From the new issue of New York Magazine's intelligencer column--Condi's slip:

A pressing issue of dinner-party etiquette is vexing Washington, according to a story now making the D.C. rounds: How should you react when your guest, in this case national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice, makes a poignant faux pas? At a recent dinner party hosted by New York Times D.C. bureau chief Philip Taubman and his wife, Times reporter Felicity Barringer, and attended by Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Maureen Dowd, Steven Weisman, and Elisabeth Bumiller, Rice was reportedly overheard saying, “As I was telling my husb—” and then stopping herself abruptly, before saying, “As I was telling President Bush.” Jaws dropped, but a guest says the slip by the unmarried politician, who spends weekends with the president and his wife, seemed more psychologically telling than incriminating. Nobody thinks Bush and Rice are actually an item. A National Security Council spokesman laughed and said, “No comment.”

[link via Wonkette, of course]

Update : Via Atrios, we just can't resist:

Following last week's article in the Charlotte Observer that prominently featured TalkLeft, this weekend's Washington Post reports on the increased number of political candidates who are placing ads on weblogs.

Premium and Regular blogads on TalkLeft are available and a terrific way to cost-effectively reach thousands of politically savvy readers.

Two years ago, in Ring v. Arizona, the Supreme Court said juries, not judges, must decide the factual basis for imposition of the death penalty. Today, the Supreme Court hears a case in which the question is whether that decision should be retroactive. Scotus Blog profiles the case here. We last wrote about the case here. Today's AP article is here.

Update: Here is a news article on today's oral argument.

Update: Dalia Lathwick of Slate, here on the case which she writes is about "the lusty lawyer, the hangman and the pot-smoking judge--she envisions Uma Thurman and Ben Affleck in the movie.

Last week we wrote about KDrink, a new Peruvian beverage which provides a buzz from the coca leaf:

In need of a little pick-me-up? Head on down to Peru and hit the grocery stores, where you'll find a new kind of iced tea drink--KDrink--with a formula made from coca leaves, the prime ingredient in cocaine.... Silvia Dongo, a pharmaceutical chemist who helped develop Kdrink, says the beverage provides energy from its 15 vitamins and minerals, 12 amino acids and 14 to 16 alkaloids that are found naturally in coca leaves. "Drinking coca beverages is a way to seek a natural and healthy stimulation," she says.

We said, "Sounds no different than Red Bull to us, but somehow, we think Drug Czar John Walters and AG Ashcroft will find a way to keep it from coming to America. "

Today we received an e-mail from Royal Food and Drink Co. in Peru, owner and maker of KDrink, with a request we publish it. We're happy to oblige.

A new study from the University of Michigan, to be presented Friday at a defense lawyer conference in Austin, TX, has examined 328 cases of wrongful conviction, and concluded that there are thousands falsely imprisoned today in America's jails:

A comprehensive study of 328 criminal cases over the past 15 years in which the convicted person was exonerated suggests that there are thousands of innocent people in prison today. Almost all the exonerations were in murder and rape cases, and that implies, according to the study, that many innocent people have been convicted of less serious crimes. But the study says they benefited from neither the scrutiny that murder cases receive nor from the DNA evidence that can categorically establish the innocence of people convicted of rape.

Here are the numbers:

The Los Angeles Times reports that Bush is losing ground with voters of rural areas:

....cracks have surfaced in President Bush's once-solid rural constituency. From places like Sherman County to Montcalm County, Mich., and Mahoning County, Ohio, some Republicans are so concerned about crop prices and high unemployment that they're considering voting Democratic for the first time.

Spain's new Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, has announced the withdrawal of Spanish troops from Iraq--as soon as possible:

A day after he was sworn in, Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said he did not believe the United Nations would assume responsibility for Iraq after the U.S.-led occupation formally ends June 30 -- his criterion for allowing the troops to stay. "More than anything, this decision reflects my desire to keep the promise I made to the Spanish people more than a year ago," said Zapatero, whose Socialist party came to power after general elections on March 14. "Driven by the deepest democratic convictions, the government does not want to, cannot and will not act against or behind the backs of the will of the Spanish people."

9/11 Commission member and former Department of Justice official Jamie Gorelick repudiates John Ashcroft's testimony of last week in today's Washington Post:

At last week's hearing, Attorney General John Ashcroft, facing criticism, asserted that "the single greatest structural cause for September 11 was the wall that segregated criminal investigators and intelligence agents" and that I built that wall through a March 1995 memo. This is simply not true.

First, I did not invent the "wall," which is not a wall but a set of procedures implementing a 1978 statute (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA) and federal court decisions interpreting it. In a nutshell, that law, as the courts read it, said intelligence investigators could conduct electronic surveillance in the United States against foreign targets under a more lenient standard than is required in ordinary criminal cases, but only if the "primary purpose" of the surveillance were foreign intelligence rather than a criminal prosecution.

Has anyone noticed Billmon at Whiskey Bar has a "closed" sign up? We hope it's temporary.

Geoff Nunberg will be mentioning a bunch of blogs on his NPR Fresh Air program Monday. Congrats to Skippy for being included.

Happy blogiversary to Atrios and James Capozzola -- Eschaton and Rittenhouse Review turned two years old this week.

Wonkette makes the New York Times:

With her gossipy, raunchy, potty-mouthed blog, Ms. Cox, a 31-year-old self-described failed journalist, has grabbed the attention of staid Washington, where gossip columns usually amount to little more than records of Capitol Hill staff changes and James Carville sightings. As she puts it, her mission for her blog (www.wonkette.com) is to write "a blend of gossip and satire and things I make up." It supports no party line, mixing gossip items from newspapers and Web sites with tips e-mailed from readers, which could be anything from guesses about which members of the Bush administration are gay to blind items on Washington luminaries. "

Josh Marshall receives a heartfelt e-mail from the employer of the four kidnapped Italian bodyguards in Iraq, with special praise for Fabrizio who was killed.

The number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq in April now stands at 99.

Ten U.S. troops were killed on Saturday in combat across Iraq - including five U.S. Marines killed in pitched battles near the Syrian border - and an eleventh soldier died in a tank rollover, the military said. The deaths brought to 99 the number of U.S. troops killed in violence since April 1.

Steve Gilliard says we're losing to the guerillas. Is he right?

Make no mistake, none. This has been a month of defeats for the US. We had to stop outside Fallujah, stop outside Najaf and now face a blockade of Baghdad. We are actively losing this war and that will be clear as time goes on.

Did Illinois let this man freeze to death in prison?

A McHenry County man who in December died of hypothermia in a Downstate prison wore only a hospital gown in his bare cell, while staffers wore winter coats, hats and gloves and drank hot beverages to keep warm, according to a wrongful-death lawsuit. The suit, filed by the father and brother of Charles Platcher, seeks more than $1 million from the state Department of Corrections and its health-care contractor, Health Professionals Ltd. of Peoria. It alleges abuse of Platcher, including that a sock was stuffed in his mouth and that he was pushed down metal stairs.

Platcher, 31, was serving a 40-year sentence in Menard Correctional Center for stabbing his mother to death in 2001. After being found unresponsive Dec. 25, he was taken to Memorial Hospital in nearby Chester, where he was pronounced dead. A coroner's inquest ruled March 30 that Platcher died of hypothermia. "He was allowed to freeze to death in their care," said John Julian, the Platchers' lawyer. "At the very least, their conduct was negligent and fell below the standard of care one would expect to be provided to inmates."

The 9/11 Commission studied the use of wiretaps since the Sept. 11 attacks:

The number of secret surveillance warrants sought by the FBI has increased 85 percent in the past three years, a pace that has outstripped the Justice Department's ability to process them quickly. Even after warrants are approved, the FBI often doesn't have enough agents or other personnel with the expertise to conduct the surveillance. And the agency still is trying to build a cadre of translators who can understand conversations intercepted in such languages as Arabic, Pashto and Farsi.

....The warrants, authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, allow for wiretaps, video surveillance, property searches and other spying on people thought to be terrorists or spies. After the 2001 Patriot Act and a key 2002 court decision crumbled the legal wall separating the FBI's criminal and intelligence investigations, use of FISA warrants has soared as sharing of information has become easier.

And now, Bush calls for renewal of the Patriot Act. We say no, pass the Safe Act instead.

[Ed. title edited to reflect the 85% figure reflects increase in wiretap requests rather than actual wiretaps]