"These are the times that try men's souls," wrote Thomas Paine, the Glenn Greenwald of the 1700's, "The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not [...]

AFL-CIO blogger Tula Connell is substituting this week for Jordan Barab. If you traveled over the holidays and made it back safely, thank an air traffic controller. The nation’s air controllers are doing a monumental job in the face of constant attacks by the Bush administration’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). In the past few years, [...]

"I am completely without objectivity. There is nothing you can say that would make me feel positively about President Bush."* Thus spake the eighth of nine prospective jurors reviewed by Judge Reggie Walton, Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and defense attorneys Ted Wells and William Jeffress today.  She had indicated on her juror form she had some [...]

Our other thread received so many nice words for Jane that we had to start another. Thank you all for your kind words.

There just didn't seem to be any other way to explain why I'm not going to be present for the first two weeks of the Libby trial so I decided to resort to the truth.  As someone who has devoted years to building this blog around coverage of the CIA leak investigation, it's going to [...]

  Let the headlines begin: "Barack Hussein Obama: The Feel-Good-About-Yourself Candidate," compliments of GOPbloggers. I've gone after the conservatives for taking out after Barack Obama's middle name, starting with Glenn Beck. In fact, one of my posts opened out onto a lawsuit threat against me by one wingnut, which happened just yesterday.  Not to worry, [...]

Fitzgerald has a reputation for not fussing overmuch about jury selection, other than to be sure he has people who can make a fair and independent judgment. The Libby strategy may be interesting.  I've heard a couple of things from looseheadprop.  First, whereas most defendants don't want a juror who has a strong and abiding [...]

[This is a continuation from yesterday's Evidence I post.]  In addition to witness testimony, in a trial there is also evidence in the form of documents and things. Before we get into that, I want to take a minute to talk about relevancy. Evidence may be true and competent yet completely irrelevant to the crime [...]

I've been inspected, see-lected, accepted and di-rected.  Here I am, gang, to welcome you to Firedoglake's pregame coverage of the Libby Trial, live from the Prettyman federal courthouse in Washington, DC, courtesy of the Huffington Post. Actually, for all the levity, entering a federal courthouse is deadly serious business.  I've been poked and prodded and [...]

Jury selection begins today in the Libby trial.  Pachacutec will be on the scene to report for us today — in the courtroom, watching the proceedings, and taking note of how things move forward as the jury of peers that will sit in judgment of Scooter Libby is selected.   That's right, boys and girls, it's [...]