There's a front page diary which states that:

The procedure for tomorrow is that votes on the outstanding amendments will begin at 10:00. After these votes happen, they'll have the cloture vote. When Leahy and Dodd say they will filibuster, it means that they will vote against the cloture vote on the bill to continue debate. If they are successful in preventing 60 votes for cloture, the debate can continue for as long as 30 hours. If they fail to prevent cloture, Dodd has four hours reserved for him and his colleagues like Leahy to convince enough fellow Dems to vote against final passage.

If this is an accurate statement, then we are being lied to, the Senate is violating its own rules and perpetrating a sham.

Follow below the fold for more.

Welcome to the Liveblog Debate. Hooray for Chris Dodd!

A couple of rules:
#1

The old mothership is slipping PLEASE RECOMMEND Mothership #2

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#4 This is not a candidate diary -- take your pie fights elsewhere.

Live Blog # 2 by gchaucer2

Live Blog # 3 greenchiledem

Live Blog # 4 by Remembering Jello  

Live Blog # 5 by RichM

Live Blog # 6 by Themomcat

Live Blog # 7 by Moody Loner

Live Blog # 8 by jrooth  (You are here)

On reading today's story about the administration's determination that they will never under any circumstances allow the Justice Department to prosecute contempt charges against anyone acting under a claim of executive privilege. I did what I irregularly do and began dashing off a short letter (in this case to my senators - Nelson and Martinez.)

But either I'm a little more muddle-headed than usual or else I'm just more concious of my muddle-headedness today, because I found myself having to work at it more than usual.

That's when it occurred to me that I could ask my fellow Kossacks for some help.

I've had my issues with Counterpunch.org's allegedly progressive pundit Alexander Cockburn over the years, but I think he's finally completely jumped the shark. Talk about strange bedfellows, he's flung himself wholeheartedly into the arms of the global warming deniers.

Follow below the fold for the gory details and some responses:

I'm sure most everyone here is familiar with the Total Information Awareness program originally proposed by Adm. John Poindexter, partially implemented by the Defense Intelligence Agency's Information Awareness Office and allegedly terminated after it came to light in 2003.  I'm also sure most here know that various parts of the program weren't really terminated, only moved to assorted black programs in other agencies.

But what you may not have known is that the whole thing was outsourced to Singapore and they have now rolled out an even bigger badder program than the original TIA.

I'm hesitant to make a diary of this since it's only a small piece of additional information, but I think it's significant.

There have been a number of diaries recently (for example here) about the deployment of the USS Eisenhower strike group to the Persian Gulf on an apparently accelerated schedule.  This might, of course, be normal force rotation, although it should be noted that another carrier group - the USS Enterprise strike group is nearby in the Arabian Sea.

But there's more.

Jonah Goldberg wrote an op-ed yesterday about Joe Lieberman's departure from the Democratic party.

The theme is a good old Goldberg favorite:

But let's be clear: Lieberman fascinates political junkies because he's an outlier, like an albino rhino or the last of the Mohicans. And his loss doesn't usher in a new reality so much as confirm the familiar one.

With much fanfare we were told last year that as part of the president's Bold Plan to Protect Us (tm) all travellers across the Canada and Mexco borders would soon have to carry valid passports.

Well, maybe not so much ...

The other day, the US Climate Change Science Program, an umbrella organization created by President Bush to coordinate US climate science research, took it upon themselves to publish the current draft of the IPCC Working Group 1 section of the pending "Fourth Assessment Review".  Access to the draft is on a password protected web page, but they are supplying that password via automated email reply to anyone who requests it.  They did this against the express wishes of the IPCC.

So what's the big deal, you wonder?  Sounds like freedom of information, a good thing, right?  Not so fast ... follow below the fold to see why this is not so innocent, and is likely an attempt to sabotage the process.

In many discussions with administration supporters regarding the ongoing surveillance program and the administration's legal reasoning justifying it, my opponent has brought forth the argument that Congress has no power to direct how the President conducts himself but ultimately they have the "power of the purse" if they disapprove of his actions.

In my opinion, this argument fails in light of the rest of the administration's reasoning, because that legal framework makes this power an instrument so blunt as to be unusable.

Follow below the fold for some more discussion.

While this is a Florida story, I think it has national implications as well since Jeb Bush has on a number of fronts (for instance charter schools) used Florida as a testbed for Bush administration ideas.

Anyway, a little over a year and a half ago, Florida decided to privatize dental care for children in Miami-Dade who are on Medicaid, and the early results are in.

More than a year and a half after the state started an ambitious pilot program to treat the dental needs of poor kids in Miami-Dade County, preliminary data indicates the pilot may have resulted in a dramatic reduction in treatment.

Partial data for one key indicator -- basic oral exams -- indicates that only one-third as many kids are getting them now as under the old program.

More after the flip.

The Counterterrorism Blog has THIS story this morning:

On February 10, the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced that agents from its Salt Lake City, Utah field office had arrested nine suspected illegal aliens from Mexico working for a contractor on the Dugway Proving Ground located some 85 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.

Better late than never, I suppose.  More about ICE after the flip.

So says Insight Magazine - a publication of the conservative Washington Times, in this article.

The lead of the story is that monitoring has been nearly completely ineffective, since al Qaeda operatives long since ceased using telephones and email to communicate their plans.

But buried deep in the article is the revelation that contrary to administration claims, this NSA monitoring has not been restricted to international communications.

More below the fold:

Another trip into cognitive dissonance land with the Bush White house:

OK, excuse me, but haven't this WH and its supporters been blaming years of recession, job loss and eventual anemic recovery on 9/11? So how can this far larger event have only "modest" effect?

The truth is, they may be right about this. But will anyone in the SCLM note the inconsistancy of this statement with their prior claims? I think not.