One member of the Iraqi Governing Council is calling for a life sentence for Saddam:

A senior Iraqi Governing Council member, Jalal Talabani, yesterday urged fellow Iraqis to reject President Bush's suggestion that Saddam Hussein should face the death penalty for his crimes.

"I want Saddam put in jail for life," Mr. Talabani said in an interview. "I want him to suffer daily as he realizes how his people hate him. Let him see how we build a new Iraq free from his evil grip."

The Iraqi Kurdish leader, who called Saddam's capture "the beginning of the end of terrorism inside Iraq," has been a leading opponent of Saddam and has jointly run a U.S.-protected ministate in northern Iraq since 1991.

Matt Yglesias reports that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice has removed its postings of death row inmates last meals from its website. As Matt says, it was the ultimate in morbid voyeurism.

Democratic contender Wesley Clark said today that he supports a trial in Iraq and the death penalty for Saddam Hussein.

The retired general said in prepared remarks in Concord he would urge that an Iraq tribunal make execution a possibility for the deposed Iraqi dictator.

‘‘I believe that the death penalty should be applied to war criminals, those who've used chemical weapons, and those responsible for genocide," he said. ‘‘And as I believe the proceedings will show, Saddam is responsible for every single one of these heinous crimes and deserves the ultimate punishment."

In other Wesley Clark news, he received the endorsement of Madonna today.

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The jury retired for the day without a verdict in the trial of accused sniper John Lee Malvo. But they did have questions. While you can never predict what a jury is going to do, from the sound of this one, we'd say an insanity verdict is a definite possibility:

The jury also asked for help with the definition it was given of malice, a necessary element to a murder conviction. Jurors had trouble with the instruction that an act is malicious only when "the mind of the actor is under control of reason."

A new CBS News poll has Howard Dean pulling away from the pack. That's not surprising. What is unusual is that the poll has Al Sharpton ahead of John Kerry and John Edwards. With 28% undecided, we'd say it's still an open call.

Howard Dean
23%
Wesley Clark
10%
Joe Lieberman
10%
Richard Gephardt
6%
Al Sharpton
5%
John Kerry
4%
John Edwards
2%
Carol Moseley-Braun
1%
Dennis Kucinich
1%
Don't Know
28%

We wonder if Lieberman got his bounce from Gore's endorsement of Dean or his neanderthal comments about Saddam. Either way, we don't expect it to last.

The Chair of the independent 9/11 commission says the attacks were preventable:

"This is a very, very important part of history and we've got to tell it right," said Thomas Kean. "As you read the report, you're going to have a pretty clear idea what wasn't done and what should have been done," he said. "This was not something that had to happen."

Kean is the former Governor of New Jersey and was appointed to the Commission by Bush. Oliver Willis, Daily Kos and Kevin at Lean Left have more.

If you're looking for a holiday gift for a true crime reader, we recommend The Brass Wall by New York Times reporter David Kocieniewski. The Village Voice has this review :

A true story, New York Times reporter David Kocieniewski's The Brass Wall is almost too juicy in its James Ellroy swagger to be believed. At the center is undercover detective #4126, Vinnie Armanti (or Vinnie "Blue Eyes" Penisi, as the local goombahs knew him), the definition of the hard-boiled New York cop. Retired from his undercover career, he's convinced by another detective to take on one last case. Ostensibly an investigation into the arson fire that took the life of a lieutenant in the Fire Department, it develops into a Byzantine trail leading to mobbed-up Bronx mooks, their crime-syndicate bosses, a coke-snorting cop who just happens to be the son of an influential Internal Affairs inspector, and Dad's friends in high and low places.

Rounding out this shady tale is a police-brass cadre willing to protect one of their own, no matter the consequences or charges, an up-and-coming crime-fighting New York mayor (guess who) who made his name fighting police corruption but built his career on police support, and a dedicated but small staff of NYPD and FBI investigators determined to see the case through to the end.

The Brass Wall