Greenwald and Salon have been stellar on Wikileaks throughout, as has FireDogLake. I first saw the particulars of the "Sex by Surprise" charges against Assange, via Jezebel, a couple of days ago, but the story you linked to from FDL does a better job of covering it: Julian Assange Arrested in London. It appears the British press has the full police reports.

Assange is being held on a "sex by surprise" charge. He has not been arrested for rape; the sex in question was consensual. Apparently, the issue is whether or not a condom was used and whether the woman requested one. The charge, only part of the Swedish criminal code and not the UK, carries a fine of 5,000 kronor, or $715. To sum up, Interpol issued an international warrant, and Britain honored it for Sweden, over a case that has a fine of $715 and no jail time. Assange has pleaded innocence to the charge.

That said, drunk drivers do cause enormous misery and we need to figure out some way to deter them. I always liked the "drinking license" as opposed to "driving license" idea.

That also said, those alcoholic energy drinks won't be missed by anyone. They are a truly killer combination of things nobody should put in their body.

Link

From the globe:

"No one in the 10-member, all-Democratic delegation has embraced the compromise plan that Obama struck with Republicans, and some are outright opposed."

""I strongly disagree," Representative Barney Frank, a Newton Democrat, said this morning. He said he would vote against the deal, although he also said it likely had enough votes to pass. "You have overwhelming Republican support and enough Democrats to do it," he said. "

Pretty much what I've been saying.  As always, Capuano's good for a few sound bites:

Kdog is making more sense every day.

Brzezinski: I am very worried that most Americans are close to total ignorance about the world. They are ignorant. That is an unhealthy condition in a country in which foreign policy has to be endorsed by the people if it is to be pursued. And it makes it much more difficult for any president to pursue an intelligent policy that does justice to the complexity of the world.

Maybe it's that a person that buys and/or receives stolen property without knowing it was stolen...

Brings up a good constitutional question: Does the government constitute a person in this particular case?

Next question-- are there any whistleblower laws that might apply?

Maybe this is really a seismic shift now. Criticizing him is not just for the DFHs anymore ....

The problem with interlocks is they are easily defeated. Someone who wants to drink and drive is going to drink and drive. Faced with an interlock they will:

1. Get someone else to blow in it
   
2. Drive a different family vehicle
   
3. etc...

Congressional Republicans appear to be quietly but methodically executing a plan that would a) avoid a federal bailout of spendthrift states and b) cripple public employee unions by pushing cash-strapped states such as California and Illinois to declare bankruptcy. This may be the biggest political battle in Washington, my Capitol Hill sources tell me, of 2011.

Although -

"After the country's high court sets a trial date, authorities could pursue extradition."

Somehow I doubt they will be successfull.

"Nigerian investigators say they have filed charges against former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and others connected to the energy services company Halliburton, accusing them of paying bribes to secure a lucrative natural gas project in the 1990s."

Never thought I would say this about Surrender Harry but good for him.

I've already called both my Senators and told them to support it.

Oh yeah - KSM will not be transferred to the US for trial, as the bill prohibits money to be used to transfer detainees or to buy an existing US prison -the article also says the bill specifically forbids transferring KSM here, as well.

This year's omnibus spending bill refuses to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay and would block the transfer of any suspected terrorist detainees to the United States in what appears to be the final blow for President Obama's campaign pledge to shutter the facility.

The massive spending bill Democrats released early Wednesday morning would prohibit the Obama administration from spending any money either to transfer detainees to the United States or to buy a replacement prison in the United States, as Mr. Obama had planned.

Prohibiting spending effectively stops the administration from acting over the next year, and with Republicans about to take control of the House in January, his chances are virtually zero that Congress will relent any time before the president stands for re-election in 2012.

The bill, which will be voted on over the next week or so, explicitly prohibits the transfer of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

"None of the funds provided to the Department of Justice in this or any prior Act shall be available for the acquisition of any facility that is to be used wholly or in part for the incarceration or detention of any individual detained at Naval Station, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as of June 24, 2009," the bill says.

Like a lot of people, I am conflicted about Wikileaks.

Citizens of a functioning democracy must be able to know what the state is saying and doing in our name, to engage in what Pierre Rosanvallon calls "counter-democracy", the democracy of citizens distrusting rather than legitimizing the actions of the state. Wikileaks plainly improves those abilities.

On the other hand, human systems can't stand pure transparency. For negotiation to work, people's stated positions have to change, but change is seen, almost universally, as weakness. People trying to come to consensus must be able to privately voice opinions they would publicly abjure, and may later abandon. Wikileaks plainly damages those abilities. (If Aaron Bady's analysis is correct, it is the damage and not the oversight that Wikileaks is designed to create.*)

And so we have a tension between two requirements for democratic statecraft, one that can't be resolved, but can be brought to an acceptable equilibrium. Indeed, like the virtues of equality vs. liberty, or popular will vs. fundamental rights, it has to be brought into such an equilibrium for democratic statecraft not to be wrecked either by too much secrecy or too much transparency.

As Tom Slee puts it, "Your answer to `what data should the government make public?' depends not so much on what you think about data, but what you think about the government." My personal view is that there is too much secrecy in the current system, and that a corrective towards transparency is a good idea. I don't, however, believe in total transparency, and even more importantly, I don't think that independent actors who are subject to no checks or balances is a good idea in the long haul.

Christine O'Donnell on Tuesday compared the "tragedy" of extending unemployment benefits to Pearl Harbor and the death of Elizabeth Edwards.

"Tragedy comes in threes," O'Donnell said. "Pearl Harbor, Elizabeth Edwards's passing and Barack Obama's announcement of extending the tax cuts, which is good, but also extending the unemployment benefits."

"A new poll indicates that two-thirds of Americans support the deal between President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans to temporarily extend tax cuts for all Americans"

but when it comes to the issues:

only "19 percent say they favor extending the cuts for all Americans, 16 percent saying tax cuts should be permanently extended for families making under $250,000 per year and should be extended temporarily for two years for those above that threshold, 34 percent favoring that the tax cuts should be made permanent for those families earning less than $250,000 a year but no extension for higher wage earners, and 27 percent calling for all tax cuts to sunset."

So while most people don't want rich people to get lower taxes, but they are willing to make that compromise for the extended unemployment/lower income tax cuts.

In other words, from a public opinion stand, Obama wins, Republicans lose.  Democrats are irrelevant.

said Chester E. Finn Jr., who served in President Ronald Reagan's Department of Education, referring to the groundbreaking Soviet satellite launching. Mr. Finn, who has visited schools all across China, said, "I've seen how relentless the Chinese are at accomplishing goals, and if they can do this in Shanghai in 2009, they can do it in 10 cities in 2019, and in 50 cities by 2029."

a new service launching in 2011 aims to put movies into your home the same day that they're released in theaters. The only catch? The digital-delivery system costs $20,000. Don't worry though, that's only a one-time fee. The fee per film is just a measly $500 on top of the $20,000. So is there a market for ultra-rich cinephiles?

Mayor Bloomberg this morning will unveil a state and national plan to create more jobs - and maybe help him get a new job, too.

His slated speech at the Brooklyn Navy Yard will take leaders in Washington and Albany to task for not finding common ground to spur the economy, one insider said.

"Our economy's revival is very fragile, and business creation is what I'm going to talk about tomorrow," the mayor said yesterday. "I think New York has done a good job. We still have too many unemployed here. We've got to find work for them."

Although the mayor isn't expected to criticize President Obama, the speech gives Bloomberg another national platform as he lays the groundwork for a potential presidential run in 2012.

"That's all this is about," said one dignitary invited to the event, which is sponsored by the Association for a Better New York and the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce.