Here's most of the transcript of Cher on C-Span: via Atrios]

Peter Slen, C-Span Moderator: Good Morning Miami Beach

caller: Good morning! Thank you for C-span, I watch it every day! Uh, I would like to say i had the occasion the other day to spend the entire day with troops that had come back from iraq & had been wounded and..um...I also visited troops during the vietnam era...but the thing that I was most shocked by...um...as I walked into the hospital the first person i ran into was a boy about 19 or 20 years old who'd lost both of his arms...and when I walked into the hosptial & visited all these boys all day long...uh...everyone had lost either one arm...one limb or two limbs or had lost one limb and there were...there were a lot of legs that seemed to be missing and a couple of the boys told me it was because that their vehicles ...that the rockets pierce the vehicles so much its like being kind of in a tin can...it doesnt have...there isnt...the walls of the humvees are very soft and theres no protection...but three guys in the same vehicle have lost a leg. ...and another thing that I saw was that...um...if they'd lost one leg that... that shrapnel that had hit the other leg had been so devastating that they were having to pull like the thigh...you know...the muscle and the thigh around the bottom of the calf to try to make the leg workable but in some cases these boys had lost one legand the other leg was so damaged that they weren't sure what they were gonna be able to do.

C-Span Moderator: Where did you spend tthe day?

caller: Walter-Reed.

No less an authority than Sam Dash, chief counsel of the Senate Watergate Committee in 1973-74 and a Georgetown University Law Professor, says the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity may violate the Patriot Act. Dash says the leak constitutes an act of domestic terrorism as defined in the legislation. He also questions whether the Justice Department will conduct the same kind of investigation it does in other suspected domestic terrorism cases. Here's just a portion of his article. We recommend you read the whole thing.

If, as now seems likely, top White House aides leaked the identity of an American undercover agent, they may have committed an act of domestic terrorism as defined by the dragnet language of the Patriot Act their boss wanted so much to help him catch terrorists.

St. Petersberg Times columnist Robyn Blumner writes today about new powers Ashcroft and Bush are seeking as supplements to the Patriot Act. The Adminstration says the new powers only close loopholes in the existing Patriot Act. Blumner explains why that isn't true. Here are the new powers:

Bush wants three additional powers from Congress. First, he wants to give the Justice Department the authority to confiscate records and compel testimony without review by a court or grand jury. ...Second, Bush wants to chip away at the right to bail. Current law allows a judge to deny bond for anyone shown to be dangerous or a flight risk. And, for anyone accused of international terrorism, there is a presumption against granting bond.

And third, Bush wants to expand the reach of the federal death penalty by making it applicable to "domestic terrorism."...Bush also wants the death penalty for those convicted of providing "material support for terrorism," a law that can be violated even when people think they are giving money to a charity and don't know the group is a designated terrorist organization.

St. Petersberg Times columnist Robyn Blumner writes today about new powers Ashcroft and Bush are seeking as supplements to the Patriot Act. The Adminstration says the new powers only close loopholes in the existing Patriot Act. Blumner explains why that isn't true. Here are the new powers:

Bush wants three additional powers from Congress. First, he wants to give the Justice Department the authority to confiscate records and compel testimony without review by a court or grand jury. ...Second, Bush wants to chip away at the right to bail. Current law allows a judge to deny bond for anyone shown to be dangerous or a flight risk. And, for anyone accused of international terrorism, there is a presumption against granting bond.

And third, Bush wants to expand the reach of the federal death penalty by making it applicable to "domestic terrorism."...Bush also wants the death penalty for those convicted of providing "material support for terrorism," a law that can be violated even when people think they are giving money to a charity and don't know the group is a designated terrorist organization.

The CIA issued a report today stating that the tape released this past weekend, purportedly by Osama bin Laden, threatening more violence against the U.S. probably is authentic.

"Following a technical analysis of an audio tape aired on al Jazeera on Oct. 18, the CIA assesses that the voice is likely that of Osama bin Laden," the spokesman said.

...Qatar-based Arabic television station Al Jazeera broadcast two audio tapes Saturday purportedly from bin Laden that vowed more suicide attacks inside and outside the United States and warned all countries backing Washington over Iraq were targets. The speaker urged Iraqis to wage a holy war against American "crusaders" in Iraq until an Islamic government was set up.

The tape could have been made six months ago.

Here is Senator Patrick Leahy's October 17 statement explaining why he voted against the Iraq-Afghanistan Supplemental Appropriations Bill. [link via Buzzflash.]

I know that I will be among a small minority. But for me, this is a matter of principle, and after a great deal of thought I have concluded that I can not support this proposal. I did not support the policy that got us into war alone. I do not support the tactics the White House has used to get this Supplemental passed. And I do not support appropriating so much money, at one time, for an oil rich nation when the responsible thing would be to approve a portion of the money today and to revisit this again next year.

... If...I thought the Administration was being honest with the American people about its motives and its policy in Iraq and the Middle East; if this Supplemental were designed to implement a credible plan to internationalize our policy rather than to continue a unilateral approach; and if this had not been a one-time only, take-it-or-leave-it, partisan approach in which almost every amendment offered by Democrats was defeated along party lines, my vote today might be different.

Don't miss Sen. Robert Byrd's comments on his opposition to the bill in The Emporer Has No Clothes.

Quote of the day, from Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, confirmed in June as deputy undersecretary of defense--and known for his "penchant" for casting the Iraq War in religious tones:

Islamic extremists hate the United States "because we're a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christians. ... And the enemy is a guy named Satan."

Here's a prior quote from Boykin on a 1993 battle in Somalia:

Discussing a U.S. Army battle against a Muslim warlord in Somalia in 1993, Boykin told one audience, "I knew my god was bigger than his. I knew that my god was a real god and his was an idol."

Rumsfeld and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are thus far defending Boykin. But Rhode Island's Republican Senator Lincoln D. Chafee "...said he had not been aware of Boykin's views as described by the Times, then added, "If that's accurate, to me it's deplorable."

So the war on terrorism can be reduced to "a clash between Judeo-Christian values and Satan?" Where did this guy come from and please, send him back now.

Update: The General apologizes. Well, not really.

Speaking at a luncheon yesterday in New York, former President Bill Clinton said that during his "exit interview" with GW, he told Bush that Osama was the biggest threat to our security.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Former President Bill Clinton says he warned President George W. Bush before he left office in 2001 that Osama bin Laden was the biggest security threat the United States faced.

Speaking at a luncheon sponsored by the History Channel on Wednesday, Clinton said he discussed security issues with Bush in his "exit interview," a formal and often candid meeting between a sitting president and the president-elect.

"In his campaign, Bush had said he thought the biggest security issue was Iraq and a national missile defence," Clinton said. "I told him that in my opinion, the biggest security problem was Osama bin Laden."

Law Prof. Eric Muller of Is That Legal? sat in on a speech by former Assistant Attorney General Michael Chertoff last Friday as part of a symposium on terror and the law at the University of North Carolina. Chertoff was the chief of the Criminal Division of the Justice Department until Bush nominated him for a seat on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. He is now a judge of that Court.

Eric was impressed by Chertoff and his arguments. In fact, Eric says, Chertoff gave an "extraordinarily lucid and powerful presentation." Here's Eric's account.

[Note, we disagree with much of what Chertoff said about the Patriot Act, particularly that it "did not purport to push law beyond existing 4th Amendment doctrine." By its increase of authority for and use of FISA warrants, allowance for nationwide issuance of search warrants, and other related power increases that we've written about here many times before, the Act reduced the role of the judiciary in overseeing the warrant process, and in many cases, goes well beyond current 4th Amendment standards. For an excellent report on how the Justice Department has misled the American people on the Patriot Act, go here]

Eric says Chertoff said if there's one aspect of U.S. Post-911 policy about which he might doubt its legality, it's the indefinite detention of American citizens as enemy combatants on U.S. soil. Decisions, we might add, are made by the Defense department rather than Justice, so all in all, it sounds like in his speech, Chertoff was just another cheerleader for Ashcroft.

Eric does take issue with Chertoff's reliance on Chief Justice Rehnquist's book, All the Laws but One: Civil Liberties in Wartime, which Eric labels, "is the work of an armchair historian, and is a radically incomplete (and one-sided) account of the history."

No matter which side you're on, Eric's account is worth reading. Again, it's here.

Courtesy of Patriot Watch:

Wesley Clark on the PATRIOT Act (Rolling Stone Interview)

Q: The president is urging Congress to grant him wider powers to wage war on terrorism at home.

A: Come on, give us a break. The Patriot Act, all 1,200 pages of it, was passed without any serious congressional discussion. There was no public accountability, and now he wants more? What does he think this country is? We shouldn't do anything with the Patriot Act until it's unwrapped. I'd like to see what violations of privacy it entails, and whether those violations are in any way justified by their preventing terrorism in this country. And we need to do it now before we take another step forward and pay for that.

On a related note, Patriot Watch is endorsing the SAFE Act:

So far, this is our favorite piece of PATRIOT-fix legislation. We believe it is a moderate, targeted bill that incorporates some of the best provisions of recent PATRIOT-fix bills. It also has a solid core of bi-partisan support including Sens. Craig ®, Crapo ®, Sununu ®, Durbin (D), Wyden (D), and Feingold (D).

"The SAFE Act (Security and Freedom Ensured Act) targets four areas of the USA PATRIOT ACT: "delayed notice" warrants, wiretaps, surveillance at libraries and multi-jurisdiction warrants."

After all the hype and buildup, Army Captain James Yee, the former muslim cleric at Guantanamo, has been charged with minor offenses:

A former Muslim chaplain at the military prison for suspected al Qaeda and Taliban fighters was charged yesterday with two counts of mishandling classified material for allegedly trying to take documents from the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to his home.

...experts said the charges and the wording of the U.S. military's announcement indicate investigators have found little that is sinister in the Yee case.

From Behind the Homefront (Reporters' Committee for Freedom of the Press):

UNUSUAL SECRECY IN GUANTANAMO SPYING CASES. The United States is taking extraordinary measures to keep a lid on information related to the espionage investigation at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prison for suspected terrorists, according to a report today from The Associated Press. The AP reports that military officials at Guantanamo have classified routine documents, blacked out the signature lines on court pleadings to hide the identities of lawyers, and forced visiting reporters to sign a pledge saying they will not ask questions about the espionage investigation. Specifically, the pledge form states, in Orwellian fashion, that the reporter will not ask about "ongoing operations, future operations or investigations that are pending."