Atrios is a prince. Our prince.

Captain James Yee, the only Muslim chaplain for the 660 detainees being held at Guantanamo, was arrested September 10 on suspicion of treason and espionage. He joins Yaser Hamdi and Jose Padilla at the military brig in South Carolina. No charges have been filed yet against Yee, who allegedly was found with classified documents in his possession, consisting of diagrams of the cells and facilities at Guantanamo.

Yee is a West Point graduate who has denounced terrorism and the 9/11 attacks in the past. There must be a lot more to this story.

A new Newsweek poll has Gen. Wesley Clark on top among the Democratic contenders for President. Daily Kos has some analysis, and concludes it doesn't mean much. Kevin at Calpundit thinks it means a lot.

Also from Kevin, if you're wondering where Clark stands on the issues, read this account of Clark's statements during a lunch with law professors in Iowa Friday.

Update: Fox News just announced that the Newsweek poll also asked which Democrat had the best chance of beating Bush. The results, in order: Clark, Kerry, Dean.

The Fresno Bee reports that an inmate doing time on a parole violation claims Scott Peterson asked about having Laci kidnapped a month before her disappearance. The inmate's lawyer says he passed a polygraph. Despite the gag order, somehow the Fresno Bee has a copy of the polygrapher's report.

Peterson's attorney Mark Geragos says he'd love to comment about the report, but can't, due to the gag order.

The inmate, Corey Lee Carroll, says he met Peterson at a strip club and Peterson, after learning Carroll had been in jail, asked him if he knew anyone who could steal his wife's car for insurance money. Carroll says Peterson paid him $300.00 to introduce Peterson to two neo-nazis and the four went to a motel to discuss the car theft. Carroll says he left when the subject of a kidnapping came up.

Carroll's lawyer says his client has nothing to gain by coming forward. Carroll is being held without bail on a parole violation. Last year he was jailed on another parole violation following a theft by receiving conviction. We're not buying it.

Check out this MEMO To MADD's New Celebrity Board from the Center for Consumer Freedom.

And this banner which MADD has the audacity to sell for $195.00--it compares beer to heroin by depicting a beer bottle as if it were a syringe.

JetBlue Apologizes for giving away its passenger records.

David Neeleman, chief executive of the New York-based carrier, said in an e-mail to customers that JetBlue made a mistake a year ago when it agreed to a Defense Department request to provide the data to Torch Concepts Inc. of Huntsville, Ala., for a project said to involve military base security.

...The airline said the study had nothing to do with the government's planned CAPPS II passenger profiling system, which uses a massive secret database of information to assess individuals' security-threat levels.

Too little too late? Here's more:

Details of the study and JetBlue's involvement were reported Thursday by Wired.com, which credited privacy activist Bill Scannell for bringing attention to the issue on his Web site. Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said that by violating its privacy policy, JetBlue could be sued for "deceptive trade practices."

Torch said the intent of the study was to guide the Pentagon on a project for military base security. But Richard Smith, an Internet privacy consultant, said the study was a prototype for a system being developed by the Transportation Security Administration. The system, ordered by Congress after the Sept. 11 attacks, will check such things as credit reports and compare passenger names with those on government watch lists.

Actor and comedian Tommy Chong, sentenced last week to 9 months in prison for selling bongs on the Internet, may appeal his sentence.

The grounds: the Judge based the sentence on "the character he played and not the person he is."

"The United States attorney made a big deal about Tommy's movies and how he portrayed drug usage and law enforcement," Stanton B. Levenson said Friday. "We didn't think it would be appropriate to consider his public persona. ... That's not him."

Levenson said attorneys were still researching possible appeal issues, but they were concerned that U.S. District Judge Arthur J. Schwab didn't separate Chong from the hippie stoner he portrayed in movies he made with comedy partner Cheech Marin. An appeal notice was filed Friday.

My laptop is on its last leg. I spend so much time blogging, I really can't afford to buy a new one. I know from TalkLeft's stats that we have many readers at major computer companies. If one of them would like to send me a new, light-weight laptop (so I can keep blogging when I travel), I'll be glad to write a review and feature it on TalkLeft and give the company a free ad for several months.

Private donations, anonymous or not, also accepted--just click on our wishlist to see -- although any brand will be just fine.

Update: I'm speechless. Absolutely speechless. And that's pretty rare for me. My wish list is showing that someone has bought me the laptop I wanted. I am very, very grateful. Whoever you are, thank you. If you included a note with the order, I will thank you properly as soon as Amazon lets me know who you are. If you sent it anonymously, please know I am in awe of your generosity (and hoping you don't change your mind!)

The ACLU, joined by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers ( NACDL ) have filed a friend of court brief in the Oregon 7 terrorism case asking the Judge to declare the Patriot Act unconstitutional.

Specifically, the ACLU, joined by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, says the Justice Department's use of a secret court to get authority for electronic eavesdropping violates constitutional protections of privacy and free speech and against unreasonable searches and seizures.

The groups filed their challenge as a "friend of the court" brief Friday in the so-called Portland Seven case, in which seven people were charged with conspiring to fight against U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Three of the defendants have pleaded guilty.

Defense lawyers in the Portland case have challenged the government's use of secret court-approved wiretaps, the collection of e-mail messages and the planting of microphones in the home of one of the suspects. They claim the covert surveillance approved by a special court under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, should not have been granted in the case because the defendants are not agents of foreign powers, spies or terrorists, as defined in the act.

A hearing on the motion will be held October 14. Here's more on the action.

For a comprehensive look at the Patriot Act in one place, visit the ACLU's Patriot Act Page.

An Islamic appeals court decision is due next week in the case of Amina Lawal , the Nigerian woman sentenced to death by stoning under Islamic Shariah law for adultery. Protests in Nigeria and South Africa are mounting and getting louder. Here's the latest.

President Thabo Mibeki told Parliament yesterday that the government must let the court process run its course.

For background and details, go here.

While Attorney General John Ashcroft maintains that no library records have been sought in the wake of 9/11 and enactment of the Patriot Act, libraries reported differently in June, 2002, according to this USA today article.

... the University of Illinois conducted a survey of 1,020 public libraries in January and February and found that 85 libraries had been asked by federal or local law enforcement officers for information about patrons related to Sept. 11, said Ed Lakner, assistant director of research at the school's Library Research Center.

....Kari Hanson, director of the Bridgeview Public Library in suburban Chicago, said an FBI agent came seeking information about a person, but her library had no record of the person. Federal prosecutors allege Global Relief Foundation, an Islamic charity based in the Chicago suburb, has ties to Osama bin Laden's terror network

...In Florida, Broward County library director Sam Morrison said the FBI had recently contacted his office. He declined to elaborate on the request or how many branch libraries were involved. "We've heard from them and that's all I can tell you," Morrison said. He said the FBI specifically instructed him not to reveal any information about the request.

The library system has been contacted before. A week after the Sept. 11 attacks, the FBI subpoenaed Morrison to provide information on the possible use of computer terminals by some of the suspected hijackers in the Hollywood, Fla., area. In October, investigators revisited the county's main library in Fort Lauderdale and checked a regional library in Coral Springs.

The article went on to discuss how library record requests work under the Patriot Act:

Former President Jimmy Carter appeared on Larry King Live tonight. He said he sees some of himself in Howard Dean. He mentioned that both Dean and Wesley Clark sought his opinion on running campaigns. Carter thinks Dean is an exciting candidate and praised his use of the internet to raise funds.