Our wanderings around the bloggerhood this weekend found some good stuff:

Leaked Bush Photos from his Thanksgiving turkey-giveaway caper are making the rounds. [ Link via Atrios]

Republican Agenda Passed in the Dead of Night by Daily Kos

David Neiwert on a threat by a right wing blogger, Misha, the "Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler, to Eric Blumrich of Bushflash on the left. Tristero has more.

Bush Wars has a weekend update and a Friday report, both excellent.

Don't miss this: U.S. News has a special investigative report: The untold story of the Bush administration's penchant for secrecy. [link via Counterspin].

Pandagon has the dirty details of a disgusting anti-Howard Dean ad hitting the airwaves. You won't believe who's behind it. Shame on them. Here's more from Matthew Gross of the Dean for America blog. Calpundit weighs in as well, calling the ad "political p0rn."

Patriot Act Watch reports that 10 Democratic congresspersons are seeking hearings on the Patriot Act:

In a letter to be delivered today, Representatives Martin T. Meehan of Lowell and William D. Delahunt of Quincy, along with eight other Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee, ask chairman James Sensenbrenner Jr., Republican of Wisconsin, to hold hearings next year "on the war on terrorism's impact on civil liberties."

On a non-political note, James Capozzola of Rittenhouse Review writes more details of his mugging last week--we're glad he's not seriously hurt.

By T Chris

Mexico will argue before the International Court of Justice (also known as the World Court) that the lives of 54 Mexican citizens on death row in the United States should be spared because they were refused their right to legal assistance from the Mexican Consulate. While Mexican newspapers view the lawyers representing the United States as a "dream team," they are confident of success.

"This is a very important case for Mexico, and we will not fail. Not one Mexican who has been denied his consular rights (in the United States) will be executed," [Mexican Foreign Secretary Luis Ernesto] Derbez said during a news conference.

... "It is not the quantity but the quality of the lawyers that counts," he said. "And we have right on our side."

Right or wrong, success before the World Court may not be enough, given the lack of respect that the United States has accorded the Court's rulings.

In 2001, German citizen Walter LaGrand was executed in Arizona, despite the court's order to postpone his punishment until it had heard Germany's case that he had been denied his right to consular assistance.

Although the World Court has no power to enforce its decisions, the United States will not score points with countries whose help it seeks in Iraq if it continues to regard international tribunals as irrelevant. Accepting the World Court's ruling in this case will not endanger Americans -- those convicted will remain incarcerated for their crimes -- but would help the United States regain respect in the international community.

By T Chris

An overhaul of the FBI's counterterrorism policies in response to the Patriot Act "marks the final step in tearing down the legal wall that had separated criminal and intelligence investigations since the spying scandals of the 1970s" according to senior FBI officials. The new policies require criminal and intelligence investigators to work together in terrorism cases, opening the door to investigative tools that were unavailable to criminal investigators prior to the Patriot Act.

The result is that the FBI, unhindered by the restrictions of the past, will conduct many more searches and wiretaps that are subject to oversight by a secret intelligence court rather than regular criminal courts, officials said. Civil liberties groups and defense lawyers predict that more innocent people will be the targets of clandestine surveillance.

New York lawyer Joshua Dratel, who has filed briefs in opposition to the FBI's anti-terrorism policies, warns that the new polices "will result in a funneling of all cases into an intelligence mode" providing criminal investigators with "an end run around the Fourth Amendment."

Two former Pentagon officials have been sentenced to 24 years each in a federal bribery case in which they made over $1 million and allowed government contractors to provide them with prostitutes.

Federal prosecutors said the men demanded bribes as high as $100,000 in certain cases and received $1.1 million in bribes and other illegal funds from businesses seeking government contracts. The men victimized the minority contract firms whose interests they were supposed to represent, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors said Neal and Jones laundered much of the money they received through a sham company and offshore accounts. The government estimated the value of the tainted contracts was $20 million.

One of the defendants was unrepentant at sentencing.

The government doesn't get it," he told federal judge James C. Cacheris. "I have given up my family life for small businesses. ... That was my job, helping small businesses to gain access. That's what I was doing."

Lawyers for the pair plan to appeal:

Their lawyers have questioned the reliability of government witnesses, some of whom were drug users who received immunity from prosecution in exchange for their testimony.

The good news is that support for Bush continues to decline. A brand new Newsweek poll has Bush at his lowest numbers ever since they began conducting polls:

...neither good news on the economy, the passage of a Medicare bill nor his surprise Thanksgiving visit to Baghdad seem to have boosted President George W. Bush’s approval ratings among all registered voters: with 51 percent approving and 42 disapproving, his ratings are the lowest in the NEWSWEEK poll’s history. And less than half (45 percent) of voters say they want Bush to be reelected.

34% say Dean can't beat Bush, and Bush would still win over any Democrat:

the president retains a 49 to 42 percent lead among all registered voters in a two-way race

Gore's endorsement helped Dean, no question, but it may not be enough:

Dean’s virulent opposition to the war is not necessarily appealing to voters, more of whom say Dean does not represent their views on Iraq (34 percent) than say he does (26 percent). Just 22 percent of them say Dean’s views on Iraq resonate with them. The man most Democrats (27 percent) consider best suited for the role of leader in Iraq is Clark; only 16 percent consider Dean the most qualified Democrat for that role and even fewer (12 percent) Lieberman.

By T Chris

Responding to Pentagon reports that Halliburton has overcharged the U.S. government by as much as $61 million for fuel in Iraq, President Bush declared that Halliburton would be expected to repay the overcharge. The company, formerly headed by Vice President Cheney, paid $1.09 per gallon more to a Kuwaiti subcontractor than it paid for the same fuel imported from Turkey.

While Halliburton claims that the Kuwaiti subcontractor was the only one that met the contract's requirements and argues that it earned only a few cents on the dollar for delivering the fuel, Halliburton's profits increased as a result of the overcharge.

Calling for a repayment of the overcharge with no additional sanction, and no promise of greater scrutiny of Halliburton's billing practices, provides no incentive for Halliburton or other war contractors not to continue a pursuit of excessive profits at the expense of taxpayers. If a government contractor less closely connected to the administration had overcharged for goods or services, wouldn't the Justice Department at least be asking whether it acted with fraudulent intent?

By T Chris

Mark Geragos announced that he will be filing 8,000 documents in support of a request to change the venue of Scott Peterson's murder trial. Geragos contends that media coverage of the case (as reflected in the documents) will impair Peterson's ability to obtain a fair trial in his hometown of Modesto.

Given the nationwide publicity Peterson's case has attracted, it will be difficult to find a pool of jurors anywhere that hasn't been tainted by the media coverage, despite Geragos' deft attempts to encourage coverage that favors Peterson. Nonetheless, residents of the Modesto area are likely to be so attuned to the case that finding local jurors capable of disregarding everything they've seen and heard before the trial would be an impossible task.

Geragos should be able to make a persuasive case that fairness requires a change of venue.

On Thanksgiving, I wrote that I had overstressed my wrist and been fitted with a cast. Well, that wasn't successful. But I have a diagnosis now, de Quervain's tenosynovitis--once called "washer woman's sprain." [ Here's more.] I just got a big painful, shot of cortisone (some new kind that supposedly doesn't cause atrophy and discoloration) and a shiny new black splint I'm only supposed to wear at night.

So, even though this condition is not caused by typing or the computer, I do have to lighten up here for a bit. Maybe just a few shorter posts a day.

This weekend, TChris, whom many of you know from his frequent, intelligent and well-expressed comments at TalkLeft, agreed to be drafted and guest blog on TalkLeft. He's an experienced, talented, dedicated criminal defense lawyer from the midwest--and although this is his first foray into blogging as other than a commenter, I know you will like him lots. Of all the regular commenters on TalkLeft, I think his views come the closest to my own. But he's not going to try and be like me--he's going to be himself, writing about what interests him in a style that's all his own.

So say hello to TChris, and make him feel welcome with plentiful comments--even when you disagree with him. I'll try to pop in a couple of times over the weekend, and I expect to be back to normal here Monday. I'm thinking positive--I have to--it's my right thumb and wrist and I'm right handed.

Senators John McCain, Maria Cantwell and Lindsay Graham visited Guantanamo this week. Their conclusion, set out in a letter to Rumsfeld: Try them or free them.

[McCain] said in an interview that he believed the continued detention of the prisoners violated basic human rights precepts. "They may not have any rights under the Geneva Conventions as far as I'm concerned," said the senator, an Arizona Republican, "but they have rights under various human rights declarations. And one of them is the right not to be detained indefinitely."

McCain also said:

....a senior administration official told him before the trip that the military has been unable to develop cases against as many as a third of the detainees and that they will have to be released..... [McCain] "blamed bureaucratic gridlock for the pace of administration decision making."

So far all of the detainees were arrested in Afganistan and all are male. But...the first female prisoner is set to arrive this week.

The three 13 to 15 year olds we've heard about are still there:

Three of the detainees are aged 13 to 15 who were "kidnapped into" a terrorist organization and treated brutally, Graham said. He said they are slated for discharge early next year into the custody of United Nations officials who have organized a special program for child combatants.

The U.S. says there are three criteria for a prisoner's release:

He must be judged to pose no threat to the United States, to be incapable of providing further intelligence information and to have been uninvolved in criminal activity.

While 88 have been released to date, no more releases are currently scheduled. Details about the 88 (and the 20 new arrivals who replaced some of them) are here.

Update: Thanks to an astute commenter, it appears John McCain and Lindsay Graham were incorrect in their statement to the Washington Post that all of the detainees at Guantanamo are from Afganistan. At least six were kidnapped from a Sarajevo prison by Bosnian police, handed over to the U.S. and brought there after the Bosnian Supreme Court had ordered them released.

It's "Sir Mick" from now on. The New York Times runs this editorial on it.

Keith Richards called the honor a "disgrace." Mick thinks he's jealous:

"I think he would probably like to get the same honor himself," Jagger told reporters. "It's like being given an ice cream - one gets one and they all want one. It's nothing new. Keith likes to make a fuss."

Jagger was accompanied at the ceremony by his 92 year old father and two of his daughters, Karis and Elizabeth. How come no Jade?

Congratulations to Mick. He's been one of our all-time favorites since:

Our all time favorites are:

Our favorite song is You Can't Always Get What You Want (from Let it Bleed.) Runner-up is Dead Flowers (off Sticky Fingers) -- but that's because it's their only song we can still play and sing by heart on the guitar.

Human Rights Watch says hundreds of civilian deaths in Iraq could have been prevented by abandoning two misguided military tactics--cluster bombs and the U.S. "decaptiation" strategy. Their 147 page report released today is available here.

The use of cluster munitions in populated areas caused more civilian casualties than any other factor in the coalition´s conduct of major military operations in March and April....U.S. and British forces used almost 13,000 cluster munitions, containing nearly 2 million submunitions, that killed or wounded more than 1,000 civilians.

Meanwhile, 50 strikes on top Iraqi leaders failed to kill any of the intended targets, but instead killed dozens of civilians, the Human Rights Watch report revealed. The U.S. “decapitation” strategy relied on intercepts of senior Iraqi leaders´ satellite phone calls along with corroborating intelligence that proved inadequate. As a result, the U.S. military could only locate targets within a 100-meter radius – clearly inadequate precision in civilian neighborhoods.

We wrote this somewhat detailed post on cluster bombing yesterday.

Lt. Col. Allen West was fined $5,000.00 for his misconduct towards an Iraqi prisoner.

In testimony at an Article 32 hearing -- the military's version of a grand jury or preliminary hearing -- West said the policeman, Yahya Jhrodi Hamoody, was not cooperating with interrogators, so he watched four of his soldiers from the 220th Field Artillery Battalion beat the detainee on the head and body.

West said he also threatened to kill Hamoody. Military prosecutors say West followed up on that threat by taking the suspect outside, put him on the ground near a weapons clearing barrel and fired his 9 mm pistol into the barrel.
Apparently not knowing where West's gun was aimed, Hamoody cracked and gave information about the planned ambush on West's convoy, thwarting the attack.

The decision was met by criticism from military prosecutors:

But while West's supporters call him a hero, military prosecutors said his actions amounted to torture and violated articles 128 and 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Prosecutor Capt. Magdalena Pezytulska said West should be tried for assault and for communicating a threat. "This is a case about a man who lost his temper," she argued. "There are consequences for [West's] actions."

West retains his eligibility for retirement and his pension. We don't begrudge him his pension or retirement benefits, he had 20 blemish-free years and earned them. As to the fine and lack of criminal sanction, that's what we in the industry call, "a kiss."