More news on the police wiretaps on Scott Peterson's phone.

The police intercepted 3,858 phone calls on Peterson's home and cell phones in the three week period between January 10 and February 4. 69 of the calls were between him and his lawyer. One was between Peterson and his private investigator. That leaves approximately 3,700 calls to other people. Peterson was a fertilizer salesman by occupation. His wife was gone, so he wasn't talking to her. He was likely not working much after her disappearance. Who else was he talking to? Amber, several dozen times maybe. His family, maybe 100 times. But that still leaves 3,500 calls. Could there have been that many calls from the media seeking interviews?

The latest news is that one of the investigators involved with the court-ordered wiretapping says he was just advised by the software company that designed the wiretap system of an additional 176 calls. The prosecutor says these calls are news to them and have asked the Judge to screen them to see if law enforcement can listen to them.

Mark Geragos, Peterson's lawyer, is seeking to toss the wiretaps, or recuse the prosecutors who listened to the privileged calls. A hearing is set for June 26. Geragos has subpoenaed the Judge who issued the wiretap order to the hearing because he did not have a court reporter present during his conferences with the prosecutors, as is required by California law.

We're sure it will be an interesting hearing, but still, our main question is who has 4,000 telephone conversations in three weeks and who was Peterson talking to?

The FBI has been undergoing internal changes--many of its drug agents have been moved into the terrorism unit and some members of Congress are upset.

The General Accounting Office, in testimony Wednesday to a House committee, found that the number of FBI field agent positions dedicated to drug crimes had dropped from about 1,400 in fall 2001 to just over 800 today.

The number of new drug investigations has fallen from 1,825 in 2000 to 944 last year and just 310 in the first half of this year. At the same time, new FBI counterterrorism investigations have risen from just over 1,000 prior to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to 4,408 by early this year.

....36 percent of the FBI's field agent positions are now working on either counterterrorism or counterintelligence, compared with 26 percent shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks. The report says that the FBI faces challenges in finding enough agents to meet the terror threat without further siphoning off resources from other criminal investigations.

The solution, according to FBI director Robert Mueller, is for Congress to fund more agent positions.

I got a call at 8:00 a.m. (MT) this morning from Fox News saying Andrew Luster had been arrested in Mexico, and the bounty hunter who had arrested him was also in jail. They were letting me know because I was scheduled to do a segment at 11:00 am (MT) on the Scott Peterson case, and they are adding Luster to the segment.

I took the news kind of personally, because Duane Chapman, or Dog the Bounty Hunter as he's usually called, is a bondsman I have used in the past and like a lot. After a few years of not being in touch (he moved to Hawaii and mostly lives there, although he still has his business in Denver) we hooked up again by coincidence a few weeks ago. As soon as I heard the news from Fox, I called his wife Beth in Hawaii who, understandably, was quite distraught. Not only did they arrest Dog, but they arrested her stepson, brother in law, a movie actor (who recently was in the film Italian Job), the camera man and the sound man.

Some things to know about Dog: He never carries a gun. Mace, sometimes, no guns. He has a really interesting life story, which you can read here.

As to the Luster capture, here's what Beth said (she had not yet spoken with Dog, but with one of the persons present):

Instapundit has a new TechCentral Station column up today on what makes a good blog. Glenn should know!

We also appreciate Glenn mentioning us along with Volokh and How Appealing as a blog providing academic or legal expertise.

So what's the secret to good blogging? Glenn says,

In every case, though, what brings success is knowing something other people don't know, and expressing it well.

All of this means, of course, that if you came to this column looking for blogging secrets, well, there aren't any. The key to good blogging is simple: have something interesting to say, and say it well. Kind of like, well, every other sort of writing - just faster, and with links. There's nothing new about that, but it's still a kind of magic, as good writing always is.

Speaking of good blogs, James Capozzola of Rittenhouse Review is one of the top writers around--meaning he just writes better than anyone else--except for Jeanne at Body and Soul who is on a par with him. Anyway, Jim announced today that is withdrawing from the race against Arlen Specter to be the next Senator from Pennsylvania. We think he was only running in the blogosphere, but Jim, you had a great run. We would have voted for you.

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Our favorite investigative reporter on the Patriot Act in recent months has been Chisum Lee of the Village Voice. In his current article, The Devil is In The Details, he confirms that the Bush Administration is sneaking Patriot Act II past us in small doses, almost imperceptibly.

Both Patriot Act II and the means for evaluating it have begun to materialize, in scattered pieces. On June 5, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft slipped a wish list of major new anti-terrorism powers into a day of congressional testimony that ranged widely from Al Qaeda to intellectual property to DNA evidence. A wealth of revelations about the Bush administration's anti-terrorism conduct has also emerged, not in one grand exposé but sprinkled among various reports, court outcomes, and congressional Q&As.

Lee cites two developments in recent weeks which should have been, but were not, reported as Patriot Act-related--both could help Congress and the public decide whether Ashcroft should get new powers:

Ashcroft urged Congress to boost anti-terrorism powers in three major ways: make more acts punishable as terrorism under a broadened definition of providing "material support" to suspect groups, allow longer pre-trial detention for people accused of a terrorism-related offense, and make it easier to sentence people accused of "terrorist acts" to death. Asked last Friday whether these would make it into a final White House request, and what other ideas would be added in the end, Justice Department spokesperson Mark Corallo would not specify, saying only, "There will be a package of legislation sooner rather than later."

Although Ashcroft's pitch for new powers made headlines, unreported were parts of his testimony that might help Americans decide whether he should get them. For one, there was his understated slant on death sentences. The possibility of execution would be most valuable as a way to "encourage cooperation" in suspects, he said, not dwelling on the more concrete result of such a sentence.

We knew the headline Bush Issues Federal Ban on Racial Profiling was too good to be true.

Bush's new racial profiling policy sounds like a campaign move geared towards increasing his minority support. But it will only reach those who can't read between the lines.

President Bush issued guidelines today barring federal agents from using race or ethnicity in their routine investigations, but the policy carves out clear exemptions for investigations involving terrorism and national security matters.

...Arab-American and civil rights groups said the exemptions in the White House policy would give the authorities legal justification to single out Middle Easterners and others who may fall under suspicion, and they questioned whether the new policy — issued as "guidance" — would be aggressively enforced.

"This policy acknowledges racial profiling as a national concern, but it does nothing to stop it," Laura Murphy, director of the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties Union, said in an interview. "It's largely a rhetorical statement. The administration is trying to soften its image, but it's smoke and mirrors."

To show you just how little change Bush and the Justice Department really intend, read this statement by White House Spokesman Scott McClellan:

"The way the president looks at it," a White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said, "this is about stopping the abuses of a few, and today's action should only strengthen the public's confidence that the vast majority of law enforcement officials have earned and deserve credit for the job they do in protecting Americans."

The abuses of a few? Is he kidding? It's been rampant all over America for years. Driving While Black. Driving While Hispanic. Driving While Muslim.

Further, what isn't a terrorist-related offense to Aschroft these days? Not much.

The U.S. is moving ahead with plans to set up a criminal court in Iraq:

Paul Bremer, the top American official in Iraq, told a news conference the new Central Criminal Court would be used for trials of Saddam loyalists who had committed crimes against occupying U.S. and British forces.

"One of the main reasons for my establishing this court is so that we can try people, in particular senior Baathists...who may have committed crimes against the coalition, who are trying to destabilize the situation here, and so we can do it rather quickly," Bremer said. "It could evolve into a tribunal to try people for crimes against humanity. That is a decision that the (future) Iraqi government should make."

The U.S. plans to open the Court next month. It is holding 1,300 prisoners out at the Baghdad airport. The court will try defendants for crimes committed after the start of the war. The court will be run by ten Iraqi judges and three prosecutors. Defendants presumably will be provided with counsel.

But, like everything else about the war with Iraq, the legality of the court is questionable:

The administration says that as the occupying power in Iraq, it has the right to issue orders which carry the force of law, and to try those who attack its forces as criminals.

But the United States has not officially declared the war over, raising potential confusion over whether attacks on occupying troops are governed by international rules of war.

Here come more reports of botched NYPD No-Knocks

We wonder how many dollars the radical right spent wooing Norma McCorvey, the plaintiff in Roe v. Wade. McCorvey has filed suit to overturn the ruling in her case, aruging that new evidence shows abortion is harmful to women. Our view: a cheap stunt.

Newsweek is reporting that the taped conversations between Amber Frey and Scott Peterson don't show much. And <a href=" Fox40 KTXL reports:

Police wiretap recordings allegedly show Peterson was cool and charming, told Amber he loved her, and then got down to business, asking if she would hand over potentially damaging photos of the two taken at a Fresno-area Christmas party before they became public.

But according to people who have heard the intercepts, they reveal little more than Peterson's obsession with the potentially embarrassing photos.

And defense attorney Jeralyn Merritt says she doubts calling Amber to the witness stand will help much either.

Jeralyn Merritt says, "Even if there was love chat where he says to her I was going to leave my wife and marry you, it's a far cry from murder and an even further cry from murdering his unborn child."

Gloria Allred says, "I think that if the prosecution chooses to call her, that means they think she has something to contribute to the case and they'll decide how it is relevant and what it bears upon."

Actually, we liked another of our comments on that show better. When asked if Amber was important to convicting Scott, we said, "If this were a menu, Amber would be a side dish."

As much as Amber and her lawyer would like to portray her as a victim of this crime she is not. She may have been victimized by Scott Peterson, but she is not a victim of the murder of Laci Peterson.

Remember the Judge who asked the woman appearing before him if she was a terrorist--causing her to faint? He's stepped down.

A sad day for democracy.

A federal appeals court, reversing a lower-court decision, ruled today that the government did not have to disclose the names of more than 700 people detained in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, agreeing with the Justice Department that making that information public could allow Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups to map the course of the investigation.

bq. The 2-to-1 decision by a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia was a rebuff to the civil liberties and other groups that were challenging the Bush administration's refusal to provide the names and other information about people, mostly immigrants, held in connection with the 9/11 terrorism investigation, on the ground of national security.

The court said the government could withhold the dates and locations of arrest, detention and release of all detainees, including those charged with federal crimes, and the names of lawyers representing them.

The case is Center for National Security Studies, et al.,
v. U.S. Department of Justice and you can read the opinion here.

Update: Jim at Unqualified Offerings has some excellent commentary on this.