In a stunning rebuke, a six-member U.S. military jury Thursday ignored a Pentagon prosecutor’s plea for a 30 years-plus term and ordered Osama bin Laden’s driver to 66 months in prison.

With credit for time served given by the judge, that means Salim Hamdan, 40, of Yemen will be sent back to the general detainee population of Camp Delta by January, and eligible to return home.

[...]

In court, Hamdan’s longest-serving defense attorney, retired Navy Lt. Cmdr. Charlie Swift, clasped the more diminutive Yemeni in a bearhug and both men openly wept.

Afterwards, Swift vowed that lawyers would work to send Hamdan home to his wife and two daughters by January. Lawyers were prepared to go straight to federal court with a habeas corpus petition, he said, were the U.S. to seek to continue to hold the driver after the sentence were done.

”What happened — despite the system — is justice,” said Swift.

[...]

After the jury’s verdict, the judge turned to the convicted terrorist and said:

“I wish you godspeed, Mr. Hamdan. I hope the day comes when you return to your wife and your daughters and your country.”

”God willing,” the man in traditional Yemeni robe and head scarf replied in Arabic, interrupting.

The judge continued: “And I hope that you are able to be a father, and a provider, and a husband in the best sense of the word.”

Then the detainee said it again: “Inshallah.”

Allred replied in Arabic. “Inshallah.”

Touching. I’m sure the LGF set is already calling for the head of ‘Judge Dhimmi.’ But, despite the Spielberg-esque conclusion to the first U.S. military tribunal since WWII, happy endings aren’t necessarily in the script, as noted by the Washington Post:

It is unclear what will happen to Hamdan after he finishes serving his remaining time, because military prosecutors and military commissions officials have argued they have the ability to hold enemy combatants indefinitely, until the end of hostilities in the so-called war on terror.

Warren Richey of the CS Monitor quotes Linda Malone, director of the Human Rights and National Security Law Program at William and Mary Law School:

“The overriding problem is that the Bush administration has said that [Hamdan] will be held until the war on terror is over, regardless of what sentence he gets,” Professor Malone says. “It is almost Kafkaesque that regardless of what the sentence might be and whatever credit he is given [for his prior detention], they are saying they are going to hold him until the war ends – and everyone knows that is virtually limitless.“

I truly hope any future habeas corpus petition proves successful. But to call this outcome “justice”? With all due respect, Lt. Cmdr. Swift, that word doesn’t mean what it used to mean.

Updated: Next on the ‘worst of the worst’ list: Bin Laden’s personal stylist *cough*.

He would give more of a McGovern-style handout to familes [sic] to help them buy the high-priced gas. That would increase demand and reverse any other efforts to lower prices unless there is a corresponding increase in supply. …

[...]

Drilling alone is note [sic] the solution, but it should be an integral part of a comprehensive plan. McCain is proposing more than drilling; he also supports research on alternative energy. The reason he focuses now on drilling is because of the contrast with Obama and the Democrats. Obama ridicules the focus on drilling because it will only come to the market several years from now. But how long before we get all those new alternative forms of energy up to speed to power our nation’s energy needs?

And what do consumers do in the meantime? This is precisely why fuel conservation measures — such as keeping your car’s tires fully inflated — are so important. But common sense is so boring, isn’t it?

It’s good that Betsy thinks drilling should be only one part of a comprehensive plan, but she apparently hasn’t heard that Obama agrees.

I’m also scratching my head over Betsy’s declaration that “a McGovern-style handout to familes [families] to help them buy the high-priced gas [...] would increase demand and reverse any other efforts to lower prices unless there is a corresponding increase in supply.”

How is helping consumers pay for gas going to increase demand? What is the connection between money to buy gas, and demand?

The answer, of course, is none. Demand has nothing to do with gas prices. Demand for gasoline is what it is. It does not change that much. Neither does supply, unless it’s artificially manipulated.

The price of gas at the pump works differently from most other services and commodities, precisely because it is not primarily driven by supply and demand. It’s driven by how much of the supply is made available at any given time by the people or institutions that control it at the source, and it’s driven by the “just-in-time” production policy of most oil companies; i.e., having only enough supply on hand for immediate production needs rather than building up reserves. Doing it that way means that both the oil gatekeepers and the oil companies in essence can charge whatever they want to charge. They’ve got us over a barrel, literally.

There is no way that offshore oil drilling is going to change any of this in the short-term. And although drilling may increase the supply in 10 or 20 or 30 years, in a larger sense that’s not the solution, either. Oil is an addiction, because we (meaning Americans) are addicted to a lifestyle that is fueled with oil.

I know that not everyone defines the problem this way. But for those — like me — who do, Americans (not to mention the world) would be far better served by making serious efforts to conceptualize, design, and fund alternative sources of energy that are not fossil fuel-based. Obviously, that’s a long-term solution; it’s not going to start paying dividends for quite a while.

That doesn’t mean we have no power to affect how much we pay for gas though. There are things we can do that will help significantly right now, and in the next few years. One of them, as I said above, is keeping your car tires inflated, just as Obama suggested. For all the pointless, time-wasting fun McCain supporters have been having belittling Obama and handing out free tire gauges, they are the real fools, because he is right.

Here are a few other ways to save fuel and/or increase fuel efficiency, courtesy of Newshoggers’ Fester:

• Passing and strictly enforcing legislation mandating a 55-mile-an-hour speed limit nationwide.
• Keeping the trunk and back seat areas of your car free of luggage and other heavy objects. (Fester doesn’t say this, but I read it recently at another blog.)
• Cooling the war rhetoric with regard to Iran and changing the perception that war is imminent. (Fester adds that to a large extent this has happened.)
• Changing the funding formulas for mass versus individual transportation so that incentives for using public transportation and private automobiles are equalized. (Right now they favor automobile use.)

Salim Hamdan was found guilty of providing material support for terrorism at a Guantanamo military commission today, but acquitted of the more serious charge of conspiracy to commit terrorist attacks and murder American soldiers. So let me get this straight: After seven years and numerous court challenges including two Supreme Court rulings, the Bush administration finally stumbled its way to its first conviction in a military commission for a crime that is routinely handled in federal courts. Is this is the best they can do?

Hamdan was Osama bin Laden’s driver, not Osama bin Laden. He never denied that he was bin Laden’s driver. It would have been an open and shut case of material support for terrorism in federal court. Hamdan could have been securely locked away years ago, but the Bush administration chose to pursue the risky path of an untested military commissions system.

Now, come on. I was under the impression Hamdan was a bloodthirsty terrorist (the worst of the worst!!1one) hell-bent on destroying the pillars of Western civilization. His conviction means the world is now a safer place, right?

The worst aspect of this whole episode is that the Bush administration has completely devalued the concept of a war criminal. War crimes should be reserved for the most serious offenses and war crimes trials are extraordinary. Charles Taylor is a war criminal. Radovan Karazdic is a war criminal. Salim Hamdan is a chauffer. He is clearly guilty of the crime of material support for terrorism. But now he has been elevated to the status of warrior, legitimizing al Qaeda terrorists’ belief that they are waging a holy war against the United States and our allies.

Well. I’m comfortable declaring this little long term experiment in post-9/11 homeland insecurity an unqualified success. Heck of a motherfucking job.

Related: Statement on the Hamdan decision from the Center for Constitutional Rights:

In response to the hand-picked military jury’s decision in the Military Commission against Salim Ahmed Hamdan, Shayana Kadidal, Senior Managing Attorney of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) Guantánamo Global Justice Initiative, issued the following statement:

“Hamdan’s trial violated two of the most fundamental criminal justice principles accepted by all developed nations: the prohibition on the use of coerced evidence and the prohibition on retroactive criminal laws.

The trial will not create finality – the decision to keep these cases out of the ordinary criminal courts will produce years of appeals over novel legal issues raised by the untested military commissions system. Even after those appeals are finished, the process will never be seen as legitimate by the world. This case was the first trial run of the commissions system, and the decision proves nothing except that the system itself should be scrapped. Terrorism-related crimes should be tried in the time-tested domestic criminal justice system, a system whose rules have been designed over the centuries with one goal: to seek out the truth.”

CCR has led the legal battle over Guantanamo for the last six years – sending the first ever habeas attorney to the base and sending the first attorney to meet with a former CIA “ghost detainee” there. CCR has been responsible for organizing and coordinating more than 500 pro bono lawyers across the country in order to represent the men at Guantanamo, ensuring that nearly all have the option of legal representation. CCR represented the detainees with co-counsel in the most recent argument before the Supreme Court. For more information or to read the amicus brief filed by CCR in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, click here.

and the ACLU:

After a trial filled with overwhelming constitutional and procedural flaws, a jury of military officers today found Salim Hamdan guilty of providing material support for terrorism. The American Civil Liberties Union has been at Guantánamo Bay observing the Hamdan proceedings, which lacked the fundamental legal safeguards found in traditional U.S. courts or military courts governed by the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

The following can be attributed to ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero:

“Any verdict resulting from such a flawed system is a betrayal of American values. The rules for the Guantánamo military commissions are so flawed that justice could never be served. From start to finish, this has been a monumental debacle of American justice. The judgment against Hamdan undoubtedly will be challenged in legitimate courts, but there is no appeal from the judgment of future generations. This system was devised to permit the prosecution of alleged wrongdoing by detainees, while continuing to cover up the wrongdoing by government interrogators. Trials that are shrouded in secrecy and tainted by coercion are the very antithesis of American justice.”

The following can be attributed to ACLU National Security Project staff attorney Ben Wizner, who observed the trial:

“In the strange world of Guantánamo justice, even if Hamdan had been acquitted on all charges, he would have been detained indefinitely. Nowhere else in the U.S. justice system can someone be held for life regardless of whether he is convicted or acquitted of a crime. Today’s outcome represents nothing more than an illusion of justice. It is time to shut down these commissions and put an end to this shameful chapter in American history.”

As part of its John Adams Project, a partnership with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the ACLU is sponsoring expert civilian counsel to assist the under-resourced military defense counsel of some Guantánamo detainees.

More information on the John Adams Project is available online at: www.aclu.org/johnadams

(both statements h/t FDL).

Also see this trip down memory lane from Think Progress: “[t]oday marks seven years since the day President Bush received a President’s Daily Brief entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” (See the memo here.)”

We’re trying to find out a bit more about the Bikini Beauty Pageant at the Buffalo Chip, where John McCain showed up and offered up wife Cindy as a contestant. ESPN says the event is topless and “occasionally bottomless”. Actually their description is worth quoting in full …

Buffalo Chip has a reputation for that sort of thing. It holds a Miss Buffalo Chip contest every night, which is essentially a topless beauty pageant. And occasionally bottomless, too. During a drenching rain Wednesday night, the contest broke up into smaller groups and one woman wound up dancing naked on a bar top. Her boyfriend/husband saw her and angrily dragged her away as she struggled to put her pants back on and muttered something about how, “It’s only this one week a year.”

Here is the video:

“After the searing experience of being in the Nixon White House, Cheney developed a view that the failure of Watergate was not the break-in, or even the cover-up, but the way the president had, in essence, been over-briefed. There were certain things a president shouldn’t know – things that could be illegal, disruptive to key foreign relationships, or humiliating to the executive.

“They key was a signaling system, where the president made his wishes broadly known to a sufficiently powerful deputy who could take it from there. If an investigation ensued, or a foreign leader cried foul, the president could shrug. This was never something he’d authorized. The whole point of Cheney’s model is to make a president less accountable for his action. Cheney’s view is that accountability – a bedrock feature of representative democracy – is not, in every case, a virtue.”

Just remember, kids: impeachment is off the table.

Update: Suskind on NBC News:

Homeowners with good credit are falling behind on their payments in growing numbers, even as the problems with mortgages made to people with weak, or subprime, credit are showing their first, tentative signs of leveling off after two years of spiraling defaults.

The percentage of mortgages in arrears in the category of loans one rung above subprime, so-called alternative-A mortgages, quadrupled to 12 percent in April from a year earlier. Delinquencies among prime loans, which account for most of the $12 trillion market, doubled to 2.7 percent in that time.

The mortgage troubles have been exacerbated by an economy that is still struggling. Reports last week showed another drop in home prices, slower-than-expected economic growth and a huge loss at General Motors. On Friday, the Labor Department reported that the unemployment rate in July climbed to a four-year high.

While it is difficult to draw precise parallels among various segments of the mortgage market, the arc of the crisis in subprime loans suggests that the problems in the broader market may not peak for another year or two, analysts said.

Defaults are likely to accelerate because many homeowners’ monthly payments are rising rapidly. The higher bills come as home prices continue to decline and banks tighten their lending standards, making it harder for people to refinance loans or sell their homes. Of particular concern are “alt-A” loans, many of which were made to people with good credit scores without proof of their income or assets.

“Subprime was the tip of the iceberg,” said Thomas H. Atteberry, president of First Pacific Advisors, a investment firm in Los Angeles that trades mortgage securities. “Prime will be far bigger in its impact.”

I can see the crisis in my own area, northern New Jersey. The signs are all over the place, literally. Of course, people sold homes before this recession began, and I did see For Sale Signs now and then in front of houses, but not every single day and almost everywhere I went. In my town and the towns nearby, I often drive down blocks where three or four houses are for sale, in one single block. It’s not unusual at all anymore.

Interestingly, just as I was about to wrap up this post, I read the news that Alexander Solzhenitsyn died today, at the age of 89. I expect that we will soon be treated to reams of laudatory praise for this towering human rights hero (which he was) coming from the mouths of people who are responsible for exactly the same horrors Solzhenitsyn experienced.

Well, guess what? It’s started.

… If you take this logic to its conclusion, there’s literally no non-racist way to accuse a member of a minority group of having an outsized ego. Any synonym you can conjure — elitist, arrogant, “megalomaniac narcissist” (to quote Hitchens) — can all happily be dismissed as “code,” regardless of whether the subject might in fact (a) display his very own presidential seal, (b) be known to describe rural voters in terms that call to mind Cletus the slackjawed yokel on “The Simpsons,” and (c) oh, by the way, lead his very own cult with himself as godhead.

The fact that none of those charges are true kind of punches a hole in Allahpundit’s argument, but why quibble over details?

I’m becoming particularly irritated at this right-wing narrative of Obama as a sinister cult-like figure who encourages his “devoted followers” to worship and adore him and fall at his feet. 

George Will makes a point I made myself last week, that the irony of all these bad-faith charges of racism is that most of the GOP’s knocks on Obama’s ego are straight out of the playbook they used against “haughty, French-looking Democrat” John Kerry. Granted, there was no “Moses” ad for Waffles, but that’s because most people hated him; Obama is adored to an absurdly iconic extent, especially vis-a-vis his actual accomplishments (in Lindsey Graham’s words, “fame without portfolio”), which is why he gets goofed on as leading people to the Promised Land whereas Kerry got the windsurfer treatment. 

There are two points about this idiocy, and it’s time to put them as bluntly as possible: 

1. This accusation is based on jealousy. These guys — everyone, from bloggers to McCain himself — who put out this absurdity are green with envy. McCain and his supporters plain and simple cannot stand it that Barack Obama is so much more popular than their candidate. McCain wants to be a rock star, too. McCain would do anything to be able to wear flowing robes and command the masses. He would die to attract the crowds Obama does. He would love it. But he can’t. And like your common garden-variety schoolyard bully, he must take down the guy that everyone loves and admires.
2. “Obama is adored to an absurdly iconic extent”? Well, actually, there is nothing absurd or iconic about it. Try asking yourself WHY people are so enthralled by Obama. Rather than concluding that he is trying to palm himself off as a divinity or a messiah, could it be that what he’s communicating is simple kindness? A desire to listen to people? Could it be that he makes people feel understood? That he gets how stressed and alone and terrified so many Americans feel these days because they can’t pay their bills, are losing their jobs, don’t have family or friends to help them, feel like the people who are supposed to care about them are more concerned about building permanent bases in Iraq than building schools in the United States? As one of those Americans going through hard times, John McCain is the very, very, very LAST person I would ever flock to hear. He’s mean, he’s unkind, he’s petty, he’s nasty, he makes fun of people and makes cruel jokes about them, plus he’s dumber than a box of rocks. He blatantly lies (his civil rights record? hello?) makes stupid factual errors all the time, and repeats the same talking points that everyone has heard for eight years and that are why Bush’s approval rating is at what? 19 percent? I mean, if you compare the way McCain presents himself in public and the way Obama presents himself in public, it’s not hard to understand why Obama attracts the love and McCain doesn’t.

Instead of demonizing Obama for what he’s doing right, try looking at what McCain is doing wrong. And stop whining and shut up.
 

Eight years ago today, George W. Bush uttered the now broken promise that has come to define his failed presidency. Accepting his party’s nomination, Governor Bush promised to restore “honor and dignity” to the White House. But as events continue to show, a more accurate - and ironic - mantra for the lawless Bush White House would be “no controlling legal authority.”

At the time it was delivered, Bush’s acceptance speech at the 2000 Republican National Convention in Philadelphia was an arrogant, deceitful broadside against the Clinton/Gore years. But the very words Bush used to tar Al Gore with the blight of the Lewinsky scandal may now constitute the epitaph for the Bush presidency:

“So when I put my hand on the Bible, I will swear to not only uphold the laws of our land, I will swear to uphold the honor and dignity of the office to which I have been elected, so help me God.”

That hateful address (video excerpts here), of course, was filled with exactly the kind of lies and taunts - the smallness - that came to define George W. Bush.

Read the rest here.

Liss has more instructions for Jake Tapper on “how dog whistles work” (hope you’re taking notes, Taps).

Iraqi parliamentarians failed on Sunday to pass a law on provincial elections, putting the date of important polls in doubt and leaving unresolved a political standoff that has stoked ethnic tensions.

After struggling for hours to reach a quorum, lawmakers indefinitely postponed a special session they had called to pass the law, which has come unstuck over plans for the disputed northern city of Kirkuk and angered minority Kurds.

The delay may mean the elections, originally planned for October 1, could be put off until next year. Electoral officials have said they need months to plan once the law is passed.

So much for all those defiant assertions about how us dirty fucking hippies simply must admit that teh surge is TOO working!

Related: More from Elizabeth Ferris of The Brookings Institution on Kirkuk, “the next ‘powder keg’ in Iraq” (PDF).

Senator Barack Obama is a man of few rhetorical stumbles, but this week a few of his words opened a racial door his campaign would prefer not to step through. When Senator John McCain’s camp replied by accusing him of playing the race card from the bottom of the deck, the Obama campaign seemed at least momentarily off balance.

The instinctive urge to punch back was tempered by the fact that race is a fire that could singe both candidates. So on Friday the Obama campaign, a carefully controlled lot on the best of days, reacted most cautiously as it sought to tamp down any sense that it was at war with Mr. McCain over who was the first to inject race into the contest. Mr. Obama made no mention of the issue, except for a brief reference in an interview with a local newspaper in Florida.[...]

David Plouffe, the campaign manager, talked briefly, and not too eagerly, about it. And the campaign’s chief strategist, David Axelrod, blamed the Republicans for misconstruing Mr. Obama’s words as an attack, and quickly moved on.

The muted response should not be taken, even campaign insiders acknowledged, to reflect high-mindedness; the Obama campaign can wield a rhetorical gutting knife. There simply was no percentage for the first black major-party presidential candidate in the nation’s history to draw too much attention to his race, much less get into a shooting war with the Republicans over the combustible issue.

[...]

“He brought up the issue of race; I responded to it,” Mr. McCain told reporters in Panama City, Fla. “I don’t want that issue to be part of this campaign. I’m ready to move on. And I think we should move on.”

For Mr. Obama, the risks of fighting back are that anything that calls attention to the racial dynamics of the contest would potentially polarize voters and stir unease about his candidacy, particularly among white voters in swing states. He is, after all, a candidate who has sought to transcend his own racial heritage in appealing to the broad electorate.

“Ideally, you want to punch back right to the solar plexus,” said Chris Lehane, a Democratic strategist. “But when race gets injected, given the 200-year history of this country, it is really fraught with peril.”

Really? Wow, it’s a good thing David Axelrod passed that information on to his boss — who knows how much worse trouble he could have gotten into if he had continued to go around forgetting that there’s been some racist goings-on over the past 200 close to 400 years that have gone by since white Europeans first came to this continent!

And of course Mr. Powell would not even dream of calling Sen. McCain on that reptilian “He brought up the issue of race, I responded to it.” After all, it’s entirely unremarkable for white candidate McCain to use coded references to Obama’s racial origins, but it’s shocking and very unseemly for black candidate Obama to reveal that he recognized and understood the dog whistle for what it was.

Bob Herbert is scathing in his column today, titled “Running While Black”:

Gee, I wonder why, if you have a black man running for high public office — say, Barack Obama or Harold Ford — the opposition feels compelled to run low-life political ads featuring tacky, sexually provocative white women who have no connection whatsoever to the black male candidates.

Spare me any more drivel about the high-mindedness of John McCain. You knew something was up back in March when, in his first ad of the general campaign, Mr. McCain had himself touted as “the American president Americans have been waiting for.”

There was nothing subtle about that attempt to position Senator Obama as the Other, a candidate who might technically be American but who remained in some sense foreign, not sufficiently patriotic and certainly not one of us — the “us” being the genuine red-white-and-blue Americans who the ad was aimed at.

[...]

The racial fantasy factor in this presidential campaign is out of control. It was at work in that New Yorker cover that caused such a stir. (Mr. Obama in Muslim garb with the American flag burning in the fireplace.) It’s driving the idea that Barack Obama is somehow presumptuous, too arrogant, too big for his britches — a man who obviously does not know his place.

Mr. Obama has to endure these grotesque insults with a smile and heroic levels of equanimity. The reason he has to do this — the sole reason — is that he is black.

And in case there’s any doubt of that, here is Victor Davis Hanson to underscore the point:

… The voter is starting to hear serially from Obama about race; they were promised a racially transcendent candidate, but so far Obama seems obsessed with identity, either accusing others of racism, or using heritage himself for political advantage. This is a tragic blunder.

[...]

… Right now Obama does not need to solidify his 90% African-American base or the Moveon.org white liberal adherents; but instead he must remember why he lost all those primaries to Hillary and to what degree his campaign since then has addressed those concerns that lost him those electorates. When a West Virginian hears that Obama is accusing others of racism, or hears him promise that racial reparations will now be a matter of government deeds not words, or a rapper brags he is a favorite of Obama and then slurs Clinton, McCain, Bush in thinly disguised racist terms, it starts to create an image of someone who is not bringing people together, but precisely the opposite.

See, being a “racially transcendent” African-American candidate  means you accept thinly disguised racist terms coming from your white political opponent while never referring to those thinly disguised racist terms in ways that might evoke charges of thinly disguised racism on your part. Being the “racially transcendent” candidate means that Barack Obama transcends race — not, for heaven’s sake, that John McCain, or any other white American, does.

I actually think with this one McCain might have gone too far — although it’s only being shown on the Internet. Still, it’s so extreme, it just makes him look like a pathetic schoolyard bully, obsessed with anger, jealousy, and hatred. It’s beyond belief, truly.

Obama’s campaign has already put out a response:

 

Barack Obama’s campaign responded sharply to a new McCain webad depicting Obama as a parody of a biblical prophet.

“It’s downright sad that on a day when we learned that 51,000 Americans lost their jobs, a candidate for the presidency is spending all of his time and the powerful platform he has on these sorts of juvenile antics,” said spokesman Hari Sevugan. “Senator McCain can keep telling everyone how ‘proud’ he is of these political stunts which even his Republican friends and advisors have called ‘childish’, but Barack Obama will continue talking about his plan to jumpstart our economy by giving working families $1,000 of immediate relief.”

The ad, released only on the Internet, is the latest in a series mocking the Democratic nominee.

“It should be known that in 2008 the world shall be blessed,” begins the ad’s deep-voiced narrator. Later, Obama emerges Godlike from the clouds.

The ad quotes Obama in both serious riffs telling a crowd “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for”; and in a sarcastic one, joking to an audience, “You will experience an epiphany and you will say to yourself, ‘I have to vote for Barack.’”

The ad then shows Obama expressing his hope that America will look back at the 2008 election as the beginning of the end of global warming. The ad then cuts to an image a Charlton Heston, as Moses, parting the Red Sea, before concluding:

“Barack Obama may be The One, but is he ready to lead?”

 

That question is increasingly likely to boomerang back on McCain, because how ready is he to lead, or capable of leading the world’s sole superpower if he runs his campaign at this level of immaturity. He looks like a fool to me.

Last Friday, police in Des Moines, Iowa arrested four people who attempted to make a citizens’ arrest of former top White House aide Karl Rove, who was in town to speak at a GOP fundraiser. A retired minister and three members of the Des Moines Catholic Workers community were cited for trespassing. However, according to a press release, the judge presiding over the case praised their efforts:

[Mona] Shaw was the first called before Polk County Fifth Judicial District Associate Judge William Price.

After entering her plea, the judge asked Shaw, “Mamn, what were you doing at the Wakonda Country Club?”

“I was attempting to make a citizen’s arrest of Karl Rove, your honor,” Shaw answered.

“Well,” the judge looked up and said, “it’s about time.”