In other news today.....

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

John Edwards has added Rielle Hunter's lawyers to his legal team in his criminal case. The two lawyers represented Hunter in her civil case against Andrew Young. James Cooney and his firm moved to withdraw. A hearing was held today to determine if there might be a conflict, since Rielle is a potential government witness against him, and whether it was waivable. Both John and Rielle waived any potential conflict. If Rielle testifies, she will be cross-examined by lead counsel Abbe Lowell or someone from his office, rather than her former lawyers.

The Government disclosed in pleadings today that Rielle Hunter received immunity in the criminal case. [More...]

Update: The longest 60 seconds of Blago's life is probably this walk (video)from the car into the prison. Via the Denver Post, here's his real welcome crew.

*****

The media circus surrounding Rod Blagojevich continued today as he flew commerically to Denver and made his way to FCI Englewood.

Followed by helicopters and television news crews on the road that brought to mind the low speed chase of O.J. Simpson, Blagojevich arrived at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. A mob of travelers took photographs on their cellphones as Blagojevich, his arms raised, stood in a body scanner before heading to down the concourse.

A little late with this. Here are my picks today (will provide the full bracket tonight):

K-State(W), Marquette (W), Murray State(W), Vandy(W), L-Ville(W), Montana, UNC-Asheville. W indicates my pick for straight up winners. Otherwise the pick is against the spread (i.e. Asheville is (+16) against the Cuse but I expect Cuse to win.)

Later games - New Mexico (W -4)(5 units), Va Commonwealth (W +7) (4 units), Gonzaga (W -1)(4 units), Baylor (W -7�) (3 units), Connecticut (W -1�), New Mexico State (W +6�) (3 units),Ohio State (W -17), Colorado (W +5�).

My Final 4 - Kentucky, Mizzou, Ohio State, Michigan. Ohio State-Kentucky in the Final. Ohio State to win it all. Open Thread.

Judicial Business of the U.S. Courts publishes the most detailed statistical tables on the work of the federal Judiciary. This week it released its statistical analysis for the 12 month period ending September 30, 2011. A summary is here, and the full report, with tables, is here.

The summary and news accounts of the report skip some of the report's most interesting statistics on criminal cases. The chart that leapt out at me is how bail has become the exception in federal courts while pre-trial detention has become the rule. First the punishment, then the verdict.

Where's the worst place to be charged with a crime? The district most likely to deny you bail, keep you locked up for months or years awaiting trial, in either federal detention centers or dismal county jails not meant to house long-term prisoners, where you are unable to work and provide for your family, have no access to meaningful rehabilitative programs and have only limited access to your lawyer in cramped visiting rooms to prepare your defense. [More...]

Via NBC News Chicago, above is the video of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich's goodbye press statement before heading off to prison at FCI Englewood (photo here) in Colorado tomorrow .

Patti is with him. The house is mobbed by media as well as onlookers and supporters. He is incredibly upbeat, Patti looks absolutely devastated.

I intended to live-blog his speech but it was too compelling to type through. I had to just watch. A summary is below: [More...]

Stan Garnett, the District Attorney for Boulder, Colorado, has written a letter to Colorado U.S. Attorney John Walsh asking that the feds back off from threatening to prosecute medical marijuana dispensaries in Boulder that are in compliance with state law. From his letter, available here:

My view is that the resources of the United States Attorney’s Office should be focused elsewhere: on terrorism, serious economic crime, organized crime and serious drug dealing (involving significant amounts of heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine). I can see no legitimate basis in this judicial district to focus the resources of the United States government on the medical marijuana dispensaries that are otherwise compliant with Colorado law or local regulation. The people of Boulder County do not need Washington D.C. or the federal government dictating how far dispensaries should be from schools, or other fine points of local land use law.

MoDo:

Hillary Clinton has fought for women�s rights around the world. But who would have dreamed that she would have to fight for them at home? �Why extremists always focus on women remains a mystery to me,� she told an adoring crowd at the Women in the World Summit at Lincoln Center on Saturday. �But they all seem to. It doesn�t matter what country they�re in or what religion they claim. They want to control women. They want to control how we dress. They want to control how we act. They even want to control the decisions we make about our own health and bodies. �Yes,� she continued to applause, �it is hard to believe that even here at home, we have to stand up for women�s rights and reject efforts to marginalize any one of us, because America needs to set an example for the entire world.�

MoDo muses that the GOP War on Women will lead to a Hillary in 2016 campaign. I already predict that (and believe it will be extremely beneficial to the Dem Party), but if this is the rationale necessary for that, I'm good with that.

Speaking for me only

So David Axelrod won't appear on Bill Maher's show. Ann Althouse chortles:

Rush Limbaugh is a media genius, but I don't think he's enough of a genius to have laid this trap. It has worked as a trap. By going too far, on one well-chosen occasion � picking on a young woman about sex � he got an immense reaction from Rush haters, who smelled blood and imagined that they could use this incident to drive Rush off the air. In making their strong argument, Rush's opponents articulated a rule demonizing those who use offensive language to describe a woman. [...] In this Fluke incident, many left-liberals have committed to a rule that can now be used to take out some of their most valuable speakers and media outlets.

(Emphasis supplied.) Weird. I thought she was talking about Bill Maher. Oh noooo! Bill Maher!! Is Althouse serious? Who cares about Bill Maher?

Speaking for me only

It's afternoon in New York, but still morning in Denver.

Ed Kilgore, who's been killing it at Political Animal, on pearl clutching.

Open Thread.

Rod Blagojevich begins his 14 year prison sentence on Thursday. At 5 pm CST today, he will hold a press conference at his home. The next morning he will fly to Colorado with his attorney, and surrender at FCI Englewood, a low security level prison outside of Denver.

There will be many saying Blagojevich got his due. I think the sentence is too harsh. He's neither violent nor a safety threat, the conviction ended his public career and ostracized him. He's broke. His daughters will grow up without a father. One day he's here, next day he's not.

FCI Englewood is pretty decent for a prison. But it's still a prison and I doubt anything can prepare him for the lack of privacy, boredom and the strict regimentation he's about to experience.[More...]

U.K. Home Secretary Teresa May has approved the extradition of 23 year old British student Richard O'Dwyer to the U.S for criminal copyright infringement.

O'Dwyer has never set foot in the U.S., never run a server in the U.S., and didn't host copyrighted material on his website, TV Shack.net. What he did: He ran a website from his basement which included links to sites that had pirated material and his site generated advertising revenue.

His site was shut down as part of ICE's Operation in Our Sites, and the U.S. sought his extradition. In January, a U.K. court ruled he could be extradited to the U.S.. The connection to the U.S. is simply that he bought the domain name (.net) from Verisign, which is in the U.S. [More...]

At the meeting of the UN Commmission on Narcotic Drugs that opened today in Vienna, Bolivian President Evo Morales held up a coca leaf and defended -- to applause -- the right of Bolivians to grow and chew the plant:

Morales said that chewing coca leaves was an "ancestral right" for Bolivians. "We are not drug addicts when we consume the coca leaf. The coca leaf is not cocaine, we have to get rid of this misconception," he said in a speech that ended with applause from the hall.

"This is a millennia-old tradition in Bolivia and we would hope that you will understand that coca leaf producers are not drug dealers."

[More...]

Around 8 in 10 Mississippians participating in Tuesday's contest were white evangelical or born-again Christians, the largest share measured in any state so far. Those same voters accounted for nearly three-quarters of those surveyed in Alabama, a proportion reached previously only in Tennessee and Oklahoma.

In South Carolina, Newt and Santorum carried 2/3 of the evangelical vote. Assuming an even split, Romney has to carry 2/3 of non- evangelicals to win. Seems far fetched.

Ezra with the rote "there is no bully pulpit" stuff. Drum with a bit more thought. Digby nailing it:

Of course presidents can't really "persuade" people of the opposing party in a polarized environment, for all the reasons Ezra lays out in his piece. But I feel as if this whole argument is about doing something that nobody but President Obama, op-ed writers and some of his more fervent followers ever thought was possible in the first place. They're the only ones who believed that the Republicans were going to fall at his feet and work together in bipartisan harmony --- or that his magical powers of persuasion would create a groundswell of support among Independents and rank and file Republicans.

When progressives called for President Obama to make speeches it wasn't with the goal that he lift his poll numbers or get Mitch McConnell to sign on. Indeed, that's the opposite of what they wanted --- the "Grand Bargains" required to get such a deal are worse than nothing at all from their perspective. The reason they wanted him to make speeches was to mobilize his followers to help "persuade" their representatives to pass progressive legislation --- or even just reaffirm his commitment to shared goals and educate the public about what those goals are. The administration abandoned any notions of doing this shortly after the election[. . . .] But Ezra's piece reaffirms that this is the way major change happens in this environment, so you can't really blame the progressives for pushing it. That's what they wanted --- major change. And in a bit of an ironic surprise, Ezra demonstrated that in this case, the progressives were the pragmatic sorts calling for "what works" --- not the president.

See also my 8 million posts on the PPUS and the "Theory of Change."

Speaking for me only