Helen Thomas writes about President Bush's disconnect with the rest of the country, which she partially attributes to the fact that he doesn't read newspapers.

The President of the United States doesn't read newspapers? We find this astonishing. Apparently, in an interview with Fox News' Brit Hume, Bush said he relies on aides to tell him what's important in the daily papers.

Bush was asked how he gets his news. Answer: He relies on briefings by chief of staff Andrew Card and national security affairs adviser Condoleezza Rice.

He walks into the Oval Office in the morning, Bush said, and asks Card: "What's in the newspapers worth worrying about? I glance at the headlines just to kind of (get) a flavor of what's moving," Bush said. "I rarely read the stories," he said.

Bush said he has been getting his news this way for quite some time.

Busy as he is, Bush would be better acquainted with the daily lives of Americans if he read his daily newspapers. I don't know of many brave White House staffers willing to risk the president's anger by dishing him the bad news.

Instead, Bush is spoon-fed the relevant news from his staff. Top aides usually know the buttons not to push when it comes to bad news. More often they will tell the president what he wants to hear -- the good news if there is any. Or they may just sugar coat the news that is tougher to swallow.

We find Bush's statement pathetically sad for him, and frightening for the rest of us. Sad for him because almost everyone reads a newspaper somewhere. Maybe we all don't subscribe to one, but we all read one--in the taxi cab, at the coffee or donut shop, at the barber's, in the doctor's waiting room, at the car dealership, the airport, hotel lobby, shoe shine stand.... all of us but the President of the United States.

And frightening for the rest of us because here is a man whose awesome responsibilities include making the most important of decisions for our country, those that affect our daily lives and the lives of those in other countries--as well as decisions that shape and define our country's role in the world -- and he fulfills these responsiblities by relying upon second-hand news.

13 potential jurors have been qualified to sit in the trial of accused Sniper suspect John Muhammed. The Court needs to qualify 27, and then both sides will begin exercising their peremptory challenges. The Virginian-Pilot continues its online reporting from the courthouse. Here's a wrap-up of today's events.

This sounds like very fast jury selection to us, particularly in a death penalty case. The questions focused on juror's attitudes on the death penalty, and whether they felt "victimized" by the sniper attacks. Most jurors said they did not feel victimized as the attacks were 200 miles away.

Testimony is expected to begin Monday in the trial.

For the first time in ages, we missed an entire day of blogging. Between court for clients in the morning, and coveriing the Kobe Bryant hearing in the afternoon and evening, we just didn't get to a computer. We're amazed that our site stats show that 7,500 unique visitors stopped by anyway. Thanks to all of you readers, that feels really good.

As to Kobe Bryant, here's the top five news items from today's hearing:

1. The detective testified that the accuser went to her rape exam the day after the event wearing panties that contained blood and semen from someone other than Kobe Bryant. These panties were yellow, and not the same as the ones she was wearing during the encounter with Kobe, which she also turned over to police. Also, there was a caucasian hair found in her pubic area at the time of her rape exam, about 18 hours after her encounter with Kobe.

2. The detective testified that the accuser said she had consensual sex with another partner two or three days before the incident with Kobe, during which her partner wore a condom.

3. The detective testified the accuser did not tell him in the first interview that she said "no" to Kobe during their five minutes of intercourse. It wasn't until a later interview that she added that she said "no." In the first interview, she told the detective that Kobe stopped when she resisted.

4. The night auditor of the hotel saw the accuser right after the incident and says she did not appear distraught and it did not seem like anything was amiss.

5. Kobe Bryant was examined from head to toe and had no marks on him.

The Judge refused the People's request to close today's hearing and allowed Pamela Mackey to resume questioning where she left off last week - with evidence of the woman's sexual activity that occurred near the time of her encounter with Kobe.

All in all, the Judge will bind the case over because the burden of proof is so low at a preliminary hearing, but a conviction seems less and less likely. All of the evidence today came from prosecution reports turned over to the defense. We haven't even seen an iota of what the defense investigation has revealed, and we bet its considerable.

The Judge is expected to rule on the issue of probable cause by Monday. Relevant news articles can be found here and here.

We'll be back tomorrow with non-Kobe related coverage.

Here's more on yesterday's yesterday's Supreme Court decision rejecting the Government's appeal of a 9th Circuit marijuana decision upholding a physician's right to recommend medical marijuana.

Go over and vote in the medical marijuana poll. As of 7:00 am Denver time, 94% favor medicial marijuana, 4% oppose and 2% are unsure. It's early here and only 47 total votes are in. Register your opinion and check back with the poll throughout the day.

ABC News reports on a new ABC/Washington Post poll showing that support for Bush's re-election continues to decline.

Net result: If the 2004 presidential election were today, 46 percent of Americans say they would vote to re-elect Bush, while 47 percent would favor the Democratic candidate ” the president's weakest showing to date in this so-called generic horse race. (It's 44 percent to 49 percent among registered voters). Bush's lead in this test is down from 13 in April, 8 in August and 5 last month.

There's more:

Nearly six in 10 Americans — a new high — call U.S. casualties in Iraq "unacceptable," more than double its level when Baghdad fell last April.

On the CIA leak investigation:

More than eight in 10 continue to see the alleged White House leak of a CIA operative's identity as a "serious matter," and the number who think the administration is fully cooperating in the investigation has declined to 39 percent. About two-thirds still favor appointment of an outside special counsel to look into the matter.

By sex and gender:

As in 2000, he faces gender, racial and income gaps. Men favor him by 50 percent to 44 percent; women prefer the Democrat by 50 percent to 42 percent. Whites and higher-income people support Bush by double-digit margins, nonwhites favor the Democratic candidate by a huge 51 points, and lower-income people by 12 points.

The office of the Inspector General has issued a report criticizing the DEA for its report keeping:

Efforts by the Drug Enforcement Administration to target, disrupt and dismantle global drug-trafficking organizations cannot be measured and, as a result, it remains unclear whether the agency is adequately achieving its drug enforcement goals and objectives, a report said yesterday.

The Justice Department's Office of Inspector General said the DEA had failed to meet key aspects of the government's new performance-reporting guidelines, which focus on results instead of procedure, and that the agency's strategic objectives were "not quantitative, directly measurable or assessment-based."

The FBI didn't fare much better:

The Justice Department's Office of Inspector General, in a 145-page report, said that while the FBI made progress in correcting problems with outdated infrastructures, fragmented management, ineffective systems, inadequate training and problems with computer security, more work is needed to guard against terrorists.

"This audit shows that while some progress has been made, more needs to be done to correct deficiencies that we have identified in prior reports," Mr. Fine said.

...The report also said computer applications were not secure from unauthorized access.

We wish the Bush Administration would focus more on pushing its law enforcement agencies to make us safe and secure with the powers they already have instead of pushing so hard for legislation that will only make us less free.

The next battle over President Bush's controversial judicial nominees is likely to be fought over conservative California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown.
Her nomination could come before the Senate Judiciary Committee as soon as next week.

The bashing of Brown -- nominated in July to the prestigious U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit -- is expected to get more intense as the confirmation date approaches. Opponents are actively lobbying senators to vote against her, and a highly critical, 2-month-old report by the NAACP and the People for the American Way is being distributed throughout the Senate.

Also troubling for Brown is that no major black law group backs her, now that the National Bar Association and the California Association of Black Lawyers have joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in panning the justice. Nan Aron, president of the left-leaning, Washington, D.C.-based Alliance for Justice, says opposition will come from all fronts -- not only black groups, but also women's organizations and pro-abortion associations.

"We will do everything we possibly can to ensure that she's not confirmed," Aron says. "We are working on a report and plan to release it to coincide with the announcement of her hearing."

We hope it's goodbye time to Judge Brown. Our prior coverage of her is here. We highly recommend you read this report on Judge Brown , prepared by People for the American Way.

A federal judge ruled today that five reporters must reveal the confidential sources of information they used in writing articles about former weapons laboratory nucelar scientist Dr. Wen Ho Lee. The reporters were also ordered to turn over to their notes and other material generated during their prepatory work to Dr. Lee's lawyers.

Judge Jackson ruled that First Amendment protections that shield journalists from government interference were outweighed in this specific case by the need of Dr. Lee's lawyers to provide evidence of government leaks in their suit against the government.

We wonder if anyone at the White House is shaking in their boots yet. Can a similar ruling in the Valerie Plame case be far behind?

Jay Allen has put up the link to his new, free comment-spamming plug-in for MT. Get it now, you won't be sorry.

Law Prof. Eric Muller of Is That Legal? sat in on a speech by former Assistant Attorney General Michael Chertoff last Friday as part of a symposium on terror and the law at the University of North Carolina. Chertoff was the chief of the Criminal Division of the Justice Department until Bush nominated him for a seat on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. He is now a judge of that Court.

Eric was impressed by Chertoff and his arguments. In fact, Eric says, Chertoff gave an "extraordinarily lucid and powerful presentation." Here's Eric's account.

[Note, we disagree with much of what Chertoff said about the Patriot Act, particularly that it "did not purport to push law beyond existing 4th Amendment doctrine." By its increase of authority for and use of FISA warrants, allowance for nationwide issuance of search warrants, and other related power increases that we've written about here many times before, the Act reduced the role of the judiciary in overseeing the warrant process, and in many cases, goes well beyond current 4th Amendment standards. For an excellent report on how the Justice Department has misled the American people on the Patriot Act, go here]

Eric says Chertoff said if there's one aspect of U.S. Post-911 policy about which he might doubt its legality, it's the indefinite detention of American citizens as enemy combatants on U.S. soil. Decisions, we might add, are made by the Defense department rather than Justice, so all in all, it sounds like in his speech, Chertoff was just another cheerleader for Ashcroft.

Eric does take issue with Chertoff's reliance on Chief Justice Rehnquist's book, All the Laws but One: Civil Liberties in Wartime, which Eric labels, "is the work of an armchair historian, and is a radically incomplete (and one-sided) account of the history."

No matter which side you're on, Eric's account is worth reading. Again, it's here.

Update: Problem fixed, you can add comments again. It was our mistake but our always helpful hosting company, Hosting Matters, found the error and fixed it.

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We have just been advised that people are getting error messages when trying to post comments. We're checking into it and will get it fixed as soon as possible. Thanks to those of you who let us know.

The Virginia Pilot is providing virtually real-time coverage of the sniper trial--in blog format. This must be a first, and we think it's great. [link via How Appealing.]