The Washington Post profiles Tennessee Senator Bill Frist today, and he seems like a really nice man with really bad politics.

The Post portrays him as a jetsetter surgeon who pilots himself around in his own plane, occasionally to pick up organs for his needy patients. He was born rich and got richer. His family owned a company called HCA that morphed into the "largest chain of for-profit hospitals in the country." After a hostile takeover in which his family ceded control, HCA became Columbia/HCA.

"In 1997, FBI raids on company hospitals turned up widespread Medicare fraud. According to attorneys for the whistleblowers who revealed the massive overbilling, HCA engaged in illegal practices even before the takeover. But Thomas Frist Jr. returned to the helm of the company as unpaid chairman and chief executive, and worked to restore trust in the company. This week, HCA (the old name is back) announced that it would pay the federal government $631 million to settle fraud claims-bringing the total payments by the company to $1.7 billion...." "With the health system in crisis, Republicans are considering a Senate majority leader who made his millions from a family-run company that defrauded Medicare, overstated expense statements, billed for services ineligible for reimbursements and paid kickbacks to physicians to encourage referrals to HCA facilities," said Physicians for a National Health Program, which has clashed with Frist over health care issues."

Frist spent $3.4 million of his own money to win his first senate race in 1994. His voting record has been the same as Lott's 90% of the time. Friends say he may have presidential aspirations for 2008.

Eli Lilly is a big financial contributor to his campaign.

Frist wrote a provision, enacted into law, that restricted the ability of plaintiffs to sue the company for injuries resulting from Thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative used in vaccines against childhood diseases. The Lilly provision was quietly woven into the legislation creating the Department of Homeland Security.

"He really shows the true compassionate conservatism," says Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.). Sorry, but we go right for the mute button whenever we hear that overused, meaningless jingle.

Let's take a closer look at his voting record. How does the wealthy, conservative, southern senator come out on non-health care issues?

Nathan Newman provides Frist's record on abortion, civil liberties, the environment and labor rights.

We checked his record on crime issues and civil rights and here's what we found:

On Civil Rights:

Voted YES on loosening restrictions on cell phone wiretapping. (Oct 2001)
Voted NO on expanding hate crimes to include sexual orientation. (Jun 2000)
Voted NO on setting aside 10% of highway funds for minorities & women. (Mar 1998)
Voted YES on ending special funding for minority & women-owned business. (Oct 1997)
Voted YES on prohibiting same-sex marriage. (Sep 1996)
Voted NO on prohibiting job discrimination by sexual orientation. (Sep 1996)
Voted YES on Amendment to prohibit flag burning. (Dec 1995)
Voted YES on banning affirmative action hiring with federal funds. (Jul 1995)
Supports anti-flag desecration amendment. (Mar 2001)

On Crime:

He is pro-death penalty and wants to limit death penalty appeals. He favors three-strikes sentencing laws. He believes in an absolute right to gun ownership.

Voted YES on limiting death penalty appeals. (Apr 1996)
Voted YES on increasing penalties for drug offenses. (Nov 1999)
Voted YES on spending international development funds on drug control. (Jul 1996)
Voted YES on more penalties for gun & drug violations. (May 1999)
Voted NO on background checks at gun shows. (May 1999)
Voted YES on loosening license & background checks at gun shows. (May 1999)
Voted YES on maintaining current law: guns sold without trigger locks. (Jul 1998)

Here is Trent Lott's voting record for comparison.

New York has asked former mayor Rudy Giuliani to cut back his security detail:

The former mayor is protected by a small platoon -- about 16 -- of New York City police detectives, at a public cost of about $1 million per year. Giuliani's security details dwarfs that accorded other former mayors, and the present mayor, Michael Bloomberg.

Police detectives also protect Giuliani's fiancee, Judi Nathan, driving her to her beach home in the Hamptons when she goes to water her flowers. A New York Post report stated that a police detective accompanied Nathan to Atlanta for a book reading by her betrothed. While there, Nathan and the officer went shopping, selecting a diamond and sapphire engagement ring for Giuliani to give her.

Six police officers flew with Giuliani and Nathan to Paris, and booked about $20,000 in overtime along the way. The city has long provided security to former mayors, but none in recent memory have had a contingent nearly as large as Giuliani's.

Frank Rich is right on target with his New York Times column today, Bonfire of the Vanities:

"We shouldn't congratulate ourselves quite so fast. The Lott story didn't break this month -- it broke four years ago. Where was the press then? Where were the Democrats? "

He's right. Trent Lott took the fall but there are a host of other, even more powerful Republicans, that have "racial lapses" of their own....Ashcroft and Bush, to name a few.

"There are still too many Republican politicians who believe they can pander to whatever racist voters are out there without being called on it. When they are, they cringe — not so much because they care about losing their few black votes but because they care about losing soccer moms who are offended by race- baiting. "Elections are settled in the suburbs nowadays, 43 percent of the vote," said George Will in condemning Mr. Lott. It's that political reality, not any moral imperative, that mandated the majority leader's death sentence."

"President Bush is no bigot, and as he likes to remind us, some of his best employees are Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. He is in favor of something called "affirmative access" — which has led to a grand total of zero black Republican Congressmen in the next Congress. "Compassionate conservatism" seems less a program than a p.r. strategy to provide cover for the likes of a Lott or an Ashcroft."

"Asked this week what the administration has done for black Americans, Ari Fleischer used the kind of examples we heard from Mr. Lott. He said that "the president looks forward to going to Africa" (how patronizing can you be?) and wants "to double funding for historically black colleges and universities" (weren't the Republicans for color-blind policies rather than a politically correct form of de facto segregation?). Mr. Fleischer also said that the president sees education as "the next civil rights movement." If so, Mr. Bush is not that movement's courageous leader; in his education bill, he dumped the tiny school voucher provision that Republican polls say many black families want."

"Black voters are not fooled by such empty theatrics. For all the "diversity" at his convention and his rhetorical "compassion," Mr. Bush drew a third less of the black vote than his father and Bob Dole did. The White House's main concern now is that white voters be fooled. So Republicans are trying to create a moral equivalence between Democratic racial lapses and their own, hoping that Robert Byrd's long-renounced K.K.K. past and use of the word "nigger" will somehow blur their own recent record. Bill Frist is the ideal new Senate majority leader, because his own genuinely good works in Africa and "compassionate conservative" geniality will camouflage a voting pattern that, on any issue touching black Americans, is virtually the same as Mr. Lott's."

After four days of on again off again server problems due to a system wide upgrade performed by our hosting company, which we weren't aware of until after they had moved our site to their new servers, it has been universally agreed that TalkLeft doesn't want to change. It doesn't work on their new system, so they have moved us back to their "old server." Hopefully, you are no longer seeing a page that says "December 17" at the top.

Please let us know if you still get any error messages when you click on any of the permalinks, comments, "recent entries" section on the right, or if anything else doesn't work.

And a huge thanks to Kos of DailyKos and Ben at Movable Type for trying to work their way through this maze. Also, we're not mad at our hosting company, they had pleasant, dedicated live people available by phone and email and were just as perplexed as the rest of us.

Enough said.

"Sen. Trent Lott has resigned as Senate Republican Leader. He will stay in the Senate. His support dwindled among Senate Republicans as they began to line up behind Frist, who said yesterday he would challenge Lot for the leadership position.

Update: Here is the text of his resignation speech.

We've reported on the new regulation requiring men from various middle eastern nations to register with the Government by this past Monday.

500 - 700 California men who voluntarily appearied at the required location to register and have their fingerprints taken were arrested by the INS sparking major protests in California where the arrests were heavier than other places in the country. In Los Angeles, 25% of the men who showed up were arrested.

The rally against the arrests drew approximately 3,000 protesters, some with signs saying "What Next? Concentration Camps?" and "Detain Terrorists not Innocent Immigrants."

"Many of those arrested, according to their lawyers, had already applied for green cards and, in some instances, had interviews scheduled in the near future. Although they had overstayed their visas, attorneys argue, their clients had already taken steps to remedy the situation and were following the regulations closely."

"One attorney, who said he saw a 16-year- old boy pulled from the arms of his crying mother, called it madness to believe the registration requirements would catch terrorists. "

"His mother is 6 1/2 months pregnant. They told the mother he is never going to come home -- she is losing her mind," said attorney Soheila Jonoubi, who spent Wednesday amid the chaos of the downtown INS office attempting to determine the status of her clients. Jonoubi said the mother has permanent residence status and that her husband, the boy's stepfather, is a U.S. citizen. The teenager came to the country in July on a student visa and was on track to gain permanent residence, the lawyer said."

A 16 year old who entered this country lawfully is permanently separated from his parents who are legal residents? That makes us sick to even think about. What country is this? We don't recognize it as America. But we can tell you whose country it is: Bush and Ashcroft's.

The Bush administration is planning to propose that Internet service providers help build a centralized system to enable broad monitoring of the Internet and, potentially, surveillance of its users. This is one of many regulations contained in a new report by the Office of Management and Budget outlining post-9/11 regulations .

"Communications between inmates and their attorneys are monitored more closely. Authorities can detain illegal immigrants longer. And airline passengers are paying new fees and waiting while their baggage is screened. These are just a few of the 58 significant new federal regulations installed in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a complete list of which is included in a report released yesterday by the Office of Management and Budget."

"Some changes prompted critics to complain of inappropriate curbs on civil liberties and unfair treatment of immigrants. Others said the government needs to do more to make the country less vulnerable to attack. Angela Kelley, deputy director of the National Immigration Forum, an immigrants rights group, said many of the new restrictions on immigrants were too onerous, including measures requiring registration and fingerprinting of some immigrants by the Immigration and Naturalization Service."

You can view the report here, but be forewarned, it's 163 pages.

We were offline when this guide to Gifts For Sexy Anarchists appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle.

It's for people who are angry about Bush, Aschroft, Cheney (Mr. and Mrs.) and the War in Iraq.

Some of our favorites on the list:

Possum-fur nipple warmers. "These actually exist. No one is quite sure why. Something to do with an overabundance of possum in New Zealand. Anything to do with exposed nipples and warming them in some remotely sexy way is sure to make heavily shellacked mannequin-faced Laura Bush titter and squeal and faint. Hand them out in the church parking lot!"

"A giant sparkly wall map of the world, with Iraq highlighted in bright bloody doomsday red, and little U.S. flags looming anywhere we have troops or we've set up a puppet government or we have land-raping oil concerns or anywhere we plan on bombing into submission real soon now even though they were our ally just last week. Hey, we're a rogue nation now. Strike first, rig a presidential election later."

"Adopt an Iraqi/Afghan citizen. Saddam hates them, the Taliban hates them, we've killed scores of them and plan on killing scores more. What better time to support these most innocent of sufferers, the deeply repressed and war torn and heavily sanctioned and completely forgotten? Hey, those millions of Iraqi children haven't had decent medical attention since the U.S. imposed sanctions. Thousands have died as a result. Send some Halliburton-brand bandages in Dick Cheney's name."

"A lovely "Evildoer" T-shirt or bumper sticker. Remember Geedubya calling everyone who doesn't believe in shopping malls and a war-hungry intolerant God and/or the new Lexus an evildoer, over and over again, last year? Reclaim this fine term, make the Feds look at you funny and fondle their manly weapons as you pass through airport security. Also available in baby-doll. Wear it in public and watch Ashcroft's lower lip tremble."

Haven't seen a gift you like yet? Try these...."Panties with a nice Christian message. Little Afghani antenna flags. Chocolate handcuffs. Wiccan cookbooks. The American-flag bikini wax" (as in waxed-in-the-shape of).

More on the tossing of the verdicts in the Central Park Jogger case:

"Michael Warren and Roger Wareham, lawyers for three of the men, spoke of justice denied for so long, justice granted yesterday, and demands of reparations. Civil suits would come, they said. They contend that the confessions were coerced by the police."

"We must first obtain justice on behalf of these young men, on behalf of their families who have been put through a terrible ordeal," Mr. Warren said. "Their youth was stolen from them, was snatched away from them, they were not able to enjoy the fruits of a childhood simply because they existed behind the cold prison bars for crimes they did not commit."

Where are the five unjustly convicted youths today?

"McCray is married, has three children and works in a factory; Richardson is a night watchman and goes to school; Salaam goes to school for computer science; Wise is looking for work; Santana is in prison for an unrelated crime."

The Judge did not mention false confessions or police interrogation procedures in his 21 page ruling. Rather, he wrote:

"It is virtually self-evident that the newly discovered evidence, specifically the confession of a self-admitted murderer and serial rapist, corroborated by physical evidence including scientific testing establishing that he was the sole source of DNA evidence ... would create the probability that had such evidence been received at trial, the verdict would have been more favorable to the defendants."

The courtroom was packed with supporters of the men who as teenagers had served seven to twelve years in prison for the crime. The five men did not appear in court, as they wanted to avoide the media.

The Marijuana Policy Project has called for the ouster of U.S. Drug Czar John Walters "for alleged 'illegal and dishonest activities' in campaigning against Nevada's marijuana ballot initiative."

The organization has filed a formal complaint against Walters under the federal Hatch Act charging that he broke the law by using his office to conduct a political campaign that was "absolutely a campaign of lies and distortions designed to frighten people."

The complaint, filed with the US Office of Special Counsel (OSC), accuses Walters of visiting several Nevada cities on October 10 and 11, 2002, and advocating for the defeat of a marijuana legalization initiative there during press briefings and television appearances.

The OSC is an independent agency set up to investigate whistle-blower complaints and alleged wrongdoing by administration officials. The ballot measure, which failed 61% to 39%, would have decriminalized possession of less than 3 ounces of marijuana by adults.

Officials found guilty of Hatch Act violations can be permanently removed from office or suspended for not less than 30 days, according to the OSC Web site.

Walter's spokesman says cabinet officials are exempt from the Hatch Act.

MPP has also filed a complaint with the Nevada Secretary of State (Elections division), that you can read here.

Rob Kampia, Director of MPP, makes no bones about the organizations goals. He told Reuters, "We want him out of the picture. We want him excommunicated from the federal government forever."

Kampia will be discussing MPP's war on the drug czar Friday night on The O'Reilly Factor.

We were just listening to the 10:00 news when they announced that the Boulder, Colorado District Attorneys' Office is re-opening the murder investigation into who killed JonBenet Ramsey. Mary Keenan, Boulder's elected DA will personally handle the investigation, along with one other deputy.

JonBenet was killed on December 26, 1996. If you've forgotten some of the details, you can get up to speed on either of our two sites chronicling the past investigation: The JonBenet Media UnLynch Mob Page and Crimes'R Us.com: The Legal Side of Crimes in the News.

Internet poster Jameson has an evidence primer in the case and an up-to-date forum for public discussion.

We'll update when we have an inclination of why, now, after six years the case is being reopened.

The Judge in the Sniper case has granted a defense request to gag the police in Fairfax, Virginia.

"Muhammad's lawyers sought the injunction against Fairfax County police and the FBI following a report last month in The Washington Post. The newspaper, citing anonymous sources, reported that Malvo, 17, had confessed to being the triggerman in some of the sniper shootings that terrorized metropolitan Washington during a three-week spree in October."

"The order prohibits police from disclosing the existence or contents of any confessions, any discussion about the reputation or criminal history of the suspects or of any prospective witnesses, and any opinions regarding evidence in the case. The order does not mention the FBI."

We suggested a gag order was necessary and explained why, here.