Several newspapers have called for Justice Scalia to step down from the case pending in the Supreme Court involving Vice President Cheney:

The Houston Chronicle says Scalia's impartiality is highly questionable.

The San Antonio Express News says hunters Scalia and Cheney are still in a blind.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer says Scalia should recuse himself.

The Sierra Club may make a formal recusal request of Scalia.

Writer Peggy Hirsch explores the issue for TomPaine.com in Duckgate.

As for Scalia, he's still defending his hunting trip with the Vice-President and saying there's no need for his recusal.

Remember CAPPS II? A new report is slamming the program.

CAPPS II would divide passengers into three categories: green, screened normally at the gate; yellow, given extra screening; and red. TSA officials say passengers given a red rating will be forbidden to fly and will be questioned at the airport by law enforcement officials.

...CAPPS II is supposed to compare personal data about passengers collected by airlines -- name, address, date of birth and telephone number -- with commercial databases held by marketing companies and others.

Mathematical formulas called algorithms would be used to combine and cross check all kinds of information about every passenger -- how long they have lived at their address, for example -- but also intelligence held by U.S. agencies about individuals and groups. The program then comes up with a threat score -- a bit like a credit rating -- for each traveler.

The program has been blasted by civil libertarians:

Critics contended that it would violate travelers' privacy and Fourth Amendment rights; brand some citizens terror suspects on the basis of potentially inaccurate data that they cannot challenge; and was being expanded for use against all kind of law-breakers and suspects, not just terrorists.

The report says the program flunked a series of tests:

Concerned lawmakers set a series of eight tests -- enacted into law in several funding bills -- that the system had to pass before money could be released to fund its implementation. The tests included establishing a process for correcting erroneous information and restoring the right of wrongly labeled innocent passengers to travel by air; assuring the security of the system from hackers and internal abuse; addressing privacy concerns; and -- crucially -- providing evidence that the screening will actually turn up potential terrorists.

The summary says the Transportation Security Administration failed on all these counts.....

Update: The Chicago Tribune has more on the report.

Guantanamo is expanding. Plans are being made to house up to 50,000 Haitian refugees at the military base--the refugees will be detained until they can be sent back to Haiti.

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There are 97 inmates on death row in Tennessee. 38 of them were convicted in trials in Shelby County. The medical examiner in Shelby County is O.C. Smith, who has recently been charged with a rather bizarre crime.

O.C. Smith pleaded not guilty Wednesday to charges he lied when he said an unknown assailant wrapped him in barbed wire and hung a bomb around his neck. He also pleaded not guilty to possessing an illegal explosive.

Authorities have given no indication why Smith, 51, would have staged an attack. He was discovered in June 2002 in a stairwell outside his office. He suffered minor injuries, and told authorities he was attacked by someone who threw a chemical in his face.

....Smith "either did the autopsies, or testified, or at least supervised the autopsies" in 30 percent to 40 percent of the convictions of the state's death row inmates, Dawson said.

The Governor of Tennessee has postponed one execution to date due to the investigation into Mr. Smith's conduct.

Detained "dirty bomb" suspect Jose Padilla, who has been held in a military brig for almost two years without charges or access to counsel, finally will be allowed to meet with his lawyer. From the DOD press release :

DoD is allowing Padilla access to counsel as a matter of discretion and military authority. Such access is not required by domestic or international law and should not be treated as a precedent. A similar decision to allow Yaser Esam Hamdi access to a lawyer was announced Dec. 2, 2003.

DoD has determined that such access will not compromise the national security of the United States, and DoD has determined that such access will not interfere with intelligence collection from Padilla, who is a U.S. citizen.

As a U.S. citizen, Padilla is not eligible for trial by military commission under the president’s military order of Nov. 13, 2001. Detention as an enemy combatant is not criminal in nature but is permitted under the law of war to prevent an enemy combatant from continuing to fight against the United States. Under the law of war, enemy combatants may be detained until the end of hostilities.

What kind of restrictions will be placed on Padilla's lawyer? Here's what Frank Dunham, the attorney for Yaser Hamdi, had to say after finally being allowed ot visit his client a few weeks ago:

Frank Dunham, Hamdi's lawyer, said Wednesday that he met with his client for about an hour but the government restrictions were prohibitive. Dunham said he wasn't permitted to ask Hamdi about the conditions of his confinement for the last two years. A Defense Department official sat in on the conversation, which was videotaped and monitored by intelligence officials.

"We didn't talk about anything that amounted to a hill of beans because what lawyer would want to ask his client any substantive question with the government sitting there watching?" he said.

Update: Arthur at Light of Reason has more, including the reaction of Padilla's lawyers:

It's so disheartening. They're throwing us a bone, as if we should be thrilled that they can now listen to our attorney-client conversations after my client's been held incommunicado, based on their say-so, for over a year and a half."

President Bush's military records are creating such a stir, we thought we'd try and find a concise summary of what happened and what the issue is. MSNBC has this version:

George W. Bush was sworn into the Texas Air National Guard on May 27, 1968 during the height of the Vietnam War. He went through all of the basic and advanced flight training and received a commission as a second lieutenant. He then went about his business as a private citizen attending monthly and any other special "camps" for training.

In 1972, then-citizen Bush got a job working on a U.S. Senate campaign in Alabama and he looked into attending Guard meetings with a unit in Montgomery, Ala. A Lt. Colonel Lott sent Bush a letter informing him when the meetings were scheduled for the Alabama unit in October and November.

The controversy: Was Bush was absent without leave or AWOL from the Alabama Air National Guard during those 2 months in 1972?

If Bush attended a meeting in Alabama, the paymaster there would have noted it and sent the information onto Texas on an "IBM 105" card where it would be recorded and sent onto payroll in Colorado. Bush has released payroll records showing he received credit for attending meetings during the 2 months in 1972. But, they don't show where he attended meetings. He was living in Alabama at the time, but there are no Alabama records to show he attended meetings there.

Here's the timeline, from the same article:

It's time for Howard Dean to pick up his marbles and go home. The last thing that's going to help him get back in the presidential race is an attack on John Kerry and in what must be a last, desperate move, that's just what he's doing, charging that Kerry is part of "the corrupt political culture in Washington."

We don't pretend to know why Dean bombed in Iowa or why the media attacked him afterwards, but the fact is, he's been out of it ever since. If he wants to stay in national politics, he'd do much better to get behind whomever the Dems choose and campaign like crazy for the candidate to beat Bush.

We're starting to feel sorry for Dean. It's so over and he just won't admit it.

One of the detainees at Guantanamo worked as a driver on a farm owned by Osama bin Laden. He has been appointed a military lawyer who says the facts will be on his side during an anticipated military tribunal tiral.

Salim Ahmed Salim Hamdan, 34, is now held in isolation at the terrorism prison in Cuba in segregated accommodations for prisoners facing possible military tribunals, said his lawyer, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift. ''He fully admits that he was an employee of Osama bin Laden'' from 1997 until the U.S. attack on Afghanistan in 2001. ``But he adamantly denies that he was ever a member of al Qaeda or engaged in any terrorist attack. He worked for Osama bin Laden solely for the purpose of supporting himself and his family.''

....Starting in 1997, Hamdan worked for bin Laden on his farm in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, Swift said, and drove a Toyota pickup truck. He sometimes ferried farm workers to the fields and sometimes transported around Afghanistan the al Qaeda mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks. Hamdan first went to Afghanistan in 1996, the lawyer said, intending to travel to Tajikistan to join Muslims there fighting former Soviet communists. He never made the trip but found the job with bin Laden that paid $200 a month, a huge sum for a poor Yemeni in impoverished Afghanistan.

''In respect to the prospect of a trial by military commission, he denies that he's a terrorist, al Qaeda or a combatant in the international conflict in Afghanistan. He is a civilian worker who was caught up in the war,'' Swift said.

At the time of his capture, he was alone and driving a borrowed car in a mountainous portion of eastern Afghanistan near Pakistan. He had just evacuated his pregnant wife and daughter to the safety of Pakistan, the lawyer said, and was returning the car.

Hamdan has a fourth grade education. Swift also described the conditions of his client's confinement:

He has been held in solitary confinement, segregated from the other Camp Delta prisoners in a windowless air-conditioned cell and permitted exercise only at night, ``so he never sees the sun.'' He suffers from arthritis, Swift said, which is aggravated by the prison's air conditioning. ''He gets cold, ironic in Cuba,'' he said.

Gee, we feel a lot safer knowing the Pentagon is going after the big guys. Hamdan sounds like a real threat.

Far fetched? You decide. This from today's Dallas Morning News:

Retired National Guard Lt. Col. Bill Burkett said Tuesday that in 1997, then-Gov. Bush's chief of staff, Joe Allbaugh, told the National Guard chief to get the Bush file and make certain "there's not anything there that will embarrass the governor."

Col. Burkett said that a few days later at Camp Mabry in Austin, he saw Mr. Bush's file and documents from it discarded in a trash can. He said he recognized the documents as retirement point summaries and pay forms.

Bush aides denied any destruction of records in Mr. Bush's personnel file. "The charges are just flat-out not true," said Dan Bartlett, White House communications director. He said the president has been forthright in producing all documents relevant to his stint in the Texas Air National Guard, from 1968 to 1973. He dismissed Col. Burkett as a disgruntled former officer of the Texas Guard. Mr. Allbaugh, now a Washington lobbyist, called Col. Burkett's assertions "hogwash."

The Dems are not buying the White House version that the released records show Bush served as required:

The Democrats' Mr. McAuliffe said he still has questions. "The fact remains that there is still no evidence that George W. Bush showed up for duty as ordered while in Alabama," he said. "We also still do not know why the president's superiors filed a report saying they were unable to evaluate his performance for that year because he had not been present to be evaluated."

The 11 pages are pay records and summaries reflecting how many points Mr. Bush accumulated toward fulfillment of his Guard obligation. The records don't document any service dates between April 16, 1972, and Oct. 28, 1972 – periods during which Mr. Bush was in Alabama.

[link via Atrios]

The release of the documents seems only to have fueled the fire.

Update: Calpundit analyzes the Burkett claim.

A psychiatrist testified before the Arizona Senate Judiciary Committee that juveniles who kill should not face the death penalty because the part of their brains that controls violent reaction is not fully formed.

Dr. Mark Wellek, past president of the Society for Adolescent Psychiatry, testified in support of Sen. Linda Aguirre’s bill (S1139), which would prohibit a court from imposing a death sentence on a person who committed first-degree murder while under the age of 18. He said major medical organizations oppose the death penalty for minors “because discoveries in recent years suggest that their brains are not yet developed and, therefore, they are probably not as culpable.”

17 states prohibit killing those under 18 at the time of their crime. Arizona is not one of them. In 2000, the Arizona Attorney General’s Capital Case Commission was formed and has since voted to recommend that the death penalty not be applied to those under 18. Five of Arizona's 127 death row inmates were under 18 at the time of their crime.

The New York Times gets it right in this editorial on yesterday's release by the White House of President Bush's National Guard records. In a nutshell, the payroll records are so at odds with statements by his superiors that further elaboration is essential:

If President Bush thought that his release of selected payroll and service records would quell the growing controversy over whether he ducked some of his required service in the Air National Guard three decades ago, he is clearly mistaken. The payroll records released yesterday document that he performed no guard duties at all for more than half a year in 1972 and raise questions about how he could be credited with at least 14 days of duty during subsequent periods when his superior officers in two units said they had not seen him.

Investigative reporting by The Boston Globe, our sibling newspaper, revealed in 2000 that Mr. Bush had reported for duty and flown regularly in his first four Texas Guard years but dropped off the Guard's radar screen when he went to Alabama to work on a senatorial campaign. The payroll records show that he was paid for many days of duty in the first four months of 1972, when he was in Texas, but then went more than six months without being paid, virtually the entire time he was working on the Senate campaign in Alabama. That presumably means he never reported for duty during that period.

The FBI wants more wiretapping authority--in particular, it wants to be able to intercept calls on a new protocol--Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP):

The debate over government interception of Internet communications has expanded to a new technology, namely Voice over Internet Protocol (“VoIP”) transmissions. Indeed, representatives of the FBI’s Electronic Surveillance Technology Section in Chantilly, Virginia have been meeting secretly with the Federal Communications Commission since July, 2003, exploring ways to provide the FBI with more regulatory authority to “wiretap” Internet communications, and in particular VoIP transmissions. [i] The FBI along with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the U.S. Department of Justice want VoIP providers declared as “telecommunications carrier[s]” under the Federal Communications Act of 1996 and the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (“CALEA”).[ii] These three federal law enforcement organizations declared that if left unregulated, VoIP would provide a means of communications whereby “terrorists, spies, and criminals … [can] most likely evade lawful electronic surveillance.” [iii]

....The FBI now has taken the position that the combination of the federal wiretap laws, originally enacted in 1964, and amended numerous times since,[xiv] along with CALEA, give it the authority to wiretap DSL and other types of broadband services, including VoIP. [xv]

Here's a description of VOIP, the use of which

....Voice Over Internet Protocol allows analog voice signals to be digitized into packets of data, sent over a series of networks, and reassembled at the other end. [iv]. In other words, telephone calls that have traditionally, since the late 19th century, been made through Public Switching Technology Networks (“PSTN”) are now initiated, transmitted and received through computer networks, and thereby avoid long distance telephone charges. The technology, introduced in 1995, stumbled along until recent improvements in the sound quality and transmission reliability have made “phone carriers …practically tripping over each other to announce aggressive VoIP strategies aimed at both consumers and businesses