There was new information Sunday and Monday that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. It came from Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz who surrendered to the U.S. and has been interrogated by U.S. officials:

The Post said Aziz, who surrendered to U.S. authorities in April, also claims Iraq did not possess stocks of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons on the eve of the war. That assertion compliments similar statements from other detained Iraqi leaders and scientists.

The newspaper said several high-ranking detainees say the reason Saddam did not disabuse United States and other intelligence services of their belief he had weapons of mass destruction was to save face with his Arab neighbors.

The prisoners say Saddam believed Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and other countries paid him deference only because they feared he had weapons of mass destruction.

France denies coaching Saddam. More details on Aziz's statement are here.

Florida's Senator Bob Graham has announced he will not seek re-election. Graham dropped out of the Democratic presidential nomination race last month. We had hoped he would run again for Senator. Except for his support of the death penalty, he's been a good, liberal senator for Florida.

This compounds problems for the Dems on the national scale as it opens up another seat in the 2004 elections:

CNN noted that Graham and three other Senate Democrats from the South -- John Edwards of North Carolina, Zell Miller of Georgia and Ernest Hollings of South Carolina -- have all decided to leave next year, forcing the party to defend four open seats in a region that is becoming increasingly Republican.

We offer two helpful ideas for the Dems: Rock the Vote (get the younger voters currently feeling apathetic or turned off to politics registered) and push the felony disenfranchisement bills so that ex-offenders can vote. Both of these groups would likely tilt towards the Dems.

The Supreme Court has asked the Bush Administration for an explanation in the case of a post-911 immigrant detained in secret proceedings:

One of those immigrants, known only as M.K.B., challenged his detention. But even that has been shrouded in secrecy. His appeal has reached the Supreme Court, only there is little written evidence that his case exists. Lower courts sealed all the legal filings, as well as the records of how his case was handled. The proceedings were held in secret.

That is unconstitutional, Miami public defender Paul Rashkind argued in the case from Florida. The Supreme Court should intervene, Rashkind wrote in an appeal, "to preserve and protect the public's common-law and First Amendment rights to know, but also to reinforce those rights in a time of increased national suspicion about the free flow of information and debate."

You can read the background and details of the case at Scotus Blog .

The cert petitition filed in the Supreme Court (M.K.B. v. Warden, No. 03-6747) can be viewed here. [link via How Appealing.]

Update: One of our readers points out this excellent article on the case.

CBS is pulling the plug on its Ronald Reagan miniseries . Too many complaints the series cast Reagan and wife Nancy in an unflattering light.

The Reagans, a mini-series that is said to depict Ronald Reagan as an affable but rather detached president and Nancy Reagan as something of a control freak, was due to be broadcast in two parts later this month.

But since snippets of the less than flattering drama were seen last month, CBS has faced an onslaught of complaint. Michael Paranzino, who last month set up the website BoycottCBS.com to rally opposition to the show, said: "The idea that a TV network can make a buck... while a great American president lies on his deathbed with his wife taking care of him at his side is repugnant to the American people."

CBS on Tuesday announced it was pulling The Reagans off the network, saying: "Although the mini-series features impressive production values and acting performances...it does not present a balanced portrayal of the Reagans." The programme will instead be made available to Showtime, the cable channel also owned by CBS's parent Viacom.

Looks to us like Viacom wins both ways--only network viewers lose.

Linda Tripp has settled her lawsuit against the Government for privacy violations. She will get $595,000.

According to USA Today, among the privacy violations are leaking information to the New Yorker:

Based on information supplied by Pentagon officials in 1998, The New Yorker reported Tripp did not admit an arrest on her security application for her job at the Defense Department. She had been arrested for grand larceny when she was a teenager.

....The 1974 Privacy Act prohibits the government from releasing unauthorized personal information about individual Americans to nonfederal organizations. Tripp claimed administration officials retaliated for her role in triggering the impeachment proceedings. Tripp provided Independent Counsel Ken Starr with tape-recorded conversations in which Lewinsky confided an intimate relationship with the president.

Tripp also gets a retroactive pay increase which will be used to calculate her retirement benefits. Her lawyers haven't said if she is still working for the Government. Assuming she is not, she is entitled under the agreement to reapply to the Government for a job.

You can read the Settlement Agreement here.

Update: Eric Alterman at Altercation says the news reports have the details way wrong.

About 15 minutes after our last post on Sunday night, we got hit by food poisoning and a fever that reached 101, sending us to the doctor Monday morning and then back to bed until just now. We're going to try to make it to work today, we should be back here tonight.

Public Defender Dude has been in a jury trial the past two weeks. The jury is out now. His thoughts on the various stages of the trial, from the day there was testimony by "lying cops" to closing arguments and now to sweating out the deliberations is a great read for anyone who's interested in trials.

James Ridgeway of the Village Voice analyzes the Democratic candidates positions on the death penalty. Three are opposed in all instances: Dennis Kucinich, Al Sharpton, and Carol Moseley Braun. Here are the positions of the remaining six, from least worst to worst (in our view):

Clark and Kerry support the death penalty in some instances but voice the strongest doubts.

Wesley Clark:

He would support mandatory review of all death penalty sentences. "I'll tell you, I'm uneasy about the death penalty," Clark said answering a question recently in Arkansas. "A government like the United States has the right to, in extraordinary cases, take the life of a criminal, but I don't like the way the death penalty has been applied in America," Clark said. "I think it's been applied in an unfair and discriminatory fashion and I think we need to go back and use modern technology and unpack all those cases on death row."

John Kerry:

John Kerry says he favors life imprisonment over the death penalty, though he advocates the execution of terrorists. Interviewed on Meet the Press last February, Kerry told host Tim Russert that he advocates a moratorium on the death penalty, but that in the end it's up to the states to decide: "It’s fought state for state by state prosecutors. That’s where it’s done. And I would honor, obviously, the laws of those states, and that’s the way we should proceed."

We support H.R. 1709, the “Security and Freedom Ensured Act of 2003” also referred to as the “SAFE Act,” introduced to cut back on excess surveillance powers authroized in the Patriot Act, which have made it easier for law enforcement agencies to monitor the innocent activities of American citizens with minimal or no judicial oversight. The bill would:

• Place reasonable limitations on the government’s authority to obtain roving wiretaps under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 by requiring that the warrant identify either the target of the wiretap or the place to be wiretapped an by requiring that surveillance be conducted only when the suspect is present at the place to be wiretapped.

• Impose reasonable limits on the government’s ability to obtain sneak and peak warrants for physical evidence by limiting the instances when a court can authorize such warrants, set a reasonable time for notification of the covert search.

• Provide privacy protections for library, bookseller and other personal records under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 by requiring that the government specify that there are specific and articulable facts giving rise believe that the person to whom the records relate is a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power and requiring that a court must find that there are such specific and articulable facts before a subpoena may be issued.

• Provide privacy protections for computer users at libraries under national security authority by excluding libraries for the reach of Title 18 U.S.C. § 2709.

• Amend Section 224 of the PATRIOT Act to sunset Sections 213 (sneak and peak warrants), 216 (application of pen registers and trap and trace devices to electronic communications), 219 (single-jurisdiction, nationwide search warrants for terrorism), and 505 (national security letters) on December 31, 2005.

Mrs. Kos has gone into labor and Baby Kos is on its way. Stay tuned.

Update: It's a healthy boy. We got a phone call from Kos, the labor was 23 hours. Congrats to Kos and Elisa.

We all know that lawyers are not allowed to put their client on the stand to tell a lie. The issue becomes murky, however, as to deciding if the lawyer really knows that what the client intends to say is untrue. Two articles in the current issue of Ethics and Lawyering address the issue.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has defined the lawyer's obligaton:

In State v. McDowell, 2003 WI App 168 (Wis. Ct. App. July 22, 2003), the court set out what the lawyer's obligation is when the lawyer merely believes the witness will testify falsely, but the witness does not admit to the lawyer that he will testify falsely.

Another problem Governor-Elect Arnold Schwarzenegger will inherit is the bloated California prison expense which is $544 million over budget--largely the fault of Gov. Gray Davis and his catering to the prison guard's union:

The California Department of Corrections is overspending its budget by more than $544 million, and perhaps far more, largely because of pay hikes, overtime and other benefits granted to prison guards by Gov. Gray Davis and the Legislature last year.

...The department attributes the largest single chunk -- $184 million -- to increases of nearly 7 percent this year in salaries for prison officers and raises for other prison employees. Another $168.5 million results from the department's need to increase payments to the employees' pension fund, in part because of past stock market declines, but also because increased salaries had added to retirement pay.

....The Davis administration negotiated a labor package with the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn. last year, granting roughly 28,000 members salary increases of as much as 37 percent spread over the five-year life of the contract. By 2006, prison officers are expected to be making $73,000 a year.

The prison guard union is enormously influential in California because they contribute heavily to political campaigns:

The union contributed $1.4 million to Davis directly and indirectly during his first term. The union gave his 2002 reelection campaign $251,000 two months after he signed the legislation approving their pay raise.

Some suggest turning to private prisons. The prison guards union has objected to that. We have a better idea. Reduce the number of inmates. Release the drug and non-violent offenders. Home detention and electronic monitoring is another option.