The Patriot Act was signed into law 10 years ago today by then President George W. Bush. We've written 570 posts on the Patriot Act. The bottom line is it didn't make us safer, only less free.

Check out the ACLU's illustration of the law over the past decade.
And its report on the sections that most need revision.

Marcy at Empty Wheel considers whether the informant in the Iran case could be the informant in the Viktor Bout case, a question I raised last week.

After thinking more about this, I've concluded they aren't the same. Here's why: The testifying informant in the Viktor Bout case goes by the name Carlos Sagastume. He testified he is from Guatemala, is a former military officer turned drug dealer, and when his supplier in Guatemala got busted, Mexican police took him to Mexico, where he was freed after paying a $60,000 "ransom." He says he then contacted the U.S. embassy offering to be an informant for the DEA. The DEA brought him to the U.S. in 1998 and he's been working as a paid informant for them ever since. [More...]

Former Goldman Sachs director Rajat Gupta will surrender to the FBI tomorrow to face criminal charges related to Raj Rajaratnam. The charges are likely to pertain to allegations he gave Raj confidential information about Goldman Sachs, who then traded on the information:

Authorities said Mr. Gupta gave Mr. Rajaratnam advanced word of Warren E. Buffett’s $5 billion investment in Goldman Sachs during the darkest days of the financial crisis in addition to other sensitive information affecting the company’s share price.

Gary Naftalis, Gupta's lawyer, says:

Gupta's lawyer Gary P. Naftalis said Tuesday night that his client and Rajaratnam communicated for "legitimate reasons." He said his client didn't trade in any securities, didn't tip Rajaratnam so he could trade and didn't share in any profits.

[More...]

President Obama and Air Force One just landed in Denver. He'll attend two fundraisers and then speak tomorrow at the Auraria campus. He's just in time for the start of our first major snow storm. 6 to 12 inches will fall between tonight and tomorrow afternoon. It was 80 degrees yesterday.

Steven Tyler fell in the shower in Paraguay and lost two (false) teeth and had to postpone Aerosmith's concert until tomorrow night:

Tyler had been dehydrated and was suffering gastrointestinal problems. A man who identified himself as Gustavo Perez, a bellboy at the Bourbon hotel near Asuncion, told local radio that Tyler slipped when he was taking a shower and "had a nasty fall."

He was hospitalized, had emergency dental surgery and is now back at his hotel. I wonder if he slipped on one of those rubber mats.

The New York Times has a fairly uninformative article in which it refers to the DEA "infiltrating" Mexican drug cartels and using some of them as informants. It mentions the current case involving the Iranian accused of an assassination plot against the Saudi Ambassador and the Chicago federal case of Jesús Vicente Zambada-Niebla, son of Sinaloa co-leader Ismael Zambada-Niebla.

The Zambada-Niebla case is far more interesting. The gist is that Vicente says he was part of an immunity deal that encompassed not only Mexican lawyer/fugitive/indicted defendant Humberto Loya-Castro (Loya), who is an advisor to Chapo Guzman and Ismael Zambada-Garcia (El Mayo) and a participant in Sinaloa activity, but that all of them also had permission to carry on the cartel's drug trafficking activity. He also alleges that the DEA provided the same immunity from capture and prosecution, and permission to carry on Sinaloa business to Chapo Guzman and Ismael Zambada-Garcia, the two leaders of Sinaloa. [More...]

Busy again. Open Thread.

The judges on DWTS sure have had their favorites this year. Their judging has been completely inconsistent. Some who dance poorly get higher scores than deserved for their "effort" while others, also praised for their effort, get low scores.

Carrie Ann Inaba's undeserved high marks to Nancy Grace are a prime example. Could it be her eyesight?

You know, I'm legally blind. I'm 20/750, since I was in fifth grade. I wear glasses and contacts. But I won't even get LASIK."

Maybe she needs to wear those glasses on the show. One thing Grace's Mary Poppins-ish, amateur dance was not, was Inaba said, a "showstopper." The dancing devil has wooden piano legs and as much grace as a bull in a china shop. (pun intended.) [More...]

Supposedly, it was a routine traffic stop on I-94 near Ann Arbor, MI that resulted in the seizure of 228 pounds of cocaine in the back of 87 year old Leon Earl Sharp's pick-up truck. Sharp, who is from Indiana, was released on bond, but not before he told the judge he was worried about having a stroke, someone had stolen his passport and that he had been forced at gunpoint to transport the drugs. For some reason, everyone in the courtroom found this funny:

Someone snickered again. It was contagious, spreading through the gallery. Randon, the judge, tried to stifle a laugh by covering his mouth. Then, he shook his head and smiled.

Mexico has released its 2011 murder statistics for January through August. Murders are down in Juarez, the border city in Chihuahua, which has been known as the most violent area in Mexico.

While it remains exceedingly bloody, Juarez is far safer than it was in 2010: with 1,065 murders through August, it is on pace for just under 1,600 murders, a murder rate of roughly 120 per 100,000 residents. In 2010, the city registered some 3,000 murders and a murder rate of roughly 250 per 100,000.

Murders are also down in Baja California Norte, home to Tijuana and Mexicali. On the other hand, murders are up in Guerrero, especially Acapulco. [More...]

Geithner!

[I]t eventually became clear the administration’s housing rescue was falling woefully short. While HAMP had aided fewer than 70,000 people in 2009, for instance, 2.5 million received foreclosure notices. [. . .] To date, administration programs have permanently reduced the debt of just one tenth of 1 percent of underwater borrowers.

The entire article is worth reading. The incompetence of one Tim Geithner shines through.

Speaking for me only

As a diehard Florida Gator fan, I am rooting for Tim Tebow to succeed as an NFL quarterback but my expectation is he will fail. I do not think he has, or will have, the passing skills necessary to be a good NFL QB. That said, who really knows? Merrill Hoge? Trent Dilfer? Really? This morning I listened to Dilfer say that Tebow's problems are "quantum mechanics." I kid you not. That is what he said. It is not inspiring of confidence. Yet, I think we should all be wary of "the illusion of validity." I had a great day picking games Saturday. It was a fluke. But the "illusion of validity" creeps in to my psyche. What is the "illusion of validity?" Via Kevin Drum, Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman explains (and, yes beware of the "illusion of validity" here too):

I thought that what was happening to us was remarkable. The statistical evidence of our failure should have shaken our confidence in our judgments of particular candidates, but it did not. It should also have caused us to moderate our predictions, but it did not. We knew as a general fact that our predictions were little better than random guesses, but we continued to feel and act as if each particular prediction was valid. I was reminded of visual illusions, which remain compelling even when you know that what you see is false. I was so struck by the analogy that I coined a term for our experience: the illusion of validity.

More . . .

Via TPM, Perry does not even code his birther outreach:

[PARADE] Governor, do you believe that President Barack Obama was born in the United States?

[PERRY:] I have no reason to think otherwise.

[PARADE} That’s not a definitive, “Yes, I believe he”—

[PERRY: ]Well, I don’t have a definitive answer, because he’s never seen my birth certificate.

[PARADE]But you’ve seen his.

[PERRY:] I don’t know. Have I?

[PARADE:] You don’t believe what’s been released?

PERRY:]I don’t know. I had dinner with Donald Trump the other night. [. . .] That came up. [. . .] He doesn’t think it’s real.

[PARADE:] And you said?

[PERRY:] I don’t have any idea. It doesn’t matter. He’s the President of the United States. He’s elected. It’s a distractive issue.

Heh, distractive.