Update: The judge has released the three questions asked by the jury during deliberations. The second one:

... a question asked yesterday about whether Clark could be found guilty of first-degree murder "as a result of being complicit." The judge said yes.

If, the judge wrote, "you find that another person committed all or part of either the crime of murder in the first degree (extreme indifference) or murder in the first degree (after deliberation)... then the defendant may be found guilty of either or both murder in the first degree."

Update: 12:08 pm. Foreman hands over verdict forms. Judge examines. Count 1: 1st degree murder: Guilty; Count 2: 1st degree murder: Guilty; Guilty on all 21 counts. (Update: Audio clip of reading of verdict here.)

After 11 hours of deliberations, the jury has reached a verdict in the Willie Clark murder trial. He's accused of killing Denver Bronco Darrent Williams. It will be read in 15 minutes.

I haven't been able to blog about the trial because it's too closely related to a certain federal drug case I'm involved in, but I will cover the verdict. [More....]

President Obama promised to work to equalize crack and powder cocaine penalties. He said he would urge Congress to eliminate the five year mandatory minimum penalty for simple possession of 5 grams or more of crack and eliminate the 100:1 disparate ratio of penalties for crack vs. powder cocaine.

This morning, The Senate Judiciary Committee held a markup hearing on S.1789, The Fair Sentencing Act (Durbin, Leahy, Feingold, Cardin, Whitehouse, Kaufman, Specter, Franken.)

The result: A compromise. The 100:1 ratio and mandatory minimum sentences will not be eliminated, but reduced to 20:1. In other words, no equalization. Crack cocaine will continue to carry a penalty 20 times more severe than powder cocaine. Is it an improvement? Yes. Is it good enough? No.

The Dem's love affair with bi-partisanship continues: [More...]

In a piece by Jon Chait that is marred through and through by bad analysis, I thought this statement the most questionable:

Republicans are [. . .] alerting the House that Senators will betray any deal they make. [. . .] Clearly, this is mostly a bluff. After all, Senate Democrats would be crazy to make specific promises to the House and then renege on them -- they would never pass another bill again.

First, a bluff is threatening to do something yourself, not predicting what someone else will do (there is a lot of misuse of poker in this piece.) Second, when was the last time anyone paid a price for double-crossing any Dem ever? The Senate has failed to pass 290 passed bills passed by THIS House. This would only be number 291. More . . .

Jan Crawford writes:

For the life of me, I just don't get why the White House continues to try to pick a fight with the Supreme Court. [. . . A]fter Chief Justice John Roberts made some entirely reasonable remarks yesterday -- and White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs just had to respond [. . .]

Leave aside the misstatements in Crawford's piece (it was not the first time a President has criticized a SCOTUS decision in the SOTU and Roberts DID criticize Obama's choice to criticize the Citizen's United in the SOTU (Obama had criticized it before)), the political calculation for the White House is obvious -- Dems will run against Citizens United in this year's elections. Any chance to talk about it is welcome. CJ Roberts' ill advised remarks provided the White House that chance. More . . .

Matt Yglesias writes:

I think there’s a lot of value in the fact that guys like Kevin Drum and Glenn Greenwald who live outside the DC-NYC media/politics hub are able to offer commentary on current affairs from relatively high profile platforms. [. . .] Readers deserve to be able to read a varied set of people working with a diverse set of models. Among other things, the existence of variety gives people an opportunity to test theories about capture and such. I think regular readers would agree that Kevin and I generally have pretty similar sellout wanker political opinions.

I think that's right (and yes, I get the joke - obviously Matt does not think his views are that of a sellout wanker and neither do I. I do think that they have an insider/Beltway Dem perspective. My problem has always been the attempt to disavow this obvious reality.) I think it is important to understand this "capture" (Yglesias' word) phenomenon. Here is an obvious one - the great enthusiasm Village bloggers have for the Grayson Medicare Buy In plan. They all love it. Guess what? they all know it has no chance of passage or of being a stumbling block for passage of the heath bill they want passed - which by a happy coincidence, is the one the President wants passed. More . .

Update: (Jeralyn) I just got back from court and a 9 hour hearing (no ruling yet, we're not done, but at least we don't go back for several weeks.) I'm pretty out of touch with the news, but will catch up tomorrow. Thanks to BTD for the open threads today and readers for hanging in. This past week may be longest I've gone without blogging in many years. I'm looking forward to returning.

Open Thread.

Open Thread.

I have a big wiretap hearing tomorrow so no blogging from me until it's over. American Idol will have to wait.

Here's an open thread, all topics welcome.

Your turn.

Open thread.

Glenn Greenwald discusses the latest addition to the WaPo Editorial Page Editor's New McCarthyite stable:

Marc Thiessen catapulted himself from obscure, low-level Bush speechwriter into regular Washington Post columnist, joining fellow torture defenders Charles Krauthammer and Bill Kristol. Today, Thiessen's column defends the Liz-Cheney/Kristol smear campaign against DOJ lawyers [. . .] Congratulations, Fred Hiatt: every time people are certain you can't possibly bring the Post any lower, you manage to prove them wrong.

Yes, the Hiatt Era at the WaPo will be remembered in infamy. Here's something I wrote about Hiatt in 2005.

Speaking for me only

Why did the progressives fail in the health bill negotiations? Chris Bowers has a theory (finally he acknowledges that progressives were "largely ineffective" in the health care debate.) Jon Walker has a better one. I have my own series on Madman Political Bargaining. MaryB has the best explanation:

I actually think the problem is that the Progressives never thought of themselves as being in a true negotiation with the Democrats as a whole and never acknowledged that the only TRUE negotiations were taking place among themselves - that the Republicans didn't matter.

[MORE . . .]