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Here’s a link to the full text of the new proposed settlement of the Microsoft case from the 9 states that refused to sign on to the total capitulation proposed by the DOJ.

John Ashcroft’s prepared remarks for the Senate Judiciary Committee and full transcript of his testimony. (Link submitted by The New Jazz Thing.)

Law.com has an interview with Islamic legal scholar Khaled Abou el Fadl, a law professor at UCLA. In the interview he explains how Islamic fundamentalists interpret Islamic law from the Quran, and how they have regressed from the level of legal scholarship that existed during the classical age. He also explains how Osama bin Laden’s world view works, and how he rationalizes his terrorist acts. The best non sequitur in the article is the comparison of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s approach to legal interpretation to that of Islamic fundamentalists. ...

The German TV crew that was in the Kala Jangi fortress filmed the two CIA agents whose interrogation of prisoners there might have inspired the revolt. Newsweek has a transcript of their conversation with Johnny Jihadi, the American Taliban. It seems like they were using the standard good cop bad cop shakedown routine on the prisoners – perhaps if they were going to threaten to let the prisoners die, they should have interviewed them one at a time. ...

The big lie being used by military tribunal supporters is that they’re the same courts used to try US servicemen. However, the text of the executive order clearly indicates that this is not the case. Spinsanity busted a few politicians on this today. So, are these guys disingenuous or just ignorant? Janelle Brown has a report from the Afghan Women’s Summit in Brussels. Scott Shuger speculates as to the whereabouts of the Taliban’s cache of Stinger missles in Slate today. ...

The Afghans meeting in Bonn have agreed to an interim government. Hamid Karzai, who snuck back into Afghanistan after 9/11 to urge Pashtun tribal leaders to resist the Taliban, is going to be the head of state. (It’s nice to see bravery rewarded.) Three of the more technocratic members of the Northern Alliance will serve as deputies to Karzai, as will a female Hazara. There appears to be no official place in the government (so far) for the more violent leaders of the Northern Alliance’s ignoble past. ...

One story that has fascinated me for the past couple of weeks is the complete and utter implosion of Enron, the company that many people thought would someday run the world. Arianna Huffington’s latest column notes that while millions of dollars in campaign donations (Enron was the number one contributor to the Bush campaign) and lobbying bought plenty of influence, it couldn’t save the company. By the way, I’m still looking for that one perfect story on what, exactly, happened at Enron. If you have a pointer, please send it along. ...

OJR has an article on MEMRI, a site which I link to quite frequently. The more MEMRI pieces I’ve read, the more I’ve wondered how anti-Arab they are. As it turns out, they’re quite anti-Arab indeed. That said, it doesn’t change the fact that the Arab press still puts out the stories that MEMRI translates and publishes, and those stories are indeed often gruesome and bizarre. The question we’re left with is to what degree they reflect the actual sentiment in the Arab world. Unfortunately, it’s a question I have no way of answering with any authority. My personal experience indicates that the stories MEMRI selects are more representative than we would hope. ...

Thomas Friedman’s column from Sunday’s NY Times, Rights in The Real World, really hits the nail on the head with these two paragraphs: The host was a serious Arab journalist, who was partly playing devil’s advocate The ACLU has issued a letter to Congress concerning the military tribunals authorized by President Bush’s executive order. It’s about time. The ACLU accepts the constitutionality of military tribunals under specific circumstances, but not the blanket usage authorized by the President. They explain their reasoning in a longer memorandum. ...

You know, it must be easy to be a columnist. Unless another columnist takes you to task, you can write something ludicrous every week and still criticize others with impunity, as if you actually posess any more insight than they do. Case in point: I saw several links today to Charles Krauthammer’s “I told you so” column Victory Changes Everything. In it, he attacks Middle East experts for their dire predictions of severe reactions to our invasion of Afghanistan in the Muslim world. Here’s a paragraph that I’ll come back to: ...