The New York Times reports major news in the NSA warrantless electronic surveillance story: When it came time for an extension of the program in 2004, former Attorney General John Ashcroft was in intensive care recovering from pancreatitis. Then Deputy AG James Comey objected to some aspects of the program and refused to sign off on it. Alberto Gonzales (then White House Counsel) and Andrew Card actually went to see Ashcroft in the hospital to get him to sign off on it.

Accounts differed as to exactly what was said at the hospital meeting between Mr. Ashcroft and the White House advisers. But some officials said that Mr. Ashcroft, like his deputy, appeared reluctant to give Mr. Card and Mr. Gonzales his authorization to continue with aspects of the program in light of concerns among some senior government officials about whether the proper oversight was in place at the security agency and whether the president had the legal and constitutional authority to conduct such an operation.

It is unclear whether the White House ultimately persuaded Mr. Ashcroft to give his approval to the program after the meeting or moved ahead without it.

Tennessee's new shaming law applicable to drunk drivers goes into effect today.

Starting Sunday, convicted drunken drivers are required to spend 24 hours cleaning roadsides while wearing orange vests emblazoned with the phrase "I am a Drunk Driver." You cause them to go out and pick up trash in front of their friends and neighbors, the embarrassment is going to be such that they're never going to want to go through that again," said state Rep. Charles Curtiss (D). "Hopefully you can turn them around to never become a second-time offender."

...Tennessee offenders will have to spend at least one day in jail, followed by three eight-hour cleanup shifts. The previous minimum sentence for driving under the influence was 48 hours in jail.

No, that's not how it will work. It will cause a group of people to hate authrority and be bitter over the shaming treatment which will reduce their self esteem. And, as one cop says,

"At the end of the weekend, we're going to have a person who has picked up a lot of litter but is still addicted to alcohol," he said.

Treatment, not shame, is the answer.

by Last Night in Little Rock

Surely you've heard the old saw: "Democracy is not a spectator sport." The earliest primaries are in a matter of four or five months, and they will shape the next Congress. Will it remain in Republican hands? Can we even afford to leave it in Republican hands any longer?

It took me until today to amortize in my mind the small fortune I contributed to losing candidates in '04, but I don't consider it wasted. I don't consider the campaigning time wasted, either. The old college try, and all that ....

My state primaries are in May. Soon enough I'll have to start contributing again and working for candidates.

Only in America, touted as the "greatest democracy," do less than 50% of the voters vote. We are a disgrace.

Resolve to be active in politics and take Congress back from the looters, plunderers, and sycophants charged with maintaining the public trust and public fisc who lack any scruples, concern for the people, or the cojones to vote an article of impeachment.

by Last Night in Little Rock

The NY Times reported late Saturday that a man arrested in Bentonville, Arkansas had files in his car and was mining data from the Indiana Sex Offender Registry.

Many in law enforcement get their jollies making post-prison sex offenders suffer for the rest of the lives by hounding them, at least there is a sheriff in Arkansas that does that, be we won't mention his name, but here's his website. At least social security numbers are not on the public Internet, but, for a price, there are plenty of websites that sell that personal data and more on all of us.

Happy New Year to all, from Jeralyn, TChris and Last Night in Little Rock. We hope it rings in justice and peace.

For those of you who will be online, this is an open thread.

Update: Here's a live streaming thread of the gathering in Times Square, including music, courtesy of Crooks and Liars.

Here's a smattering of what I've found interesting today:

• RJ Eskow on today's WaPo Alito article
• Avedon Carol's always excellent round-up.
• Glenn Greenewald on threatening Administration critics with prosecution
• Digby on Constitutional Thuggery
• TBogg's soccer post about his daughter Casey
• Norgwegianity leads us to Separated at Birth, for anti-Cheneyites everywhere.

by Last Night in Little Rock

Ever been to Times Square on New Year's Eve? Three times here, but not since the 90's. It is a party to remember forever: people you never met before will hug you and kiss you, if you don't mind the fact they may be extremely drunk. New Yorkers are still the finest and, yes, friendliest, people in America.

To get in now, however, backpacks are not allowed, and all bags are searched on the perimeter, blocks away. Just posted on NYTimes.com:

While the party carried on in Times Square, late arrivals waited in long lines to pass through security checkpoints where police searched bags. The crowds were still merging on midtown for the celebration an hour before midnight.

by Last Night in Little Rock

Something I missed from three days ago until I found it on PatriotDaily.com. USA Today reported Dec. 28 that TSA screeners use conversation at some airports to identify potential troublemakers: Airport security uses talk as tactic / Conversation can help identify high-risk fliers. If anything, this has a high-risk of abuse of civil liberties.

Conversation during a traffic stop has long been the ploy of choice for police officers to find an excuse to search your car for drugs or weapons.

A reader at Josh Marshall's TPM made a good catch. Last night's Associated Press article on Jack Abramoff's impending plea deal said:

Abramoff’s cooperation would be a boon to an ongoing Justice Department investigation of congressional corruption, possibly helping prosecutors build criminal cases against up to 20 lawmakers and their staff members.

Overnight it was changed to:

Abramoff's cooperation would be a boon to an ongoing Justice Department investigation of congressional corruption, possibly helping prosecutors build criminal cases against up to 20 lawmakers of both parties and their staff members. (enphasis added.)

As for whether Abramoff will try to take down Democrats as well as Republicans, I'd look to whom he blames most for his current predicament. As he's now having his come-to-jesus moment with the all but inevitability of his spending the next several years in a federal prison, don't count out simple revenge. Who didn't help him when they should have, who let him crash and burn, who dropped him like a hot-potato, and who tried to save their hide at his expense?

What a way to end the year. Where is the U.S. media on this? It's all over the European newspapers. Der Speigel:

Recent reports in the German media suggest that the United States may be preparing its allies for an imminent military strike against facilities that are part of Iran's suspected clandestine nuclear weapons program.

Some background:

According to Ulfkotte's report, "western security sources" claim that during CIA Director Porter Goss' Dec. 12 visit to Ankara, he asked Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to provide support for a possibile 2006 air strike against Iranian nuclear and military facilities. More specifically, Goss is said to have asked Turkey to provide unfettered exchange of intelligence that could help with a mission.

Note: This now appears to be a bogus story. See below:

In Washington State, school kids are being asked to take patriotism tests that are unrelated to their coursework.

[The test] gauges whether or not the student shows fealty to the power of the state and whether the student believes in the right to overthrow a corrupt government.

Here's one of them, submitted by the mother of a 10th grader. [hat tip to Patriot Daily.]

Update: Commenters are very skeptical of this article and the source, Prison Planet. I've added a question mark to the title.

Update: Patriot Daily agrees the article is bogus and explains. Classy addition by Patriot Daily, which happens to be a very reliable news source.

Huffington Post bloggers have their end of year blog posts up. Mine is a top ten list of the Villains of 2005. You can add your own in the comments.

Arianna has some resolutions she'd like George Bush to make:

• "Next time the mother of a slain soldier camps out in a ditch outside my ranch, I'll meet with her right away";
• "Next time a Cat 5 storm destroys a major American city, and my point man is more worried about the way his clothes look than helping the victims, I won't say he's doing a 'heck of a job'"; and
• "No more equating loyalty with competence. Sorry, Harriet."

Nora Ephron has a one line resolution for the President, and yes, it's funny.

Bill Maher writes his thoughts on 2005.

Maybe next election, people will start to think, who gives a damn if I want to have a beer with this guy?

Predictions? Bob Cesca has very funny ones, that leave you wondering if maybe they could happen. That's a scary thought, here are just two:

by Last Night in Little Rock

The N.Y. Times today has an article today with the amusing title: So, Guy Walks Up to the Bar, and Scalia Says..., also commented on Rawstory.com as Study: Scalia 19 times as funny as Ginsburg. Somebody thought it was important enough to do a study of the number of times that Justices somehow evoke laughter in the Supreme Court. Somebody has too much time on his hands.

Scalia has a sharp, even biting, wit, no doubt about it. I try to make it to the Supremes once a year for Fourth Amendment arguments, being a Fourth Amendment buff, so I've seen him in action. Sometimes it's funny, and sometimes it hurts.

My last argument was in 1995, and before me was Vernonia School Dist. No. 47J v. Acton, the first school drug testing case. Acton's lawyer was an earnest young man, and he was quite nervous. I do not remember the exact phrasing of the Scalia question, but the young man answered by referring to his nervousness and urinating on himself while he was standing there, and everybody thought his self-effacing comment was really funny, and it broke the ice. The kid did a good job, but he lost, but not unexpectedly: A cert. grant means an 80% likelihood of reversal.

"Real, raw, terrifying tales of 'justice'". That's how John Freeman in the Minneapolis Star Tribune begins his review of the recently published Surviving Justice.

The 13 men and women featured in "Surviving Justice: America's Wrongfully Convicted and Exonerated" were sent to prison for crimes they did not commit. Some languished for years on death row. Others were sentenced to life in prison. And yet they consider themselves fortunate. Thanks to their own calls for help and sheer dumb luck, the judicial system grudgingly admitted mistakes and set them free.

One by one, these interviews pinpoint lingering problems in our criminal justice system, from the inaccuracy of eyewitness accounts and polygraph tests to the need for better public defenders. Along with students from the University of California graduate school of journalism, editors Lola Vollen and Dave Eggers have written helpful guides to these issues. Their description of how snitches work is fascinating and eye-opening, and their brief description of the rape epidemic in prisons is frightening.

It's not scientific, but these numbers are pretty astounding. MSNBC is running a poll on whether Bush should be impeached. The results right now:

• Yes, between the secret spying, the deceptions leading to war and more,
  there is plenty to justify putting him on trial. 86%

• No, like any president, he has made a few missteps, but nothing approaching
  "high crimes and misdemeanors." 5%

• No, the man has done absolutely nothing wrong. Impeachment would just be a
  political lynching. 8%

Voting is still open.

If you are looking for a great holiday story (that has nothing to do with New Years or crime but a lot to do with social injustice) with a fabulously happy ending, look no further than Memories Shrouded in Doubt in today's LA Times about two women, Regina Louise and Jeanne Kerr Taylor. I could not stop reading it, but clearly, I'm not alone. Not only is it today's most e-mailed article on the LA Times website, but yesterday, Regina Louise's 2003 memoir, Somebody's Someone, was #171,759 on Amazon. Today it is # 5,046. From a book review:

Regina Louise was poor, black, illegitimate, and abandoned by her mother to the care of an elderly woman, Big Mama, more concerned with getting to heaven than the health and welfare of her charge. Writing in the idiomatic voice of her childhood self, the author brings her fear, pain, stubbornness, and intelligence up close as she describes her struggles to find someone to love who will love her back. After a brutal beating at the hands of Big Mama's grown foster child, Regina is shuffled from one home to another, angry, uncooperative, vulnerable, finding solace first in fantasies that her mother will rescue her, then in the dream that she will be taken in by a family like those she sees on television.

It's supremely ironic that the woman who truly loves her happens to be white and is barred from fostering her. This is a harsh, often brutal, but always compelling memoir, and its very existence is proof of the author's personal triumph in the face of enormous odds.

Now read the LA Times' article for the happy ending, one that occurred after the book was published.

John Hinckley, who shot then President Ronald Reagan in 1981, was found not guilty by reason of insanity. He has been a patient at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington ever since and is now 50. In recent years, doctors at the facility have said he is no longer psychotic or depressed. In 2003, the Judge presiding over his case allowed him to have unsupervised visits with his parents. He also has been allowed to make off-site excursions around Washington and to stay overnight with his parents within 50 miles of the hospital.

Today, the Judge went further, granting Hinckley overnight visits with his parents at their Virginia home, three hours from the hospital.

So Alberto Gonzales has decided the Justice Department will probe the whistleblowers who leaked the information about Bush's warrantless NSA surveillance to the New York Times. Typical. What we need is a special counsel to investigate Bush's actions, not the whistleblowers.

The ACLU has issued this press release in response:

"President Bush broke the law and lied to the American people when he unilaterally authorized secret wiretaps of U.S. citizens. But rather than focus on this constitutional crisis, Attorney General Gonzales is cracking down on critics of his friend and boss. Our nation is strengthened, not weakened, by those whistleblowers who are courageous enough to speak out on violations of the law."

"To avoid further charges of cronyism, Attorney General Gonzales should call off the investigation. Better yet, Mr. Gonzales ought to fulfill his own oath of office and appoint a special counsel to determine whether federal laws were violated."

This sounds like a job for GAP, EPIC's Government Accountability Project.

The Donald is considering a run against Attorney General Eliot Spitzer in the 2006 New York Governor's race, according to Joseph Bruno, the state's Senate Majority Leader.

Republicans are looking for a candidate with name recognition and money to take on the only announced Democratic candidate, state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. Spitzer is far ahead of all candidates for governor in the early polls.

I think the Republicans are dreaming, Trump won't do it....I just can't see him commuting, even by private jet, to Albany every day.

The Central Asian nation Kyrgyzstan today ended the death penalty once and for all.

Kyrgyzstan's president effectively ended the use of the death penalty in this ex-Soviet republic by extending a moratorium on the punishment until its planned abolition, a presidential spokesman said Friday.

President Kurmanbek Bakiyev signed the decree Thursday aiming "to humanize and liberalize" the criminal code and urged parliament to support plans to do away with the death penalty, said presidential spokesman Dosali Esenaliyev.

A moratorium has been in place in Kyrgyzstan since 1998. Where is Kyrgyzstan? Right next to Uzbekistan (see this map.) There was a revolution in Kyrgyzstan in March, spurred by protests. Hopefully, it will spread to its authoritarian, torturous neighbor soon.

Bakiyev was elected president in July. The country has 5 million people, 75% of whom are Sunni Muslims. There is a 99% literacy rate for men, and 96% for women. (Stats here.)

You can read more about Krgyzstan here.

I haven't had time to read the news today. Is anything happening? This thread's for you. I'll be back here tonight.