Rick Perry must be rubbing his hands in delight. He's got company as Herman Cain shows once again he's not ready for prime time. Watch Cain draw a blank on Obama's position on Libya. [More...]

Chelsea Clinton to NBC:

NBC announced Monday that it has hired Chelsea Clinton to become a full-time special correspondent for NBC News.

Now I 'm thinking Hillary Clinton is definitely hanging up the political spurs. This looks bad, and not just for Hillary.

I don't know Chelsea Clinton, but I always understood her image to be something better than this Russertism. Guess I was wrong.

Speaking for me only

Question presented - Is a professional sports league a single entity under Section 1 of the Sherman Act?

For more on the single entity question, see American Needle v. NFL. See also this post.

NYTimes:

While previously a small number of felons were able to reclaim their gun rights, the process became commonplace in many states in the late 1980s, after Congress started allowing state laws to dictate these reinstatements — part of an overhaul of federal gun laws orchestrated by the National Rifle Association. The restoration movement has gathered force in recent years, as gun rights advocates have sought to capitalize on the 2008 Supreme Court ruling that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to bear arms.

Atrios points to Booman about, as Atrios puts it, "David Brooks s[itting] down and th[inking] to himself, "how can I blame liberals for what happened at Penn State, but in a subtle way." On MTP, Brooks said:

MR. BROOKS: I don't think it was just a Penn State problem. You know, you spend 30 or 40 years muddying the moral waters here. We have lost our clear sense of what evil is, what sin is; and so, when people see things like that, they don't have categories to put it into. They vaguely know it's wrong, but they've been raised in a morality that says, "If it feels all right for you, it's probably OK."

While Brooks' entire thought process is repulsive, I was struck by the "30 or 40 years" line. Obviously Brooks was trying to allude to the 60s I think. That was confirmed by Brooks; discussing the "bystander effect:"

Showtime's Homeland is getting really intense. The Good Wife has an episode on the death penalty. For lighter fare, there's Pan Am and The Next Iron Chef.

In the real world, Mexico says the helicopter crash that killed Interior Minister Francisco Blake Mora and others was likely an accident. No signs of engine failure or mechanical problems, no explosion. Here's the transcript of today's press conference (in Spanish, but you can use google translater.) That hasn't stopped suspicions from running high.

A new scandal on Congress and insider information is brewing.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

CBS News has a new report on the U.S. detention program at Bagram in Afghanistan:

Today, there are more than 3,000 detainees at Bagram, or five times the number (around 600) when President Barack Obama took office in January 2009. There are currently 18 times as many detainees at Bagram than at the U.S. military prison at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, naval base, whose prisoner population has dwindled from a peak of 780 to 170.

The military has changed the name of the facility to the Detention Facility in Parwan (DFIP).

DOD is now reviewing bids from contractors to expand the facility to house up to 5,500 detainees. The project is expected to cost another $25 to $100 million when it is completed by the end of 2012.

In May, 2011, Human Rights First published this report on Bagram, Detained and Denied in Afghanistan. At that time, their were 1,700 detainees at Bagram. "The Department of Defense won't release the names of its Bagram detainees or its reasons for holding them indefinitely."

Atrios:

I'm not one to get on people for being impure in their failure to boycott all the evil institutions in the world, if for no other reason than it's pretty much impossible. But I admit I'm a bit puzzled about the number of self-admitted really hardcore college sports fans who admit the entire enterprise is completely abusive and corrupt.

Regular readers know that I am a hardcore fan of college athletics, particularly college football. I do believe it is "corrupt" (in the sense that the major players in the sport regularly violate the rules and the BCS is a slush fund for a privileged few that deprives the "less well off" in the system of needed funds - see Junker, John) and I believe that players should be paid. I'm not sure what Atrios means by "abusive." Football is a violent sport, but I feel positive that most of the participants are playing because they want to, not because they are forced to. I played football and very few things in life gave me more satisfaction. I loved it. I do not see how recognizing the terrible flaws in the system requires foregoing enjoying the sport. FTR, I also love boxing but also accept that it probably should be banned. Also too, concussions in the NFL.

Atrios' comment perplexes me.

Open Thread.

Paris Hilton is tweeting up a storm about how much she loves Bali. It's her first visit. She tweeted a few hours ago, "Make a wish. 11.1l.11"

Since I've stood up for Paris on TalkLeft so many times during her various legal difficulties, I thought I'd ask her a favor. I tweeted her in reply:

[More...]

Law Professor David Cole in the New York Times Review of Books writes about the secret memo of authorizing the extra-judicial, targeted killing of American citizens, Anwar al-Awlaki and drone attacks. Shorter version: We need established defined rules and transparency.

In a democracy the state’s power to take the lives of its own citizens, and indeed of any human being, must be subject to democratic deliberation and debate. War of course necessarily involves killing, but it is essential that the state’s power to kill be clearly defined and stated in public—particularly when the definition of the enemy and the lines demarcating war and peace are as murky as they are in the current conflict.

Secret memos, with or without leaked accounts to The New York Times, are no substitute for legal or democratic process. As long as the Obama administration insists on the power to kill the people it was elected to represent—and to do so in secret, on the basis of secret legal memos—can we really claim that we live in a democracy ruled by law?

[More...]

Newt Gingrich, via the New York Times, said in 1995, while he was weighing whether to run for the Presidency:

Speaker Newt Gingrich said on Friday that he would ask Congress to enact legislation imposing the death penalty on drug smugglers, and he suggested that mass executions of people convicted under such a law might prove an effective deterrent.

..."The first time we execute 27 or 30 or 35 people at one time, and they go around Colombia and France and Thailand and Mexico, and they say, 'Hi, would you like to carry some drugs into the U.S.?' the price of carrying drugs will have gone up dramatically."

[More...]

Do any of these Republicans know what they are talking about? For whatever reason, there's another Republican debate tonight. Newt Gingrich falsely claimed Anwar al-Awlaki was convicted. When the moderator challenged him on it, he said something like "well he was convicted by a military report given to the President." When challenged that's not what the law means by conviction, he said he's an enemy combatent so that's exactly what it means.

I'd bet he wasn't paying attention and confused al-Awlaki with someone else (a brain lapse), and instead of admitting it, tried to swim out of it. He sank.