This could be major:

Later this week, a key member of Congress will issue an all-points call for intelligence analysts to blow the whistle on President Bush, Vice President Cheney and others in the Bush administration who may have distorted, exaggerated, manipulated or lied about intelligence on Iraq in the run up to war.

By creating a "tip line" on his official Web site, Democratic congressman from California Henry Waxman is encouraging current and former U.S. national security officials to come forward and disclose how the administration played with intelligence on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction and ties to Al Qaeda. A ranking member on the House Committee on Government Reform, Rep. Waxman is making it possible for officials to go on the record or remain anonymous, according to one of his aides.

Deborah Perlstein directs the U.S. Law and Security Program for the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, and is editor of "Assessing the New Normal," a book on liberty and security in the United States since the Sept. 11 attacks. She has an excellent commentary today in the International Herald Tribune, Detained at the Whim of the President. She correctly observes that we shouldn't be fooled by the Administration's recent release of some of the Guantanamo detainees--or its decision to allow Yaser Hamdi limited access to counsel. While these are welcome measures, they are part of a "broader strategy" aimed at keeping the Supreme Court off the Administration's back so it can continue its secret and arbitrary policies on enemy combatants.

These steps are welcome. But they should be understood as part of a broader strategy. The announcement on Guantánamo comes just weeks after the Supreme Court decided to review a lower court holding that the federal courts had no jurisdiction to evaluate the legality of the Guantánamo detentions. And the decision to allow Hamdi access to a lawyer was announced on the day final briefs were due to the Supreme Court, which is now deciding whether to take the case. It is difficult to see the timing as coincidental. For the past two years, the Bush administration - far more so than previous "wartime" executives - has been very effective at keeping the courts out of the business of checking executive power.

In the two years since the Sept. 11 attacks, the administration has established a set of extra-legal structures designed to bypass the federal judiciary. It has maintained that those detained by the United States outside U.S. borders - at Guantánamo and elsewhere - are beyond the jurisdictional reach of the U.S. courts altogether. Individuals subject to military commission proceedings - which two years after their announced creation have yet to begin - are to have their fate decided by military personnel who report only to the president.

Melanie Sloan, writing for Buzzflash, wants to know Whatever Happened to the Plame Investigation? We haven't heard an official word about it since Sept. 29th.

Why has the investigation stalled? Is it because the Department of Justice, just as suspected by the Democrats all along, isn't serious about prosecuting the leaker? Is it because George Bush has swept the matter under the carpet? Where are the Congressional hearings that were so common during the Clinton administration? Can anyone seriously doubt if the same events had transpired during the Clinton years there would have been day after day, and month after month of hearings with Congressional leaders clamoring for an independent counsel, with the result that one would have been appointed?

Good questions, all. The inquiry does seem to have been swept under the carpet.

Ever wonder what Michael Jackson would look like today if he hadn't had plastic surgery? Take a Look. [link via Victory Briefs]

Canadian Maher Arar describes his torture at the hands of Syrians after being deported there by the U.S. following his seizure at JFK while changing planes in Delivered Into Hell by U.S. War on Terror in today's LA Times. It's a must read. It begins:

I recently spent 10 1/2 months in a grave-sized cell in Syria, unsure why I was there, unsure how to get out. Fear paralyzed my wits when I needed them most. I was beaten and I was tortured and I was constantly scared. Every day I worried that I would never be released, that I would disappear into that concrete grave forever.

Why was I being held? I still don't really know. I am not a terrorist. I am not a member of Al Qaeda. I am a Syrian-born Canadian. A father and a husband. A telecommunications engineer. I have never been in trouble with the police and have always been a good citizen.

My ordeal began on the afternoon of Sept. 26, 2002, when my flight back from a family vacation in Tunisia stopped over in New York and American immigration officials pulled me aside to answer a few questions.

[link via Arthur at Light of Reason]

Two new articles catch up on the Tommy Chong case. An LA Weekly article delves into the wierdness of the case in Chong Family Values. Sounds like an Ashcroft-driven affair all the way through.

According to [defense lawyer Stanford] Levenson, the deal he struck with the prosecutors allowed them to prosecute Tommy Chong and Chong Glass (effectively shutting it down), in exchange for leaving wife Shelby, who had signed the family’s loan checks, and [child] Paris alone. Tommy cooperated with the government and was the first of Operation Pipe Dreams’ defendants to plead guilty. But while the feds told Levenson they were not necessarily seeking jail time, their legal body language said otherwise.

City Beat analyzes the case and interviews Chong at the Taft Correctional Institution where he is serving his nine month sentence.

Bush Wars sums up the reactions to Gore's endorsement of Dean. The consensus seems to be that Dean has the nomination locked up. A few, like Mark Klieman and Kevin at Lean Left disagree. Josh Marshall thinks it helps Dean, but really helps Clark.

Drug War Rant has a terrific long quote from a 1996 article late Sen. Paul Simon co-wrote with Dave Koppel for the National Law Journal on the foolhardiness of mandatory minimum sentences and incarcerating non-violent offenders.

Jay and Jane of the Daily Rant have renamed their blog "Classless Warfare" and moved it here.

James Capozzola of Rittenhouse Review got mugged the other night. He's okay though.

Ezra at Pandagon reviews last night's Democratic debate and says it was the worst ever.

Off the Kuff has an interview with Richard Morrison, who may challenge Tom Delay for his Texas seat.

Billmon at Whiskey Bar gives his take on the Guardian article positing that Osama bin Laden is winning the terror war.

Sean Paul at Agonist is taking nominations for a book club he's starting.

Patriot Watch informs about a new Government project called US-Visit, which will "replace a patchwork of disparate immigration databases and paper-based files and will require that almost all visitors be digitally fingerprinted and photographed."

Behind the Homefront has a link to a Navy memo by a a Deputy Assistant JAG (Judge Advocate General) about the effect of the Patriot Act on FISA searches and surveillance procedures.

Avedon Carol at Sideshow links to this article by a disabled Vietnam-era vet who recently visited a Minneapolis V.A. hospital and discovered, when Bush came on the tv, that many fellow vets oppose the Bush administration's war in Iraq.

Oliver Willis is running a poll on who Dean will choose for his VP candidate. Easy choice for us, if we're limited to the current crop of candidates: Clark or Edwards. Graham would be a big mistake. We think an equally intriguing poll would be to name Clark's first cabinet picks for Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense and Attorney General. Now there's where we think you'll be able to trace the choices to favors owed and repaid.

OK, then, we're signing off. If we're not back tomorrow, please read the blogs above and Jeanne at Body and Soul who picked up and expanded upon our post about John Lennon's soul transfer 23 years ago and SK Bubba and Sisyphus Shrugged who were kind enough to mention the same John Lennon post and run with it.

The hearings against Army Chaplain James Yee hit a stall Tuesday when prosecutors announced they were unsure the papers Yee carried were classified.

Yee was initially stopped by Customs, thought to be a spy and thrown in the navy brig where he was held in solitary for over two months while the Government investigated the documents in his briefcase.

After concluding its investigation, the Government announced it was not filing spy charges against Yee after all, only charges of mishandling classified data, adultery and possession of pornography on his government computer. The Government learned about the adultery and pornography during a review of the documents seized from Yee at the time of his arrest.

Eugene R. Fidell, Captain Yee's civilian defense lawyer, called it disgraceful that his client had been kept in the brig for 76 days for possessing materials that the government still had not determined were classified. Mr. Fidell also said the military should be embarrassed to have tried to proceed with a criminal hearing on the charges without the determination.

Major Sikes [Yee's Military counsel] said he hoped the military would decide to drop the case. He said he believed that the military was pressing ahead as part of an unwise effort to save face over its initial miscalculation.

The Government now says it will conduct a thorough investigation into whether the documents Yee carried at the time of his arrest were classified. The hearing that began Monday will resume January 19.

Shoddy is probably an understatement in describing the Government's handling of Yee's investigation and prosecution.

Update: The Christian Science Monitor examines why the Army's case is falling apart:

A federal Magistrate Judge has disclosed that key documents in the Al-Arian terrorism case in Florida were improperly shredded by court clerks:

Sami Al-Arian, a former professor at the University of South Florida in Tampa, is in jail on charges of funneling money and support from Chicago and Florida to the radical Palestinian group Islamic Jihad.

U.S. Magistrate Thomas McCoun III said in a letter to Al-Arian's lawyers that search warrants used in 1995 in his case were shredded by mistake, casting doubt on the admissibility of some government evidence.

Investigators used the warrants to raid Al-Arian's home, his university office and a think tank with which he was associated. The absence of the court documents could prevent the U.S. government from using as evidence in court the materials they seized from the 1995 search, Linda Moreno, one of Al-Arian's lawyers, said yesterday.

How could this have happened?

In a letter sent Friday from McCoun, a federal magistrate in Tampa, Fla., to Al-Arian's lawyers, who had requested the court documents, McCoun wrote:

"My deputy reports that these original court files no longer exist. ... Clerks in the Tampa division began shredding magistrate judge files more than five years old. ... This shredding included sealed files kept in the court's vault."

Investigators said "volumes" of documents and other materials had been seized from Al-Arian in 1995. Here's more from Al-Arian's attorney on the import of the document destruction:

Bump and Update: Gavin Newsom won the Mayor's race in San Francisco. But Matt Gonzalez made a great showing, losing by only 5 points. See below for vote numbers as they came in:

With 100% of the vote in:

GAVIN NEWSOM . . . . . . . . . 118,651 52.57%
MATT GONZALEZ . . . . . . . . . 107,030 47.43%

Actually, Gonzalez did incredibly well considering that Newsom spent $4 million on the campaign, outspending Gonzalez by 10 to 1. And that Bill Clinton came to town yesterday to stump for Newsom.

****************
original post 8:06 pm

Official results for the San Francisco Mayor's race between Democrat Gavin Newsom and Green Party candidate Matt Gonzalez (see Left vs. Left) will be available here beginning at 8:00 pm PST.

Results in the District Attorneys' race will also be posted on the site.

Update: 97% of the vote in,
GAVIN NEWSOM . . . . . . . . . 115,859 52.41
MATT GONZALEZ . . . . . . . . . 105,223 47.59

Update: 9:00 pm results with 86% of the vote counted:

Did Howard Dean make another gaffe today in the e-mail he sent out to supporters announcing Al Gore's support? Here's the line at issue:

And I look forward to January 20th, 2005, when we follow the example of another great Tennessean, Andrew Jackson -- we will throw open the doors to the White House and let the American people back in.

Andrew Jackson, a great Tennessean? Not according to J. M. Branum, a law student and Kucinich supporter who authors the JMBZine blog:

No, Andrew Jackson was not a great Tennessean, but rather was a very dangerous man who did some horrible things in our history. My own ancestors (the Cherokee) were sent on the genocidal "Trail of Tears" by Jackson, despite the fact that the Cherokee had won their case in the US Supreme Court. Jackson defied the rule of law and prevailed in doing so. Those who suffered were the thousands of American Indians who died during the removals to Indian Territory in the west.

Jackson is no hero in my book and I'm disappointed that Dean thinks he is worthy of praise.

President Andrew Jackson authorized the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Here's more on the Trail of Tears.

Here's a short paragraph from an 1830 Jackson speech on the Act:

Judge Terry Ruckriegle made the right ruling today in the Kobe Bryant case. He denied a prosecution request to have both parties file all motions pertaining to evidence in the case under seal. We wrote a few weeks ago when the DA filed the motion,

The prosecution is seeking to have all future pleadings in the case that refer to evidence in the case filed under seal. This is wrong, and there is a much fairer way to accomplish the goal. Each side should file two versions of any pleading containing information that shoud not be made public--one of which is the entire pleading, filed under seal, and the other is a redacted version for the public, with just the sensitive material deleted and so noted. This was done in the Oklahoma bombing trials and it worked well.

To seal all evidentiary pleadings in their entirety is contrary to the public's right to know and the First Amendment.

That's exactly what the Judge ordered today:

...Judge Terry Ruckriegle said, attorneys in the case can file motions about Bryant and his accuser that leave sensitive details to be filed separately under seal. The judge urged attorneys to make sealed filings "sparingly and wisely" and he chided the prosecution for citing "no legal authority" to seal all details of evidence.

In other Kobe news, the defense filed a motion today asking the Court to order the DA to investigate whether any "hangman t-shirts" were ordered by the Sheriff's department, and if so, how many. Kobe attorney Pamela Mackey stated in the motion that the Sheriff's office refused to supply the information to the defense, and that the information is relevant to show the bias of the investigating agencies. She also stated that the t-shirts had been described as "racist and 'invocative of Klan lynching and wholly inappropriate in modern society."