Child soldier Omar Khadr pleaded guilty today in his military commission trial at Guantanamo.

Mr. Khadr agreed to plead guilty “in exchange for the Canadian government agreeing to repatriate him back to Canada after one year,” said his Canadian lawyer Dennis Edney...

The Harper government, despite its strident denials and years of refusing to intervene, endorsed the deal and made an exchange of diplomatic notes with Washington that should pave the way for Mr. Khadr to serve the remainder of his sentence in Canada, beginning next fall.

A jury will now recommend a sentence length for Khadr, but it only matters if it is less than the 8 years he agreed to in the plea agreement.

The details are sealed for now, but should be disclosed after the jury renders its verdict. Human rights groups quickly assailed the deal as unfair to Khadr: [More...]

The ACLU wrote a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder today about California's Prop 19 that would legalize adult possession of marijuana in the state.

The letter asks Holder and Kerlikowske to stop threatening costly litigation and the deployment of federal drug police to arrest individuals who might use marijuana if the state enacts the proposition, which would allow adults 21 and older to possess and grow small amounts of marijuana for their personal use and allow cities and counties to regulate and tax commercial sales. The letter calls such rhetoric "unnecessarily alarmist" and says it does little to foster a balanced discussion of a legitimate policy issue.

"Proposition 19 would remove state criminal penalties for certain adult marijuana use," says the ACLU's letter. "The new law would not require anyone to do anything in violation of federal law. There would be no positive conflict."

[More...]

Last week we wrote about the impending Arizona execution of Jeffrey Landrigan. Landrigan alleged that the sodium thiopental Arizona planned to inject into Landrigan was not made by Hospira, Inc., the one U.S. company authorized to manufacture it. In other words, it came from a foreign source. He sought a stay and an order compelling the state to disclose the origin of the drug. The Arizona Supreme Court denied both requests.

With only 18 hours left before the execution, a federal judge today granted Landrigan a stay and ordered Arizona to immediately disclose the source of the drug. The court's 19 page ruling is here.

According to the Arizona Republic, the drug came comes from Great Britain. [More...]

The Brown Willie Horton ad:

* Reference here.

Speaking for me only

This is funny:

Open Thread.

Via ZeroHedge, TARP Inspector General Neil Barofsky issued a scathing 388 page report (PDF). Geithner's Treasury Department catches the brunt:

While SIGTARP offers no opinion on the appropriateness or accuracy of the valuation contained in the Retrospective, we believe that the Retrospective fails to meet basic transparency standards by failing to disclose: (1) that the new lower estimate followed a change in the methodology that Treasury previously used to calculate expected losses on its AIG investment; and (2) that Treasury would be required by its auditors to use the older, and presumably less favorable, methodology in the official audited financials statements. [. . .] This conduct has left the Treasury vulnerable to charges it has manipulated its methodology for calculating losses to present two different numbers depending on its audience [. . .] Here again, Treasury's unfortunate insensitivity to the values of transparency has led it to engage in conduct that risks further damaging public trust in the Government.

(Emphasis supplied.) There's more and worse. A stunning rebuke.

Speaking for me only

Why was the 2009 stimulus too small? Two primary reasons -- one, Lawrence Summers misread the economic catastrophe at hand:

The memo argued that the stimulus should not be used to fill the entire output gap; rather, it was “an insurance package against catastrophic failure.” At the meeting, according to one participant, “there was no serious discussion to going above a trillion dollars.” [. . .] Summers [. . .] believed that filling the output gap through deficit spending was important, but that a package that was too large could potentially shift fears from the current crisis to the long-term budget deficit, which would have an unwelcome effect on the bond market.

Two, Rahm Emanuel misunderstood the Congressional process:

Krugman:

The real story of this election, then, is that of an economic policy that failed to deliver. Why? Because it was greatly inadequate to the task.

Could the stimulus have been made more effective? David Corn:

The "original sin of the Obama administration," says former labor secretary Robert Reich, "was to make the stimulus too small while giving out too much of it as tax breaks to businesses." [. . .] White House aides—and my colleague Kevin Drum—will say that Obama obtained the biggest stimulus he could, given GOP opposition. But the president need not have accommodated his foes so readily. "He could've demanded more, and settled for less," says a senior Senate Democratic strategist. That would have at least established a useful story line: For more recovery, we need to do more. Instead, Obama was left hailing a stimulus that didn't do enough.

And Obama got what he asked for:

Judge Burton Roberts has died. He was 88. The retired Bronx Supreme Court Judge was the inspiration for Myron Kovitsky, the judge in Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities.

In “The Bonfire of the Vanities,” one of the only admirable figures is Myron Kovitsky, a Bronx judge who refuses to be influenced by the press, the public or publicity-seeking prosecutors. Mr. Wolfe modeled the character after Judge Roberts and dedicated the book to him and one of his former assistants, Edward W. Hayes. In the 1990 film version, the judge’s name was changed to Leonard White, and he was portrayed by Morgan Freeman.

Judge Roberts, a longtime prosecutor before becoming a judge, was flamboyant but always true to his strongly held principles:

[He] denigrated capital punishment, mandatory sentencing laws, and public officials who criticized rulings in ways he felt were politically motivated intrusions upon the independence of the judiciary.

[More...]

Desperate Housewives should be funny tonight. There's also new episodes of The Next Iron Chef, Brothers and Sisters, football, and of course, HBO's Boardwalk.

On the dinner menu: Homemade spaghetti and meatballs.

TalkLeft moved to a new server over the weekend. It should be faster, but the automatic formatting isn't working in the post-writing window (comments are fine) so I have to post and then go back and add the formatting. Hopefully, it will be fixed soon.

What's on your mind tonight? This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

A new poll from the Denver Post and 9News have Sen. Michael Bennet and challenger Ken Buck in a dead heat. Three weeks ago, Buck was leading by five points.

In the Governor's race, Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper has a good lead on Tom Tancredo. The poll shows he's got more support than Tancredo and the Republican candidate, Dan Maes, combined. Results here.

Tancredo is ratcheting up the ads against both Maes and Hickenlooper. [More...]

CNN reports 1,000 Yemen military and security forces have launched an attack in the Shabwa province of Yemen, believed to be home to al Qaeda members, including Muslim Cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, but they say he is not the only target.

Last week, there were other raids. They didn't kill any al Qaeda members, just a 65 year old man and two women. From the Yemen Observer:

Yemeni warplanes launched strikes in the Modia district of Abyan province on Tuesday, targeting locations believed to be home to al-Qaeda commander Abdul Munem al-Fahtani, according to the defense ministry website.

“The raids at Thaooba area, Modia district, killed a 65-year-old man and two women. No al-Qaeda members were killed,” a security official told Yemen Observer on a condition of anonymity.

[More...]