As expected, the CIA announced the results of its probe of the CIA's inspector general John Helgerson, who has raised hackles in the agency for his investigations into counterterrorism policy and detainee interrogations. Among the fixes:

[CIA Director Michael] Hayden said Helgerson has appointed an ombudsman to represent the interests of CIA officers under IG investigation. He agreed to make a "greater effort" to include the views of those officers in his final reports, and to allow officers to review draft reports. He also agreed to help officers find attorneys with security clearances to represent them if they choose. Officers will be told when interviews are being recorded, and investigations will be conducted more swiftly.

Finally, Helgerson agreed to an internal watchdog of his own, a "quality-control manager" who will ensure that all exculpatory and mitigating information about the subjects of IG investigations is included in final reports.

Notes the AP, "The CIA has declined to specify why the IG review was undertaken. The results suggest CIA officers were concerned there was a presumption of guilt and they were not treated fairly by Helgerson's team of investigators."

We'll keep you updated as to whether the watchdog's watchdog will get a watchdog.

Continued fallout from the U.S. attorneys scandal. From The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

The state Senate on Thursday unanimously approved the payment of legal fees for Georgia Thompson, a state employee whose conviction for mishandling a contract was overturned by a federal appeals court....

Senators voted 32-0 to pay $228,793 for Thompson's legal fees; the bill now goes to the Assembly, where it is expected to pass. There was no debate on the bill, but Sen. Judy Robson (D-Beloit) said it was the "least we can do" for Thompson, who served time in a federal prison before the appeals judges ordered her released.

Of course, the appeals court's decision to immediately overturn the case was remarkable in itself. But here you have a state legislature working to redress the wrongs of a federal prosecutor. Has this ever happened before? It strikes me as a rather unique situation.

And remember that efforts by Congress to investigate the Justice Department's handling of the case -- in addition to other possible cases of selective prosecution -- have been firmly rebuffed (with the exception of the disclosure of one telling email).

From CQ:

A House Republican under Justice Department investigation because of ties to convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff has garnered help with his legal bills from a handful of colleagues, including Minority Leader John A. Boehner .

Rep. John T. Doolittle , R-Calif., reported in a filing made available Thursday that his legal expense fund had received $5,000 from Boehner’s leadership PAC. The money was part of $36,500 kicked in by GOP colleagues to Doolittle’s legal defense between June 27, when he opened the fund, and year’s end.

Here's a statement just out from Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) on the deal:

“I am pleased that Republicans have finally backed down from their efforts to ram a deeply flawed FISA bill through the Senate without votes on amendments. We all agree that FISA needs to be updated so our government can go after the foreign communications of suspected terrorists. But we must not provide overly broad and unnecessary powers that infringe on the rights and privacy of law-abiding Americans, especially to an administration that has proven it cannot be trusted. Next week, we have an opportunity to fix this bill, but only if senators stand up to the administration’s attempted power grab and support my and other amendments to put in place checks and balances. If the final bill produced by the Senate doesn’t protect the privacy of law abiding Americans or if it includes immunity for telecom companies, I will strongly oppose it and will vote against cutting off debate on it.”

Some explanation about what he's referring to at the end there. After the Senate votes on all of the amendments, there will be a vote on whether to invoke cloture. That's part of the deal. 60 senators will have to support that for the bill to move to its final vote. What Feingold is saying is that he will vote against that final motion to invoke cloture if certain key amendments don't pass.

We know that Rep. Don Young (R-AK) is under federal investigation for his ties to the corrupt oil company Veco. But that's about all we know.

It's clear, however, that Young has a variety of heavy-hitting lawyers working overtime. Just in the last quarter of 2007, according to his disclosures, he dropped approximately $331,000 for lawyers at Akin Gump and $75,000 for lawyers at the Anchorage-based firm Tobin O'Connor. And then there's $20,000 for a Seattle based attorney named John Wolfe (The Anchorage Daily News points out that Wolfe has also represented Sen. Ted Stevens' (R-AK) son Ben in an ongoing probe into corruption in state politics.) That brings Young's campaign spending on the lawyers to approximately $872,000 in the last year. He's started up a legal defense fund, apparently to accommodate a number of donors who'd like to help out even more.

Is this all related to the same investigation? Certainly with Young, there are plenty of scandals to choose from.

Young, in classic Don Young style, isn't saying anything.

Andrew Berger contributed research to this post.

Yet another one:

A federal grand jury has issued a subpoena to a reporter of The New York Times, apparently to try to force him to reveal his confidential sources for a 2006 book on the Central Intelligence Agency, one of the reporter’s lawyers said Thursday....

Mr. Risen’s lawyer, David N. Kelley, who was the United States attorney in Manhattan early in the Bush administration, said in an interview that the subpoena sought the source of information for a specific chapter of the book “State of War.”

The chapter asserted that the C.I.A. had unsuccessfully tried, beginning in the Clinton administration, to infiltrate Iran’s nuclear program. None of the material in that chapter appeared in The New York Times....

Mr. Risen, who is based in Washington and specializes in intelligence issues, is the latest of several reporters to face subpoenas in leak investigations overseen by the Justice Department.

Reports from the Senate Ethics panel released yesterday (new laws require that the panel’s work is documented) reveals that members have been busy probing Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM) for his involvement in the US Attorney firings and Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) for his behavior in a public restroom. Three other Senators or Senate aides are under investigation but no details have been made public. (Washington Post’s “Capitol Briefing”)

While President Bush and other proponents of the U.S. "surge" in Iraq declare that the strategy is working, evidence suggests that security in Iraq has begun to decline in recent weeks. TPM alum Spencer Ackerman reports that suicide attacks have returned to Baghdad, Anbar, and Diyala provinces while in Baghdad there has been an increase in IED attacks. (Washington Independent)

In a Senate hearing yesterday, the Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Richard Boucher kept to President Bush’s talking points and challenged lawmakers that “nobody can tell me” that Afghanistan is “not going in a positive direction.” Boucher must have missed the three major reports (Jones-Pickering, Atlantic Council, and National Defense University) that pointed to the instability (27% percent increase in violence) and precipitous deterioration in that nation. (Think Progress)

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So, after all that, after all the back room offers and counteroffers and fear-mongering and delaying, the Senate has finally struck a deal on the surveillance bill, and everyone has agreed to it, including Sens. Dodd and Feingold, so there should be no filibustering this time around. They'll get to voting on it all on Monday.

Most crucially, the Dodd/Feingold amendment, which would strip retroactive immunity for the telecoms from the bill, will only need 51 votes to pass. The same goes for the related Specter/Whitehouse amendment, which instead of offering immunity to the telecoms, would replace the federal government as the defendant in all the lawsuits.

There are, of course, other important amendments we'll be keeping an eye on. Sen. Feingold has a number, including one that would require a warrant when the target of the surveillance is a U.S. citizen or resident. This prevents the government from sneakily avoiding the trouble of a warrant by claiming that the focus is a foreign person; so-called "reverse targeting." Feingold's amendment would theoretically prevent that by requiring a FISA court warrant for surveillance of a foreign person where the "significant purpose" of the collection is to target a U.S. person located in the United States.

And the Republicans will have their own amendments which would loosen the bill's scope. Like one from Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) that "would change definitions in the law to allow surveillance without a warrant in cases that involve the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction," as CQ's Tim Starks describes it. There's more detail on the vote thresholds required on the various amendments here.

So tune back in Monday to see what happens. It will be a much different kind of debate than last time around. The President, as expected, signed the bill extending the Protect America Act for 15 days, so Monday's vote will not have the same time pressures. It will be a vote on retroactive immunity without the administration's squeeze play. We'll see what happens.

Next week, Michael Mukasey will appear before the House Judiciary Committee for take two of his grim performance yesterday.

Chairman John Conyers (D-MI), naturally, has a whole host of questions. So in a letter to Mukasey today, he queried the attorney general on weighty topics ranging from torture to voter suppression to selective prosecution to the most weighty of all:

The website TPMMuckraker, which played an important role in providing information to the public concerning the U.S. Attorney scandal, revealed that it has recently been removed from DOJ’s press release email distribution list. Who made this decision and why, and was there a change in policy in press release distribution after you became Attorney General?

Perhaps Rep. Conyers will have better luck getting a response than we have. But just in case, we've asked the Department's Office of Public Affairs again for an explanation.

The full letter is below.

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Those who've already checked in at TPM today know what's going on.

The big change here at TPMm is that readers will now need to create a TPM account to comment. And the switch-over also unfortunately means that comments made to posts this morning were lost. Sorry about that.

As you'll eventually see in the right sidebar by the end of the day, the new setup allows us to promote muckraker-related posts by users at TPMCafe. Andrew explains that a bit more here.

Take 'er for a spin and let us know how it goes. Keep in mind, however, that things are sure to be rather bumpy for the next few hours.

After Michael Mukasey's genially hostile performance yesterday, maybe it's become apparent that genial hostility is the name of the game:

Senate Democrats plan to delay a floor vote on President Bush’s nominee for the No. 2 post at the Justice Department until the department responds to several Judiciary Committee oversight letters.

Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin , D-Ill., said Thursday that the nomination of Mark Filip for deputy attorney general will be “held on the floor” until the panel receives responses, adding that Democrats have notified the department of the demand.

Among the letters that have yet to be answered:

Leahy and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the panel’s top Republican, also wrote to Mukasey and Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell on Dec. 21 asking them to preserve any audio or video recordings of detainee interrogations. The two lawmakers asked Mukasey and McConnell to canvass the government for such recordings and report back to the committee.

Mukasey so far has proven a mildly superior correspondent to Alberto Gonzales. Which is to say that he occasionally answers a letter.

The Senate has been in a logjam on the new surveillance bill since last week, when Republicans prevented the Democrats' attempts to hold simple majority votes on a number of amendments (the Republicans want a 60-vote threshold).

And ever since both houses finally agreed to a fifteen-day extension to the Protect America Act on Tuesday, the two sides have gone underground for negotiations.

According to a source on the Hill, discussions have been progressing. Yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) made an offer on how to proceed, to which Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) made a counteroffer.

Most of the details of those discussions are unknown. But, as might be expected, the Dodd/Feingold amendment, which would strip retroactive immunity for the telecoms that collaborated with the administration's warrantless wiretapping program, is at the center of the dispute. According to the source, McConnell's counteroffer included votes on seven of the proposed amendments (which seven is unknown -- there are a number of important amendments offered by a variety of lawmakers), but, crucially, Dodd/Feingold was not one of them.

In a letter to McConnell late yesterday, portions of which the source provided, Reid wrote McConnell, "That amendment – which Sen. Dodd has been talking about for months – goes to the heart of the FISA debate. It is ludicrous to think he should not be allowed to offer that amendment."

Again, the details of these offers (including the proposed vote thresholds) are unknown. And McConnell is clearly objecting to more than just Dodd's amendment. Reid's letter refers to "several" amendments missing from McConnell's counteroffer. So the two sides still have a ways to go. Discussions continue today. We'll keep you updated.

Though former president Bill Clinton accompanied Canadian mining financier Frank Giustra to Kazakhstan on Giustra's private jet, accompanied him to a meeting with that nation's repressive president, received a $31 million donation from Giustra for his charitable foundation and a pledge for $100 million to William J. Clinton Foundation, Clinton claims he did nothing to help Giustra ink a mining deal with the Kazakhstan president that is worth tens of millions of dollars. Clinton's spokesperson said there was "no discussion" of the deal when the two met with the Kazakhstan president. (New York Times)

President Bush acted swiftly after championing clean coal technology at the State of the Union address Monday. Within 24 hours, Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodmean decided to shelve the FutureGen project - "the cleanest fossil fuel powered plant in the world" - possibly because an Illinois site was chosen over one in Texas. Senator Durbin (D-IL) noted that “In 25 years on Capitol Hill, I have never witnessed such a cruel deception." (Think Progress)

Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) has requested that former Attorney General John Ashcroft testify at a hearing next month that will look into the hiring of former government officials as monitors in settlements between corporations and the government. Ashcroft recently received a contract worth between $28 million and $52 million to monitor a settlement involving Zimmer Holdings Inc. (New York Times

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When someone comes out with a book called The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation, you know it's not going to be a fawning portrait of the commission's thoroughness and objectivity. And indeed the book, by New York Times reporter Philip Shenon, has some revelations that are sure to challenge its reputation.

The book is being closely held until its release next month, but Max Holland, a D.C. area blogger and author, was somehow able to snag an advance audio copy at his local bookstore.

A lot of what has been "censored," it turns out, revolves around the commission's executive director Philip Zelikow. According to Holland, Shenon reports that Zelikow 1) hid the depth and breadth of his relationship to key members in the administration, 2) had a number of private conversations with Karl Rove (funny how he keeps popping up) while he was on the panel, and 3) succeeded in softening the final report's judgment on the Bush Administration's responsibility.

Star ABC muckraker and TPM alum Justin Rood confirmed Holland's account, and got Zelikow's response.

But on to the revelations. First, about what Zelikow failed to disclose. He was a former aide to Condoleezza Rice, and had a long relationship with her. That was well known. But:

According to Shenon, however, Zelikow failed to disclose several additional and egregious conflicts-of-interest, among them, the fact that he had been a member of Rice’s NSC transition team in 2000-01. In that capacity, Zelikow had been the “architect” responsible for demoting Richard Clarke and his counter-terrorism team within the NSC. As Shenon puts it, Zelikow “had laid the groundwork for much of went wrong at the White House in the weeks and months before September 11. Would he want people to know that?”

Zelikow denies this and says he recused himself from anything to do with the NSC transition. Update: Sorry for the lack of clarity here. Zelikow is not denying that he was on the transition team; that fact was reported by The Wall Street Journal as far back as 2003. He's denying that he hid that fact from the commission.

Second, about those phone calls. Shenon reports that not only did Zelikow frequently talk to Rove, but that he tried to hide it, even requesting that his secretary not take messages. Zelikow denies this, too, and tells Justin, "I never discussed the 9/11 Commission with him, not at all. Period."

And then there's Zelikow's influence on the final product:

Even after his recusal, Zelikow continued to insert himself into the work of “Team 3,” the task force responsible for the most politically-sensitive part of the investigation, counter-terrorism policy. This brief encompassed the White House, which meant investigating the conduct of Condoleeza Rice and Richard Clarke during the months prior to 9/11. Team 3 staffers would come to believe that Zelikow prevented them from submitting a report that would have depicted Rice’s performance as “amount[ing] to incompetence, or something not far from it.”

On this count, Zelikow has a glass half-full view of things:

Out of 85 staffers, half a dozen were disgruntled, Zelikow told ABC News. "Under the circumstances, that was a pretty low fraction," he said. "But they all talked to Shenon."

As I noted earlier, Mukasey indicated early in the hearing that the criminal investigation of the CIA's destroyed torture tapes may well explore whether the interrogation techniques shown on those tapes were legal. But as Mukasey made clear, that may or may not happen.

So Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) wanted to know, is the Department of Justice investigating whether the sorts of techniques used by CIA agents were torture? And if not, why not?

Well, they aren't. And as for the why not, he and Mukasey went round and round on the question for two rounds of questioning. Here's Whitehouse's second try:

In this and the other exchange it became apparent that there were two justifications for Mukasey's stance.

The first you might call the real reason. It's one he succinctly described earlier when he said "I [am not] going to call into question what people do or have done, when it's not necessary to do so."

The second rested on a legal argument that was seemingly less self-justifying -- but he had real trouble getting it to stand up under Whitehouse's questioning.

The main issue, he argued, was whether the proper "authorizations" were given.

Well, isn't Mukasey's emphasis on "authorizations" really the Nuremberg defense? Whitehouse wanted to know. "I had authorization and therefore I'm immune from prosecution?"

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Michael Mukasey is attorney general in large part due to Sen. Chuck Schumer's (D-NY) support. And in his questions today, Schumer started by commending a number of Mukasey's actions (restarting the OPR investigation into the warrantless wiretapping program, tapping a well-qualified prosecutor to investigate the CIA tapes' destruction), but then said that he was "disappointed" in Mukasey in other ways. And he tried his best to give Mukasey a hand and pull him out of the swamp.

His question was simple. You've said that waterboarding is "repugnant." So, if it is repugnant, don't you think that a ban of waterboarding is a good thing? Wouldn't you support that?

Mukasey didn't take Schumer's hand. He said he'd need to mull it over. Here's the video:

Schumer was unhappy. "You have already stated something to be repugnant... Why could something “repugnant” not be outlawed?"

"Senator, I don't want to trivialize the question," he replied, "but I'll refrain from naming all the other things that I find repugnant." Whether something is repugnant to him, he said, is not a good basis for whether it should be outlawed. "I want to analyze it as a policy matter." He said that he didn't want to put his own "personal tastes" into his office; he wanted to hear everything there was to hear about it from all his advisers. Before that time, he couldn't say.

"I have to tell you how profoundly in this particular situation I disagree with you," Schumer closed.

Update: Here's the transcript:

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Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) picked up where Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) left off. Does the attorney general really think that it depends on the circumstances when you can waterboard somebody?

Here's the video:

Durbin pressed the point that the Senate had, on a broad bipartisan basis, prohibited "such practices with the McCain amendment" (the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act).

But the Senate had also "voted down a bill that would prohibit waterboarding," Mukasey replied.

"You still think that the jury is out on whether the Senate believes that waterboarding is torture?" Durbin wanted to know.

"The question... is whether the Senate has spoken clearly enough in the legislation that it has passed...."

"Where is the lack of clarity in the McCain legislation?"

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Michael Mukasey finally got into the nitty gritty of how he thinks about torture, and he seemed to finally show his hand.

Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) said that he'd been getting the impression that Mukasey really thought about torture in relative terms, and wanted to know if that was so. Is it OK to waterboard someone if a nuclear weapon was hidden -- the Jack Bauer scenario -- but not OK to waterboard someone for more pedestrian information?

Mukasey responded that it was "not simply a relative issue," but there "is a statute where it is a relative issue," he added, citing the Detainee Treatment Act. That law engages the "shocks the conscience" standard, he explained, and you have to "balance the value of doing something against the cost of doing it."

What does "cost" mean, Biden wanted to know.

Mukasey said that was the wrong word. "I mean the heinousness of doing it, the cruelty of doing it, balanced against the value.... balanced against the information you might get." Information "that couldn't be used to save lives," he explained, would be of less value.

Marty Lederman blogs: "What this reveals is that DOJ and Mukasey have concluded that waterboarding is categorically not torture, and is not 'cruel treatment' under Common Article 3 (even though it is, by Mukasey's own lights, "cruel" -- go figure)."

Biden responded, "You're the first I've ever heard to say what you just said.... It shocks my conscience a little bit."

Update: Here's the transcript:

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Here's the most fruitful of the responses about waterboarding that the senators were able to elicit from Mukasey so far.

Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) had a long wind up before delivering his punch. After detailing how objectionable waterboarding was, how it was clearly torture, as clearly as robbing a bank is stealing, he came out with: "Would waterboarding be torture if done to you?"

"I would feel that it was," Mukasey replied. But then he devolved into his practiced take which he detailed in his letter last night. He can't just come out and say that waterboarding is clearly torture when done to anyone, he says, "because of the office that I have." It was a brief moment of clarity.

Update: Actually, Mukasey's responses to two other questions, detailed above, proved even more clear.

Update: Here's the transcript:

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Michael Mukasey is not a man to live in the past. It's a much more difficult place.

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) started his questions by asking about the President's Article II powers under the Constitution. Do you think that the President can break any law he pleases because he's the President -- including, say, statutes banning torture?

"I can't contemplate any situation in which this president would assert Article II authority to do something that the law forbids," Mukasey shot back.

"Well, he did just that when he violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act" Specter responded. "Didn't he?"

Well, "both of those issues have been brought within statutes," Mukasey responded, apparently hoping that he wouldn't have to discuss the stickier past.

"That's not the point," Specter pressed. "The point is that he acted in violation of statutes, didn't he?"

"I don't know," Mukasey conceded. Awkward.

"There's no dispute about that," isn't there? The law says you have to go to court to get a warrant for wiretapping and the administration didn't do that.

Mukasey then wound into a description of the alleged problems with FISA regarding foreign to foreign communications.

"But I'm talking about wiretapping U.S. citizens in the United States" Specter protested, before giving up, saying "Well, not getting very far there, let me move on...."

Update: Here's the transcript:

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So what's going on this morning with the surveillance legislation?

Here's a statement we've just gotten from Reid's office: "Currently discussions are ongoing in an effort to determine how to move forward on FISA. Senator Reid is closely working with all Democrats including Senators Feingold and Dodd on this issue."

That's another way of saying that he's not selling out on retroactive immunity, it seems. And no deal has been struck yet. We'll keep you updated as things develop.

In his first round of questioning this morning, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) asked a question that's been on everyone's mind: will the criminal investigation that's been launched into the destruction of the CIA's torture tapes also cover the techniques that were documented on those tapes?

Mukasey said, essentially, that it hasn't been ruled out. John Durham, the prosecutor who's been tapped to lead the investigation, he said, will proceed as in any other matter, "step by step." If "it leads to showing motive... then I'm sure it will be explored." He stressed again that Durham, an experienced prosecutor, was in charge (even if he's not completely independent) and that he's joined by an experienced FBI agent.

Update: Here's the transcript:

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Last night, the Senate also quickly passed that 15-day extension to the Protect America Act. So it seems like the President will likely sign that into law.

So what's next? In comments on the Senate floor this morning, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said that after holding a meeting in his office at 6 PM last night, he called Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). He indicated that they may have struck a deal on how to proceed, but it wasn't clear if all the details had been hashed out, and he didn't indicate what the details of that deal might be. We'll keep you updated as we learn more.

Update: See update here.

In a signing statement appended to the National Defense Authorization Act for 2008, President Bush asserted that he is not obliged to obey four key sections of the bill because they trample on his executive authority. One provision that Bush's statement targets precludes the the use of taxpayer money "to establish any military installation or base for the purpose of providing for the permanent stationing of United States Armed Forces in Iraq" or "to exercise United States control of the oil resources of Iraq." (Boston Globe)

Barack Obama's (D-IL) presidential campaign announced last night that it will give to charity over $70,000 in contributions linked to Antoin Rezko, the Chicago developer due to begin trial next month for corruption. The campaign said it discovered the money after it undertook a more extensive review of Rezko-related contributions. (AP)

Civil Rights groups have called upon Attorney General Michael Mukasey to rescind a Department of Justice opinion that authorized an administration scheme by which registered Republicans switch their affiliation to "independent" so that President Bush can stack the bi-partisan, eight person Civil Rights Commission with political allies. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR) are leading the effort to have a Bush memo, which laid the foundation for the end run around the Civil Rights Act of 1957, rescinded. (CREW)

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Last time around, Attorney General Michael Mukasey had more than a little trouble telling the Senate Judiciary Committee whether waterboarding is torture. "If it amounts to torture, then it is not Constitutional" just wasn't cutting it.

But this time, he's coming ready. He laid it all out in a letter to the panel last night. When he sits down for his hearing this morning, he'll say... I can't tell you if it's torture, because we're not doing it now anyway and there's no use talking about it if we're not even doing it -- which doesn't mean that we won't do it, but we really probably won't.

Or as he puts it, if I may quickly summarize his 3-page letter:

"[I] have concluded that the interrogation techniques currently authorized in the CIA program comply with the law.... I have been authorized to disclose publicly that waterboarding is not among those methods. Accordingly, waterboarding is not, and may not be, used in the current program.... It is precisely because the issue is so important, and the questions so difficult, that I, as Attorney General, should not provide answers absent a set of circumstances that call for those answers. Those circumstances do not present themselves today, and may never present themselves in the future."

The clear intended message here for the Democrats on the panel is that Mukasey would never approve waterboarding, but they're not going to get him to say why. Somehow I don't think they'll be completely satisfied. Especially if he repeats this line from his letter:

"There are some circumstances where current law would appear clearly to prohibit the use of waterboarding. Other circumstances would present a far closer question."

So -- what's up? Marty Lederman, a former lawyer in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, speculates that what's really driving Mukasey's refusal to address the question is that "such a repudiation would undermine the legal basis for other of the 'enhanced' CIA interrogation techniques" -- techniques such as stress positions, inducing hypothermia, sleep deprivation and the like.

Remember also that Mukasey has expressed confidence in Steven Bradbury, the current head of the Office of Legal Counsel, who has reportedly approved all these techniques (and waterboarding). And in his statement today, Mukasey seems to be saying above that he's approved them too (minus waterboarding). He supports the current system and doesn't want to rock the boat. With the most controversial technique eliminated, all this unwanted scrutiny will hopefully recede.

We'll be providing live updates of Mukasey's hearing, which starts at 10 this morning.

The Orlando Sentinel reports on how things are going down in Florida, our nation's capital for electoral mayhem (and that's a pic of the patron saint of Florida elections, former Secretary of State Katherine Harris, to the left there):

Sheneka McDonald spent 10 minutes trying to convince poll workers ... that she should have a Democratic ballot. She questioned poll workers when she was handed a Republican ballot but was told, "this is the only ballot we have."

"I said, 'How can this be the only ballot,'" McDonald recalled. "That's when the guy chimed in from the back and said the Democratic primary was in March."

The poll captain eventually apologized to McDonald and told her they had forgotten to unpack all the ballots. "It was a little unnerving this morning," she said. "I don't see how you forget to unpack ballots. This is what gives Florida its reputation."

Note to Florida election workers: Although Florida has been stripped of its delegates, there is most certainly a Democratic primary today.

And TPM Reader KH writes in to tell the story of one man's triumph against incredible odds:

I voted in Lee County, Florida this morning - being in Southwest Florida, its a Republican stronghold in the state. The poll worker who opened the door for me advised "Just show your driver's license to the desk and you can vote." Only problem is that this is patently untrue, Florida providing for casting of provisional ballots and all. When I told the nice lady at the registration desk that I had lost my wallet and was going to cast a provisional ballot, she gave me the perplexed look of the uninformed. Fortunately, there was a gentleman at the "special services" desk who knew what to do and he got me on my way to voting. Then he told me that I had to "contact the supervisor of elections and provide proof of my right to vote or they will not count my ballot." Sigh. This also is not true in Florida - no proof is required if the only basis for casting the provisional was the lack of proper identification. The supervisor is suppose to run the driver's license number provided (which I gave them) against the state database and when they match the vote is counted.

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Who wouldn't want to relive the 2004 election debacle in Ohio?

House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) and Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) have invited Ohio's controversial former Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell (R) for a chat about voting irregularities in the 2004 election. The hearing, which "will explore the current state of voting rights and the allocation of resources to end voter suppression and voter fraud," is scheduled for February 8th. Conyers and Nadler appear to be hoping that Blackwell's past success in suppressing voter turnout will be very informative. The invite is below.

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Just now, the House changed the bill to make it a 15-day extension instead of 30-day one, and the bill passed by voice vote. It all happened rather quickly. So it seems as if there really wasn't much disagreement on this at all. Now it's back over to the Senate....

Note: As I noted yesterday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) mentioned that he would agree to a shorter extension than 30 days. So it appears as if two weeks is what the Republicans hit on. In a press release, House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO) warns: "This is the Democrats last chance - in two more weeks, if they fail to get a bill completed, there will be no more excuses available.”

As if things weren't complicated enough....

Over in the House, Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ), a member of the House intelligence committee, took to the floor this afternoon to urge others to vote against any extension to the Protect America Act. His reasoning: 1) the administration's bill was bad law in the first place and brought home the lesson to never pass legislation under "duress brought on by propaganda, misinformation, and fear mongering,” 2) surveillance authorized under the PAA would continue even if the law lapsed, and 3) it wouldn't improve the Dems' negotiating position.

Here's video of his remarks:

He reiterated this in a "Dear Colleague" letter sent to all of the other lawmakers who had voted against the PAA back in August. That letter is below.

So the question becomes whether other Dems will break ranks (all in all, 181 voted against the PAA last August). The vote on the extension is likely to take place in the next hour or so in the House.

In the Senate, they'll get back to debating the surveillance bill as well. Things still seem at a standstill, with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) insisting on simple majority votes for all of the amendments -- including the crucial Feingold/Dodd amendment to strip retroactive immunity for telecoms that participated in the administration's warrantless wiretapping -- and the Republicans refusing. We'll keep you updated.

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It's hard enough to get the facts straight when allegations are made. But everything gets all the more complicated in the Bush Administration's hall of mirrors; it's all pots and kettles.

Consider this dust-up between the Office of Special Counsel and the Justice Department. In one corner, you have Special Counsel Scott Bloch, who heads an obscure little office that is charged with investigating whistleblower complaints, Hatch Act violations, and the like -- but who is himself being investigated for retaliating against whistleblowers and politicizing his office. Oh, and he used a tech service called Geeks on Call to scrub his hard drive at work (he says all the info was personal). In the other corner, you have the Justice Department, and well, you know all about that.

In a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey last week, Bloch charged that the Department was blocking his probe of politicization in the DoJ, his investigation of U.S. Attorney David Iglesias' firing (was it because of his Navy reserve service?), and a whistleblower complaint against former U.S. attorney Rachel Paulose. Eric Black, who reported on the letter last night, has helpfully posted a copy here (pdf).

In the letter, Bloch complains that 1) after the Justice Department launched its own internal investigation of the U.S. attorney firings and politicization in the Department last spring, they asked him to back off, and 2) the DoJ has refused to investigate a whistleblower complaint against Paulose.

Bloch's job, at least under the Bush administration, is to write investigatory reports which the White House will then ignore. Tellingly, Bloch complains in the letter that he's been trying to get White House counsel Fred Fielding on the phone for two months and had no luck.

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The Senate is back at it this morning, and pretty soon, the House is expected to hold a vote on a 30-day extension to the Protect America Act.

Things are too fluid right now to tell what will happen next, but we'll keep you updated.

A transcript of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's (D-NV) brief remarks to open debate is below.

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Antoin "Tony" Rezko, the ethically challenged businessman whose thousands of dollars in contributions to Barack Obama have dogged the candidate, has been jailed for violating his bond. According to a federal prosecutor, Rezko "played a shell game" in which he hid millions of dollars from the authorities while claiming to be broke. Rezko's trial for charges of fraud, money laundering, and attempted extortion begins February 25. (AP, Washington Post)

Republican efforts to make a proposed earmark moratorium a symbol of their new fiscal discipline and ethics has met stiff opposition from Republicans. Meanwhile, the head of the GOP - President Bush - has enjoyed a steady diet of pork by approving approximately 55,000 earmarks worth more than $100 billion. Think Progress has the facts. (Politico, New York Times, Think Progress)

Student protests at the prestigious prep school Choate Rosemary Hall, which boasts alumni such as John F. Kennedy and Adlai Stevenson, have convinced Karl Rove to withdraw his name as the graduation speaker this spring. Rove explained that he "would not want 12 minutes of remarks to be used as an excuse by a small group to mar what should be a wonderful day of celebration." (Washington Post)

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It was the ghost of State of The Unions past. Five years ago, President Bush used the SOTU to forcefully make the case for war with Iraq. Remember "the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa?" Those were the days.

The USA Today headline for last night's speech? "Bush Tries to Show That He's Still on The Job." Ouch.

Nothing was a bigger tell of the desperation here than the heroic centerpiece of Bush's address. It's pretty safe to say that before the Bush administration, most Americans had no idea what an earmark was. But Bush, the earmark president, the man who presided over and enabled the Republican Congress during the Jack Abramoff and Duke Cunningham scandals, changed that. And now he's decided that he's really going to bring the hammer down on the practice now that the Republicans no longer run Congress (actually not so much bring the hammer down as threaten to bring the hammer down right before he leaves office).

The major papers didn't even go to the trouble of taking him seriously.
The Boston Globe has a rundown of the watchdog disdain for Bush's crackdown. And The New York Times had a straightforward take:

President Bush has never shown much distaste for Congressional pork.

But in his last year in office, with his party out of power on Capitol Hill, he declared Monday that he had had enough.

In the last seven years he has signed spending bills containing about 55,000 earmarks worth more than $100 billion for projects....

In his State of the Union address Monday night, Mr. Bush threatened to veto future spending bills unless Congress cut in half the number of earmarks, which now total more than 10,000 items and nearly $20 billion annually....

Mr. Bush was notably silent on the subject until after his fellow Republicans lost control of Congress in the 2006 midterm elections. And, now that his power has waned, his threats are almost certain not to matter.

It's no secret that after 9/11, the administration authorized the use of waterboarding, and that the technique was used on a number of detainees in 2002 and reportedly stopped in 2003. But the administration has never explicitly admitted that.

In fact, when Dick Cheney, seduced into loose talk by a friendly interviewer, confirmed that "a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives," the White House furiously backpedaled, and Tony Snow did his best to proclaim that "a dunk in water" had not been a reference to waterboarding, but just "a dunk in the water."

So John Negroponte is really letting the horse out of the barn here. In an interview with National Journal, the former director of national intelligence casually mentions the use of waterboarding:

Q: When we as a nation are still debating the morality and efficacy of "harsh" interrogation techniques that much of the world consider torture, and indefinite detainment that lies outside the rule of international law, can the United States really win the "war of ideas" that President Bush insists is crucial to this conflict?

Negroponte: I get concerned that we're too retrospective and tend to look in the rearview mirror too often at things that happened four or even six years ago. We've taken steps to address the issue of interrogations, for instance, and waterboarding has not been used in years. It wasn't used when I was director of national intelligence, nor even for a few years before that. We've also taken significant steps to improve Guantanamo. People will tell you now that it is a world-class detention facility. But if you want to highlight and accent the negative, you can resurface these issues constantly to keep them alive. I would rather focus on what we need to do going forward.

Somehow I think that his upbeat, glass-is-half-full message will get lost here.

And expect for White House spokeswoman Dana Perino to do her best to put the horse back in the barn tomorrow.

So all but a handful of Dems held together to rebuff the Republican attempt to push through a surveillance bill with retroactive immunity. With that, the Senate is off until tomorrow morning -- when the battle will be rejoined.

The first fight looming is over an extension to the administration's surveillance bill, the Protect America Act. Even if all sides were able to hash out a deal in the next few days, the Dems argue, they wouldn't be able to get the bill signed before the law lapsed on Friday.

Up until now, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) had refused to entertain any such scenario. It was part of the Senate Republican-administration tag-team squeeze play. But in remarks today, he seemed to soften his stance, saying that he might support a short extension to the PAA. But he didn't say for how much time, and it's apparently less than thirty days.

In the House tomorrow morning, they'll hold a vote on a bill that would extend the PAA by thirty days. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has indicated he'll try the same thing. But given the tactics the Republicans used last week, it's far from clear that the Republicans will even allow a vote on it. So-- we'll see you in the morning.

The fight goes on.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-KY) cloture vote failed 48-45 just now, well short of the 60 votes necessary.

In the end, four Dems crossed over to vote with the Republicans: Sens. Mark Pryor (D-AR), Ben Nelson (D-NE), Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) and Mary Landrieu (D-LA). Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) was the lone Republican to vote with the Dems.

Now we're on to the question of whether an extension will be passed. We'll have more on that in a moment.

Update: Here's the official tally.

A prepared transcript of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's (D-NV) remarks before the vote today are below.

Some highlights:

Mr. President, in my twenty years in Congress, I have not seen anything quite as cynical and counterproductive as the Republican approach to FISA.

The American people deserve to know that when President Bush talks about the foreign intelligence bill tonight, he's doing little more than shooting for cheap political points - and we should reject his efforts....

The Republican leader filed cloture on this bill after it had been on the floor for just a few hours. He filed cloture after Republicans blocked every amendment they could from being offered and blocked all amendments from getting votes.

In simple terms, this means the Republicans were filibustering their own bill. Let me repeat that. The Republicans were filibustering their own bill. In my time in the Senate, I can't remember this taking place....

We are the deliberative body. Let us deliberate.

Full transcript below.

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Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), the champion of the Senate intelligence committee bill that contains retroactive immunity, and one of the twelve Democrats who voted against the Senate Judiciary Committee bill last week, just said on the floor that he'll also vote against cloture. The administration is placing politics above national security, he says.

This isn't shaping up to be a close vote.

Update: His full statement is below.

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Not a good sign for the Republicans Just now on the Senate floor, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) spoke against the Senate Republican leadership's attempt to invoke cloture on the surveillance bill, indicating that he'll vote with the Democrats.

Among the amendments that the Republicans seek to block is one of Specter's own amendments, one he's sponsoring along with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI). The amendment would, rather than granting the telecoms retroactive immunity for cooperating with the administration's warrantless wiretapping program, substitute the government as the defendant in the numerous lawsuits against the telecoms.

Update: We have a rough transcript of some of his floor remarks below.

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The race is on to determine which Republican can best walk and chew gum at the same time: that is, simultaneously fear-monger about the lapse of the Protect America Act while at the same time rejecting Democratic efforts to extend it for thirty days.

President Bush, in his weekly radio address, warned: "We need to know who our enemies are and what they are plotting. And we cannot afford to wait until after an attack to put the pieces together." Bush, remember, has threatened to veto any extension of the PAA.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), face underlit with a flashlight observed succinctly: "It’s not about frightening the American people. The American people should be frightened and remember full well what happened on 9/11."

And House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO) ties it all up into a neat bow: "The implications of failing to act are real. If we let this law expire, we will go back to a system that last spring kept American soldiers in Iraq waiting on D.C. lawyers before they could look for a kidnapped colleague.... Our national security is far too important for another temporary patch."

For me, I have to say that Blunt takes the cake. Not only does it rely on the by-now debunked claim that the prior FISA law prevented the NSA from wiretapping Iraqi insurgents who'd kidnapped U.S. troops, but he claims that the old FISA law prevented the U.S. from even looking for those missing soldiers. And Blunt glancingly describes the administration lawyers who deal with surveillance authority as "D.C. lawyers." Gotta love that. His full statement, which is just bursting with distortions too numerous to catalog, is below.

Note: Any other outstanding examples we didn't note? Let us know in the comments.

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For years, the families of the four Blackwater guards killed in the infamous Fallujah incident have carried on a wrongful death lawsuit against the company. A House oversight committee investigation faulted the company's cost-cutting for leaving the guards vulnerable to the ambush.

But Blackwater, always in need of very good lawyering, says that if it weren't for some lousy (though very expensive) lawyers, they would have easily disposed of the lawsuit already. From Legal Times:

Blackwater Security filed a $30 million malpractice suit against Wiley Rein on Wednesday, alleging that the firm made costly missteps in a wrongful death case brought on behalf of four former Blackwater employees who were killed in Iraq in 2004.

Somewhat awkwardly, one of the lawyers who was on that Wiley, Rein team being sued for incompetence is current White House counsel Fred Fielding. It's nothing personal, I guess.

Blackwater dropped Wiley, Rein back in 2005, opting for another heavy-hitting firm, Greenberg, Traurig. The suit is ongoing.

From 60 Minutes' fascinating interview with FBI agent George Piro, who led the American team to interrogate Saddam Hussein:

Piro says no coercive interrogation techniques, like sleep deprivation, heat, cold, loud noises, or water boarding were ever used. "It's against FBI policy, first. And wouldn't have really benefited us with someone like Saddam," Piro says.

Why not?

"I think Saddam clearly had demonstrated over his legacy that he would not respond to threats, to any type of fear-based approach," Piro explains.

"So how do you crack a guy like that?" Pelley asks.

"Time," Piro says.

Months of time, during which Piro manipulated Saddam, creating a relationship based on dependency, trust and emotion.

Oh, and by the way: "He considered [Osama bin Laden] to be a fanatic. And as such was very wary of him. He told me, 'You can't really trust fanatics,'" Piro says."

via Laura Rozen.

You hear a lot about the administration's torture regime, but not a lot about the process of how we got to where we are.

Say hello to TPM alum and drinking buddy Spencer Ackerman at his new muckraking home, The Washington Independent. In his first big piece, Spencer looks at how the CIA ended up implementing a system where "U.S. interrogators are still mostly in the dark—in the dark not only about al-Qaeda, but about how to effectively elicit vital national-security information from the detainees in its custody."

Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) said yesterday on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" that he will return all campaign funds that are connected to indicted Chicago developer Antoin Rezko. Obama has already returned $85,000 in Rezko-related contributions, but news reports have suggested recently that he has not returned all Rezko-related money. (Washington Post)

The Bush administration’s federal mine safety regulators have violated federal law by allowing thousands of health and safety violations to go unpunished. In just the past six years, The Department of Labor’s Mine Safety and Health Administration failed to act upon approximately 4,000 violations. One of those violations was partially responsible for the 2005 death of a Kentucky miner. (Charleston Gazette)

On New Year’s Eve President Bush signed the OPEN Government Act, legislation that had passed in the House and Senate unanimously. Though the law was supposed to strengthen the Freedom of Information Act, Bush has now taken steps to undermine OPEN by gutting funding for the National Archives and thus, according to Congress Daily, “effectively eliminat[ing] the office.” (Think Progress)

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The White House surveillance bill squeeze stepped up to another level over the weekend. So the scene is set for an ol' fashioned cloture vote rumble this afternoon at 4:30.

To refresh your memory: the administration's far-reaching surveillance bill, which was passed last August in a similar White House squeeze play, expires February 1st.

To take the time pressure off and ensure that surveillance would be unaffected by the lapse, Senate Majority Leader has repeatedly proposed a 30-day extension to the Protect America Act. Republicans in the Senate have repeatedly blocked any effort to have a vote on it. They've also blocked attempts to hold votes on almost all of the offered amendments, leading to the situation today.

On Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) filed for cloture, forcing a vote which would end debate, preclude any votes on the amendments, and lead immediately to a vote on the underlying Senate bill -- the administration-supported Senate intelligence committee bill, which contains a provision granting retroactive immunity to the telecoms. The Republicans need 60 votes to make that happen.

Now things are at the point where even if the Senate did manage to pass some sort of bill before Thursday, the process of hashing out the differences with the House version (which doesn't contain retroactive immunity) would drag on past the deadline. Reid has said as much: "The president has to make a decision. He's either going to extend the law... or there will be no wiretapping."

And over the weekend, the White House issued a veto threat. The game was clear:

“The president would veto a 30-day extension,” a senior administration official said. “They’re just kicking the can down the road. They need the heat of the current law lapsing to get this done.”

Bush even added a tweak of soft-on-terrorism in his weekly radio address to bring home the message:

"If this law expires, it will become harder to figure out what our enemies are doing to infiltrate our country, harder for us to uncover terrorist plots and harder to prevent attacks on the American people."

For the record, everyone agrees that surveillance initiated under the Protect America Act will be unaffected for another year. But surveillance on new targets would fall under the prior FISA law, the one superseded by the Protect America Act.

So.... what's going to happen this afternoon? The Senate will hold its much anticipated cloture vote, and we'll see if the Republicans will be able to lure over enough Dems over to get to 60. Sens. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Barack Obama (D-IL) will be present to cast their "No" votes. If the vote fails, it seems likely that Reid will try for a vote on that 30-day extension. (For it's part, the House is set to hold a vote on a 30-day extension today.)

As for what happens at that point, I'll be the first to confess that I have no idea. We'll keep you updated.

On Thursday morning, Detroit’s Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick (D) and his chief of staff, Christine Beatty -- and all of Detroit, courtesy of the Detroit Free Press -- woke up to find the irrefutable evidence of the love affair they had both denied under oath:

Beatty asked the mayor, on Sept. 12, 2002, if she could "come and lay down in your room until you get back?"

The next morning Kilpatrick, referring to his bodyguards, wrote: "They were right outside the door. They had to have heard everything."

Beatty replied: "So we are officially busted!"

"Damn that," Kilpatrick responded. "Never busted. Busted is what you see!"

Worse than the humiliation and embarrassment at the very public disclosure of both their affair and the unraveled coverup, is, yes, the real possibility of getting "busted" on a perjury charge, a felony. If charged and convicted, Kilpatrick, a lawyer, could be disbarred, would be removed from office, and could even face up to 15 years of jail time. Beatty, a law student, would have to find a new career.

The other big loser in this tawdry affair is the city of Detroit.

The mayor has cost Detroit taxpayers more than $9 million to date, because he was sued as a public official. Many are calling for the resignation of “a mayor with so much potential squandered on the keyboard,” a “talented” and “charismatic ” politician - “so knowledgeable on policy, so lacking in discipline.”

It all started back in April 2003 when one of the mayor’s bodyguards, Harold Nelthrope, blew the whistle on two of the cops on the mayor’s security detail; they were fraudently padding their expenses, wrecking city cars and drinking and partying while on duty. Nelthrope also passed along rumors about a bash at the mayor's residence involving a stripper. Deputy Police Chief Gary Brown began to investigate. Two weeks later, he was out of a job.

Three weeks later, Brown and Nelthrope sued the mayor and the city, claiming they were fired in retaliation for investigating the mayor’s security team. Later that year, another bodyguard, Walt Harris, sued the city and the mayor, making the same charges as the other two. He also alleged that the mayor retaliated against him because he reported that the mayor was cheating on his wife with Beatty and several other women.

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