Morning News Roundup (31 Mar)

• Intrepid National Journal Murray Waas pulls another scoop out of his hat with the revelation that former Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley determined that Bush had been specifically advised that claims he later made in his 2003 State of the Union address -- that Iraq was procuring high-strength aluminum tubes to build a nuclear weapon -- might not be true.
  
  The biggest concern was a classified one-page summary of a National Intelligence Estimate, specifically written for Bush in October 2002. The summary said that although "most agencies judge" that the aluminum tubes were "related to a uranium enrichment effort," the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the Energy Department's intelligence branch "believe that the tubes more likely are intended for conventional weapons." [National Journal]
  
  
• The WaPo's Howie Kurtz continues the Jill Carroll skepticism:
  

  I must say, though, that I found her first interview yesterday rather odd. Carroll seemed bent on giving her captors a positive review, going on about how well they treated her, how they gave her food and let her go to the bathroom. And they never threatened to hit her. Of course, as we all saw in those chilling videos, they did threaten to kill her. And they shot her Iraqi translator to death.
  
  Why make a terrorist group who put her family and friends through a terrible three-month ordeal sound like they were running a low-budget motel chain?

  But another Wapo account of what happened to Carroll after her surprise release might help explain the "Stockholm Syndrome" that her detractors have been accusing her of:
  

  Hours later, Carroll's captors dropped her off in a Baghdad neighborhood, outside an office of the Iraqi Islamic Party. The politicians inside gave her juice, candy, water and tissues.
  
  Composed, Carroll negotiated her way through the first of many politically laden conversations she would have Thursday, trying to stick to what she wanted and didn't want to say.
  
  The party officials asked her to write out and sign a statement saying she had not been harmed in her brief time at their offices. They had her record a question-and-answer session on camera that they said was for their records. It showed up on television shortly afterward.

  [PS - 10am PST] Check out this update, full of the latest RWNM smears...
  
  
• A former federal prosecutor and a State Department official were indicted yesterday on charges of conspiring to conceal evidence during a botched terrorism trial. The indictment stemmed from the prosecution of four North African immigrants accused of operating a terrorist cell in Detroit. Two of the four were convicted, but a federal judge overturned the verdicts at the Justice Department's request after prosecutors discovered that documents that could have helped the defense were not turned over by the government as required. [Boston Globe]
  
  
• The the Senate Judiciary Committee holds a hearing today on Russ Feingold's censure resolution (over the President's illegal warrantless wiretapping program). And according to The Nation's John Nichols, it'll have some star power:
  

  Making arguments about the extreme seriousness of the warrantless wiretapping issue -- and the need for a Congressional response -- will be noted constitutional lawyer Bruce Fein, who served in President Ronald Reagan's Department of Justice as Deputy Attorney General, and author and legal commentator John Dean, who served at Richard Nixon's White House counsel before breaking with the president to reveal the high crimes and misdemeanors of the Watergate era.
  [...]
  For Feingold's Senate colleagues – defensive Republicans and cautious Democrats alike --- the testimony of Fein and Dean may come as a shock to the system. These veterans of Republican administrations past offer little quarter when it comes to the presidential wrongdoing of the moment.
  
  Fein has argued, with regard to this president's penchant for illegal spying schemes, that: "On its face, if President Bush is totally unapologetic and says I continue to maintain that as a war-time President I can do anything I want – I don't need to consult any other branches' – that is an impeachable offense. It's more dangerous than Clinton's lying under oath because it jeopardizes our democratic dispensation and civil liberties for the ages. It would set a precedent that … would lie around like a loaded gun, able to be used indefinitely for any future occupant."

• Bad news: Massachusetts's highest court ruled yesterday that most gay couples from other states cannot get married there.
  
  Potentially good news: The Washington state Supreme Court is expected to rule soon on the constitutionality of a state law prohibiting same-sex marriage. Two lower courts have struck down the law. Unlike Massachusetts, Washington has no law prohibiting nonresidents from getting married there if their own state prohibits it. [WaPo]
  
  
• A study has found that prayers offered by strangers had no effect on the recovery of people who were undergoing heart surgery. And patients who knew they were being prayed for had a higher rate of post-operative complications like abnormal heart rhythms, perhaps because of the expectations the prayers created.
  
  The study cost $2.4 million, and most of the money came from the John Templeton Foundation, which supports research into spirituality. The government has spent more than $2.3 million on prayer research since 2000. [NYTimes] According to this archived NYTimes article (which is available fully if you're a Times Select subcriber), "Government financing of intercessory prayer research began in the mid-1990's and has continued under the Bush administration."