I've made my Saturday College Football picks (recorded my sports radio show, broadcast on Netroots Radio tomorrow at noon EST), but only me, the NSA and my investment house know what they are. To be revealed tomorrow morning as I turn the tables on my bad opening weekend.

Open Thread.

This seems a good development:

The United States would give Syria 45 days to sign an international chemical weapons ban or face the wrath of American military might, under a draft resolution being circulated by Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.). The alternative to a use-of-force resolution could forestall an immediate American strike and create an incentive for Assad not to use chemical weapons against his own people again. It may also provide a rallying point for lawmakers who are reluctant to either approve strikes or reject the use of force outright.

I think there are problems with the wording and details but I applaud the thrust. Restart the diplomatic track. The Obama Administration should take a look at this.

Shellie Zimmerman's lawyer today announced she has filed for divorce.

John Donnelly, a family friend who testified in George Zimmerman's defense at his trial, told Reuters that Shellie was "devastated" when her husband "just packed up and left" after his acquittal and was gone for a month without telling anyone his whereabouts. Shellie had lost touch with him and had grown increasingly upset.

The divorce petition is here.

(No character attacks on anyone please. They will be deleted.)

Jack Balkin wrote:

Under the U.N. Charter, it is illegal for member states to attack each other because they claim another state is violating international law unless they are acting in self-defense or unless they are authorized to do so by a Security Council resolution. There is no such resolution with respect to Syria. The whole point of the Charter is to keep (for example) Russia from attacking (for example) Israel because Russia claims that Israel is violating international law. What goes for Russia attacking Israel also goes for the United States attacking Syria.

This story is being under-reported in the press. Imagine a New York Times headline that read:

Obama seeks to violate United Nations Charter: Asks Congress's Blessing.

But that is exactly what is happening. Obama may say that he is just trying to enforce international norms, but he is doing it by violating article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter. To invoke a metaphor from another war, he is destroying the village in order to save it.

I point this out not because I think it is the most compelling reason to oppose Obama's Syria policy, but because it makes a mockery of the argument that we must support Obama's Syria policy in order to defend international norms. For example, E.J. Dionne writes today:

The NFL punishes players who use marijuana.

Marijuana Policy Project has purchased a billboard ad calling on the NFL to stop the punishments. The billboard is in front of Sports Authority Field at Mile High, where the Denver Broncos will host the first NFL regular season game of the year tomorrow.

The 48-foot-wide Broncos-themed billboard highlights the relative safety of marijuana compared to alcohol and urges the NFL to "stop driving players to drink" with harsh penalties for marijuana use, noting that, "A safer choice is now legal (here)."

There's also a Change.org petition you can sign here. Here's a photo of the actual billboard. The Marijuana Policy Project will hold a news conference Thursday at 10 a.m. MT in front of the billboard (1700 N. Federal Blvd., Denver)

Robert Dewey served 17 years of a life sentence for a Colorado rape and murder DNA evidence later proved he did not commit.

After release from prison in 2012, he had nothing. In June, Colorado passed a law (available here) allowing up to $70,000. a year compensation to the wrongly convicted. Dewey was present when Governor Hickenlooper signed the bill into law.

A Colorado judge has now approved a $1.2 million settlement to Dewey. 5280 Magazine has a long feature article on Dewey's journey, Resurrection.

Of note: [More...]

It seems sad to me that the questions presented in this Fallows piece are treated as trenchant, rather than obvious:

1. What objectives does the administration seek to achieve in Syria?

2. How does it anticipate that the use of force will lead to the fulfillment of those objectives?

3. What is the administration's theory of victory? That is, what are the assumptions that link the use of military force to the achievement of victory?

4. How does the administration believe that Syria will respond to the U.S. use of force?

5. What does the administration believe could go wrong? What unexpected things could happen?

6. And finally, how does the administration anticipate that this will end?

It is sad and shocking, but unfortunately, not surprising, that these questions are not the center of the debate.

The leaders of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee have agreed on a compromise Syria resolution. (Full text here.) It's not quite what Obama wanted, but it is expected to go to a committee vote tomorrow.

The bill limits the authorization to 60 days, with an option for an additional 30-day deadline, and makes clear there would be no boots on the ground, the sources said.

More here. A new Reuters poll shows 56% of Americans opposed to an attack.

I'm not in favor of the strike. Seems like a hollow gesture and a slippery slope -- for us. Give our leaders an inch, and they'll find a way to go for the mile.

I obviously disagree with the policy, but I also have to question the politics of this:

Secretary Clinton supports the president’s effort to enlist the Congress in pursuing a strong and targeted response to the Assad regime’s horrific use of chemical weapons,” a Clinton aide told POLITICO.

I think the President has not presented a plan that makes sense. And I see no reason why Hillary Clinton needed to comment on it now.

The New York Times reports on the Hemisphere Project, a program in which the DEA HIDTAs have been paying AT&T for phone records for 26 years.

The government pays AT&T to place its employees in drug-fighting units around the country. Those employees sit alongside Drug Enforcement Administration agents and local detectives and supply them with the phone data from as far back as 1987.

[More...]

Ostensibly, the Secretary of State of the United States, John Kerry, seems to have no idea what the job entails. NBC reports:

Secretary of State John Kerry told House Democrats during a Monday conference call that they face a "Munich moment" as they weigh whether to approve striking Syria to punish Syrian President Bashar Assad for using chemical weapons, two sources with knowledge of the call told NBC News. The phrase is a reference to the 1938 Munich Pact that ceded control of part of Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany -- a moment that history has harshly judged as an appeasement of Adolf Hitler that preceded World War II.

Personally, I think Kerry's phrasing is despicable, implying that those who disagree with his assessment of the right course of action in Syria are like those who appeased Hitler in the 1930s. It smacks of the worst rhetoric in the runup to the Iraq Debacle.

But more importantly, it simply is not something a Secretary of State should be saying. If diplomacy is required at some point in this situation, how is the Secretary of State to carry it out, given his intemperate, to put it kindly, remarks? He does not seem to possess the temperament for the job.

Happy Labor Day. (Version with Axl Rose here.)

Lets drink to the hard working people
Lets drink to the lowly of birth
Raise your glass to the good and the evil
Lets drink to the salt of the earth

Congratulations to Diana Nyad. At 64, she is the first to swim from Cuba to Florida. 112 miles, 53 hours.

French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault has presented a report to Parliament which finds the Syrian attack on August 21 involved the "massive use of chemical agents".

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.