President Obama will speak next Thursday at 7pm ET, so he doesn't interrupt NFL football. I could care less about football, but I would hate to miss eviction night on Big Brother, and with 8 million viewers, that's nothing to sneeze at. On tonight's show, here's hoping Shelley goes home.

Condi Rice had some sharp words today for Dick Cheney's portrayal of her as "tearful" in his book.

"It certainly doesn't sound like me, now, does it?" Rice said in the interview. "I would never -- I don't remember coming to the vice president tearfully about anything in the entire eight years that I knew him."

The Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled today that due process rights apply to all, even the undocumented. The opinion is here.

There's also a new Jersey Shore and Project Runway tonight. This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

Via Krugman, the IMF report (PDF) on how Iceland has put itself on the right path. This stuck out for me:

A new and significantly smaller banking system has emerged from the crisis, with substantial private sector involvement. The banking system now holds assets of about 200 percent of GDP (one-fifth the size of the system pre-crisis) and is comprised of 14 institutions (23 before the crisis). This downsizing was largely achieved by transferring domestic assets and deposits to new institutions and imposing losses on general unsecured creditors. Work to address legacy vulnerabilities in the financial system (including the high level of nonperforming loans, loan and deposit concentration, and financial imbalances) is progressing. In particular, household and corporate debt restructuring is finally advancing and will help restore bank and private sector balance sheets.

Facing up to reality of the banks' true financial condition worked in Iceland. Maybe it can work here.

Speaking for me only

College football season starts tonight. Go Gators!

Open Thread.

Time for dinner and Big Brother here.

Anyone have any interesting Labor Day plans? Maybe you can get in the mood with Salt of the Earth with Mick and Keith -- the Concert for 9/11 version.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

A lawsuit between two private contracting companies that transported detainees between the U.S., Guantanamo and secret black-hole overseas prisons has revealed major new details about the Government's secret rendition program under George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

The company is DynCorp, now known as Dyncorp Internatiobal.[More...]

The Associated has published two documents proving the existence of the Demographics Unit inside the NYPD. (Background here.) Mayor Bloomberg said the unit didn't exist.

Working with the CIA, the New York Police Department maintained a list of "ancestries of interest" and dispatched undercover officers to monitor Muslim businesses and social groups, according to new documents that offer a rare glimpse inside an intelligence program the NYPD insists doesn't exist.

The documents add new details to an Associated Press investigation that explained how undercover NYPD officers singled out Muslim communities for surveillance and infiltration.

The documents are here and here.

NYTimes DealBook:

The Justice Department filed a complaint on Wednesday to block AT&T;�s proposed $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile, a deal that would create the largest carrier in the country and reshape the industry.

The complaint, which was filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, said that T-Mobile �places important competitive pressure on its three larger rivals, particularly in terms of pricing, a critically important aspect of competition.� The complaint also highlighted T-Mobile�s high speed network and its innovations in technology.

Here is the complaint. Here is Department of Justice Statement:

In order to ensure that competition remains and that everyone � including consumers, businesses and the government � continues to receive high quality, competitively priced mobile wireless products and services, the Department of Justice today filed an antitrust lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. to block AT&T;�s acquisition of T-Mobile.

The Department filed its lawsuit because we believe the combination of AT&T; and T-Mobile would result in tens of millions of consumers all across the United States facing higher prices, fewer choices and lower quality products for their mobile wireless services.

More detailed analysis on the flip.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in Seattle is hearing two cases today involving the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program.

Two cases involving widespread warrantless wiretapping of U.S. citizens by the National Security Agency will face a major hurdle Wednesday in a federal appeals court in Seattle. A procedural hearing will be held to determine whether actions by the NSA and AT&T, which cooperated with the agency, can be challenged in court.

The first case is Hepting v. AT&T:

The lawsuit claims that AT&T violated the privacy rights of its customers by allowing the NSA to occupy one of the company's switching stations in San Francisco and monitor its customers' e-mails and phone calls without a warrant.

In the second case, Jewel v. NSA, brought by Electronic Frontier Foundation. [More..]

The LA Times reports on a key legacy of the 9/11 attacks: the exponential increase in governmental spying on Americans.

Thanks to new laws and technologies, authorities track and eavesdrop on Americans as they never could before, hauling in billions of bank records, travel receipts and other information. In several cases, they have wiretapped conversations between lawyers and defendants, challenging the legal principle that attorney-client communication is inviolate.

As one law professor puts it:

"We are caught in the middle of a perfect storm in which every thought we communicate, every step we take, every transaction we enter into is captured in digital data and is subject to government collection."

One we give the Government new power, it rarely gives it back. It's important to note that this legacy was not caused by the terrorists, but by our own lawmakers in Washington who let fear drive their actions. We have not become safer, we are only less free.

McClatchy has a report today on the flaws in the military's death penalty system:

Of the 16 men sentenced to death since the military overhauled its system in 1984, 10 have been taken off death row. The military's appeals courts have overturned most of the sentences, not because of a change in heart about the death penalty or questions about the men's guilt, but because of mistakes made at every level of the military's judicial system.

Why?

The problems included defense attorneys who bungled representation, judges who didn't know how to properly instruct a jury and prosecutors who mishandled evidence....At almost every level - from trial to appeals - young, inexperienced lawyers routinely have been appointed to represent capital defendants.

McClatchy contrasts these cases with those of the 9/11 defendants: [More...]

The new documents released by the President's Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues on the 1,300 Guatanmalan soldiers, prostitutes, prisoners and mental patients who were deliberately infected with sexually transmitted diseases in the 1940's will turn your stomach.

Here's the story of Berta, a mental patient believed to be dying:

During the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues’ meeting today on the investigation of US researchers deliberately exposing and infecting Guatemalans with sexually transmitted diseases from 1946 to 1948, one member raised the story of Berta.

....Dr. John Charles Cutler [the principal investigator for the study] .... “put gonorrhea puss on her eyes, urethra and rectrum.” Soon after, Berta died. She was one of 83 participants who died during the course of the studies.

[More...]

Ezra Klein writes:

The Obama administration is weighing whether to go big or go small in their jobs plan next week. I think the answer is clear: they should go big so they can go small. [. . . T]he more he identifies himself with particular solutions, the more he poisons those solutions for the Republican Party. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) simply cannot come out and say that �the president�s jobs plan is a sensible, pragmatic package for moving America forward that correctly takes the best ideas from both sides into account.� The moment Obama mentions a policy in a big speech, it becomes that much less likely to pass a divided Congress.

Apparently, asking for more than you expect to get in a negotiation is now understood by Ezra. I welcome his enlightenment on this point. But of course, the reality is nothing will be agreed to on stimulus, something Ezra seems to recognize. Good for Ezra, whose thinking on the President's power to set the agenda has also appeared to evolve.:

Today's early Open thread.

The Obama Administration wants to extend the temporary payroll tax cut it brokered with Mitch McConnell in December 2010 (it was part of the infamous Deal that extended the Bush tax cuts.) While some like Ezra Klein hailed this initiative as great stimulus, the record is mixed at best. Bruce Bartlett writes:

[T]here is no evidence that the lower payroll tax has done much of anything to stimulate either spending or hiring. There are a number of reasons for this. [. . .T]he tax cut only helps those with jobs. While many have low wages and undoubtedly are spending all their additional cash flow, those with the greatest need and most likely to spend any additional income are the unemployed.

[. . . E]ven if one assumes that the cost of employment has declined and employers can somehow capture some of the payroll tax cut, there�s little sign that labor costs are the principal factor holding back hiring. The main one is a lack of sales, as monthly surveys by the National Federation of Independent Business document. In the latest survey, 23 percent of businesses said poor sales were their No. 1 problem and only 4 percent cited the cost of labor.

(Emphasis supplied.) I'm not sure why the lack of demand in a zero bound recession is not recognized as the problem here by the VSP in this country. The issue is how to stimulate demand. For this purpose, spending, by the government, is what is required. It seems clear no one wants to understand this. Bartlett writes:

Michael Jackson would have turned 53 today. Dr. Conrad Murray, facing trial for involuntary manslaughter over Jackson's death was in court today. The Judge rejected his request to introduce evidence concerning Jackson's molestation case. Good decision, Jackson was acquitted and it seems like an attempt to change the subject.

Murray wants to argue Jackson was a long time drug addict. Even if he was, how does that exculpate Dr. Murray, who had been treating Jackson while living in his house, if his actions resulted in Jackson's death? [More...]