Update: John Nichols: A Baldwin shift to Obama could send crucial message

So, why is Wisconsin's most progressive elected official and superdelegate still declared, alone among elected state officeholders, for Hillary Clinton?

Good question for Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Madison).

What does it take from Clinton for Baldwin to jump ship?

via MAL Contends

The House Judiciary Committee is proceeding in investigating the Bush administration's political prosecutions.

Press Release from April 17

(Washington, DC)- Today, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) and Committee Members Linda Sánchez (D-CA), Artur Davis (D-AL), and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) announced three critical actions in the Committee's investigation into allegations of selective or poltiically-motivated prosecution in the Justice Department.

The Members today invited Karl Rove to testify before the committee; urged the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility to investigate those allegations; and demanded that Attorney General Michael Mukasey provide additional documents on this subject.

Today's actions result from the Committee's majority staff report, also released today, which details the cases, interviews and documents they have reviewed since the Committee began its investigation last year.

Update: A reader left this comment worth posting: "Hillary is a political succubus. She will suck the energy and will from this party until we are broken and defeated. ... Even if one does not consider the supposedly inflammatory nature of the Wright sermons, she took an opportunity to promote healing or at least thought provoking discussion, and instead parroted a line that even the conservative nominee and the man he defeated has abandoned. ... I have no doubt Hillary would have left her church and the place that introduced her to Jesus because it is abundantly clear that there is no belief, no ethic, no moral, or important relationship she would not gladly sacrifice in order to further her own naked ambition."

Hillary Clinton has gone blind.

Update: John Nichols: A Baldwin shift to Obama could send crucial message

Voters in US Rep. Tammy Baldwin’s 2nd congressional district in Wisconsin on Feb. 19 delivered a resounding victory to Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton—65 to 34 percent.

As a superdelegate, Rep. Baldwin has pledged her support behind Hillary Clinton.

Now Clinton has engaged in unrelenting negative attacks on Obama using the Republican tactics of personal destruction, dubbed the “kitchen sink” strategy. [See Dear Hillary, We're Breaking Up for an instructive overview.]

In this despicable enterprise, Clinton is destined to fail, but not without first doing a lot of harm.

From Nichols at The Nation:

Three senior members of the House Judiciary Committee have called for the immediate opening of impeachment hearings for Vice President Richard Cheney.

Democrats Robert Wexler of Florida, Luis Gutierrez of Illinois and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin on Friday distributed a statement, "A Case for Hearings," that declares, "The issues at hand are too serious to ignore, including credible allegations of abuse of power that if proven may well constitute high crimes and misdemeanors under our constitution. The charges against Vice President Cheney relate to his deceptive actions leading up to the Iraq war, the revelation of the identity of a covert agent for political retaliation, and the illegal wiretapping of American citizens."

While I agree with Glenn Greenwald that the Democratic draft of the FISA Bill re-write is not all that bad, given that the last revision expires in February, it's worth slowing down and fighting for amendments which repair gaps in communications privacy which preceded the summer capitulation, notably with respect to location data collected by the cellular and other wireless providers.

Realtime location tracking was mandated by the "E-911" legislation of the late '90s, for use when YOU dialed 911 in an emergency, but as built out, the architecture knows your whereabouts any time the phone's powered to receive calls. More, a record is retained, and with the Statutes silent, some Courts have held you've waived any privacy in this data history by contracting with the carrier. The highest profile case of law enforcement access in Wisconsin was the election-morning 2004 tireslashing incident.

Representative Baldwin, has a key role, as she sits on both the Judiciary and Commerce Committees, both of which have jurisdiction, along with Intel. In prior conversations, she's expressed interest in legislating the location data, but I've yet to hear back on her interest in attaching the fix requiring the same level of warrant requirements as content interception to the pending Wiretap bill.

U.S. House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr., D-Mich. has requested from U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales documents and information concerning the prosecution of former democratic Gov. Don Siegelman in a letter released yesterday.

Siegelman is widely believed to be a victim of a Karl Rove-engineered prosecution.

The letter was signed by four members of the House Committee on the Judiciary, including Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI).

The letter slams and asks for information about a total of three prosecutions, including the infamous Georgia Thompson prosecution.

The letter reads in part:

- via MAL Contends
The US House Committee on the Judiciary last week held an oversight hearing featuring Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Wisconsin citizens got a chance to see the newest member of the committee in action, Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Madison).

Baldwin was aggressive in her questioning of Gonzales, while Gonzales was typically evasive, inane and insincere.

What stood out was the focus of Baldwin’s questions—US Atty Stephen Biskupic, and Gonzales’ spirited defense of Biskupic.

Baldwin opened by citing an April 16, 2007 editorial in the New York Times by Adam Cohen , and quoting passages about Biskupic’s specious and discredited prosecution of Georgia Thompson.