McClatchy reports on anonymously sourced accounts of the final plea negotiations between John Edwards and the Government. It's very detailed.

The essence: Edwards had a choice between a felony and the ability to argue for no jail time, or a plea to three misdemeanors and a six month sentence. If he took the latter, he couldn't argue for home detention or a halfway house instead of prison.

Because the misdemeanor deal would have precluded him from arguing for a non-jail sentence, he turned it down. The final negotiations lasted past Midnight on Thursday, and into Friday morning, just minutes before the grand jury returned the Indictment on Friday. [More...]

All day I've been reading two of the people killed with Ilyas Kashmiri are Amir Hamza and Mohammed Usman.

Recently tortured and killed journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad wrote in October, 2010 that Mohammed Usman, who was an associate of Kashmiri and Osama bin Laden, had been killed in a drone strike. [More...]

What's on your mind this weekend? If it's something besides what we've covered, here's an open thread, all topics welcome.

U.S. District Magistrate Judge Hugh Brenneman Jr. in Michigan has ordered the state to turn over medical marijuana records to the DEA for its use in a federal criminal investigation.

The DEA had issued administrative subpoenas to the Michigan Board of Community Health.

[H]e said that “while the Michigan Legislature declared its intent not to penalize the medical use of marijuana under state law, it had to acknowledge its action did not alter the existing federal prohibition against marijuana....The use of marijuana remains a federal felony.”

[More...]

The timeline of the killing of journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad and the drone attack that killed Ilyas Kashmiri is raising flags in my head. It could be coincidence, but then again, maybe not. Take a look.

Journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad was kidnapped, tortured and killed on May 29 or 30. It's widely believed Pakistan's ISI was behind it.

The Asia Times had just published Shahzad's last article on May 27, saying Ilyas Kashmiri was behind the attack on the Pakistan Navy base in Karachi.

Shahzad was the only journalist to have interviewed Kashmiri after Kashmiri surfaced following the 2009 false report of his death. The interview is here. [More...]

Via al Jazeera: A Pakistani formy army Brigadier says Pakistan's ISI was involved in the attack that reportedly killed Ilyas Kashmiri and others. He was on the "wish list" the U.S. gave Pakistan last week, when it imposed a one month deadline on Pakistan to capture Kashmiri and four others.

The United States has given Pakistan time till July to capture Al Qaeda leader Ilyas Kashmiri and Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Omar. It has also warned of a military offensive in North Waziristan if they are not captured.

Also on the list: Al Qaeda's second-in-command Ayman al Zawahiri, the operating chief of Haqqani network Sirajuddin Haqqani and the Libyan operations chief of Al Qaeda Atiya Abdel Rahman.[More...]

In 2009, the media reported the death of terrorist leader Ilyas Kashmiri in a drone strike. It was very upsetting to David Coleman Headley, who had been plotting with Kashmiri to conduct the Mumbai attacks and the planned attack on a Danish newspaper. The death report on Kashmiri turned out not to be true, and according to the U.S., which has indicted Kashmiri in the Headley/Rana case, Headley continued plotting with Kashmiri, LeT, and Major Iqbal.

Now Kashmiri is reportedly killed again, also in a drone strike, this time in Pakistan yesterday that occurred as he and his fellow terrorists were sipping tea in an apple garden.

A U.S. official says Kashmiri was the target of the drone attack but could not confirm his death. A local militant commander, Baitullah, says he wasn't killed. But HJI is reportedly confirming his death. [More...]

Paul Krugman's critiques of RyanCare have delivered questions as to how RyanCare differes from ObamaCare with regard to how Americans will pay for health care under ObamaCare. Here is Krugman's response:

[H]ow does the Ryan plan differ from the Affordable Care Act? After all, in both plans people are supposed to buy coverage from private insurers, with a subsidy from the government.

Well, the answer is that the ACA is specifically designed to ensure that insurance is affordable, whereas Ryancare just hands out vouchers and washes its hands. Specifically, the ACA subsidy system (pdf) sets a maximum percentage of income that families are expected to pay for insurance, on a sliding scale that rises with income. To the extent that the actual cost of a minimum acceptable policy exceeds that percentage of income, subsidies make up the difference.

This is an inadequate answer imo. Indeed, it provides an obvious retort - what if RyanCare incorporated provisions to "ensure that insurance was affordable[?}" Would it be okay then? No it would not. Because Medicare is superior to ACA. Because single payer public insurance is superior to ACA. Krugman implicitly says so here. Moreover, Krugman is all too sanguine about the efficacy of ACA's ability to make sure "insurance is affordable." A perusal of the article Krugman links to, written by Jon Gruber, demonstrates this:

Via echidne, Florida the Guinea Pig:

Florida Gov. Rick Scott signed two historic Medicaid bills Thursday, placing the health care of nearly 3 million Florida residents into the hands of for-profit companies and hospital networks. Lawmakers said the program was overwhelming the state budget and needed to be privatized to rein in costs and improve patient care. Critics fear the bills build on a flawed five-county experiment where patients struggled to access specialists and doctors complained the treatments they prescribed were frequently denied.

[. . .] The bills removed a requirement for plans to spend certain percentages on patient care and Federal health officials encouraged state lawmakers to include that provision in the bill. Instead, the bills call for managed care plans to repay profits over 5 percent to the state.

[More...]

The Donald comes to the rescue?

So much for dropping out -- Donald Trump tells TPM he believes he can win the White House as an independent candidate, keeping his name in the presidential game despite declaring last month he would not run for the GOP nomination. [. . .] As for whether he'll run, he said it depended on the GOP nominee. "Let's see what happens with the Republicans, who they put up," he said.

I still have the Short Fingered Vulgarian to kick around!! About two weeks ago, Trump said:

After considerable deliberation and reflection, I have decided not to pursue the office of the presidency. Business is my greatest passion and I am not ready to leave the private sector.

I guess the Reality TV and licensing business is not as exciting to Trump as he thought it would be. Of course this can not go on forever - the moment Trump has to reveal that he really is just another Kardashian is when the fun stops.

Speaking for me only

The charges in the John Edwards Indictment are all premised on the assumption that the monies from Fred Baron and Bunny Mellon that ended up financing Rielle Hunter and Andrew Young's excellent adventures were campaign contributions rather than gifts. If they weren't campaign contributions, there's no crime.

There's no case law on point. There are no prior federal prosecutions alleging a candidate mislabeled a campaign contribution as a gift, thereby violating federal election law.

What the Government told Edwards' attorneys and election law experts prior to the Indictment was that there was a FEC civil advisory opinion in 2000 (the Harvey opinion) that supported its position. Team Edwards responded that opinion was distinguishable from his situation, and pointed out another advisory opinion (the Moran opinion) in 2002, closer to his situation which concluded the donated money was not a campaign contribution. The Wall St. Journal has more here, and also check out election law expert Rick Hasen at Slate.

Neither opinion is directly on point in Edwards' case. Both are distinguishable. And newer FEC advisory opinions clearly state the opinions are not only advisory, but that they are not to be relied on in cases with distinguishable facts. [More...]

Update: Here is John Edwards' statement after his court appearance today.

John Edwards has arrived at the federal courthouse in North Carolina with his daughter Cate.

The unnamed staffer in the Indictment who claimed John Edwards knew of Fred Baron's payments to Rielle Hunter during the campaign is reportedly Wendy Button. She didn't include that detail in her article on helping draft the statement admitting paternity (which wasn't used.) [More...]