalkLeft noted in March, Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia refused to return to Iraq after deciding that he couldn't further an immoral war. The price of that decision: conviction of desertion in a court martial, a year in prison, and a bad-conduct discharge at the end of his prison term.

Sergeant Mejia, 28, has said his experience in Iraq, seeing brutality, senseless deaths and commanders who he said put glory over good decisions, convinced him that the war was "oil driven" and immoral.

After Mejia refused to return to Iraq, he applied for conscientious objector status, but the military recognizes only an objection to war in general, not an objection to specific conflicts. Mejia wasn't allowed to use that application as a defense, nor was he allowed to testify about the mistreatment of detainees that he witnessed.

by TChris

NBC's Tim Russert and Time magazine's Matthew Cooper were subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury investigating the White House's disclosure to selected journalists that Joseph Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, is a CIA agent. (Background collected here.) Time and NBC will attempt to quash the subpoenaes to protect the confidentiality of their sources.

The request to interview reporters may suggest that the probe is nearing a conclusion, because Justice Department guidelines require that prosecutors exhaust all other avenues before calling reporters before a grand jury. Attorneys for several grand jury witnesses and news organizations said it is not clear whether [Special Prosecutor Patrick] Fitzgerald is moving toward seeking indictments in the case or whether he is preparing to complete it without bringing criminal charges.

A reporter's right to protect confidential sources is not absolute, and courts sometimes order disclosure as a last resort to advance a criminal investigation. Journalists sometimes disobey court orders to disclose sources, risking contempt sanctions. No word on whether a subpoena has been issued to Robert Novak, who was clearly the recipient of a leak about Plame's identity and was thus a key witness to the alleged crime.

The results from the Blogads Reader Survey are out. More than 17,000 readers responded. Some interesting numbers:

This survey shows that blog readers are older and more affluent than most optimistic guestimates: 61% of blog readers responding to the survey are over 30, and 75% make more than $45,000 a year. Moreover, blog readers are more cyber-active than I'd hoped: 54% of their news consumption is online. 21% are themselves bloggers and 46% describe themselves as opinion makers. And, in the last six months:

• 50% have spent more than $50 online on books.
• 47% have spent more than $500 online for plane tickets.
• 50% have contributed more than $50 to a cause or candidate, and 5% have contributed more than $1000. (Only 25% of NYTimes.com readers have contributed anything online in the last year.)

Blog readers are media-mavens: 21% subscribe to the New Yorker magazine, 15% to the Economist, 15% to Newsweek and 14% to the Atlantic Monthly. They are also far more male -- 79%! -- than I expected, versus 56% of NYTimes.com's readers.

Blogads.