The FBI is doubling the number of agents assigned to the Justice Department probe into alleged leaks by White House officials of the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame.

As Democrats accused the White House of trying to improperly influence an inquiry into a leak, officials said on Thursday that the F.B.I. was doubling the number of investigators on the politically charged case.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation plans to use about 12 agents and other personnel, twice the number first planned, to try to find the person who leaked the identity of an undercover C.I.A. officer, the officials said.

It can quadruple them and it won't solve the problem. Bush and McClellan's remarks last week claiming that Rove, Abrams and Libby were not involved illustrate the need for special counsel. Four senators, in a letter written to Bush yesterday,

...pointed to the White House statement about the aides as one of several serious missteps. Mr. McClellan did not have the legal expertise to question possible suspects, said the letter from the Senate Democratic leader, Tom Daschle of South Dakota, and Senators Joseph R. Biden of Delaware, Carl Levin of Michigan and Charles E. Schumer of New York.

"The White House has now put the Justice Department in the position of having to determine not only what happened, but also whether to contradict the publicly stated position of the White House," they said.

Here's more on the Senators' letter to Bush.

Former federal prosecutor James Orenstein today joins the growing list of those calling for the appointment of special counsel.

Update: Congratulations to Human rights activist Shirin Ebadi, winner of the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize.

[Ebadi] won the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for her work fighting for democracy and the rights of women and children, the first Muslim woman and the first Iranian to receive the accolade.

Ebadi, 56, the first female judge in Iran who also was jailed on charges of slandering government officials, was praised by the Norwegian Nobel Committee for promoting peaceful, democratic solutions in the struggle for human rights.

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original post:

The Nobel Peace Prize winner will be announced shortly. Candidates include the pope, the former Czech president, Brazil's new leftist leader ...and former Illinois Governor George Ryan, who emptied Illinois's death row before leaving office.

What are Ryan's chances? 12-1, according to one bookmaking odds service.

Former Gov. George Ryan and rock star Bono have something in common beyond just their Irish heritage. Both have decent odds of winning the coveted Nobel Peace Prize, which will be awarded Friday by the Norwegian Nobel Institute.

Centrebet, an online Australian bookmaker, looked over some of the 165 nominees for the peace prize and ranked Ryan at 12-1 odds and U2's lead singer at 10-1.

Others say Ryan is "running neck and neck with the Pope."

We hope Ryan gets it.

Should minors be entitled to Miranda warnings? The Supreme Court is going to decide. We think they should, and so does Sherry Kolb, columnist for Findlaw, who analyzes the issues, and says there may be a stumbling block.

Go, Martha! She won a big round in court and the Government is so upset it may appeal.

U.S. District Judge John E. Sprizzo last week said depositions of 15 witnesses in her criminal case can be taken by lawyers representing investors who sued Stewart after her company's stock value declined when she became embroiled in an insider trading scandal.

Prosecutors tried to block the depositions, contending that the sworn testimony of government witnesses would give defense lawyers an unfair look at evidence prepared for her January trial on criminal obstruction charges. "We're reviewing our options," said Marvin Smilon, a spokesman for U.S. Attorney James B. Comey in Manhattan. He declined to elaborate.

It's about time something broke her way.

The Red Cross has finally come out and criticized the indefinite detentions of detainees at Guantanamo Bay:

A senior official of the International Committee of the Red Cross said on Thursday that the holding of more than 600 detainees here was unacceptable because they were being held for open-ended terms without proper legal process.

Christophe Girod, the senior Red Cross official in Washington....said that it was intolerable that the complex was used as "an investigation center, not a detention center."

Girod said he's going public with the charge because of the U.S.'s inaction on the detainees.

Mr. Girod said, "The open-endedness of the situation and its impact on the mental health of the population has become a major problem." In 18 months, 21 detainees have made 32 suicide attempts, and human rights groups have said the high incidence of such events, as well as the number of detainees being treated for clinical depression, was a direct result of the uncertainties of their situations.

Griod said the number one question asked by detainees is, "What's going to happen to me.?"

You can read more of Griod's views here.

The Washington Post Friday has an excellent editorial on the detainees, The Court's Conscience. It discusses Fred Korematsu, and the brief he has filed in the Supreme Court supporting the Guantanamo detainees. The Post says,

Mr. Korematsu's brief is an important reminder that "we tend too quickly to sacrifice . . . liberties in the face of overbroad claims of military necessity" and that courts "have too often deferred to exaggerated claims of military necessity and failed to insist that measures curtailing constitutional rights be carefully justified and narrowly tailored."

Here are the latest CNN poll numbers on the Democratic candidates. Clark led the group with 21 to Dean's 16, however, last time around Clark was at 22% and Dean at 13%. So Dean went up a point while Clark went down a point. Here's the rest:

Clark was followed by former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean with 16 percent, Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman had 13 percent, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry with 13 percent and Missouri Rep. Dick Gephardt with 8 percent. The field was rounded out with activist Al Sharpton at 6 percent, former Illinois Sen. Carol Moseley Braun with 4 percent, North Carolina Sen. John Edwards with 2 percent and Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich with 2 percent.

The debate is not bad, we're watching now (probably a rerun.) We like Clark, Dean and Edwards the best. Kerry just doesn't move us and he harps on his Vietnam war service too much. Gephardt and Lieberman are too much like "your father's oldsmobile." Sharpton, Mosley Braun and Kucinich all add to the discourse, and we're glad they're there, but we just can't take their candidacies very seriously.

There was lots of ganging up on Clark. Moderator Judy Woodruff talked too much. Lieberman didn't do himself any favors by bashing Hollywood.

The Washington Post debate analysis is here.

Bump and Update: The defense dropped a bombshell. We agree with the legal analysts quoted in the article who speculate it helped Kobe. The hearing will continue next Wednesday. [link fixed.]

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1/9 3:33 pm
Update: Ugly details are coming out. But so far, it's just the direct examination of the detective, no cross yet. People are speculating that Kobe himself might testify.

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original post, 1:30 pm

Contrary to prevailing legal speculation, including our own, Kobe Bryant's attorneys are proceeding with the preliminary hearing in the case. It just started and is expected to last two hours. No reports yet on what portions of the hearing, if any, will be closed to the public. That was decided at a hearing in the last hour. Clearly, if the defense is going forward, they aren't worried about what will come out in the public domain today. The defense is expected to call at least one witness that will challenge the accuser's credibility.

Earlier report is here.

Continuing the topic of taking the War on Drugs to an absolutely absurd level....

In today's news:

Boyfriend and girlfriend, 15-year-olds Brandon Kizi and Andra Ferguson are both asthma sufferers and both students at Caney Creek High School. At least, they were, until Andra began suffering an asthma attack at school.

"I couldn't breathe, and I was just very short of breath," recalled Andra. "My chest was tightened up and it was hurting."

Brandon described the incident. "Her face was turning a little reddish-pink and she looked pale, as far as I could see. I loaned her my inhaler. I walked her to the nurse's office and loaned her my inhaler."

That's when the trouble started. The school nurse called the school police, who arrested Brandon. They charged him with a felony, namely distributing a dangerous drug for loaning out his prescription inhaler. Andra's mother thinks that's wrong. "His (inhaler) is the very same thing. And he has had my permission to give her that medication any time she forgets it," said Sandra Ferguson.

Don't miss journalist David Neiwert of Orcinus on the spectre of the White House raising executive privilege in the Valerie Plame-CIA affair.

Here's more on executive privilege. Here too.

We used to not mind Westchester County DA Jeanine Pirro. She always pushed victims' rights, but she was never evangelical or off- the- wall about it. That's changed. She is pitching her new book --on victims' rights--and yapping non-stop spewing all sorts of nonsense on every cable channel that will have her. We just had to mute her. Her voice has gotten shrill, she's speaking a mile a minute and repeating herself over and over. And she's talking nonsense.

But, it's her new message we find most offensive. Her tag line is that we should change the name of the criminal justice system to the victim's justice system because the system has become about criminals rather than about victims.

Hey, Jeanine, we have news for you. The system has been about the accused for more than 200 years --ever since the Bill of Rights was passed. The intent of the framers was to protect the rights of persons accused of crime - not the rights of the victim.

Quoting ourselves from a 1997 article published in NACDL's Champion, "The foremost purpose of the Bill of Rights is to restrain the power of the majority and its elected government to act against an individual. As one author put it: "The Bill of Rights was designed to protect personal liberties from governmental infringement, not to protect private individuals from each other." [James M. Dolliver, "Victims' Rights Constitutional Amendment: A Bad
Idea Whose Time Should Not Come," 34 Wayne L.Rev.87, n.7, at 91 (1987).]

We are not anti-victim. In fact, we have consistently urged that victims of crime be treated with dignity, fairness and respect. But ideas such as Jeanine's and those behind the Victims' Rights Amendment looming in Congress are unwise and dangerous.

And that's our rant for the day.

Margaret Cho minces no words in her disgust for the blonde she-pundit the left loves to hate. The right needs to get a clue. [link via Atrios.]

Ms. Cho is right up front about her own biases:

My prejudice and hatred of the establishment, the judicial system, anti- abortionists, racism, misogyny, the integration of church and state - can spiral downwards out of control.

As Atrios says, Rant on. We need more of this.

Bump and Update: Time Magazine reports that Yaser Arafat has stomach cancer. Palestinian authorities have not confirmed this but they deny that he had a heart attack:

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Original Post: 10/7

We're glued to watching the recall results like the rest of you, but we just caught wind of this and thought we'd pass it on. Palestinian leader Yaser Arafat has suffered a heart attack.

Yasser Arafat has suffered a mild heart attack but the Palestinian leadership has sought to keep his health problems secret for fear it will "create panic".

The 74-year-old Palestinian president, who is suffering from Parkinson's disease, disappeared from public view last week and re-emerged at the weekend looking extremely ill. His face was pale and pinched, he had lost weight and he was almost inaudible. He had trouble standing for more than a few minutes at a time.

.... "Although he has had a slight heart attack, the doctors say he will make a full recovery. He is in full control. There is nothing to worry about," said a close aide to Mr Arafat, who did not wish to be named.