Earlier today, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) took to the Senate floor to explain why he thinks it's important to actively counteract the administration's continual exertions of executive power. A telling illustration of that continual effort is what they do "when they think no one is looking," he said.

He then went on:

For years under the Bush Administration, the Office of Legal Counsel within the Department of Justice has issued highly classified secret legal opinions related to surveillance. This is an administration that hates answering to an American court, that wants to grade its own papers, and OLC is the inside place the administration goes to get legal support for its spying program.

As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I was given access to those opinions, and spent hours poring over them. Sitting in that secure room, as a lawyer, as a former U.S. Attorney, legal counsel to Rhode Island’s Governor, and State Attorney General, I was increasingly dismayed and amazed as I read on.

To give you an example of what I read, I have gotten three legal propositions from these OLC opinions declassified. Here they are, as accurately as my note taking could reproduce them from the classified documents. Listen for yourself. I will read all three, and then discuss each one.

1. An executive order cannot limit a President. There is no constitutional requirement for a President to issue a new executive order whenever he wishes to depart from the terms of a previous executive order. Rather than violate an executive order, the President has instead modified or waived it.

2. The President, exercising his constitutional authority under Article II, can determine whether an action is a lawful exercise of the President’s authority under Article II.

3. The Department of Justice is bound by the President’s legal determinations.

Those three principles, he said, boiled down to:

1. “I don’t have to follow my own rules, and I don’t have to tell you when I’m breaking them.”

2. “I get to determine what my own powers are.”

3. “The Department of Justice doesn’t tell me what the law is, I tell the Department of Justice what the law is.”

You can read the entirety of his remarks here.

So much for that. From The Los Angeles Times:

A proposed initiative that drew national attention for its potential to affect next year's presidential election will not appear on the June ballot, organizers said Thursday.

Republican backers of the measure, which could have tilted the presidential contest toward the GOP nominee by changing how California awards electoral votes, conceded that they were unable to raise sufficient funds.

Sacramento consultant Dave Gilliard, the campaign manager, said that even if a financial angel were to shower the campaign with $1 million, there was not enough time to qualify the measure for June.

Take two! Senate intelligence committee chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) had said yesterday that the CIA told him about its destruction of videotaped interrogations in "November 2006." But oops -- in a new statement just released to the press, he says he spoke too soon. It turns out he knew about the tapes' existence in 2003, but only found out about their destruction yesterday. Rocky:

"Last night, the CIA informed me that it believes that the leadership of the Senate Intelligence Committee was told of the decision to destroy the tapes in February 2003 but was not told of their actual destruction until a closed committee hearing held in November 2006.

"The committee has located no record of either being informed of the 2003 CIA decision or being notified late last year of the tapes having being destroyed. A review of the November 2006 hearing transcript finds no mention of tapes being destroyed.

"While the existence of the videotapes was known to me in 2003 in my capacity as then-Vice Chairman of the committee, I was not told of the CIA’s decision to destroy the tapes and I was not aware of their destruction until yesterday’s press reports."

The CIA shares so much information with Rockefeller, he must have just been confused. Who can keep it straight? In any event, Rockefeller knew since 2003 that some interrogations were videotaped, and he kept his mouth shut. Here's what he said he did.

"In May 2005, I wrote the CIA Inspector General requesting over a hundred documents referenced in or pertaining to his May 2004 report on the CIA’s detention and interrogation activities. Included in my letter was a request for the CIA to provide to the Senate Intelligence Committee the CIA’s Office of General Counsel report on the examination of the videotapes and whether they were in compliance with the August 2002 Department of Justice legal opinion concerning interrogation. The CIA refused to provide this and the other detention and interrogation documents to the committee as requested, despite a second written request to CIA Director Goss in September 2005."

Let's see the release of these letters. And more than that: Rockefeller is pledging a full investigation in the Senate intelligence committee. Once again, Matt has it right. Rockefeller needs to start snitching.

Here's Cookie Krongard's letter informing George W. Bush of his resignation. Long story short, he's very grateful for the opportunity to have... zzz. And lest there be any doubt about Cookie's legacy, he lets the president know that he's training a new generation of IGs:

I believe very strongly in the obligation of all good citizens to do public service at some point in their lives. I was pleased this year to create the Howard J. Krongard Scholars in the Nation's Service at Princeton University... I remain deeply committed to these objectives, but I fear that if the current environment in Washington persists, too many of the most qualified prospective public servants across the country will be dissuaded from serving.

Imagine the horror: the next generation of would-be investigators, making money up in investment banks when they could be looking the other way while contractors line their pockets with taxpayer money. A grateful nation turns its eyes to Cookie Krongard.

So that's what happened to Cookie Krongard's forthcoming perjury hearing. Today, the embattled State Department Inspector General faced reality and resigned.

Krongard, you'll recall, was accused of seemingly endless laxity in investigating State Department contractor fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan; and of retaliating against whistleblowers in his own office. Things got much worse when he denied knowledge, under oath, that his brother was on the advisory board of Blackwater, a huge State Department contractor. He quickly reversed himself. And after that, Cookie's brother contradicted him in an interview with TPMmuckraker.

Here's McClatchy's Warren Strobel:

In an e-mail to his staff, obtained by McClatchy, Krongard said that he plans to leave the government by Jan. 15.

In a reference to the upheaval in the inspector general's office in recent months, he told his staff: "I also ask you, frankly, to make an effort to reduce the static that interferes with the harmony we would like to achieve."

There was no immediate comment from the State Department.

Translated from the Cookiese, that reads, "Please don't leak anything even more embarrassing about me as I enter this new, humiliating phase of my life."

Update: Cookie's full email is after the jump.

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It's not easy keeping track of Rudy Giuliani's shag-related expenditures of taxpayer money while mayor of New York. For one thing, it's impossible to get a total of the amount spent guarding the mayor's then-girlfriend. And the available records are spotty at best. But we gave it the ol' TPM try. So here, without further ado, is our timeline.

5/99 -- Judith Nathan and Giuliani meet at Club Macanudo, a cigar bar on the Upper East Side.

7/3/99 -- NYPD Officers charge the city for gas to "accompany the mayor to Southampton."

7/31/99 -- Four officers accompanying Giuliani stay at the Atlantic Utopia Lifestyle Inn in Southampton for $1,016. Giuliani had no events in the area that day.

8/20/99 -- Giuliani visits Southampton, where Nathan has a condo. He brings along his aide Manny Papir, and Manny charges the city for a room at the Southampton Inn for $331.16. That same night, Giuliani's four man security detail charged $1,704.43 at the same inn. Giuliani had a fundraiser on the 21st.

Early 2000 -- NYPD officers start escorting Nathan around. Giuliani aides say that the protection at the time was "sporadic and did not include a full-time, round-the-clock detail." They cited previously undisclosed "threats" as the reason. But "former neighbors of Nathan's, as well as a law enforcement source, describe a full-scale valet service at Nathan's beck and call...."

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This just in from Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA). She says her letter to the CIA warning it against destroying the interrogation tapes is classified and can't be released:

CIA Director Hayden's public statement yesterday, that some members of Congress were informed about the existence of videotaped interrogations of high value detainees, prompts me to respond.

In early 2003, in my capacity at Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee, I received a highly classified briefing on CIA interrogation practices from the agency’s General Counsel. The briefing raised a number of serious concerns and led me to send a letter to the General Counsel. Both the briefing and my letter are classified so I cannot reveal specifics, but I did caution against destruction of any videotapes.

Given the nature of the classification, I was not free to mention this subject publicly until Director Hayden disclosed it yesterday. To my knowledge, the Intelligence Committee was never informed that any videotapes had been destroyed. Surely I was not.

This matter must be promptly and fully investigated and I call for my letter of February 2003, which was never responded to and has been in the CIA’s files ever since, to be declassified.

So Harman had, in early 2003, at least generic knowledge of the tapes' existence and at least some indication that the CIA might have destroyed them. She felt restricted by classification from saying anything about this publicly, and now what she warned against has come to pass. There's every reason to suspect that the CIA has recorded more interrogations than we currently know of, and has destroyed even more evidence of such than we're presently aware.

Perhaps Harman can shed even more light here. The CIA may not look too kindly on her request to declassify the 2003 letter. As Matt Yglesias writes, it's time for Harman to start snitching. Dare the agency to seek prosecution.

The irony is getting out of control. For years, the Bush administration has sought to assure the interrogators who implemented its torture policy that they won't be prosecuted. But with the revelation that operations chief Jose Rodriguez destroyed recorded evidence of potentially-illegal interrogations, the CIA may have boxed even the Bush Justice Department into a corner. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), the number-two Democrat in the Senate, is calling on DOJ to open an obstruction-of-justice investigation. You can read Durbin's letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey here.

So far, it's not clear what DOJ will do. "We have received and are reviewing Senator Durbin's letter," says Dean Boyd, spokesman for DOJ's national-security division. More as it develops.

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Faced with the inconvenient assessment that Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapons program, GOP Senators are running an old game plan: create a commission that will treat the truth and a lie as equal possibilities. However, Michael McConnell, the director of national intelligence, is unequivocally standing by the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran.

The Washington Post reports that GOP Senators John Ensign (R-NV) and Jeff Sessions (R-AL) want to create a commission on the NIE that will, inevitably, trash it. For some historical perspective on how frequently the right has gone after intelligence assessments that conflict with desired conservative policy preferences, read Ilan Goldenberg. His bottom line: "In all of these cases conservatives played with and disregarded intelligence to help make their cases for a particular policy. And in all of these cases the conservatives were wrong." But he might have added something else: in all of these cases the conservatives were successful, despite being, you know, wrong.

Meanwhile, others on the right see something more nefarious at work. Danielle Pletka of AEI smears the entire intelligence community to the Post without any evidence: "This NIE was presented with a clear intention to deceive..." Similarly, in The New Republic, Yossi Klein Halevi doesn't bother addressing the new intelligence that prompted the Iran volte-face, and simply says the U.S. has lost "the will to stop Tehran" from doing something that Tehran isn't doing.

The intelligence community isn't backing down in the face of the right-wing pressure. "We certainly stand by the product," says DNI spokeswoman Vanee Vines. "It represents the consensus of intelligence community. That was clear when we released it. … We stand by it as comprehensive and accurate." But don't expect the braying from the right about appeasement and betrayal to cease.

What about Hayden's boss, Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell? McConnell's been DNI since February. When did he learn about the CIA destroying videotaped interrogations of al-Qaeda detainees? How many tapes did the CIA tell him it destroyed? Does he believe what he's been told? What action, if any, will he now take?

Sigh. That's for McConnell to know and you not to find out. "We're not commenting on that at all," says DNI spokeswoman Vanee Vines.

What did Congress know about the CIA's 2002 torture tapes and their 2005 destruction of same? Senate intelligence committee chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV):

While we were provided with very limited information about the existence of the tapes, we were not consulted on their usage nor the decision to destroy the tapes. And, we did not learn until much later, November 2006 -- 2 months after the full committee was briefed on the program -- that the tapes had in fact been destroyed in 2005.

Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), then-ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, isn't clear about what or when she knew of either the tapes or their destruction. But she says she warned CIA against getting rid of the evidence.

Rep. Jane Harman of California, then the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, was one of only four members of Congress in 2003 informed of the tapes' existence and the CIA's intention to ultimately destroy them.

"I told the CIA that destroying videotapes of interrogations was a bad idea and urged them in writing not to do it," Harman said. While key lawmakers were briefed on the CIA's intention to destroy the tapes, they were not notified two years later when the spy agency actually carried out the plan. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said the committee only learned of the tapes' destruction in November 2006.

It seems as if the "four" congressional leaders Harman refers to as knowing about the tapes were the chairs and ranking members of the intelligence committees: Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS), Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), Rep. Porter Goss (R-FL), and Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA). Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) took Goss' spot as chairman of the House intelligence committee that year when Goss became CIA director. Hoekstra told the AP that he didn't know a thing about either the tapes or their destruction. I'm calling Harman to ask her for her letter to the CIA about the tapes, and will bring it to you if and when I have it.

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A new report from the Pentagon's inspector general describes a massive failure in accounting for military equipment and services provided to forces in Iraq. More than $1 billion for military equipment like tractor trailers, tank recovery vehicles, crates of machine guns and rocket propelled grenades is unaccounted for. (CBS News, New York Times)

Salon pushes beyond Bush’s obvious prevarications about the NIE and Iran’s nuclear threat and argues that “the real lie” is Bush’s claim that “his administration has made a serious offer to negotiate with the Islamic Republic, and that Iranian intransigence is the only thing preventing a diplomatic resolution. Negotiations over Iran's nuke program, which started in the fall of 2003, were initiated by Britain, France and Germany, not the U.S. “Contrary to Bush's statement at his press conference this week, the United States did not "facilitate" these negotiations.” (Salon)

The Nation reports that “bu$ine$$” for Blackwater has never been better. Despite the massacre of 17 Iraqis, Congressional investigations of tax fraud, and a federal lawsuit alleging war crimes, Blackwater, having launched a marketing campaign, still seems a favorite of the Bush administration. The company even managed to have its own paratroopers make an aerial landing – complete with Blackwater parachutes – in San Diego’s Qualcomm Stadium during a halftime show at the San Diego State/BYU football game. (The Nation)

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Usually, what nails you in Washington malfeasance is the cover-up, not the crime. With the revelation that the CIA in 2005 destroyed videotapes of interrogations of senior al-Qaeda detainees, it'll be both.

Start with the facts as they're currently understood. In 2002, the CIA videotaped interrogations of Abu Zubaydah, the chief of al-Qaeda's military committee, and an as-yet-unknown colleague. (My guess is that Detainee #2 is Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who, following his capture that September in Pakistan, was the second most important detainee then in custody.) During that time, the tapes remained a closely-held secret, despite requests for information on interrogations from the 9/11 Commission, a 2002 joint Congressional inquiry into 9/11, and Judge Leonie Brinkema, who presided over the Zacharias Moussaoui trial. In 2005, then operations chief Jose Rodriguez ordered the tapes destroyed, without disclosing their existence to anyone who didn't already know. This week, The New York Times prepared a story about the tapes. To get out in front of it, Director Michael Hayden released a statement about both the tapes and their destruction.

Hayden makes not a single plausible claim about the tapes and why they were destroyed. He said in an internal message to CIA employees that the release of the tapes -- whether to the judge or to the inquiries or to, ultimately, the press -- would have allowed al-Qaeda to identify CIA interrogators and then target them for retribution. The appropriate response to that is: LOL. The CIA has the capacity to move its operatives around the world, including to places where there aren't any al-Qaeda "assassins" -- like, say, northern Virginia. To say otherwise, as Hayden does, is to tacitly concede that CIA is too incompetent to protect its people.

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The New York Times has a big one this afternoon: in 2002, the CIA videotaped the interrogations of at least two Al Qaeda operatives -- interrogations that likely involved waterboarding and similar techniques. But no one who asked for videotapes of CIA interrogations -- including the 9/11 commission and a federal judge -- was told about it. The tapes were ultimately destroyed in 2005.

In a nutshell:

Daniel Marcus, a law professor at American University who served as general counsel for the Sept. 11 commission and was involved in the discussions about interviews with Al Qaeda leaders, said he had heard nothing about any tapes being destroyed.

If tapes were destroyed, he said, “it’s a big deal, it’s a very big deal,” because it could amount to obstruction of justice to withhold evidence being sought in criminal or fact-finding investigations.

CIA chief Mike Hayden announced the destruction of the tapes today in order to get ahead of the Times story, which was due to break tomorrow morning. "The tapes posed a serious security risk," he explains. However, he doesn't attempt to justify the decision to lie to investigators about their existence before they were destroyed.

As for why the tapes were destroyed:

A former intelligence official who was briefed on the issue said the videotaping was ordered as a way of assuring “quality control” at remote sites following reports of unauthorized interrogation techniques. He said the tapes, along with still photographs of interrogations, were destroyed after photographs of abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib became public in May 2004 and C.I.A. officers became concerned about a possible leak of the videos and photos.

Presidential veto, here we come.

The intelligence bill passed today includes, as anticipated, a measure (sponsored by Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Chuck Hagel (R-NE), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), and Russ Feingold (D-WI)) that would effectively ban waterboarding. That's because it would limit CIA interrogators to using techniques approved by the Army Field Manual.

If President Bush signs the bill, says Sen. Feinstein in a statement, "all U.S. government interrogations – military and civilian – would be conducted under the same rules and regulations, and eight specific techniques, including waterboarding, would be prohibited."

But the White House has said that he will veto it. So then it becomes a question of whether Congress has the votes to override it.

Here's the measure's language:

“No individual in the custody or under the effective control of an element of the intelligence community or instrumentality thereof, regardless of nationality or physical location, shall be subject to any treatment or technique of interrogation not authorized by the United States Army Field Manual on Human Intelligence Collector Operations.”

This week was supposed to be the main event. In one corner, a State Department inspector general accused of incompetence, subterfuge, and conflicted interest, saying he didn't know his brother served on the advisory board of a huge State Department contractor. In the other, a former CIA Executive Director, saying he told his brother in October about joining that board. Krongard versus Krongard. Both under oath. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) as referee.

After a mid-November interview with Buzzy Krongard, Waxman announced that on the week of December 3, he'd hold a hearing to determine whether State Department IG Howard "Cookie" Krongard lied to the House oversight committee in his last testimony. Well, it's December 6. There hasn't been a hearing so far. There isn't one on the committee schedule. What gives?

Honestly, TPM readers, I have no idea. Waxman's people haven't answered my emails. I appear to be on a straight-to-voicemail arrangement with Krongard's spokeswoman. Even Buzzy seems to be freezing me out. I'm starting to get a complex!

It would be pretty surprising if Waxman backed off his path to pursuing a perjury investigation. Krongard has apparently figured he can weather the storm. What will happen? I'd like to tell you that we'll see, but I might be the last to know.

Yesterday we told you about Rudy Giuliani's business partner Hank Asher's well-timed gift to the wife of indicted Orange County Sheriff Mike Carona. One of the remarkable things about the story is how thoroughly it hits the high points of what we've come to expect from Giuliani muck.

Sure, it's got bribery allegations, as with Giuliani's chum Bernie Kerik. But it's also got the flagrant misuse of taxpayer money on "security" matters that we've come to expect from the Giuliani brand.

Setting aside the hundreds of thousands in gifts and bribes outlined in the indictment, Carona was notorious in California for traveling with "a team of detectives as bodyguards." When The Los Angeles Times asked him about "the extravagance" in 2004, sheriff officials replied, "without offering specifics," that "Carona has received death threats and is a potential target because he serves on a federal homeland security committee and has become a recognizable figure with appearances on national TV news programs." The Times noted that other California sheriffs didn't seem to need the same amount of attention.

An Orange County Register piece from earlier this year suggests that at least part of the inspiration for rolling with such a posse came from Giuliani himself:

According to grand jury testimony, [Carona's deputy sheriff George] Jaramillo ordered underlings to run his personal errands, had secretaries juggle calls from his wife and girlfriends, and said he needed an entourage because he was tired of being treated like "the gardener."

Carona got the same star treatment, using bodyguards and being chauffeured by deputies to events. After a visit to New York and a meeting with then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Jaramillo and Carona decided they wanted the same kind of deputy detail and ordered it done.

Carona, of course, has endorsed Giuliani. It's unclear whether the security detail was also dispatched to secure his longtime mistress.

Yesterday the State and Defense Departments announced the contours of a new "understanding" for oversight of State's security contractors in Iraq. The gist: State will have to inform military commanders of the doings of contractor-guarded convoys, and if there's obvious wrongdoing, the U.S. embassy and the military command will seek prosecution. (Of course, it's not clear what law would apply, but anyway.)

All this arose because of Blackwater's September shootings of Iraqi civilians in Nisour Square. Not surprisingly, the company -- which is being sued by the victims' families, and might even (but probably won't) face criminal charges stemming from an ongoing FBI probe -- is embracing the State-Defense pact:

Blackwater fully supports the memorandum of agreement signed today by the Department of State and the Department of Defense regarding private security companies operating in Iraq on behalf of the US Government. Blackwater has always supported the identification of contractor standards and clear rules of accountability. Increased coordination and constant review of procedures will provide even better value to the Government. Blackwater looks forward to complying with new rules as we continue to serve the United States Government.

Four former CIA officials find Bush’s claim that he only recently learned of the contents of the NIE report, to be “preposterous.” One of these experts said that such intelligence would have been, as a matter of practice, included in the Presidential Daily Briefings (PDB) , which have occurred daily since last August when the Director of the NIE whispered in Bush’s ear that he had some new info on Iran. (Huffington Post)

Lawyers for Bin Laden’s former driver Salim Ahmed Hamdan have been allowed to argue that Hamdan is a prisoner of war and not an unlawful enemy combatant. Earning a coveted POW status would mean that Hamdan would be removed from the military commission process and that the Geneva Convention would apply to the terms of his detention. However, a military judge has denied him the right to call three “high-value detainees” as witnesses. (LA Times)

What's next for prisoners at Guantanamo Bay? It appears likely that the Supreme Court will rule that the U.S. Constitution protects their legal rights, but there are tougher issues to decide, like whether the current procedure is adequate. Don't expect a decision in Boumediene v. Bush and Al-Odah v. United States until early next summer, just before the court recesses. (McClatchy)

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We've been down this road before, first with the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act and then with this summer's executive order on interrogations. And, like water seeking its own level, each time the Bush administration faces some kind of legal obstacle to torturing terrorism detainees, it finds a way to circumvent it. Even so, Congress is prepared to pass yet another ban on CIA torture techniques, the AP reports.

House and Senate negotiators working on an intelligence bill have agreed to limit CIA interrogators to techniques approved by the military, which would effectively bar them from using such harsh methods as waterboarding, congressional aides said Wednesday.

Members of the House and Senate intelligence committees decided to include the ban while working out differences in their respective bills authorizing 2008 spending for intelligence programs, according to the aides, who spoke anonymously because the negotiations were private. Details of the bill are to be made public Thursday.

That will set the stage for another veto fight with President Bush, who last summer issued an executive ordered allowing the CIA to use "enhanced interrogation techniques" that go beyond what's allowed in the 2006 Army Field Manual.

The Army field manual is compliant with the Geneva Conventions, the Constitution, and the laws of the United States of America. Waterboarding and the other potentially-banned tortures are not. Three guesses on which the Bush administration will choose.

From a not-yet-online piece from Congressional Quarterly, the White House proclaims that torture, and only torture, can keep your children safe:

And White House spokesman Tony Fratto issued a statement saying, "if that provision is in the bill, it would make a bad bill worse. We had a veto message on a similar provision in the House's supplemental funding bill. The CIA program has provided valuable, actionable intelligence that has allowed us to find and capture terrorists and prevent attacks. Efforts to weaken this program are dangerous and misguided."

As the AP notes, CIA director Mike Hayden has (euphemistically) defended torturing detainees. Attorney General Michael Mukasey has pleaded ignorance on whether waterboarding is torture. In an interview with TPMmuckraker on Monday, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) pledged to press Mukasey on the legality of waterboarding every time Mukasey testifies to the Senate Judiciary Committee. With the White House spending more energy defending its God-given right to torture than it spends, say, finding Osama bin Laden, prepare to see this sorry spectacle again and again over the next fourteen months.

Rudy Giuliani has argued that his buddy Hank Asher put his lawbreaking past behind him. But it looks like he may have fallen off the wagon.

We noted earlier today that Asher pops up in the indictment of Orange County Sheriff Mike Carona. And although Asher is not accused of a crime, the facts do not look good: Less than three weeks after Carona was selected to advise the President's Homeland Security task force, Asher gave Carona's wife a $15,000 watch. Asher was lobbying for the federal government to buy his data mining software at the time. That same month, he hired Giuliani under a contract worth more than $4 million to head that effort.

Carona was one of 14 officials named as advisors to the task force in December of 2002, the month before the newly formed DHS officially began operations. The panel was guiding development of the Department at the time. Carona remained as an advisor until he was forced to resign last month due to his indictment on corruption charges.

According to the indictment, Asher gave "yellow gold and diamond" Cartier watches to both Carona's wife and the wife of his deputy when they visited New York in December 2002. ABC reported that Asher was bombastic during the meeting at the restaurant, handing out $100 bills and comping other diners' meals and drinks to "pay for any inconvenience his boisterous party caused the other guests."

Carona was certainly aware of Asher's product, code-named MATRIX. A 2004 City Journal piece reported that Carona said that if he'd had MATRIX in 2002, "he could have prevented the murder of five-year-old Samantha Runnion, abducted from outside her home in July 2002, and found, raped, along a mountain road the next day." In 2002, when he was nominated to the DHS advisory spot, he told The Los Angeles Times that he intended to push for "strong coordination between the federal and local fight against terrorism," precisely the strength of MATRIX, which compiles law enforcement databases and public records.

Asher's support of Carona continued in 2006, when he and his family and associates made $6,000 in contributions to Carona's reelection campaign, according to county records.

Asher could not be reached for comment, and an assistant at his company Jari Research said that it was unlikely he'd respond, since this was a "hard time" for him. Asher's sister died last month of cancer.

As for Giuliani's camp, they responded to ABC's story yesterday about Asher's appearance in Carona's indictment with something of a non-answer:

"This would seem to be another case of trying to find a story where there isn't one. Over the course of his career, Mayor Giuliani has worked with numerous well-respected and highly regarded individuals as a member of the Reagan Department of Justice, US Attorney, Mayor of New York and private practice," said Maria Comella, a spokesperson for Giuliani.

Andrew Berger, Adrianne Jeffries, and Peter Sheehy contributed research to this post.

Nearly three months after the Nisour Square shootings, the long hard slog to establish effective oversight and control of security contractors continues. From The New York Times:

Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top United States commander in Iraq, and Ryan C. Crocker, the American ambassador to Baghdad, have agreed on the details governing the operations of Blackwater and other private security contractors there, American officials said Tuesday.

The agreement requires all State Department convoys in Iraq to coordinate their movements with the military’s main operations center in Baghdad, sets minimum standards for training the contractors and outlines when armed guards may use force in self-defense.

But they're not quite there yet: "One important issue the agreement does not address is the legal framework to prosecute any State Department contractors who violate the law."

Update: ABC has more details.

Karl Rove is gone, but not forgotten.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy has scheduled a vote tomorrow on whether to issue contempt citations to Rove and White House chief of staff Josh Bolten for ignoring Congressional subpoenas from the U.S. attorneys investigation. Of course, Republicans might defer the vote for another week. But at the latest, the citations would be sent to the Senate floor next Thursday.

And then it's up to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). His counterparts in the House leadership have delayed a vote for contempt citations against Harriet Miers and Bolten since July. We've got a question in to see whether Reid will be speedier. We'll let you know what we hear.

Update: A Reid aide responds that "after the Committee acts on this issue, Senator Reid will consult with Senator Leahy about how to move forward on it." Maybe things will be clearer next week.

And for those who didn't catch our interview with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) about the contempt citations earlier this week, check it out.

Bad news for Trent Lott's brother-in-law Dickie Scruggs:

Timothy Balducci, a co-defendant in the federal bribery case against plaintiffs attorney Richard "Dickie" Scruggs, has agreed to plead guilty to one count of conspiracy and to cooperate with the government....

Federal prosecutors have alleged that Mr. Balducci earlier this year approached state Circuit Court Judge Henry Lackey on Mr. Scruggs's behalf and offered to pay him $40,000 for a favorable ruling in a civil case.

Balducci could prove a formidable cooperator. After all, in a conversation with Judge Lackey (one taped by investigators), he said:

[Dickie Scruggs] and I, um, how shall I say, for over the last five or six years there, there are bodies buried that, that you know, that he and I know where...where are, and, and, my, my trust in his, mine in him and his in mine, in me, I am sure are the same.

Not the guy you want talking to the feds.

What if I told you that you could make millions of dollars doing it's-not-clear-what? Well, Rudy Giuliani has lived the dream.

We introduced you earlier to Hank Asher, Giuliani's friend and two-time business associate, who's recently cropped up in a public corruption indictment. The Giuliani-Asher relationship is a tale to tell on its own, though.

The two met when Asher demonstrated his Matrix database software for Giuliani in 2002. The ex-mayor has said that he immediately became an enthusiast: "this was a technology that would have been very helpful to us even when I was the mayor and putting together programs for reducing crime to help us find serial killers, abductors of children, and of course terrorists." Something else might have explained his enthusiasm: Asher and Giuliani inked a deal in December 2002 for Giuliani Partners to represent Asher's company, Seisint.

The deal, first reported by The Washington Post this spring, was remarkably sweet: $2 million per year, a commission on sales of Seisint products, and 800,000 warrants to buy company stock. How much that added up to is unclear. The Post reported that Giuliani Partners got "most" of the promised compensation and that the stock warrants proved most valuable, since Seisint was sold to LexisNexis in 2004 for $775 million.

In return for all that, Asher got . . . well, it's not clear. In fact, the Post reported, a Seisint shareholder sued the company in 2004 over the contract, arguing that it was a "waste of corporation assets" to enter into a contract for which the company received "no benefit." The lawsuit was later settled.

There was at least a rationale for the deal.

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From the Politico:

Lott had said he has heard the various rumors regarding his decision to retire, but said the real reason is that which he publicly declared at his first press conference in Pascagoula, Miss. - it was just time for him to leave the Senate.

"I have heard everything," said Lott "That it was a health problem, that it was a sex problem, that it was a problem with his brother-in-law. None of that is true, not even close."

Lott said he has spoken to Scruggs, who he is husband of his wife's younger sister, just once since the indictment. Lott said Scruggs "is still my friend," and he suspects that the well-known lawyer became enmeshed in "a sting" by the FBI.

Rudolph Giuliani has resigned as head of Giuliani Partners, a position that earned him $4 million last year. Rudolph claims that "everything I did at Giuliani Partners was totally legal, totally ethical," yet just yesterday the New York Times “identified one client as the Persian Gulf country of Qatar, which was accused of sheltering suspected Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.” (Boston Globe)

Guantanamo Bay has its own perverted sense of innocence. Shortly after a 19-year old German was taken from Pakistan to Guantanamo Bay in 2002, American officials determined that he was not a terrorist. But over the next four years, “two U.S. military tribunals that were responsible for determining whether Guantanamo Bay detainees were enemy fighters declared him a dangerous al-Qaeda ally who should remain in prison.” (Washington Post)

Meanwhile, as prisoners as Guantanamo Bay wait for the Supreme Court to weigh in on the legitimacy of military tribunals today, a prisoner cut his throat with his own fingernail so severely that it caused a substantial loss of blood. Those concerned about the detainees say that such acts are not unusual. (New York Times)

Current and former intelligence officials say much of the 2005 Iran report is solid, but they acknowledge that some of its conclusions appear to have been thinly sourced and were based on less rigorous methods that were later revised. The 2005 report said Iran’s leaders were working tirelessly to acquire a nuclear weapon, a claim that is contradicted by the 2007 version of the report released yesterday. The 2005 Iran report was also written by some of the same team that had produced key parts of the overstated Iraq threat estimate, which was similarly acknowledged to have been wrong in one of its main conclusions. (New York Times)

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They're hard to keep straight, the various and sundry friends and business associates of Rudy Giuliani with legal problems. But here's one worth keeping an eye on: Hank Asher. ABC reports that Asher, a former drug-runner, as well as a business partner and "close friend" of Giuliani's, makes an appearance in the recent indictment of Orange County Sheriff Michael Carona on bribery charges.

Carona himself was once a rising star in the GOP, often mentioned as a potential candidate for lieutenant governor of California. Dubbed "America's Sheriff" by Larry King for how he handled the 2002 hunt for 5-year-old Samantha Runnion's kidnapper, he naturally endorsed America's Mayor Rudy Giuliani for president. According to news accounts, he's met Giuliani at least twice. He's also chums with Bernie Kerik.

The indictment alleges that Carona and five associates, including his wife (Deborah) and mistress (named Debra), accepted bribes and generally did what they could to get rich off Carona's position ($700,000 in bribes and kickbacks). Among the dozens of illicit gifts enumerated in the indictment is this one:

On or about December 19, 2002, defendant Deborah Carona and co-conspirator Jaramillo's wife [that's Carona's assistant Sheriff George Jaramillo] accepted as gifts from H.A., a businessman who owned a data mining software company, yellow gold and diamond Ladies Cartier Watches worth approximately $15,000 each.

"H.A.", according to ABC, is Hank Asher, who did indeed own a data mining software company called Seisint at the time (more about that later). Asher himself is worth "north of $700 million," based mostly on his success selling his data mining product, which is called Matrix (he's since sold it to LexisNexis). And yes, he did smuggle cocaine from Colombia to Florida aboard his private jet for eight months in 1980 and 1981. But he says he paid his dues by cooperating with federal agents to stop other runners.

But it sounds like Asher still likes to live large. During that same dinner meeting with the two wives at Carmine's here in New York, he apparently got a bit rambunctious:

When Hank Asher reached into the bag and pulled out the two $15,000 gold Cartier watches, the holiday crowd at Carmine's restaurant on 44th Street in Manhattan noticed, patrons recalled....

During the Carmine's dinner, when Asher's voice began to boom across the room, patrons recall him handing his black American Express card to the restaurant to pay for any inconvenience his boisterous party caused the other guests. He told the staff to buy everyone's dinners and drinks and then peeled off a few $100 bills to tip strolling carolers in the restaurant.

As ABC notes, Asher isn't named as a co-conspirator in the case, and "there is no allegation in the document that he attempted to influence any purchases or other decisions by the county." Maybe it was just a nice Christmas gift. But the timing is enough to raise eyebrows. Because that's when Asher was making a big push for law enforcement agencies to buy his product. Carona, famous as he was for tracking down child predators, would have been an asset to Asher, who was hawking a product designed to help authorities identify suspects by searching billions of public records. Carona and Asher would later serve together on the Board of Directors for the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.

Certainly Asher had a broad strategy for selling his system. To help him sell to the federal government, his secret weapon was Rudy Giuliani, whom he'd hired for a staggering sum of money -- under a contract that the two of them kept secret for years. More about that in a bit.

It's been a long time since we've had the opportunity to write about Ex-Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA) after his ignominious defeat last November (he asked voters for "the benefit of the doubt" and they didn't give it to him). But unfortunately for Weldon, he's back in the news:

Former representative Curt Weldon's chief of staff has agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy charges for allegedly helping a consulting firm that Weldon championed obtain federal funds and for concealing money the firm paid him and his wife, according to court papers unsealed today.

According to the court document, Russell James Caso and a top official at the unnamed consulting firm met repeatedly with Weldon to seek the Pennsylvania Republican's help in obtaining federal funds for the organization's defense projects....

The court papers make no accusations against Weldon. But they say Caso "intentionally" concealed payments of $19,000 from the firm to his wife by failing to report them in congressional disclosure forms "even though he knew he was required to do so."

Although the papers make no direct charges against him, Weldon appears in the charging document as "Representative A," which is mighty bad news. It's a pattern that prosecutors have followed repeatedly in the Jack Abramoff scandal -- getting guilty pleas from former staffers and cutting cooperation deals with them in order to build cases against their former boss. Look out, Curt! It's amazing that the left-wing conspiracy to bring him down has persisted even after his forced retirement.

Update: Here's the "information," the document that lays out the charges to which Caso is pleading guilty.

Check out Dan Matthews and Julian Assange's Wikileaks analysis of the difference between the 2003 and 2004 Guantanamo Bay manuals. Matthews and Assange note that the 2004 manual restricts detainees' access to prison chaplains -- most likely in response to the case of James Yee, an Army chaplain then suspected of espionage for al-Qaeda and since cleared of all charges. The result of the Yee Affair was, apparently, a transformation of religious-comfort services into a potential intelligence-collection operation:

In March 2003, the chaplain could access detainee areas unaccompanied, and could “speak freely with detainees”, but by March 2004, the chaplain is “assigned an escort” to visit detainee holding areas – potentially a form of surveillance. And the chaplain can “speak with detainees” - but apparently not so freely as before.

Furthermore, in other parts of the manual, the chaplain is again disempowered – from making announcements on the PA system (sections 16-3 and 16-5), from providing religious items (section 16-13). And guards are no longer encouraged to seek the chaplain's advice on religious matters (section 16-14).

Matthews and Assange also note how the manual expresses hostility for the International Committee of the Red Cross:

Edits to the manual suggest that further hurdles may have been placed in the way of the Red Cross. Sction 17-2 stipulates that the Red Cross “is restricted from all buildings without prior approval... except the Detention Clinic and the Detention Hospital.” Then, the Red Cross is required to be aware of “scheduled guard feeding times” and adjust their schedule accordingly.

The Red Cross is prohibited from passing mail between detainees in both manuals. The 2003 manual stipulates in chapter 13 that “At no time should [Red Cross] reps pass any mail between detainees”.

By 2004, the military saw fit to make the stipulation, if nothing else, louder: “AT NO TIME should ICRC reps pass any mail between detainees.”

From Bloomberg:

Former Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu, charged in September with cheating investors in a $60 million ``Ponzi'' scheme, was formally indicted by a federal grand jury on similar allegations, U.S. prosecutors said....

Hsu, 56, faces as much as 20 years in prison on the most serious counts. He is being held on separate charges stemming from a 1991 prosecution in which he entered a no-contest plea to charges he stole $1 million from 20 investors in a scheme to buy and resell nonexistent latex gloves.

ABC has a copy of the indictment, which is very similar to the charges filed in September. Once again, prosecutors charge that Hsu made "direct and implied threats" to those who invested with him in order to coerce them into contributing to his favored candidates, particularly Hillary Clinton.

Even with the Democrats in the majority and the FBI on his tail, he's still got it:

Senior Republican appropriators in the Senate have collected more money in earmarks than any other members of Congress, even though President Bush and GOP leaders have forcefully criticized “pork-barrel spending.”

Not only have these lawmakers defied their leaders, they have also taken a much greater share of the pot set aside for rank-and-file Republicans than have senior Democrats....

Sen. Thad Cochran (Miss.), ranking Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee, has collected $774 million worth of earmarks in 12 spending bills. After Cochran, Sen. Ted Stevens (Alaska), the second-ranking Republican on Appropriations, secured more money for special projects than any other member of Congress: $502 million.

Not surprisingly, Rep. Jack Murtha (D-PA) took the gold in the House. And the bronze went to Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), who's earmarking activities are also under investigation.

It's a minor victory, one that won't be recorded in the history books. But it looks like the Senate Republican leadership's strategy to keep Senate campaign disclosure reports from being easily searchable is on its way to success.

As we laid out before, they've long been fighting a bill to require the disclosure reports to be filed electronically, something the House did six years ago. The latest coup was a move by Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) to add a poison pill to the simple and thoroughly uncontroversial bill (it's got 41 co-sponsors, including 16 Republicans). Ensign said that bill is going nowhere unless it has his amendment, which would require non-profits that file ethics complaints against senators to disclose all donors who gave $5,000 or more, a measure that would effectively discourage ethics complaints against senators.

Last month, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) asked pretty please if Ensign might offer the amendment separately, since it has nothing to do with the underlying bill. Today, his answer came: no (sub. req.). And that means that senators will most likely not be required to electronically file in the run-up to the 2008 election -- definitely good news for candidates who will be receiving contributions they'd rather not have to explain.

Being an author of legal thrillers, John Grisham knows a sophisticated bribery scheme when he sees one. And frankly, he seems a little disappointed in his fellow Mississippian and friend Dickie Scruggs. Or at least that's the impression one gets in reading his comments about his friend's predicament to The Wall Street Journal:

"This doesn't sound like the Dickie Scruggs that I know," Mr. Grisham said yesterday. "When you know Dickie, and how successful he has been, you could not believe he would be involved in such a boneheaded bribery scam that is not in the least bit sophisticated."

As we detailed last week, the indictment alleges plenty of boneheadedness. Would a villain in a Grisham book be so dumb as to refer to a bribery payment as "the package?" Surely not. Is he wrong to expect at least as much from his friends?

According to internal State Department cables obtained by TPMmuckraker, the State Department has slated two Diplomatic Security officials who oversee private-security contractors guarding U.S. diplomats in Iraq and Afghanistan for salary bonuses. The optional bonuses, called Senior Foreign Service Performance Pay Awards, come months after administrative investigations have raised questions about the propriety of State's relationship with security contractors like Blackwater.

In late October, Richard Griffin, head of the department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security, resigned after an internal State Department review of contractor relationships implicitly rebuked the office for insufficient oversight. That lack of oversight contributed to the September shooting deaths of over a dozen Iraqi civilians by Blackwater security guards at Nisour Square, and has inflamed Iraqis, who view State Department guards Blackwater, Triple Canopy and DynCorp as having a license to kill without legal consequence. Yet shortly after Griffin's resignation, ABC News reported that two key deputies who worked closely with the security contractors, Kevin Barry and Justine Sincavage, received quiet promotions. One outraged State official told ABC, "What does it say when State promotes the two people into DS' most senior positions, when if they had properly managed the programs under the responsibility, we wouldn't be in this mess?"

That question could also be asked of their recent pay bonuses.

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Rudy Giuliani is the only Republican candidate who remains involved in private business and recent scrutiny of his relationships has raised serious questions about his judgment. The New York Times reports that Rudy’s firm Bracewell & Giuliani has lobbied Congress for legislation that President Bush believes is a threat to anti-terrorism efforts in Africa. One state department official noted that Bracewell & Giuliani’s lobbying is harmful to a relationship with an ally. (New York Times)

Brent Wilkes, recently convicted of bribing former U.S. Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, will not be able to subpoena reporters and government officials regarding grand jury leaks. Wilkes argued that the leaks deprived him of his right to a fair trial but a federal judge ruled that leaks had "no material affect on the verdict." (AP)

In the wake of September 11, Congress created a $1 billion insurance fund (The World Trade Center Captive Insurance Company) to cover the claims of sick workers. Now, the inspector general for the Homeland Security Department is looking into why the fund "has chosen to litigate all claims instead of settling whenever possible." (AP)

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Score another one for Wikileaks. This morning -- thanks to a source known only as "Peryton" -- the open-source website for whistleblower documents published the 2004 manual for U.S. military detention operations at Guantanamo Bay. You can read it, with commentary, here.

Last month, Wikileaks published the 2003 edition of the manual. Among other controversial provisions, the manual instructed officials to hide certain detainees from the International Committee of the Red Cross, a practice that the military repeatedly denied was in existence at Guantanamo. Spokespeople for the U.S. military's Southern Command, which oversees Guantanamo Bay, said the manual was outdated and assured that some instructions that violated the Geneva Conventions were no longer in effect.

It's unclear so far what portions of the 2004 manual remain in place. (Maybe Peryton will enlighten us in the future.) The Washington Post's Josh White quotes Guantanamo Bay spokesman as saying that "things have changed dramatically" at the camp since 2004. But Wikileaks finds that, in key areas, the 2004 manual didn't change so much from 2003:

Systematic denial of Red Cross access to prisoners remains. The use of dogs remains. Segregation and isolation are still used routinely and systematically – including an initial period of at least 4 weeks "to enhance and exploit the disorientation and disorganization felt by a newly arrived detainee", only terminated at the behest of interrogators. Both manuals assert that detainees will be treated in accordance with the "spirit" of the Geneva conventions "to the degree consistent with military needs", but never assert that the conventions are actually being followed at Guantanamo. Put into practice, neither manual complies with the Geneva conventions.

So is the past prologue? We'll find out. For now, though, dig into the 2004 manual and let us know in comments what you think is most significant.

Kevin Drum speculated earlier today that pressure from the Democratic-controlled Congress might have pushed Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, into releasing today's National Intelligence Estimate, which judges that Iran doesn't have an active nuclear weapons program. It's an assessment that's certainly in line with past practice: after all, the administration isn't in the habit of releasing much information at all, let alone data points that suggest Iran can't, you know, start World War Three. But in this case, it looks like McConnell took the initiative without help.

An aide to Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), the chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, says that Rockefeller -- the obvious culprit in any Senatorial intelligence push -- didn't press McConnell to release the NIE's key judgments. Rockefeller's House counterpart, Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-TX), released a statement today saying that he wants to be "fully informed about the classified sources upon which this estimate is based" and that he will "review areas where certain agencies dissent." That sounds like a man in the dark about the NIE. At the risk of wild speculation, I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's unlikely that their GOP colleagues didn't want the world to know about Iran's nuclear non-threat.

Perhaps other Senators or Congresscritters pushed McConnell. But so far it looks like this is a case of the intelligence community actually being out to set the record straight.

Thomas Kontogiannis, briber of Duke Cunningham and cooperator extraordinaire, was due to be sentenced today for his role in the schemes. But today the judge put it off since Tommy K just had bypass surgery.

Last week, his lawyers argued that he'd die in prison because of his heart condition. That didn't tug on the prosecutors' heart strings, however, and they recommended a ten-year sentence, adding that Tommy K had actually continued to run a mortgage fraud scheme for months after he'd pleaded guilty in February.

The judge appears to take a similarly dim view and has revoked Kontogiannis' bail:

[Kontogiannis] will remain in federal custody at the hospital.

U.S. District Judge Larry Burns said Kontogiannis went to Greece with family and appeared to commit what he called "new and continuing crimes." The judge did not elaborate on the alleged crimes.

Some senators are queasy over a potential contempt-of-Congress showdown with the Bush administration over the U.S. attorney firings. Not Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), who sat down with TPMmuckraker in his Senate offices this morning.

Whitehouse said that the Bush administration has "redrawn the line" for a reasonable exercise of executive privilege. And that's why he supports Senator Patrick Leahy's efforts to hold current and former White House officials in contempt for not complying with Congressional subpoenas from the firings investigation. Leahy ruled last week that the administration's assertions of privilege this summer in response to the subpoenas were invalid, a step towards issuing a contempt citation.

What's more, Whitehouse welcomes the Constitutional showdown that would result. "I'm astounded at the breadth and the scope of the privilege that they claim," the first-term senator said. "I actually hope that it comes to a point where we end up litigating it and getting a court decision and settling this question."

Asked if he was going further than other senators, who'd use a possible contempt finding as a mechanism to compel the document disclosure, Whitehouse said the Bush administration has gone so far in "grading its own papers" -- that is, deciding for itself what Congress is entitled to receive from the executive -- that it's time to return to Constitutional first principles. "I'd rather get it done," he said:

"There has not been a lot of case law on this subject. We've been going on for a long time off of Department of Justice [attorney general] opinions, and a certain amount of tradition, and how settlements and agreements in the past have shaken out. But the Bush administration has shown why it's actually important that there be a legal line drawn to hold them to, because they've redrawn all the executive lines. I think it'd be good for the process to get a court decision for once and for all on the subject so everybody knows where we stand. It'll eliminate a lot of the back and forth in the future."

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Hmm. Could it be that Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell is trying to signal his opposition to a war with Iran?

This morning, the intelligence community released the key judgments of a National Intelligence Estimate concluding "with high confidence" that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in the fall of 2003. Yet, just weeks ago, McConnell announced that the NIEs -- assessments of a given national-security or foreign-policy priority across all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies -- would no longer be available to the general public. The Iran NIE, McConnell said, would be no exception. Here's how AP intelligence reporter Pamela Hess reported McConnell's decision on November 13:

McConnell also said a new national intelligence estimate on Iran should be complete in about a month, but its key findings will not be released publicly. He says doing so could alert Iran to its intelligence vulnerabilities.

How quickly times change! Credit McConnell and the intelligence community for the public disclosure: after all, its previous estimate on Iran, completed in 2005, judged that Iran had an active nuclear-weapons program, so keeping the new NIE secret would have amounted to letting an inaccuracy stand. Indeed, that's how McConnell's deputy, Donald Kerr, described the motivation behind disclosure in a statement to reporters:

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Ever since September, the nomination for accomplished vote suppression expert Hans von Spakovsky to be a member of the Federal Election Commission has been snagged, stopped by the public opposition of Sens. Barack Obama (D-IL) and Russ Feingold (D-WI) and the somewhat more private opposition of Sens. John Kerry (D-MA) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH).

The Republican leadership countered the Democrats by insisting that von Spakovsky's nomination was all or nothing -- either von Spakovsky went through or none of the nominated commissioners did. That means that if no compromise is reached by the end of the year, the FEC, which makes rules governing election spending, might effectively shut down in an election year, since it would be left with only two commissioners out of six seats. As we reported back in October, that could create a situation where outside groups funded by millionaires (like the Swift Boat Vets) could run amok in a campaign year.

Roll Call gives (sub. req.) an update of sorts this morning. The short version: things are still at a standstill, but "various scenarios currently are circulating" to avoid a shutdown. One scenario: von Spakovsky could withdraw and the problem would go away. Another: the White House and Senate could join together to make a new round of nominations. Or another: "the deck of current commission recess appointees may be reshuffled and re-recess appointed, a complicated and likely unprecedented strategy." Stay tuned.

Another test for Attorney General Michael Mukasey.

In a letter to Mukasey today, House sleuth Henry Waxman (D-CA) said that the White House has prevented former Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald from turning over records of his interviews during the Valeria Plame leak investigation of White House officials, including the President.

In July, Waxman said, Fitzgerald agreed to turn over the documents to Waxman's House oversight committee, along with documents from his interviews with State Department and CIA officials. But though he's turned those other documents over to the committee, the White House has prevented the release of his records of the White House interviews.

In the letter, Waxman urges Mukasey to ignore the White House's position, saying that "the role of the Attorney General is to administer the laws with impartiality." During the Clinton Administration, he writes, Janet Reno "made an independent judgment and provided numerous FBI interview reports to the Committee, including reports of interviews with President Clinton, Vice President Gore, and three White House Chiefs of Staff." Apparently the Justice Department under Alberto Gonzales had agreed to the White House's request to keep the documents from Congress. Waxman wants to know if things will change now that there's a new boss.

Waxman had requested transcripts or other documents relating to Fitzgerald's interviews of President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Andrew Card, Stephen Hadley, Karl Rove, Dan Bartlett, and Scott McClellan. Fitzgerald is prepared to turn over at least some of these, Waxman writes, though it's unclear which.

Bernie Kerik has some serious lawyer problems. One law firm is suing him for over $200k in unpaid fees and now federal prosecutors have asked the judge in Kerik’s trial to disqualify his attorney because of conflicts of interest. It seems that even Bernie’s lawyer has dirt on him that could force the attorney to testify about obstruction of justice charges. (AP)

The U.S. has told England that it can “kidnap” British citizens if they are wanted for crimes in the United States because the Supreme Court has said so. Until now it was commonly assumed that US law permitted kidnapping only in the “extraordinary rendition” of terrorist suspects. This may alarm the British business community as more than a dozen British executives are currently being investigated by US authorities and could face criminal charges in America. (The Sunday Times)

When the Guantanamo detainee Omar Kahdr (who was 15 when he was captured in Afghanistan) goes to trial this spring under the Military Commissions Act, he will not know the identities of the witnesses testifying against him. A U.S. military judge is shielding the identity of witnesses, a move that could hamper the defense’s ability to challenge the credibility of witnesses. (Washington Post)

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It's easy to get distracted in our workaday lives and lose sight of the big picture.

For instance, Mike Allen of the Politico reports that the White House recently passed "an unusual landmark": the administration has produced 1 million documents to Congress since January. The mind can scarcely comprehend the horrors of such unbridled oversight.

The details of this "unusual landmark" are unclear. Characteristic of a White House that has successfully stonewalled a number of key Congressional investigations while still managing to complain about responding to inquiries, the provenance of that "1 million" number is unstated. (A Waxman aide "scoffed" at the number, Allen reports.) Presumably if you were to press for information as to where it had come from, it would prove an additional unreasonable burden. And as to whether that landmark (if it has been reached) is, in fact, "unusual," who knows? Certainly to a White House that suffered no oversight during its first six years, it is unusual.

Having staggered the mind with the "1 million" number, Allen quotes a "senior administration official" to drive home the real costs:

“There are a number of dry holes that got drilled,” a senior administration official said. “People don’t care about it. The public is saying: Gas is at $3 a gallon. Is there any energy bill? No.”

The official even made sport of the Democrats’ approach, calling it “purely reflexive.”

“People are having concerns with their mortgages,” the official said. “Is there a mortgage bill? No. We have a government to fund. Is there any appropriations bill? No.

“But, I’ve got a new subpoena for you today — and we’re going to hold somebody in contempt. Doesn’t that help you?”

The main effect, the official said, was a distraction for the staff and countless hours of work for the White House counsel’s office.

Accepting the undeniable logic of every new subpoena meaning one less sweeping piece of legislation, it staggers the mind to think of what the Democratic Congress could have accomplished these past 11 months if it had spent its time passing the administration's legislation instead of investigating it. Not only that, but there wouldn't have been the additional burden of having to replace officials forced to resign as the result of those investigations. Think how much more could get done!

Now, if only the press would lay off too, then they could really get some things accomplished.

Last week a few national blogs picked up KCTV-5's investigation of Johnson County, Kansas District Attorney and anti-abortion crusader extraordinaire Phill Kline. Kline was Kansas Attorney General until voters ousted him in December of 2006 in favor of former Johnson County DA Paul Morrison, who became a Democrat in order to run against Kline. After Kline lost, the state GOP appointed him to fill Morrison's shoes in Johnson County, a district where he was highly unpopular, in a decision party officials now regret. The two men, Morrison and Kline -- whose destinies are clearly intertwined -- effectively switched jobs.

And how is Kline performing in his new position, which nets him $143,000 a year?

KCTV reported that Kline only spends 29 hours a week in his office, frequently only for a few hours a day, which other Kansas DAs said falls far short of the time necessary to do the job. And the news channel also says Kline's legal residence in Johnson County is a sham -- he rents a crumby apartment above a storage facility at $400 a month, while keeping his Topeka dwelling. KCTV reporters watched the Johnson County apartment for "weeks," with no sign of Kline.

In a rebuttal, Kline's spokesman said that the reporters would have seen Kline leaving his apartment "if they woke up a little earlier to catch him when he leaves for work" and reminded people "that the DA job is not strictly confined to the four walls of the DA office."

So where was Kline while he was at not-work and not-Johnson County? There is some speculation that he was devoting time to his favorite cause.

If you feel like you've read the name "Phill" spelled with two L's somewhere before, it was probably connected to the anti-abortion crusade. Kline's obsession with the issue has made him a darling of the pro-lifers. His critics say he put his energy into campaigning with pro-life groups. And while on the job, he's stayed true to the same aim, filing a 107-count criminal complaint against Planned Parenthood. The complaint is interesting because 1) Planned Parenthood filed a lawsuit against him first, and 2) his foil, current AG Paul Morrison, had decided not to file charges against Planned Parenthood after conducting what he called a "thorough" investigation of allegations Kline made while he was Kansas AG.

But it gets muckier.

Kline must subscribe to the same podcast as Alberto Gonzales or something, because he fired eight attorneys in his office without reason on his first day as Johnson County DA in January. Now those attorneys are suing him, and the judge has not been ruling in his favor. The fired attorneys say Kline axed them because they had no political loyalty to him. Kline says he can ax whoever he wants. Sound familiar?

Whatta guy. Too bad he's said he's not seeking re-election. Maybe he's tired of living in his $400/mo. storage closet.