Months ago, we all rejoiced that TIA (Total Information Awareness) was dead. We may have been premature in our celebration. The AP reports that research for many of Poindexter's programs continues to be funded under slightly altered names--a "shell game" if you will.

The government is still financing research to create powerful tools that could mine millions of public and private records for information about terrorists despite an uproar last year over fears it might ensnare innocent Americans.

Congress eliminated a Pentagon office developing the terrorist tracking technology because of the outcry over privacy implications. But some of those projects from retired Adm. John Poindexter's Total Information Awareness effort were transferred to U.S. intelligence offices, congressional, federal and research officials told The Associated Press.

In addition, Congress left undisturbed a separate but similar $64 million research program run by a little-known office called the Advanced Research and Development Activity (ARDA) that has used some of the same researchers as Poindexter's program.

"The whole congressional action looks like a shell game," said Steve Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, which tracks work by U.S. intelligence agencies. "There may be enough of a difference for them to claim TIA was terminated while for all practical purposes the identical work is continuing."

David Neiwert, writing over at American Street answers the question, "What do the Ten Commandments, gay marriage and Janet Jackson all have in common?"

All three are symbols, for the religious right, of "everything that is wrong with America." The fact that a judge was prevented from having the Ten Commandments placed in an Alabama courthouse; that a Massachusetts court legalized gay marriage, followed by the civil-disobedience action by San Francisco authorities in similarly recognizing such unions; and that Jackson was able to "shock" Super Bowl audiences long ago jaded by half-naked cheerleaders and beer commercials by briefly baring her breast -- all these, according to the folks who want to remake America as a "Christian nation," are clear signs that the nation's moral depravity has gone too far.

And as a troika, they are playing a central role in the campaign by this same faction of the right to radically recast the nation's political landscape, primarily by attacking the power of the courts to shape public policy. They are the noisy cover, as it were, for a stealth attack on the judiciary.

This is great writing, read the whole thing.

The Guardian reports that Mick Jagger was convinced he was framed in a 1969 drug raid, according to newly released reports.

The controversy around the May 1969 police raid, led by the head of the Chelsea drug squad, the curiously named Detective Sergeant Robin Constable, on Jagger's Cheyne Walk home was to prove typical of its time. Only a few years later senior detectives of Scotland Yard's drug squad under Detective Sergeant "Nobby" Pilcher found themselves on trial at the Old Bailey for just such corrupt practices.

The DPP file released this month at the National Archives shows that Jagger's allegations were taken more seriously than most because his came with the backing of a future Conservative attorney general, Michael Havers, and the Labour MP, Tom Driberg. But a full internal Scotland Yard inquiry was only launched after the Australian police reported that Jagger's partner, the actress Marianne Faithfull, had told them she "hated coppers" because the couple had been framed on trumped-up charges by the London police. Faithfull had been admitted to a Sydney hospital for a drug overdose while she had been in Australia with Jagger where she was supposed to co-star with him in Tony Richardson's film, Ned Kelly.

It's an ugly scenario, and Jagger's version rings true to us:

Daily Kos endorses John Edwards for President.

It's Comedy Monday over at Hamster.

Thinking of seeing Mel Gibson's film, Passion of Christ? Get the low-down from Dave Neiwert at Orcinus.

Jesse and Ezra over at Pandagon are not impressed with the start-up of the Bush re-election campaign.

Join the movement and send flowers to a random same-sex couple getting married at city hall in San Francisco.

Atrios says be sure to buy girl scout cookies--they are being boycotted for their support of Planned Parenthood. We like the thin mints the best.

Skippy's gone all awol all the time.

Demagogue makes the case that Bush's recess appointment of William Pryor to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals is unconsitutional.

Don't forget to bookmark The Dreyfuss Report, Tom Paine's new blog on Iraq and national security issues.

Oliver Willis has an original take on Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Rock.

SKBubba has the last word on Nader's run:

Bush's popularity has faded with Illinois voters:

Illinois voters have grown so disenchanted with President Bush that he would lose the state to either of the top two contenders for the Democratic nomination if elections were held today, a Tribune/WGN-TV poll shows.

According to the poll, both Kerry and Edwards would beat Bush in Illinois.

We've been receiving e-mails from people we don't know in opposition to Ralph Nader's decision to run for President. Here are some of them:

• I can only assume that Nader's decision to run for President again is based either on a tremendously over-inflated ego or he is a puppet of the Republicans who welcome him into the race in the hope that Bush will win again. There is no logical reason for Nader to run - his protestations about the "liberal inteligentsia" being out to stop him is ridiculous. He has demonstrated - four years ago, and again now, that he is irrelevant except as a spoiler. There is not a single spark of hope of him winning anything except ridicule. No money, no funding, little chance of even getting on a state ballot make this attempt nothing short of idiotic.
  
• Why is Ralph Nader running? You could say ego. And you would be right. You could say bile and meanness. And you would be right. You could say "because he can" (like why a dog licks himself). And you would be right. But the most powerful reason, in my judgment, is that he wants Bush to win. That way the ultra-libs will be further energized, and keep sending him all those lovely checks. Ralph Nadar is only interested in Ralph Nadar. He is a wolf in wolf's clothing. I'd sooner vote for Osama Bin Laden; at least he isn't a hypocrite.

We liked these too:

• Nader, you're going to ruin it again. You screwed up last time and now we're living with George Bush. Get behind the Democratic candidate -- now - - before the damage is done! Thanks.
  
• Mr. Nader, please I do not want GW Bush re-elected. Please do not run in November.

We don't feel threatened by Nader's run this time. We don't think many people will vote for him, least of all the Democrats. We doubt the press will give much coverage to his campaign. We don't intend to give him much coverage here either. We think he's best ignored.

Update: Calpundit shares our view.

But can the rest of us make a pact to just ignore him? He's not even worth criticizing or mocking anymore, and we've all got more important things to do than giving him the attention he craves. Like unelecting our current president, for example. OK?

Maybe some creative blogger will come up with a graphic of Nader that says "Nader-Free Zone."

Georgetown Law Professor and civil liberties expert David Cole has an excellent op-ed on the detainees at Guantanamo in Sunday's Los Angeles Times (free subscription required). Here's a snippet:

The Supreme Court recently decided, over the government's objections, to take up legal challenges by the Guantanamo detainees and U.S. citizen Yaser Esam Hamdi. Only after that decision did the Pentagon announce that Hamdi would be allowed to talk to his lawyer, that the juveniles and several others at Guantanamo would be released and that the military would provide annual reviews for those still detained.

The Pentagon no doubt hopes that these initiatives will show that it can be trusted with wholly unchecked authority. But the fact that it made these overtures only when threatened with legal oversight underscores the necessity of the rule of law.

Guantanamo is, in short, the perfect symbol of what the administration has sought generally in the war on terrorism: the authority to act without the constraints of law. The nations of the world are concerned that we want that authority not only on an isolated leasehold in Cuba but in their backyards as well.

Monday the Judge in the Martha Stewart trial will hear more arguments and decide whether to throw out the securities fraud charge against her. From the questions put to the prosecution on Friday, this seems quite possible.

Cedarbaum on Friday repeatedly asked prosecutor Karen Patton Seymour what evidence supported the claim that Stewart sought to defraud investors in Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia when Stewart issued allegedly false public statements and releases protesting her innocence in June 2002.

by TChris

Accusations of corporate fraud will continue to be tested in lower Manhatten courtrooms after Martha Stewart's trial ends. Starting Monday: the trial of John Rigas, the founder and former CEO of Adelphia Communications, and his two sons on a variety of fraud charges, including allegations that Rigas "improperly used the company's money for his own purposes - buying Adelphia stock, building a $13 million golf course and shuttling family members back and forth from a safari vacation in Africa, among other expenses."

by TChris

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on the Bush administration's Department of Defense.

The Defense Department continues to pay millions for information from the former Iraqi opposition group that produced exaggerated intelligence that President Bush used to argue his case for war.

The Pentagon has set aside between $3 million and $4 million this year for the Information Collection Program of the Iraqi National Congress, led by Ahmed Chalabi, said two senior U.S. officials and a U.S. Defense Department official.

The Defense Department official who anonymously revealed the spending said that it would be "too negative" to call all of the purchased intelligence useless, and contended that it is worth sifting through the rubbish to find an occasional "golden nugget." Still, it seems odd that our government arrests its own citizens every day for providing false information to the government, while it pays known liars in Iraq in the hope that they might occasionally tell the truth.

A "senior administration official" argued that, absent intelligence alternatives, we had little choice before the war but to ignore the self-interest of the Iraqi National Congress. The same official thinks the "evidence now suggests that ... we may have been duped by people who wanted to encourage military action for their own reasons.” The official questioned whether the United States should continue funding the program. Sounds like a good question to ask. Maybe he should ask his boss.

We are headed back to Denver and very grateful to TChris for all his great posts this weekend. We'll be back after the finale of Sex and the City tonight. (Our prediction: Carrie will come back to the U.S. with Big but refuse to marry him.) In other news, Terry Nichols' retrial in Oklahoma is set to begin March 1. It is in McAlester, Oklahoma--home of Oklahoma's death row, munitions factory and prison system. That speaks volumes about the potential jury pool.

Nichols' has offered to plead guilty and take a life sentence, but that's not good enough for those who want him dead. A recent poll of Oklahomans shows that most of them do not want this trial.

A recent Tulsa World poll found that 70 percent of Oklahomans feel the expense of a state trial is unnecessary since Nichols is already serving a life sentence. An earlier poll, for The Oklahoman, found a majority of state residents would prefer a plea bargain to a trial.

Not even the families of the victims are in accord on the issue:

Jim Denny makes an unlikely advocate for Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols. His two children still suffer from injuries received when the explosion ripped through the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.
For his role in the terrorist attack, Mr. Nichols was sentenced to life in prison without parole. But on March 1, he will face a new trial on state murder charges - and nearly nine years after the bombing, many Oklahomans say enough is enough.

"The federal government did a great job trying both McVeigh and Nichols," says Mr. Denny from his home in Oklahoma City. "But this state trial is the biggest waste of money and waste of time. There comes a time when we have to let go." Denny is not alone. In a recent poll sponsored by the Tulsa World, 70 percent of those surveyed opposed a state trial, which has already cost taxpayers $4 million. The resistance isn't just about money, say mental-health experts; it's about progress, and a sign that Oklahoma is healing.

We will be following this trial closely when it begins.

by TChris

In a triumph of ego over the collective good, Ralph Nader announced on Meet the Press that he will run for President. Also on Meet the Press, Arnold Schwarzenegger complained that, as a foreign-born citizen, he can't be elected President.