DemLog

Today's Abilene Reporter News quotes locals predicting whom President Bush might appoint to succeed retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, including Republican chair Paul Washburn & Democratic Chair Dave Haigler:

Washburn said a lot of people qualified for the bench would likely turn down Bush's offer because of what happened with previous Senate confirmations. One name Washburn threw out as a possible replacement was Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.

"He's been on the Texas Supreme Court and did a good job," he said. "He's very well qualified."

Dave Haigler, Taylor County Democratic Party chairman, said Bush probably will opt for someone more conservative than O'Connor.

"I would say the court is going to swing a little more to the right," Haigler said. "I think the president is looking for someone who is a safe bet who will vote against Roe v. Wade if it comes up again, to water that decision down or reverse it."

One name Haigler threw out as replacement for O'Connor is Judge J. Michael Luttig of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Luttig clerked for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia when Scalia was an appeals court judge.

Haigler said Luttig might be more apt to vote conservative if a Roe v. Wade case made it back to the Supreme Court.

-- Jason Sheehan -- ARN full story.

Comments by D.H.: My counterpart, Paul Washburn, has loyalties to Texas Republicans like Sen. John Cornyn, but it makes no sense for President Bush to appoint a Republican senator to anything, with the slim majority the Republicans now hold in the senate. Bush would be more likely to appoint Nevada Senator Harry Reid, a pro-life Democrat who is the Senate Minority Leader, because the Nevada Governor, Kenny Guinn, is a Republican who could appoint a Republican successor to Reid in the senate and get them one vote closer to the minimum 60 needed for cloture and being filibuster proof.

If being pro-life were all that important to Bush, that is. I say it's not. Party & personal loyalty is more important to Bush than any ideology. But he will throw a bone to the right-wing radicals if he can do so and still shore up his own sagging political fortunes.

No, I blogged a shortlist of 8 likely Bush picks on June 24, and I'll stick with those, Judge Michael Luttig being #1.

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All the papers lead with Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's resignation. O'Connor was the first woman on the United States Supreme Court where she served for 24 years and was often a crucial swing vote on a number of contentious cases involving such divisive issues as abortion, affirmative action, and religion. [This story was blogged by DemLog yesterday here, here and here.]

O'Connor's resignation, which came in the form of a three-sentence letter delivered to the White House (seen here at right, which was to be "effective upon the nomination and confirmation of my successor"), caught Washington by surprise as all speculation about a justice resigning in recent weeks centered around Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist. She gave no specific reason for her retirement except that she's 75 and wants to spend more time with her husband, who is said to have Alzheimer's disease.

The Los Angeles Times mentions that O'Connor looked worried and sad on the court's last day of the term on Monday, as she helped steady a weak Rehnquist and they walked off together. The New York Times is quick to point out that the resignation means the court has its first vacancy in 11 years, thereby ending the longest period without change since the 1820's. The Washington Post says that O'Connor's crucial tie-breaking role in the court made her "perhaps the most influential woman in public office in U.S. history" and public surveys often listed her as one of the most admired women in the country. (Slate has compiled past articles on O'Connor and her legacy is currently being discussed).

All the papers preview the upcoming battle over O'Connor's replacement, which promises to be heated because everyone sees it as key to the future of the Supreme Court. Politicians and interest groups were getting ready for Rehnquist's retirement but the fight over replacing the reliably conservative chief justice was not seen as being crucial because it would not have meant a change in the court's balance of power. Conservative and liberal groups are starting public campaigns that are likely to rival presidential ones in ferocity and money. "No matter what side you're on, everything you've believed in, everything you've cared about, everything you've fought for is at stake," Ralph G. Neas, president of the liberal People for the American Way, said to the NYT.

The NYT describes many of the possible candidates from the list that had already been drawn up in preparations for Rehnquist's retirement and compares their different styles. The different implications of O'Connor's retirement, however, mean that the list might change to add more women, as there are currently only two. (The WP dedicates a short article to each of the 12 candidates it considers to be on the shortlist, which includes three women).

Some have also suggested that Bush (seen here left with O'Connor) might put on hold his desire to appoint the first Hispanic judge. (Slate wrote about possible Supreme Court nominees last week).

The WP fronts, and the NYT goes inside with, the continuing search for missing U.S. troops in northeastern Afghanistan. On Tuesday, a Special Operations helicopter that was sent to the area to look for them was shot down, killing all 16 people aboard. [Blogged by DemLog yesterday here and here.] U.S. commanders lost contact with the missing troops on Tuesday shortly after they came under enemy fire. A spokesman for the Taliban said they killed seven of the men, but U.S. officials claim there is no evidence to support the claim. In the past three months there has been a sharp increase in violence in Afghanistan that has resulted in the death of 45 U.S. military forces (the NYT uses AP numbers and says 29 American troops have been killed, along with 465 suspected insurgents, 125 civilians, and 43 Afghan policemen and soldiers).

All the papers go inside with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder deliberately losing a confidence vote in order to be able to hold early elections in September. [Blogged by DemLog here yesterday.] The chancellor currently has an 18 percent approval rating and the increasing divisions within his party led him to announce that his coalition does not have the ability to fix the German economy. The vote of no confidence means that Schroeder can now ask the president to dissolve parliament and, assuming the Supreme Court approves, there will be new elections.

The LAT gets word of a group of U.S. investigators who have concluded that Iranian president-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not the person escorting an American hostage in a 1979 photograph. [Blogged by DemLog yesterday here, here and here.] The investigators found several important discrepancies between the photograph that some claimed was of Ahmadinejad and others of him at the time. According to LAT's source, the investigation into Ahmadinejad's possible role in the hostage crisis is "still an open question" and continues to be investigated.

All the papers mention that lawyers for Matthew Cooper from Time magazine and Judith Miller from the New York Times (shown here at right) asked that if the reporters must be jailed that the sentence be limited to home detention, or to specific federal prisons. Lawyers for Cooper argued that he should not be incarcerated because Time magazine turned over the notes that reveal his sources. Miller's defense argued she also shouldn't be jailed because she has made it clear she will never hand in her sources, so jailing her would not result in Miller obeying the court. [This story was blogged here by DemLog yesterday.]

Full "Today's Papers" article.

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House lawmakers gave renewed support to The Iran Freedom Support Act, introduced by Republican Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (

The legislation, introduced by Ros-Lehtinen in January, already had 250 co-sponsors before the revelations, but the number of backers rose to over 300 after revelations that Iran's hardliner president-elect, Mahmood Ahmadinejad, may have played a role as a hostage taker. Full AFP story.

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In the 40-minute session in the Oval Office yesterday, Mr Bush was clearly striving hard to maintain the momentum of the past six months, a diplomatic push to align America more closely with its allies without deviating from its national interests. He promised more assistance for Africa, now steadily rising with each new summit meeting; more movement to meet the rest of the world something close to halfway on climate change, a phrase Mr Bush himself, however, conspicuously avoids using, suggesting he hopes to find agreement on means even if there is little on the principles.

But this war President is unflinching on the principal foreign policy challenge. He rejects the idea that the war in Iraq may actually be producing more terrorism, creating a place where eager jihadists are trained to plot murder around the world. And he remains messianic about his ambition of promoting democracy around the world -- not only in the Middle East, but in Africa and Europe.

Perhaps most revealing is his response to a question about Iran. His words are polite but the President's body language is eloquent. As I read him a quote from the latest rantings of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian President, and remind him that the Iranian President was a leader of the students who took Americans hostage in Tehran in 1979, he is visibly agitated. He glances at his advisers with a look of disgust that suggests that the chances of a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear crisis are remoter than ever.

Full London Times story & interview with Bush.

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Time magazine warned of 'chilling' new limits on US press freedoms as it reluctantly agreed to hand over Coopers's notes to a grand jury probing the leak of a CIA operative's identity.  (AFP/Getty Images/File)

NEW YORK (CNN) - Time Inc. announced Thursday it would turn over the subpoenaed records from journalist Matt Cooper regarding the leak of a CIA operative's name, even though it "strongly disagrees" with the court order.

Cooper and Judith Miller of the New York Times were facing up to four months in jail for refusing to reveal their confidential sources in the matter to a grand jury, after the U.S. Supreme Court Monday refused to hear an appeal in the case.

Time Inc. said in a statement its decision to turn over the records should prevent their White House correspondent from serving any time.

"We believe that our decision to provide the Special Prosecutor with the subpoenaed records obviates the need for Matt Cooper to testify and certainly removes any justification for incarceration," the statement said.

A federal judge was scheduled to decide next week whether Cooper and Miller would have to go to jail.

At a meeting Wednesday, attorneys for both Miller and Cooper told U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan that they intended to stick to their decision not to reveal their sources. He gave their attorneys until Friday to submit additional arguments and set a final hearing for July 6.

"The time has come to proceed," the judge said. "The rule of law is at stake."

Hogan also had said Time Inc. would face civil penalties of a "substantial sum" if it does not turn over documents, including Cooper's notes, to the grand jury as ordered.

Meanwhile, the journalist whose work began the chain of events that led to the contempt charges against Miller and Cooper, Robert Novak, said Wednesday that he deplores the fact that the two reporters could go to jail, although he insisted "they're not going to jail because of me."

As he has throughout the controversy, Novak, a syndicated columnist and CNN contributor, told CNN's "Inside Politics" that he cannot talk about the case now, but he said he does plan to reveal the circumstances once the case is settled.

"I will reveal all in a column," he said. "I'd like to say a lot about the case, but because of my attorney's advice, I can't. But I will, and there might be some surprising things."

In July 2003, Novak, citing unidentified senior administration sources, revealed Plame's identity as a CIA operative.

Plame's husband is Joe Wilson, a former U.S. ambassador to Iraq. Wilson charged that his wife's name was leaked to retaliate against him after he disputed Bush administration statements that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had tried to purchase uranium in Africa.

Ironically, Judith Miller, left, faces jail time for refusing to reveal sources she developed during her reporting, even though she never actually wrote a story on Plame or Wilson. But Novak, who first revealed Plame's identity, has not been held in contempt.

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The FBI's various intel efforts will be consolidated into one branch--the National Security Service--that will ultimately report to Negroponte.

The intel consolidation is intended to help break down the walls between the FBI and CIA--which, as the WP emphasizes, is why civil-liberties types aren't thrilled. "Spies and cops play different roles and operate under different rules for a reason," said an ACLU lawyer. In any case, the change is among 70 of the 74 recommendations made by the recent WMD commission that the White House endorsed yesterday. The others were mostly small bore or just vague. Among them: a pledge to formalize ways for dissenting analyses to make their way up the chain of command. The NYT flags one of the four recommendations that wasn't endorsed: a call to detail "accountability of individual intelligence units" in pre-war Iraq assessments.

The WP fronts a few former and current CIA spooks saying their Italian counterparts were indeed kept in the loop about the agency's plan to "snatch" a suspected al-Qaida man. The suspect was shipped to Egypt, where he was reportedly tortured. His case has been taken up by an Italian judge who has ordered the arrest of 13 CIA agents. The Post's agency sources said the Italian spooks agreed beforehand not to confirm anything if, as happened, the incident became public.

What the above Post piece doesn't address is previous reports that Italian secret police were about to arrest the suspect and perhaps some of his compatriots. "We do feel quite betrayed that this operation was carried out in our city," one investigator told the NYT.

"We supplied them information about Abu Omar [also known as Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, shown at right], and then they used that information against us, undermining an entire operation against his terrorist network."

The Wall Street Journal goes high with military officials saying that the downed transport chopper in Afghanistan appears to have been hit by a rocket, with all 17 soldiers--mostly special forces--likely killed. The Post and LAT explain why none of that is confirmed: The helicopter went down in a particularly remote area and fell into a deep ravine; there's bad weather; and the worst part, as a military spokesman said, "We are fighting our way to that helicopter."

The NYT off-leads a wide-angle piece on increasing instability in Afghanistan, where, the Times says, people are increasingly disenchanted with the U.S.'s presence. USAT paints a far less dire picture. "The fear we might withdraw or lessen our support is much greater than any feelings that the presence of the United States is not desirable," one Afghanistan analyst told the paper.

Everybody mentions that President Bush was briefly "relocated" last evening when (another) plane strayed into D.C.'s restricted airspace. The breach also prompted a short-lived larger evacuation order but not the panic of the last time it happened.

The NYT fronts the redesign of the proposed hardened Freedom Tower, which now features a 200-ft., NYPD-blessed, base of concrete and steel.

The NYT reefers a judge ruling that Time's Matthew Cooper and the NYT's Judith Miller, shown here at left, now have a week to squeal--about their sources in the outing of a CIA agent--or face prison. Cooper's corporate bosses have suggested they might hand over his notes, which Cooper says he doesn't want but would save him from the slammer.

A front-page Post piece says the president based his speech partly on the advice of two political scientists who've concluded that what Americans really care about is ... winning--the rest is white noise. "The most important single factor in determining public support for a war is the perception that the mission will succeed," said one of the profs. But the other academic--the one who wasn't recently hired by the White House--said that the president didn't do a good job last night and should have offered some benchmarks. "He may have stemmed the flow for a little bit, but I don't think he's given the public a framework for showing how we're making progress."

The above Post piece also includes this:

"We want people to understand the difficult work that's ahead," said a senior administration official who insisted on anonymity to speak more freely. "We want them to understand there's a political process to which the Iraqis are committed and there's a military process, a security process, to which we, our coalition partners and the Iraqis are committed. And that there is progress being made but progress in a time of war is tough." [Emphasis added]

Good to know the SAO was speaking freely and that the Post, in return for granting anonymity, demanded such straight talk.

Eric Umansky writes "Today's Papers" for Slate. He can be reached at todayspapers@slate.com . Source: Slate Magazine's "Today's Papers" column.

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The Patriot Act was first presented to Congress five days after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and passed 45 days later. Written into the law were so-called "sunset" provisions, which set about 10 percent of the sections to expire on Dec. 31, 2005, unless Congress votes to keep them in effect.

The law was passed by overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress -- by a 98-1 margin in the Senate and 356-66 in the House -- but since then a growing number of legislators have become critical of it. Most of those expressing concern have been Democrats.

Concerns from the public likewise have grown. At first the critics were mostly immigrants' rights groups and civil liberties advocates, but a number of conservative organizations and gun rights advocates have joined the call to re-examine the Patriot Act.

Across the country, seven states -- Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, Montana and Vermont -- and 382 cities, counties and towns have adopted resolutions expressing concern about the Patriot Act's potential infringement on civil liberties. Nearly 300 more resolutions are being considered, including 19 statewide resolutions in states as diverse as Wyoming, Tennessee and Massachusetts.

Among the sections due to expire at the end of the year that have drawn criticism are:

Sec. 201, which expands the number of federal criminal offenses for which wiretaps can be issued;

Sec. 202, which creates new wiretap authority relating to computer crime;

Sec. 203(b) and (d), which allow information gathered in criminal investigations, including wiretaps, to be disclosed to intelligence, immigration and national security officials;

Sec. 206, which allows "roving" wiretaps under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that follow the target of the investigation to any telephone used. Sec. 206 does not include any requirement that only conversations involving the target can be listened to, a provision included in other roving wiretap laws;

Sec. 207, which permits FISA wiretaps to continue for as long as a year and extends the duration of physical search orders;

Sec. 212, which allows the government to demand records and content from communications providers without consent, notice or judicial review in an emergency;

Sec. 214, which allows the government to get the telephone numbers dialed to and from a particular phone as well as Internet "routing" information that may contain some substantive content of the communications, with minimal judicial review under FISA;

Sec. 215, which lets the FBI use FISA court orders to seize any "tangible thing," including medical, library, business and travel records, from a wide variety of institutions with minimal judicial review;

Sec. 217, which allows the interception of "computer trespasser" communications without a judge's assent;

Sec. 218, which allows criminal investigators to use espionage powers, which require little evidence of criminal wrongdoing, in cases when gathering foreign intelligence is only a "significant purpose" of the investigation, rather than the "primary purpose";

Sec. 220, which allows law enforcement to go to any judge nationwide when seeking search warrants for electronic evidence, opening the door to judge-shopping.

Rest of this ABC News story. D.H.: Page 3 of this story discusses controversial provisions of the Act that are not expiring.

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