It's time for Survivor, Harry's Law and America's Next Top Model.

Via TMZ, here's Lindsay Lohan's glowing Probation Report. What does the Judge care if she does her service at The Red Cross instead of the program she specified? Time to let up on Lindsay. I doubt she'll go back to jail in November, but the press is already having a field day. Worst headline: "Pack Your Prison Panties, Lindsay, You’re Going Back to the Big House." (By a men's site that claims to love and respect women.)

Here's an open thread, all topics welcome.

Secure Communities by the Numbers: An Analysis of Demographics and Due Process, a new report the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy of the University of California-Berkley, analyzes data from ICE on the Secure Communities program, received through a FOIA lawsuit and finds numerous problems. Among them:

Approximately 3,600 United States citizens have been arrested by ICE through the Secure
Communities program.

[More...]

Earlier, it was reported that the DEA informant in the Viktor Bout case was paid $1.5 million. Scratch that, it was $8 million and rising. Former Guatemalan soldier and drug dealer turned DEA informant, Carlos Sagastume, testified yesterday in the trial of accused arms dealer Viktor Bout.

Sagastume testified his supplier in Guatemala got busted and Mexican police took him to Mexico, where he was freed after paying a $60,000 "ransom." 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. He's made over 150 cases and says it's the best paying employment he's ever had.

He testified that he has been paid $1.6 million by the DEA and $7.5 million by the State Department. He said he raked in $250,000 from the Bout case alone, and hopes to earn more money from the case.

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Kevin Drum continues to project his fear of Rick Santelli on to the rest of us:

[T]he Republican responses are a grim reminder of just how bad the politics of housing are. Voters may say they hate bailing out the banks — and they do! — but they hate bailing out the profligate next-door neighbors even worse. No politician in America seriously wants to risk voter wrath by doing that.

Drum has trotted out this nonsense consistently since Santelli called for "a thousand tea parties." He's been consistently wrong on this throughout. Obama and Dems gain no votes from the Tea Party - who are merely the same right wing Republicans that we all know. This is the type of Third Way/DLC thinking we thought had already been thoroughly discredited. Drum's thoughts lead to the path of Dem defeat - half baked policies like HAMP.

Speaking for me only

Yesterday, Mitt Romney said:

"Don’t try to stop the foreclosure process. Let it run its course and hit the bottom," Romney said when asked what he would do to jump-start the floundering housing market. "Allow investors to buy homes, put renters in them, fix the homes up and let it turn around and come back up," he continued. "The Obama administration has slow walked the foreclosure process ... that has long existed and as a result we still have a foreclosure overhang."

(Emphasis supplied.) This is likely a political problem for Romney but it is also wrong as a factual matter. Indeed, Romney notes in his next sentence that HAMP was "inadequate." Obviously the Obama Administration "slow walked" nothing. Apparently, "states rights" federalism is only important to Republicans when they are trying to destroy the social safety net. When federalism interferes with the interests of Wall Street, then it is a bad thing. Consider today's ruling from the highest court in Massachusetts on "the process that has long existed:"

We agree with the judge that the [the plaintiff banks], who were not the original mortgagees, failed to make the required showing that they were the holders of the mortgages at the time of foreclosure. As a result, they did not demonstrate that the foreclosure sales were valid to convey title to the subject properties, and their requests for a declaration of clear title were properly denied.

State rights federalism will seem less important to the GOP on this issue I bet. Also too, so much for adherence to "strict construction" and "the rule of law" from the GOP:

The X-Factor seemed to start off on a bad note when it dropped British judge Cheryl Cole. Replacement judge Nicole Scherzinger didn't seem to me like a good fit during auditions. But now that it's clear the judges' role is not just to vote every week, but to train their assigned group of contestants, I've changed my mind. I can't see Cheryl Cole coaching any of these teams to musical super-stardom. Nicole may be lacking in the magnetic personality department (as she was on DWTS, which she won) but after watching the judges' home segments, I think she'll be a winner as a coach.

It was definitely a struggle to stick with the show through the weeks of auditions. L.A. Reid and Simon were the only reasons I kept watching. For the most part, the contestants were either very physically unappealing or far too young. But in the end, with tonight's selection of the final 17, it was worth it and made for pretty riveting TV.

The X-Factor is not the same as American Idol. To say it's more emotional is an understatement. It's like Queen for a Day on steroids. [More...]

Why is "Gitmo" trending on Twitter right now? Because Herman Cain said on Wolf Blitzer today: If Al Qaeda demanded it, he'd consider releasing every detainee at Guantanamo in exchange for the release of one American soldier.

BLITZER: Could you imagine if you were president…and there were one American soldier who had been held for years and the demand was al Qaeda or some other terrorist group, “You got to free everyone at Guantanamo Bay” – several hundred prisoners at Guantanamo. Could you see yourself as president authorizing that kind of transfer?

CAIN: I could see myself authorizing that kind of transfer but what I would do is I would make sure that I got all of the information. I got all of the input, considered all of the options. And then, the president has to be the president and make a judgment call. I can make that call if I had to. (my emphasis.)

Here's the video.

I have yet to see a Republican debate, nor do I care to. For those who are following, here's a place to discuss it. Tonight's final debate of the series, whatever that means, takes place in Las Vegas.

Who's in it: Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), Pizza CEO Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul Rick Perry, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum.

It begins at 8 pm ET, airs on CNN, will stream live, and is hosted by Anderson Cooper. Who are their commentators? [More...]

The non-partisan Tax Policy Center has analyzed Herman Cain's 9-9-9 tax proposal. Business Week reports on the findings:

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan would lead to higher tax bills for lower- and middle-income Americans while most high earners would pay less tax than they do now, according to a new analysis.

The 9-9-9 plan would translate into a tax cut for almost 95 percent of Americans with cash income exceeding $1 million, according to the analysis released today by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center in Washington.

The Associated Press has more. If you want to crunch the numbers yourself, here is the Tax Policy Center's analysis and charts.

Via Matt Yglesias, Susie Madrak's great point:

If #OWS Has No Coherent Message, How Come Eric Cantor Is Suddenly Talking About 'Income Disparity'?

I don't want to refight the "Make Him Do It Wars." But this was sort of the point. Yglesias writes:

Obviously at some point in the process of political change it matters which policies get adopted. But control of the agenda space matters too. For a long time, we were talking about “the deficit.” The deficit is a real thing, and it would be nice to address it. There are some good progressive ways to address it. But dragging the conversation in that direction was a victory for the conservative movement. Dragging the conversation onto the terrain of inequality is a major win for the 99 Percenters.

This has always been true. And it is true for Obama as well. Since his jobs speech and his jobs bill, and with the emergence of the Occupy Movement, it's obvious the conversation has changed. This could have happened before. But no spilt milk. Let's look forward.

One last key point - while we can have differing opinions on the degree Obama has been complicit in the goings on, pro and/or con, it seems clear to me that not making Obama the focal point of the Occupy Movement (again pro and/or con) has been critical to its success. Pols are pols and do what they do. To me, OWS is not about Obama specifically. It's about all of our institutions. It's about problems bigger than Obama.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director John Morton today announced the number of people deported from the U.S. in fiscal year 2011 (which ended in September.) The total, which is the highest number yet: 400,000. (ICE press release here.)

According to ICE, "55 percent of the 396,906 individuals deported had felony or misdemeanor convictions." It could not answer how many of the felonies were immigration offenses like illegal re-entry which don't require the commission of a separate crime:

Individuals can be convicted of a felony just for returning to the U.S. or being found in the U.S. after the government orders them to leave.

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There are two important TV programs to watch tonight.

• 9 p.m. (ET): CNBC will air "Billions Behind Bars: Inside America's Prison Industry." The program examines the multi-billion dollar industry of private prisons. The Justice Policy Institute (JPI) was consulted by CNBC producers throughout the making of the documentary following its release this summer of Gaming the System: How the Political Strategies of Private Prison Companies Promote Ineffective Incarceration Policies, which explored the political strategies private prison companies employ to influence policy.

• 9 pm ET: PBS: Lost in Detention, FRONTLINE and the Investigative Reporting Workshop examine the Obama administration’s controversial get-tough immigration policy. [More...]