The case is growing quickly. A doctor who worked as a translator at Guantanamo was arrested yesterday in Boston as he made his way back from Cairo.

Defense Department officials described [Ahmed] Mehalba as a civilian contractor who provided translation services, but it was unclear if he had fulfilled his contract or was still working at the camp.

Agents with Customs and Border Protection noticed documents that appeared to have come from the prison camp and that they suspected of being classified. The FBI was called in to interview Mehalba, who denied the documents were his, the official said. (Emphasis our's)

After the interview, the FBI arrested Mehalba on charges of making false statements. He was being held in Boston and further charges are possible, said the official, who declined to describe the nature of the documents in Mehalba's possession.

Making false statements? Sounds to us like needed something to justify the doctor's continued detention as they continue to investigate more serious charges. Making false statements to a federal offical is a catch-all type crime carrying a maximum of five years in prison.

One of the reasons we love The Poor Man is he is just about the funniest person in the blogosphere--go read An Internal Dialogue --pertaining to right- wing punidtry reaction to the Valerie Plame Affair.

Buzzflash interviews John Dean on Attorney General John Ashcroft...the genesis of the interview is Dean's column here, discussing whether lying about wmd is an impeachable offense.

Today, we are interviewing Dean --a noted author, political and legal analyst, and FindLaw columnist -- on the efforts of John Ashcroft to create a de facto policy of prosecuting Americans for disclosing government information, even if it is not classified. It is another example of Ashcroft, on behalf of Bush and Cheney, seeking to turn America into a Soviet style state, where an elite group of rulers control all the information that belongs to the American people.

Dean's column comes at an ironically timely moment. Right now, the White House is furiously trying to spin its way out of a traitorous act of betrayal, exposing a CIA operative who specialized in tracking legal and illegal trafficking in weapons of mass destruction. Ashcroft is no doubt spending time with his staff trying to find inventive ways to AVOID holding anyone at the White House accountable. At the same time the Department of Justice is probably conspiring to let an act of treason go unprosecuted at the White House, it is also, according to Dean, trying to figure out ways for sending American to jail for disclosing or transferring information that belongs to the American people, not the Bush Cartel.

Go read.

We are as intrigued by the Plame affair as the next person, but we don't want to forget other important events of the day. Mississippi's Charles Pickering should be winding his way through the House Judiciary Committee very soon in his quest for a lifetime seat on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Read the new Statement Of Senator Patrick Leahy on Pickering's re-nomination. Register your disapproval of Pickering's confirmation with your Senator.

Andrew Lam, writing for Pacific News Service, asks whether detained Army Chaplain Capt. James Yee will become Wen Ho Lee II. It sure seems like a possibility right now.

Yee's arrest is as troubling as Dr. Lee's, says Ling Chi Wang, a professor of East Asian Studies at the University of California at Berkeley. Though not prepared to pass judgment on the case, Wang says that "based on what has been leaked to the media, I smell a rat." The public knows next to nothing about the Yee case other than what the FBI and the military have revealed to the press, he says, much of which "we can safely regard as propaganda and half-truths."

Here's a current link to Robert Novak's July 14 column outing Valerie Plame, wife of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, as a CIA operative.

Among those in Congress calling for a special prosecutor (already rejected by the White House as we reported earlier): Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota and Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman John D. "Jay" Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, both of whom wrote letters Monday to Bush and Ashcroft.

In an unprecedented power play, Attorney General John Ashcroft has moved a death penalty trial from one federal district to another. Defense attorneys say he moved the case to get a Judge more sympatico with the Government's position.

Trying to cut budgets, prisons in several states have revised their food plans to reduce calories for inmates.

These new food plans involve either reducing the number of calories provided each day or eliminating a meal on weekends and holidays by serving two meals instead of three.

....Experts on prisons say, however, that food is only a very small part of the overall cost of running a prison system — about 80 percent of prison budgets go for guards' salaries — so that any saving achieved by reducing inmates' food will be minimal and comes at a risk.

We see this as misguided, unfair and just another attempt to denigrate the least powerful among us.

The reduction in daily calories was a result of a bill passed by the Texas Legislature that required the Department of Criminal Justice to reduce its budget by 5 percent, or $230 million, this year, with about $6 million of that coming from reduced spending on food, Mr. Todd said.

State Representative Ray Allen, a Republican who is chairman of the House Corrections Committee, said, "It was not our first choice to cut their food, but we had a $9.9 billion shortfall."

Here's how the cuts are effectuated:

In the truth is stranger than fiction department.....A Tampa band named "Hell on Earth" is protesting assisted-suicide laws. To prove their point, they will feature a live assisted suicide onstage at their concert this Saturday night in St. Petersberg, Fla. If you can't attend in person, don't worry, you can watch it on the internet.

.... the suicide show will be played before a "select few people" at an undisclosed location in St. Petersburg on Saturday and be shown live on the band's Web site. ....[Band Leader BillyTourtelot] would not disclose any details about the terminally ill person or say how the person planned to kill himself.

He said the point is to raise awareness that physician-assisted suicide should be legalized in Florida. Tourtelot said he is not worried about the legal ramifications. Violating the new city ordinance is punishable by up to 60 days in jail and a $500 fine. A Florida law already makes it manslaughter, a felony, to assist in a suicide. But Tourtelot insists the band is not assisting the act.

"This person will be doing this self-deliverance totally by themselves, on their own accord," he said.

The band is known for unusual stage shows. A past show featured the band grinding up live rats in a blender.

The White House today rejected calls for an Independent Counsel to investigate leaks in the Plame affair. Both Wesley Clark and Howard Dean have rightly pointed out that the Justice Department is not the appropriate agency to conduct an impartial, independent investigation.

The White House says Justice will determine whether an investigation is warranted. So there are no plans at this point for the launching of an investigation--there will only be an " preliminary inquiry."

Officials said the Justice Department began a preliminary inquiry to determine if there should be a full-blown probe based on a memo from the CIA stating a leak had occurred.

We anticipate a whitewash.

Update: Maybe not.

Good news from the New Hampshire Supreme Court. In a new decision, it has disagreed with the Supreme Court and held that individuals have a right to privacy in trash they put out for collection.

The New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled Monday that garbage is private, even when it has been put out near the street for collection. The 4-1 decision runs counter to rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court and high courts in most other states. But the court said New Hampshire's constitution provides a stronger expectation of privacy than the U.S. Constitution. The decision came in a case in which police searched a man's trash and found wire scrapers coated with marijuana residue.

The Court relied on the New Hampshire state consitution in arriving at its ruling:

We conclude that the defendant exhibited an actual expectation of privacy in his trash because he placed it in black plastic bags with the expectation it would be picked up by authorized persons for eventual disposal. We also conclude that society is prepared to recognize that expectation as reasonable. We acknowledge that the United States Supreme Court has held, to the contrary, that "society would not accept as reasonable [a] claim to an expectation of privacy in trash left for collection in an area accessible to the public." California v. Greenwood, 486 U.S. 35, 41 (1988). We are free, however, to construe our State Constitution to provide greater protection than the Federal Constitution. See id. at 43; Ball, 124 N.H. at 231-32. We do so here.

The full text of the opinion is here. Hawaii and Washington are two other states that have ruled this way.

This just in via email from the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP):

Tomorrow, Tuesday, September 30, the U.S. House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) Reauthorization Act of 2003. This bill authorizes the drug czar to spend more than $1 billion dollars over the next five years for the continued funding of the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign. If you do not call your U.S. representative immediately, this bill -- along with the media campaign funding --will almost certainly be approved.

Please call your U.S. representative toll-free by using the Capitol Switchboard at 800-839-5276. This switchboard operates 24 hours a day. So if you are inspired to call after normal business hours in D.C., the operator will transfer you to your representative's office and you can leave a voice mail message. Of course, calling during business hours would be preferable, if possible.

We've written about this before, here and here.

MPP provides this sample script for you to use when you call: