Eric Alterman was on Dennis Miller's CNBC show yesterday. We didn't see it, but Eric has some choice words for Mr. Miller today. Walter at Idols of the Marketplace saw some of it and says:

Eric Alterman couldn't couldn't see the show but I caught about three minute of Miller's juvenile behavior before I had to turn the channel. I actually felt like getting in my car, driving to the studio and punching him out. What's the point of inviting an author on a show to discuss issues and then pretend as if you are bored to death with his every word? Miller's act is just a mask for a man who really has no idea what he is doing and doesn't possess brain enough to realize it.

Update: You can watch the segment here. Eric writes today that Miller called and apologized to him.

We've never heard Howard Stern's radio show, so we were surprised to read he's been a Bush supporter....until now:

Stern had essentially backed Bush on most issues (including the war in Iraq) and talked him up as a capable leader. Those days, however, are officially gone. He lately attacks the president as a "maniac" and an "arrogant bast*rd" while whipping up opposition to what he contends is a dangerous Christian-right shift in Washington. In short, Stern as of this month has become the anti-Rush Limbaugh. If the Republicans ever wondered what it might be like to have a left-leaning version of Limbaugh hacking them to bits, they're now finding out daily.

If you're wondering whether Stern's view could have an impact, the answer is maybe, yes:

Stern has an estimated 8.5 million weekly listeners to his morning program. These multitudes very much worship at the altar of Howard -- buying what he tells them to buy, calling whom he tells them to call, supporting what he tells them to support and (yes) voting how he tells them to vote.

....Michael Harrison, founder and publisher of Talkers magazine -- a monthly that covers the radio news / talk industry -- believes that "in the case of a close election, a guy like Howard Stern could tip the scales. ... A generation of Americans has grown up listening to him and are now in their 30s and 40s," Harrison says. "The one thing they all have in common is they love Howard Stern. And they trust him. When he tells them to be critical of Bush, they listen and respond."

Maybe we'll tune him in after all, [link via Last One Speaks]

Opposition to the military's rules for trying enemy combatents and detainees is coming from an unusual source: Military lawyers. The Wall Street Journal reports (paid subscription required):

In November 2001, when President Bush authorized the first U.S. military tribunals since World War II, the process drew fire from human-rights groups and some legal experts. Now the critics have an unexpected set of allies: the detainees' five military lawyers, who have launched a surprisingly vigorous assault on the system that hired them.

The five JAGs -- as members of the Judge Advocate General's Corps, the military's legal arm, are known -- have attacked the tribunals as inherently unfair, contrary to international law and susceptible to political influence. In a brief they submitted to the Supreme Court, Cmdr. Swift wrote a section comparing the president with King George III and likening the treatment of tribunal defendants to the injustices that helped spark the American Revolution.

Here's how the tribunals will stack the deck against the detainees. Here are some concerns we all should have about Guantanamo.

[WSJ link via Patriot Watch and reader Cliff.]

Pakistani officials say they have cornered Ayman al-Zawabi, whom they describe as "al Qaida No. 2."

Pakistani troops believe they have surrounded al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri in an operation near the Afghan border, three senior Pakistani officials told The Associated Press on Thursday.

The officials, who spoke to AP on condition of anonymity, said intelligence indicated the Egyptian-born al-Zawahri has been cornered in an operation that began Tuesday in South Waziristan involving hundreds of troops and paramilitary rangers.

We have doubts he'd allow himself to be captured alive. Stay tuned.

It's a war that isn't ending. More explosions in Iraq. This just developing--two more hotels that house foreigners have been hit. With the one year anniversary of the Iraq invasion coming up, Al-Jazeera reports:

Explosions and shootings have racked Iraq in what appears to be an intensification of anti-occupation resistance ahead of the first anniversary of the US-led invasion.

Your help is needed.

Please Tell Congress To Identify Impaired Drivers, Not Marijuana Smokers. Urge Your Congressman To Reject H.R. 3907 And H.R. 3922

NORML needs your help convincing Congress to reject a pair of bills that would criminally punish marijuana smokers for "drugged driving" simply if inactive marijuana metabolites are detected in their bodily fluids - even if the individual is neither under the influence nor impaired to drive.

H.R. 3907, sponsored by Rep. Jon Porter (R-NV), demands that state legislatures amend their DUID (driving under the influence of drugs) to enact mandatory minimum penalties for anyone convicted of driving under the influence of illegal drugs. Under the proposal, states have until 2006 to pass and enforce DUID laws "approved by the Administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration," or lose portions of their federal highway funding.

H.R. 3922, sponsored by a bipartisan coalition of legislators including Reps. Robert Portman (R-OH), Sander Levin (D-MI), Steven LaTourette (R-OH), Mark Souder (R-IN) and Jim Ramstad (R-MN), seeks to impose so-called "model" DUID legislation upon all 50 states - demanding they enact statutes sanctioning anyone who operates a motor vehicle "while any detectable amount of a controlled substance is present in the person's body, as measured in the person's blood, urine, saliva, or other bodily substance."

These bills represent an all out federal assault on the marijuana smoking community. Because inactive marijuana metabolites (inert compounds indicative of past drug use) remain detectable in the blood, and particularly urine, for days and sometimes weeks after past use, this legislation seeks to define sober drivers as if they were intoxicated. Someone who smokes marijuana is impaired as a driver at most for a few hours; certainly not for days or weeks. To treat all marijuana smokers as if they are impaired, even when the drug's effects have long worn off, is illogical and unfair.

The media is making a big deal out of a letter Martha Stewart's lawyers have sent to her friends asking them to write a supportive letter to the Judge in hopes of getting a lesser sentence.

First, letters of reference are routine. The decision of the Judge and recommendation of the probation officer can be affected somewhat by their subjective impressions of the character of the individual. A well-written, detailed letter of reference that reflects positively upon the individual about to be sentenced can influence the final outcome of a sentencing hearing.

Second, and here's the rub-- because of the federal sentencing guidelines, letters have limited value. In an extraordinary case, they might contribute to a Judge's decision to depart below the guidelines, but usually, the most they can do is influence a a judge to sentence someone to the bottom of the guideline range, rather than the top. For example, if Martha's range is 10 to 16 months as expected, the letters could sway the judge to impose a sentence of 10 rather than 16 months--and to allow her to serve half of it on home arrest rather than all of it at a federal prison camp. That's likely the best scenario at this point.

In Martha's case, letters showing her to be a giving person who contributes her time and money to those less fortunate, and except for this single instance of misjudgment, a moral and honest person, could help her get the lowest sentence possible under the guidelines.

Supreme Court Justice Anton Scalia refused to recuse himself from hearing a case involving VP Cheney's energy task force records--despite his spending a weekend hunting with Cheney. The Sierra Club had petitioned for his recusal. Supreme Court rules direct that the judge whose recusal is being sought is the judge who rules on the motion.

In an unusual response, Scalia said he will recuse himself when "on the basis of established principles and practices, I have said or done something which requires this course." He said the hunting trip to Louisiana was planned before the energy case reached the court. Those "established principles and practices" do not require or even permit him to step aside in the Cheney case, Scalia wrote.

Newsday says Scalia is wrong.

Scalia should reconsider. The court should urge him to do so. And if not-so-gentle persuasion fails, his court colleagues should decide for him. Unchecked, Scalia's intransigence will undermine public trust in the court's impartiality. That's too high a price for the nation's court of last resort to pay for one man's stubborn bad judgment....The Supreme Court has traditionally left recusal decisions to the justices involved. But if Scalia doesn't see the light, the full court should shine it in his eyes.

Here are more newspaper editorials calling for Scalia to step down from the case.

The fight between Congress and our federal judges is heating up. Congress wants to further limit judicial discretion in sentencing by reigning in judges who grant downward departures from the federal sentencing guidelines. Many judges are furious. Here's what Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy had to say yesterday:

"I do think federal judges who depart downward are courageous," Kennedy told the House Appropriations Committee during a hearing on the court's budget. Judges should not have to "follow, blindly, these unjust guidelines," he said....The mandatory minimums enacted by the Congress are in my view unfair, unjust, unwise," Kennedy said.

Update your bookmarks.....Kevin Drum of the wildly popular Calpundit has moved to Washington Monthly.

by TChris

Susan Lindauer, charged last week with conspiring to spy for Iraq before the war, says that she was "only trying to help prevent a war in Iraq."

Susan Lindauer told The Associated Press she was being punished because she got involved in U.S. foreign policy. She said her intent was to persuade Iraq to allow weapons inspections before the war and to get it to cooperate with the war on terror.

Lindauer is accused of meeting with members of the Iraqi Intelligence Service and of trying to deliver a letter to her second cousin, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, outlining her access to members of Saddam Hussein's regime.

by TChris

Congress must believe that federal judges, left to their own devices, will seize every opportunity to impose lenient, compassionate sentences upon those convicted of federal crimes. First it hogtied sentencing discretion by forcing judges to follow rigid guidelines. Then, in response to those rare occasions on which judges departed down from a guideline sentence to avoid an unjustly harsh result, Congress enacted the Feeney Amendment, further restricting their ability to impose fair sentences and requiring them to tattle on themselves when they do.

Since Republican administrations have chosen federal judges in 15 out of the last 23 years, Congress must think all those liberal Republican-picked judges are just too compassionate. But no judge of any political persuasion likes to have Congress meddling in judicial business. Judges inhabit a separate and equal branch of government, after all, and they know it. And they're mad.

"Feeney makes judges go from being 'the pinnacle' of the plea-bargaining process to being merely 'a nuisance,'" complains U.S. District Judge William Young, the chief federal trial judge in Massachusetts. He sees the amendment as further proof that Congress wants to vitiate the judiciary's role in sentencing while maintaining the aura of judicial independence and power. "Congress doesn't want to get rid of [the] symbolism [of judge-inspired sentences] because that conveys to our people that there has been judgment, that there has been reflection," Young adds.

Chief Justice Rehnquist isn't one of the liberal judges that Congress imagines to be running amuck in the judiciary, but he let Congress know that he doesn't like being ignored. Congress didn't bother to ask the judges what they thought of the Feeney Amendment before enacting it. Not a bright idea, Congress. Guess who gets to decide if your law is constitutional?