In what has become a recurring feature from the editorial board of the New York Times, once again the paper has used its lead editorial as a space to blast away at those Senate Democrats who are affirmatively (or at best, naïvely) willing to trade away our constitutional rights out of fear of seeming weak.  Of course, the joke's on them, because by caving in to the illogical demands of the Bush Administration, it is those Dems who seem weak.

Today's editorial, "The FISA Follies, Redux", doesn't say anything most Kossacks don't already know backward and forward, but is worth a read nonetheless (excerpts and some commentary follow below).

Yes, it's finally happening!

After much delay, gnashing of teeth, and a complete lack of coordination on my part, our post-holiday Kossack caucus has finally been set up, thanks mostly to the persistent efforts of kath25 and srkp23, combined of course with early encouragement by our regular intrepid organizer, casperr.  Hopefully the deafening silence about the plans and the short notice here aren't too inconvenient, and we can see some folks who aren't ordinarily in town or who haven't been able to make it to our other recent get-togethers.  The plan is as follows:

Thursday, Dec. 27, starting at around 6:00pm
Greenwich Treehouse
46 Greenwich Avenue (between Charles and Perry Streets, 6th and 7th Avenues)
New York, NY 10011
212-675-0395

More info below.

No, not of cash (though she's been fundraising at a might clip), but rather a second child.  The Albany Times Union reported this evening that freshman Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand (NY-20) is pregnant and expecting the baby to come along next May.  (Cue cheeky headlines, of which I suspect there will be more than a few.)  I'm fairly certain that as of right now, she's the only pregnant member of Congress out of the 90 or so women currently serving -- I'm guessing that we don't need to inquire about the men for this question.

Gillibrand and her husband, Jonathan, say they always wanted a second child -- they already have a four year-old son -- and that she'll continue to commute between Washington and her Greenport, NY, home until the doctors tell her to stay put.

Tomorrow, Wednesday, December 5, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Boumediene v. Bush and Al Odah v. United States, the Guantanamo detainees' habeas corpus cases.  Without question, this should prove to be one of the more momentous cases of the current Supreme Court Term, and the ultimate decision could well become a major issue in the presidential campaign.

Oral argument is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. and run for one hour.  An audio recording of the hearing will be made available shortly after the conclusion of the proceedings (probably within an hour or so), and the transcript at some point in the afternoon.

I'm not going to attempt to analyze the nitty-gritty legal principles (I'll leave that to the professionals, and besides, this diary is plenty long enough anyway), but rather present a general road map for how we've gotten to this point.

This is almost getting to be a trend over the last few weeks -- lead editorials in The New York Times that almost could have been written as a front-page story or diary here at Daily Kos (aside from being somewhat more polite and pulling a few punches here and there).  For all of the paper's flaws, their official editorial position is -- as best as I can tell -- the most closely aligned with our own among the biggest traditional media outlets.

Today's lead, double-length editorial, "Abdicate and Capitulate", takes the Senate Democrats -- and Chuck Schumer in particular -- to task for their behavior during the Mukasey nomination.  The editorial board of the Times seems about as exasperated as we are here regarding the weak response to clearly unacceptable nominees, and is similarly unwilling to go along with the mealy-mouthed excuses offered up.

See below the fold for what I'm talking about.

Okay, if your idea of a "vacation to an exotic locale" is to spend time in some CIA-run or foreign prison in, say, remote North Africa, Central Asia or Guantánamo, you might find this encouraging.  For everyone else who hasn't completely lost their sanity, the latest underhanded moves by the Bush Administration to prevent any examination of its rendition programs are pretty much what we've come to expect.

Following through on its presumed intention noted in this space two months ago, the Administration has now formally sought to assert the state secrets privilege to dismiss a private party lawsuit brought on behalf of five individuals who were "arrested, transported, detained, and interrogated as part of the CIA’s terrorist detention and interrogation [a/k/a extraordinary rendition] program".  The similar case brought by Khaled El-Masri against the Gov't was dismissed by use of the privilege, but this suit, Mohamed v. Jeppesen Dataplan, names only the corporation as a defendant, not government agencies or officials.

Just like your stereotypical undead movie monster, the proposed ballot initiative to change the allocation of California's electoral votes seems to have returned from the grave, poised to wreak havoc once again.

Despite the numerous reports from four weeks ago that the backers of the initiative were abandoning their effort once it was revealed that they were having problems raising money for the signature drive (and that what little there was coming from a sketchy source), some of the warier amongst us warned that there was always the possibility that the measure could be revived if a major financial backer could be located.

And guess what?  As-yet unnamed Republican "reformers" have stepped forward to do just that.  More details below the fold.

Sorry for the brevity of this diary, but since this seems to have slipped through the cracks here today, I figured it was worthy of attention.

Today's lead editorial in the New York Times reads as though it were written by the Daily Kos community: "With Democrats Like These . . .".

Okay, perhaps there isn't quite the same degree of righteous anger, and they refrain from use of expletives entirely, but it certainly seems to capture the sentiment of most folks around this place pretty well.  The editorial takes Democrats to the woodshed for their complicity in assisting Bush shred the Constitution of the United States.  See below for examples of what I'm talking about.

In a little-noticed filing yesterday, the Bush Administration tipped its hand as to how it plans to scuttle yet another lawsuit that could otherwise expose details of one of the many the nefarious policies it has been carrying out behind our backs:  extraordinary rendition (which is really nothing more than a euphemism for "kidnapping") to secret CIA prisons overseas.

Some of you might recall that at the end of May 2007, the ACLU announced that it had brought a lawsuit on behalf of several individuals against Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc., a subsidiary of the Boeing Company, for its role in providing travel services (logistical and flight support) for the CIA to clandestinely transport terrorism suspects to prisons abroad where they are routinely tortured and otherwise abused.

Now, the government has effectively indicated that it intends to get Jeppesen off the hook before the case can get underway:  the Administration will intervene for the purpose of invoking the military and state secrets privilege, and would seek dismissal of the lawsuit in its entirety on those grounds.

In an unusual, but hopefully not unique, example of bipartisan cooperation, Governors Eliot Spitzer and Arnold Schwarzenegger joined together today in a letter to President Bush calling for the withdrawal of new rules proposed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) relating to the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).

As noted in Gov. Spitzer's press release (and discussed extensively in a wide variety of diaries here at Daily Kos, two weeks ago CMS announced that under the new rules, "until a state enrolls 95 percent of those eligible for SCHIP in households making under 200 percent of the poverty line ($41,300 for a family of four), they cannot provide coverage to children in families making above 250 percent of the poverty line ($51,625 for a family of four)."  Not only is this a horrible idea on its own, but it would be a disaster for children in states with higher costs of living.

As many readers here might well remember, a month ago the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a significant ruling relating to a number of the Guantánamo detainee cases pending before it.  Recall that under the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, the D.C. Circuit was empowered as the court for appellate review of determinations made by the Pentagon's Combatant Status Review Tribunals as to whether detainees can continue to be held (and ultimately for them to be prosecuted pursuant to the terms of the noxious Military Commissions Act of 2006).

In that decision, the court held that it needed to examine all the evidence relating to a detainee in order to make the determination as to whether the CSRT finding was correct, or flawed.  (This is discussed further, below.)

Now, in the first test case to come before the court, Paracha v. Gates, the Department of Justice is -- surprise! -- seeking at least an extra month beyond its deadline of September 13 to compile, and file with the court, a "revised certified index" to the materials relevant to this detainee.

In a little-noticed interview published yesterday, Alaska's own Senator-for-Life, Ted Stevens, demonstrated his tenuous hold on reality and concluded that the biggest problem facing this nation is . . . you guessed it:  the media!

Poor, poor Ted.  At times, during his sit-down session with the editorial board of the Anchorage Daily News, Stevens managed to sound almost rational, but then every time he says a few more words and blew it, either with a statement that was bound to create a "Wha?!?!" reaction or by flying off the handle at his interviewers, whom he clearly viewed as though they were representing the Inquisition instead of a newspaper.

I'm not going to attempt any real analysis here, since this is a classic example of Republican unintentional humor (which would be far funnier if the consequences weren't always so tragic).  Selected excerpts follow.

On the last day of the 2006-07 Term, the U.S. Supreme Court has struck down the voluntary integration policies used by the Seattle and Louisville public schools.

As shouldn't be a surprise to anyone by now, the combined rulings in the cases were decided by the all-too-familiar 5-4 margin with Justice Kennedy concurring in the judgment by the conservative majority.  Chief Justice Roberts wrote the majority opinion, and in addition to Kennedy's, Justice Thomas wrote a separate concurrence as well (given his personal background, that could either be interesting or appalling, depending on what he has to say).

The opinions themselves, and relevant excerpts, should be available shortly and will be posted here in an update as soon as the justices finish reading from them.  The dissents might actually take a while to get through.  Update: The opinions are now available (warning: 185-page PDF).  Smaller files of each separate opinion are linked at the bottom of the diary.)

This morning, the Supreme Court turned down petitions brought by several groups of detainees held at Guantanamo for a review of their cases and for an interpretation (and ruling on the constitutionality of) the Detainee Treatment Act and the Military Commissions Act.

To have granted review of these matters would have required the votes of four of the justices, yet only three sought to grant the detainees' petitions:  Breyer, Souter and Ginsburg.  Of those, Breyer and Souter would also have granted petitioners' request for expedited review so as to have the cases decided before the end of the current Supreme Court term.

Additionally, two other justices, Kennedy and Stevens, filed a separate statement that they only declined review now only to permit a prompt resolution of the proceedings below (presumably, the tribunals themselves and the appellate review before the D.C. Circuit Court) before SCOTUS took up the constitutional issues.  But they did make it clear that the government must not delay those proceedings.

This morning, the Supreme Court gave an indication that it's in no hurry to begin addressing the habeas corpus issues raised by last year's contemptible Military Commissions Act.  As shown on today's Orders List (at p.3, under 06-1169, Hamdan v. Gates), the Court declined to grant a motion for expedited consideration of the petition by two detainees for a writ of certiorari, which would then in turn lead to accelerated briefing and argument of the merits of the case.

While it's almost a certainty that the Court will ultimately consider the key question -- either through this petition or the ones being filed today in Boumediene and Al Odah (see below for more) -- there is now a serious likelihood that given the Court's schedule, there simply may not be enough time left in the current term (ending in late June) for a decision on the merits, meaning that the detainees would have to wait until early autumn to see whether their habeas rights are restored.  Given that the Administration has made clear that it intends to commence with military tribunals this summer, the matter could potentially largely be moot by October.

Today, the nine justices of the U.S. Supreme Court are beginning what will hopefully turn into a substantive review of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which, among its many noxious prongs, purports to preclude non-citizen detainees held at Guantánamo Bay from making a claim of habeas corpus, perhaps the most fundamental legal right we have, and one that has been a cornerstone (if not the cornerstone) for freedom of abuse from unfettered executive authority.

If there is still sanity to be found on the bench, the Court will restore habeas rights to the detainees, and, ideally, declare the MCA wholly unconstitutional.  The Court is likely, however, to decide these matters on the narrowest grounds possible.

For now, I will leave it to others -- better writers than I -- in the Restoring Our Constitution series to discuss why habeas corpus is so central in an historical context.

Every couple of days now it seems, the extent to which Sen. Conrad Burns has surrounded himself with people of questionable character (chief among them, of course, being Jack Abramoff) becomes clearer and clearer.

Today, the Montana State Auditor's Office announced it has begun legal proceedings alleging securities fraud against the former finance director for Burns' campaign, Pat Davison.  Conveniently (too conveniently, perhaps), Davison quietly left his position with Burns four weeks ago, so Burns can claim that he's totally uninvolved in this.  Except, of course, for the slimy associations he'd made in appointing Davison in the first place.

More below, with a huge tip of the hat to pontificator for alerting me to this.

I suppose this should be a surprise to anybody around here, but earlier today, Kentucky's Governor, Ernie Fletcher (R), had all the charges against him dismissed with prejudice (meaning that they can't be refiled down the road).  A mere two weeks ago, the judge in charge of the case held that the case against Fletcher could not proceed so long as he remained in office, so today's development cannot be all that much of a shock.

As part of the agreement which led to the dismissal, Fletcher denied that he personally broke any laws, but admitted that his administration engaged in wrongdoing, thus acknowledging that the prosecution spearheaded by State Attorney General Greg Stumbo (D) was entirely legitimate.  Among other things, this now clears the way for Stumbo to challenge Fletcher in the governor's race next year (Stumbo had said he couldn't run so long as the charges were active, as this would be seen as a conflict of interest).  Follow through for more.