Attorney General John Ashcroft's gallbladder removal surgery was a success. He'll be recuperating for several days in the hospital. Maybe he will have a laptop and internet connection. Let's send him some messages--not insults, remember, he's ill and it's bad karma to send ill will to anyone who's sick. We're thinking more about some constructive suggestions and well-mannered expressions of why his policies have been wrong for the Constitution and the American people. If we get some good ones, we'll print them and mail them to him inside a "get well" card.

Remember, what goes around comes around, so think twice before saying bad things about a person in ill health.

The American Prospect has a new article with details of Karl Rove's testimony to the FBI in the Valerie Plame investigation.

Rove also adamantly insisted to the FBI that he was not the administration official who leaked the information that Plame was a covert CIA operative to conservative columnist Robert Novak last July. Rather, Rove insisted, he had only circulated information about Plame after it had appeared in Novak's column. He also told the FBI, the same sources said, that circulating the information was a legitimate means to counter what he claimed was politically motivated criticism of the Bush administration by Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.

What do you think? Is he being truthful? If so, who was the leaker?

Check this out - a new poll shows 57% of Americans don't support Bush and want a president who will steer us in a different direction.

The Washington Times reports that a new poll shows terrorism is the single most important issue to American voters, and that is why Bush is going after Kerry's intelligence voting record. The Dreyfuss Report says:

A new Gallup poll reports that Americans rank terrorism as the most critical threat to the United States. Ninety-two percent of Republicans and 77 percent of Democrats said terrorism was the No. 1 danger facing America. The Washington Times quotes a Republican strategist (unnamed) saying that Bush will "make the case that Kerry is not the right man to lead the war on terror." And, in the same piece, Will Marshall, the DLC's thinktank man, says it will be the "dominant issue in the presidential campaign."

Thus, Bush's wild-swinging attack on Kerry for having had the temerity to suggest (a decade ago!) that the bloated U.S. intelligence budget might need some trimming. (Since then, instead, the budget for U.S. intelligence has skyrocketed, up 50 percent—a wasteful increase that Kerry now says he supported.) I repeat, again: the Democrats need to come up with a way of hitting Bush on terrorism, and not by demanding a bigger war on terrorism—which is what Hillary and Joe Lieberman want. Instead, they need to quietly educate Americans about how to put terrorism in perspective. Compared to the threats that can really hurt us—say, car crashes, tobacco, environmental pollution, AIDS—terrorism isn't that big a deal. Sure, it's scary, and sure, we need to pursue Al Qaeda and its allies. But a $500 billion Pentagon budget? A huge Department of Homeland Security? Patriot Act II?

The Guardian profiles Karl Rove today. His dirty tricks date back to 1970 when working for a campaign, he flooded Chicago's red light and soup kitchen district with invitations to a campaign event promising "free beer, free food, girls and a good time for nothing."

This sounds like him:

At high school in Utah, Rove was known as a nerd and a motor-mouth, unpopular but irrepressibly opinionated.

Somehow Rove got from there to here:

The nerdy political brawler with only a secondary school education is now the man the president likes to call his "boy genius" - a testament to Rove's role in orchestrating Bush's rise from a feckless, hard-drinking politician's brat to Texas governor to president in barely a decade. And unlike other electoral svengalis who have gone before him, Rove has carried his power intact from the campaign bus to the White House.

Where's he going?

The Republicans now control the presidency, the senate, and the house of representatives. Rove's task now is to consolidate that dominance of the White House and Capitol Hill and then use it to recast the Washington's third source of power, the supreme court, from its current cautious conservatism to a more red-blooded Republicanism.

But maybe the grand jury will get him first:

Last year, however, Rove's taste for personal politics entangled him in an extraordinary spy scandal. He is reported to have made calls to Washington journalists last July identifying a CIA undercover agent, Valerie Plame, who was married to Joseph Wilson, a former ambassador who had called into question the administration's claims about Iraq's alleged nuclear programme. Rove allegedly told the journalists that Plame was "fair game" because her husband had gone public with his criticism.

A grand jury is now investigating the leak of Plame's name, a federal felony. Rove has denied being its source, and Wilson believes now he may have tried to push the story only after her name had already been published. Rove has yet to appear before the grand jury, but he has retained an expensive Washington lawyer.

The kicker? Bush's pet name for rove is "Turd Blossom."

....a Texanism for a flower that blooms from cattle excrement.

Skippy writes about last week's Senate vote to prevent federal civilian agencies from outsourcing American jobs. It sounds good, until you read the fine print:

in a last-minute deal, the senators made exceptions for the defense and homeland security departments, as well as intelligence agencies and security programs at the energy department. the amendment also allows agency heads to make exceptions for some security-related purchases and for items or services only produced or available outside of the country.

whew! that was close! good thing we can still send the work of homeland security and defense of this country overseas for foreign nationals to do!

Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! interviewed exiled Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide by cell phone in the Central African Republic. The program says his comments represent the most extensive English-language interview Aristide has given since he was removed from office and his country. You can read the transcript here or listen to the 30 minute interview here.

It begins with Aristide saying:

Five British citizens being held at Guantanamo will be sent back within 24 hours. Officials in Britain say prosecutors will decide whether to release the men or charge them with a crime.

Legal experts believe it unlikely the five British citizens to be released will face trial at home because any information gleaned from the men during interrogation would be inadmissible since they had no access to lawyers. Lawyers also said it was questionable whether British courts have jurisdiction over alleged criminal acts in Afghanistan, unless acts of terrorism or treason could be proven.

Families and lawyers of the five prisoners have insisted throughout their two-year-long detention that the men are innocent and were mistakenly caught up in the U.S. war on terror.

The Guardian reports that the families are angry -- we don't blame them:

The father of a British terror suspect held in Guantanamo Bay yesterday denounced a leak from the Bush administration which alleged his son trained at an al-Qaida training camp. Azmat Begg, 65, was in the US capital as part of a campaign for justice for the four remaining Britons held without charge or access to a lawyer for up to two years.

The US leak, to the Daily Telegraph, alleges that the four remaining men trained in terrorist camps and learned skills such as bomb-making. But lawyers for the men yesterday described the claims as "rubbish" and "tendentious" and expressed fears that they might have invented confessions under the psychological pressure of two years' detention without charge or trial and in the mistaken belief they might face the death penalty.

Mr Begg, a former bank manager from Birmingham, said the leaked claims about his son were either American lies or "definitely" obtained under duress. He said Moazzam had been in Afghanistan as an aid worker, teaching and building wells for the poor, and since his detention by the US he had been "kept like an animal in a cell".

Mr Begg continued: "Mr President, I do not plead for mercy. My son has not been charged with any crime. He does not know what is alleged against him. Neither do I. He has been held captive for more than two years. "In all that time he has never been charged and tried. I do not ask for mercy. I ask for justice."

Joining the families at the Washington protest were actress Vanessa Redgrave and former hostage Terry Waite.

We're glad to see other organizations speaking out as well:

Overruling a 1980 decision, the Supreme Court today strengthened the right of an accused to confront his accuser. The decision was written by Justice Scalia. Our favorite quote from the opinion:

``Dispensing with confrontation because testimony is obviously reliable is akin to dispensing with jury trial because a defendant is obviously guilty,'' Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the court. ``This is not what the Sixth Amendment requires.''

While the facts of the underlying case were not of national importance, the impact of the decision will be.

The ramifications of today's ruling may not become clear immediately, but they could affect a number of previous convictions across the country. The testimony of a witness who cannot be cross-examined during trial may still be allowed, but only if the defense has had a chance to cross-examine him or her at an earlier stage in the case.

The case is Crawford v. Washington, No. 02-9410 and you can read the full opinion here (pdf). The ACLU and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers ( NACDL) submitted amicus briefs in the case.

Update: The New York Times report on the decision is here. Scotus Blog has a detailed analysis as well.

A new USA Today/Gallup/CNN poll has Kerry ahead of Bush and Democratic voters preferring Edwards for Kerry's VP slot.

Edwards, the North Carolina senator who dropped out of the presidential race last week, was the choice of 30 percent of voters who are Democrats or lean Democratic, according to a CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll.

Nader comes in stronger than we would have thought--at 5%--taking votes away from Kerry:

In a matchup of the presidential candidates, Kerry and President Bush were about even, Kerry at 47 percent and Bush at 45 percent with independent candidate Ralph Nader at 5 percent among registered voters. Kerry was slightly ahead 50-45 percent when only he and Bush were included in the question.

We want a Kerry-Edwards ticket. It will be unbeatable. We hope Kerry sees the light.

Update: Political Wire reports the electoral map favors Kerry as well. And Daily Kos has the 2004 Veep Cattle Call.

We had such high hopes for the Innocence Protection Act. We didn't get it. We got a bill that will spend up to $800 million on DNA crime fighting -- mostly for testing old rape kits trying to solve uncharged crimes and updating computer resources.

Where's the money for DNA testing for inmates with claims of innocence?

One source of controversy in the administration's DNA spending is the omission of significant funding aimed at exonerating the innocent or preventing wrongful convictions. Such measures are key elements of a DNA bill stalled in the Senate since last fall.

Barry Scheck, a New York City lawyer who specializes in exonerating convicts through DNA evidence, said the administration's decision to bypass provisions that could free the innocent was "truly unfortunate." The Innocence Project, which Scheck co-founded, has used DNA tests to exonerate 142 convicts.

Actor-writer Spalding Gray disappeared on January 10. His body was found this weekend floating in New York's East River. Suicide is suspected, as Mr. Spalding was plagued by depression and tried to jump off a bridge in 2002. May he now find the peace that eluded him the last several years.