Federal Judge David Hittner has advised the parties in the Fastow (Enron) case that he wants to have a meeting to try and salvage the Fastow plea deals.

U.S. District Court Judge David Hittner told attorneys Thursday morning he wanted to discuss the circumstances of a plea involving Lea Fastow, a former assistant treasurer at Enron, so a plea in another Enron-related matter could go forward. He did not name Andrew Fastow, whom people close to the case said was negotiating a plea deal with prosecutors that could send him to prison for 10 years and force him to pay $20 million. "We are going to lay it all out," Hittner said.

We wrote about the collapse of Lea Fastow's plea deal yesterday.

People are getting cabin-fever big time in Oregon and professional list-servs are going a little haywire with nutty people posting things they might not otherwise post. Here's one example: the first page of the Martha Stewart Jury Questionnaire:

Martha Stewart Jury Questionnaire, Page 1

1. Have you ever used a glue gun?

2. What is a caper? (Choose one):
a. a planned illegal activity, typically involving theft.
b. a pickled delicacy made from the buds of a bush grown in the Mediterranean region.

3. What should never be placed on a coffee table when guests arrive? (Choose one):
a. drink glasses without coasters.
b. the K-Mart mail order catalog.
c. bare feet.

4. When using beans in a recipe:
a. do you use fresh or canned?
b. if fresh, do you soak the beans in water or chicken broth?
c. if you use broth, is it canned or homemade?
d. if homemade, was the chicken free range and did you slaughter it yourself?

5. In what month should tulip bulbs be planted?

6. When storing towels, do you fold them or roll them? If rolled, do you tie them with a ribbon before guests arrive?

7. Have you ever received an e-mail message offering extra-virgin olive oil? If so, did you reply?

Looks to us like these list-servers are suffering from DSM-IV diagnosable cabin fever --but still, it's witty enough to spread around.

An expose of how Minnesota cops turned a small time hustler and snitch into a big time entrepeneur.

"It is overall a bad policy to rely upon informants to make your case, primarily because they get paid to send people to jail," says the Drug Policy Allliance's Bill Piper. "And so they have an incentive to manufacture evidence, which is what we're seeing around the country. It's endemic to the drug war. We've become a nation of informants, actually." If the federal government does keep the Byrne grants, Piper's organization would like to see the law rewritten to require that states receiving the grants demand corroboration of all evidence obtained from informants.

A new national poll has Wesley Clark closing the gap on Howard Dean.

Update: The New Republic has just endorsed Joe Lieberman. Kos at Daily Kos has numerous posts on why the New Republic is not a liberal publication. From his latest:

Remember, TNR is a publication that bills itself of the Left, while owned by a hard-core Republican and Zell Miller Democrat who just donated $2,000 to Bush-Cheney 2004. Whose interests do you think those guys have in mind?

So they have injected themselves into the Democratic primary process, like wolves in sheep's clothing, advertising on progressive blogs and perpetuating the myth that they are a journal of the left.

They endorsed Lieberman. Good for them. I've been trying to make the argument that The New Republic lacks any relevance within Democratic Party circles. They've just made the case for that better than I ever could.

Gary Hart vs. Ben Nighthorse Campbell? We say Run, Gary, Run!

Former Colorado Sen. Gary Hart is seriously considering a challenge to Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, according to party sources. The two-term senator and two-time presidential candidate recently discussed a possible bid with national and state party leaders who are urging him to jump in, said Democratic sources in Washington and Colorado who requested anonymity.

"It's serious enough that he's pondering the 'how to' aspect of the campaign," said one Democratic official. "He thinks if he got in this race he would win, but he's got a lot of other factors that weigh into this and this is obviously a big jump."

Here is some of the negative reaction to Bush's immigration reform plan:

"George Bush's plan leaves foreign workers as fodder for our fields and factories without giving them a path to legalization and a fair shot at the American dream. He's had an election year conversion to immigration reform, but it's too little and three years too late." - Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., a presidential candidate.

"The proposal ... is woefully inadequate and falls far short of being the serious, reform our country needs to fix our broken immigration system. The White House says this proposal is compassionate, but as the fine print makes clear, that claim is false for millions of immigrants." Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass.

"President Bush's plan would move millions of people into a second-class status with no real promise of citizenship." - Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., a presidential candidate.

[comments now closed]

In war news today, U.S. soldiers have been accused of killing an Iraqi couple, orphaning their five children:

US paratroopers fired on a house in this center of anti-American resistance, killing an Iraqi couple, orphaning their five children and enraging neighbors who insisted the pair were innocent.

In other war news, 35 American soldiers were injured in a mortar attack.

Update: 9 U.S. soldiers were killed today in an attack on a Black Hawk medivac helicopter.

Update: Read the letter from the mother of a killed Iraqi to President Bush. She says her son was murdered.

Update: Wesley Clark has answered our question on the live chat going on now:

- talkleft asks: You have criticized the Patriot Act. Which portions of the Patriot Act would you ask Congress to repeal and why? As President, how will you protect our civil liberties while trying to ensure our safety?

- I will suspend the portions of the Patriot Act that have to do with search and seizure law, and we'll go back to old way with probable cause and judges and warrants, and then we'll take the whole act back to the Congress for legislative review. We will have all the authority we need to protect the country from terrorists, but you can't win the war on terror by giving up the very freedoms we're fighting to protect. Wes

***********************
The live internet chat with Wesley Clark starts at 5pm ET--now--you can access the chat here.

If you want to participate (they expect 3,000 to log on), here are the details:

Public IRC Server: irc://irc.forclark.com
Closed Read-Only Channel: #wireside
Open Discussion Channel: #clark04

We were flattered to be invited by the campaign to submit a question-- and we did--we hope it's one Gen. Clark chooses to answer. Here are the blogger participants:

Kevin Kraynick "Tooney Bin"
Ted Barlow "Crooked Timber"
Mark A.R. Kleiman "A Fair and Balanced Weblog"
Bill Scher, Executive Editor, "LiberalOasis"
Jeralyn Merritt "TalkLeft: The Politics of Crime"
Ruy Teixeira "Donkey Rising"
Digby "Digby's Hullabaloo"

Wired News is the latest to examine The Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004 that Bush signed into law last month. This is the law that expands the FBI's power to obtain records from financial institutions (including casinos, pawn shops and more) without requiring permission from a judge. [link via Cursor.]

We wrote about it here.

We're glad to see that a lot more readers are commenting on TalkLeft. We read every one of the 300 + comments a day. We also pay a lot for the bandwidth. Tips are appreciated--see the Amazon and (paypal) donation buttons on the left side of the site. Amazon is anonymous and paypal lets us know your email address so we can send a thank you note.

The U.S. announced it will release 500 Iraqi prisoners. That leaves 12,300 more.

The release of Iraqis held indefinitely and without charge has been a top demand of community and tribal leaders, as well as human rights advocates.

"All they do is put a bag on their heads, bind their hands behind them with plastic handcuffs and take them away. Families don't know where they go," Malek Dohan al-Hassan, head of the Lawyers Syndicate in Baghdad, said last month. "They violate human rights up to their ears."

The U.S. is also increasing bounty awards for the capture of those Iraqis it wants the most.

13 remain at large. Twelve of those have rewards of $1 million for their capture - or for confirmation that they are dead, Bremer said. The U.S. military has also put a $10 million bounty for Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, vice chairman of Saddam's revolutionary council. He became the most-wanted fugitive after Saddam's Dec. 13 capture. Fifteen of the fugitives command bounties of $200,000 each; rewards for the remaining 15 are $50,000 apiece.

South Knox Bubba has read Wesley Clark's tax plan two or three times and says:

Being able to say "A family of four making up to $50,000 would pay no federal income taxes, and all taxpaying families with children making up to $100,000 would get a tax cut." and that "No families with incomes under $200,000 will pay more in taxes than they do today." is powerful stuff.

It's smart, too. 98% of Americans would pay lower taxes. 3.5 million families will pay no income tax at all. Only 0.1% of taxpayers will pay more. 31 million families will benefit, and bonus, will not even have to file a tax return. What's not to like? (Although I'm not clear on what happens to the 2% or so making more than $200K but less than $1 million).... This is a good deal for American workers and families, and everyone benefits in the long run.