Max has announced the "MAXSPEAK DEAD POOL"--on who takes the fall as a result of the alleged CIA leak of the identity of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame.

Taking the fall" means resignation, arrest, or indictment, whichever two come first.

Update: Via Calpundit, we learn Drudge has a response by Novak up on his site. It's unsourced as of now:

'Nobody in the Bush administration called me to leak this. In July I was interviewing a senior administration official on Ambassador Wilson's report when he told me the trip was inspired by his wife, a CIA employee working on weapons of mass destruction. Another senior official told me the same thing. As a professional journalist with 46 years experience in Washington I do not reveal confidential sources. When I called the CIA in July to confirm Mrs. Wilson's involvement in the mission for her husband -- he is a former Clinton administration official -- they asked me not to use her name, but never indicated it would endanger her or anybody else. According to a confidential source at the CIA, Mrs. Wilson was an analyst, not a spy, not a covert operator, and not in charge of undercover operatives'...

For the second time in one week, Law Professor Glenn Reynolds, aka Instapundit, writes about the Death Penalty on his MSNBC weblog. We're thrilled that Glenn is giving the issue so much attention. His column today includes a long letter from us, in response to his review of Scott Turow's new book, Ultimate Punishment, in his Sept. 25 column.

Of course, we don't have the same views as Glenn on all aspects of the death penalty. For example, while he doesn't say so, we suspect Glenn supports the death penalty in theory, provided it could be fairly adminstered--while we oppose it in all cases. But we welcome his concern for the wrongfully convicted in prisons (See the 9/25 column) and for his take today on who should be locked up and who not--and why the system isn't working the way it should. Glenn says:

My own sense is that we lock up too many people, and that we lock up some of them for too long, and some of them for not long enough. That’s partly because the system is so overburdened that there are too many plea bargains, and too many cases in which charges are brought for leverage. I’d like to see the criminal justice system focus on serious crimes — violent crimes, robbery, etc. — and spend far less on victimless crimes, simple drug possession, etc. Then it would have the resources to do a good job on the cases that are really important, and we could keep violent criminals in jail for a long time.

Glenn also says people don't trust the criminal justice system. They have a hard time believing that "life without parole" really means the inmate can't be released before his death. He's probably right that those opposed to the death penalty have to work harder to make people understand this.

But we still give a lot of blame to the politicans. As we wrote Glenn,

It is now a crime to drive while tired in New Jersey. It's called "Maggie's Law." [Not to be confused with the state's Megans Law."

Under Maggie's Law, police will not be pulling over drivers whose eyelids look heavy. But the law allows prosecutors to charge a motorist with vehicular homicide, punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $100,000 fine, in the event of a deadly crash if there is evidence the accident was caused by sleepiness.

This strikes us as overkill and another feel-good unnecessary law. There are plenty of laws already on the books that criminalize the conduct of at-fault and negligent motorists who cause an auto accident that results in death. There's no need to specify every type of misconduct that fits the crime of vehicular homicide or criminally negligent homicide or whatever the law is called in a particular state. That's what juries do.

New York and Washington state are considering similar bills.

We have been getting emails of journals from some of the Freedom Riders on the bus tour to DC. If you haven't been following the tour, designed to gain support for Immigrant rights, go here. The news reported the other day that border agents stopped some of the buses and detained the occupants for hours. Here is an unedited first hand account beginning with the stopping of the bus:

Update: 9/29 at 1pm MT:

The White House has denied Karl Rove was behind the leak.

*****************

New reaction to the announcement of a Justice Department probe of the intelligence leak surrounding Joseph Wilson's wife, CIA operative Valerie Plame:

Retired Gen. Wesley Clark, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, said a Justice Department probe would be inadequate. "This is too much for (Attorney General) John Ashcroft," he said. "It strikes right at the heart of our ability to gather intelligence."

Contacted by phone, Wilson said Sunday he thinks it's safe to assume that the CIA would not refer the matter to the Justice Department unless it thought a crime might have been committed. He said if White House officials were to blame, their motives were easy to decipher.

"It's pretty clear to me that, knowing that they could not shut me up because I had already told my story, the purpose for doing this was to intimidate others and keep others from stepping forward," Wilson said.

Wesley Clark told a college audience in New Hampshire Friday that he'd relieve Rumsfeld of his command. Others (Dean, Kerry) have called on Rumsfeld to resign, but this is the first we've seen that a major candidate would give Rumsfeld the boot.

Gen. Wesley Clark, told a New Hampshire audience Friday night he had only fired one person in his life. On Saturday he said he wanted to fire a second person: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

When asked at a house party on the Seacoast about what he would do in Iraq if elected president today, he was met with applause when he said, "First of all I would change the Secretary of Defense. Then I would go to the commanders of the ground and go to Iraq myself personally and I would develop an exit strategy that gives us a success and lets us downsize our commitment there."

Besides Rumsfeld, Clark also criticized Bush's National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice for her views of the world and then U.S. House Majority Leader Tom Delay, also a Republican, for his vote on a measure involving Kosovo.

In Washington Saturday, Clark said Americans are embarrassed by Bush.

Speaking after an event in Washington at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's annual conference, Clark, 58, told reporters that the American people are "really embarrassed" by the administration's leadership.

Back in July, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) called upon FBI Director Mueller to investigate the source of the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity. The press release on his Senate website says:

News reports suggest that Administration could have leaked the identity of a CIA agent to discredit a critic of the President and intimidate others from speaking out

US Senator Charles Schumer today asked FBI Director Robert Mueller to open an investigation into reports that two senior members of the Bush Administration illegally disclosed the identity of a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operative. According to Section 421a of the Intelligence Identities and Protection Act, the unauthorized identification of a CIA operative is a criminal act punishable by up to ten years in federal prison.

"This is one of the most reckless and nasty things I’ve seen in all my years of government," Schumer said. "Leaking the name of a CIA agent is tantamount to putting a gun to that agent’s head. It compromises her safety and the safety of her loved ones, not to mention those in her network and other operatives she may have dealt with. On top of that, the officials who have done it may have also seriously jeopardized the national security of this nation."

Here is the text of the letter Schumer sent to Mueller. Does anyone know what, if anything, Mueller or the FBI did in response? We suspect the answer is "nothing," but we'll be pleased to learn we are wrong.

Six telephone calls to journalists, all of whom must have told their editors, and possibly colleagues....this should hardly be the mystery of the year. We won't be surprised if by tomorrow morning, some enterprising journalist has uncovered it.

Update: A CNN/USA Today poll released today shows the recall is likely to succeed and Arnold is the most popular replacement candidate.

***********
Sunday's Los Angeles Times editorial Why the Recall Is Wrong is worth reading -- it devotes a section to each of the major candidates, and explains why each falls short of deserving the job of Governor. In fact, the Times says, every one of them would be worse than Davis.

The Times takes the same position as we have taken for months now: No endorsement of a replacement candidate.

Some snippets:

It looks pretty clear that the U.S. will be flying solo in rebuilding Iraq. The United Nations wants no part. Neither does the Iraqi Governing Council.

"They're on their own," a U.N. official said. "It's just between them and the American taxpayer."

We'd say its going to be between the taxpayers and their voting booths come November, 2004.

The Washington Post reports that a "senior administration official" has confirmed that "two top White House officials" called at least six journalists and diclosed the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame, wife of Ambassador Joseph Wilson.

The operative's identity was published in July after her husband, former U.S. ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, publicly challenged President Bush's claim that Iraq had tried to buy "yellowcake" uranium ore from Africa for possible use in nuclear weapons. Bush later backed away from the claim.

...."Clearly, it was meant purely and simply for revenge," the senior official said of the alleged leak.

This is major because federal law prohibits the intentional disclosure of an operative's identity.

So, who could the two top officials be? Daily Kos thinks one is Ari Fleischer and the other may be Karl Rove. We haven't a clue, so stay tuned.

Update: Here is the law at issue: The Intelligence Protection Act (50 U.S.C. Sec. 421). Different sections of the act provide for penalties ranging from three years to ten years.

Update: Atrios on the import of the budding scandal:

TalkLeft had its one millionth unique visitor early this morning. We began stat counting on June 22, 2002. There have been 1,611,409 page views in that time.

Unique visitors are not the same as hits. For example, for the month of September, 2003, we've had 89, 111 unique visitors who have made 204,720 visits and viewed 431,961 pages. Hits just for September, 2003 so far number 865, 506.

The blogs and internet news sites referring us the most visitors for the month of September are Atrios, Warblogs.cc, Instapundit, Daily Kos, Buzzflash and Cursor. Thanks, guys!

According to Blogstreet, today we are the 11th most influential blog and the 66th most popular blog.

Most importantly, thanks to all of you who have read and supported this site with words of encouragement, links and donations. Tommorrow is our (the author's) birthday so we feel like hitting one million today is an extra present.

One of our stat programs gave these meanings to the various terms:

If you have ever wondered to what extent Bush and the Justice Department would go to obtain expanded powers in the name of the terror war, the answer is becoming very clear. The Administration is becoming a master at using the media to condition us to their next power grab.

Take Sunday's New York Times, for example. Two journalists, Eric Lichtblau and Don Van Natta, Jr., write two separate articles, on related but different subjects. Neither takes note of the topic in the other's article. Yet the two articles are inextricably linked and clearly demonstrate where Bush & Co. is headed.

A few hours ago we wrote about Lichtblau's article, U.S. Uses Terror Law to Pursue Crimes From Drugs to Swindling. It's about how the Justice Department is using the Patriot Act in non-terror cases, ranging from:

....suspected drug traffickers, white-collar criminals, blackmailers, child pornographers, money launderers, spies and even corrupt foreign leaders... Justice Department officials say they are simply using all the tools now available to them to pursue criminals — terrorists or otherwise.

The focus of the article is whether using the Patriot Act in non-terror criminal investigations....for garden-variety crimes, if you will....is legal or just or even in sync with what Congress intended when it passed the Act. There is no mention of terrorist's involvement in routine crimes in an effort to hide their money to finance more terrorism.

Now we move to the Sunday Times Week in Review section and Van Natta Jr.'s article, Terrorists Blaze a New Money Trail. The article is about how terrorists are not using banks or other institutions to launder money. Instead, the article claims, they've decided to hide money by going into the petty crime business which generates non-traceable cash. There is no mention of the Patriot Act or other terror laws being used to catch such activity.