Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) has encouraged opponents of the Democrats' health care reform to show up at Capitol Hill today at "high noon" to "look at the whites of their eyes and tell them, 'don't you dare take away my health care.'" Nothing "scares members of Congress more than freedom-loving Americans," Bachmann says. But the Capitol Police don't seem too scared—they're already rounding up protesters by the handful. A Senate source emails:

We had five people arrested in Hart [Senate Office Building] this morning. Two were literally carried out by Capitol Police, their arms and legs restrained, all the while screaming at the top of their lungs, drawing crowds of staffers and senators to the balconies and office windows of the east wing of the building.

The source couldn't say whether or not the protesters were associated with Bachmann's event—and since ABC News is reporting that eight pro-health care reform protesters were arrested near Sen. Joe Lieberman's office this morning, it's quite possible that the freedom-loving Americans weren't involved. Our own Stephanie Mencimer is on the hill today to cover the protest, so we'll keep you posted.

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Today's must reads have discovered tweetdeck:

• AARP to endorse House health reform bill. This is a big deal. (AP)
• Igor Panarin's Doomsday Tea Party (MoJo)
• The roots of the coming crash (Reuters) 
• 23 CIA Agents Convicted in Rendition Case (MoJo)
  
• Andrew Cuomo, New York's Attorney General, files antitrust suit against Intel (NYT)
• Senate extends homebuyer tax credit, unemployment insurance (WaPo)
• What Keynesians Actually Believe (Paul Krugman)
• "Ideological fissures loom" in GOP (WaPo)
• City Paper reenacts WaPo fistfight (Washington City Paper)
• "V" is "Tea Party TV" (The New Republic)
• Anyone else think the President is kind of a jerk for telling everyone about his Malia's "C" grade? (Los Angeles Times)
  
• Is There a Tri-Partisan Path Forward for a Climate Bill? (MoJo)
• Three Wolf Moon Shirt: Who said feminists aren't effing hilarious? (Shakesville)
  

Get more stuff like this: Follow me on twitter! David Corn, Mother Jones' DC bureau chief, also tweets, as does MoJo blogger Kate Sheppard. So do my colleagues Daniel Schulman and Rachel Morris and our editors-in-chief, Clara Jeffery and Monika Bauerlein. Follow them, too! (The magazine's main account is @motherjones.)

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With the climate bill stalled in the Environment and Public Works Committee, a bipartisan group of senators on Wednesday announced that they're working on an alternative path to passing legislation.

Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said they are meeting with fellow senators and with administration officials to work out a proposal on climate and energy legislation that they will hand over to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The proposal will incorporate the components of legislation being crafted within the various committees of jurisdiction, along with work with senators outside those committees.

Kerry emphasized that this process won't replace the work being doneby the Environment and Public Works Committee, where chair Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) is currently trying to work around a Republican boycott of the markup. "We'll take the best of what Sen. Boxer produces and we will build on it," said Kerry. "Our effort is to try to reach out to broaden the base of support beyond the six committees of jurisdiction."

I don't think this announcement is as big a deal as some have suggested. It has always been the case that Reid would have the ultimate authority to combine and tweak a final bill with the goal of garnering 60 votes. And in the weeks since Kerry and Graham coauthored their editorial calling for climate action, it has become clear that there is a separate track of negotiations occurring outside of Boxer's committee, designed to appease senators who want a greater role for nuclear, coal, and domestic oil.

[Read more]

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In 2003, CIA agents snatched an Egyptian cleric in Milan, Italy, and flew him to Cairo, where he was, predictably, interrogated and tortured by Egyptian security forces. The case of Abu Omar would have been like many of the extrajudicial "extraordinary renditions" secretly carried out by the Bush administration except that an Italian prosecutor stepped in and indicted 26 Americans involved in the daylight abduction. Today, an Italian judge ruled against 23 of the defendants, sentencing them to as much as eight years in prison. None will serve any prison time since they were tried in absentia, but the ruling is a rebuke to the US government—and the nearly 15-year-old rendition policy, which remains in place.

The policy of transferring suspected terrorists to third countries, implemented during the Clinton administration, has led to at least 67 people being detained by American agents and then taken to one or more countries where they were tortured, imprisoned without trial, and/or killed. In his investigation into the Italian case in Mother Jones' special package on torture, Peter Bergen described how the Bush administration's insistence that it was not handing over suspectes to be abused was demonstrably—and knowingly—false. The Obama administration has made similar assurances. It has not ruled out the use of rendition (AKA "transfers") but has said that it will ensure that "any affected individuals are subjected to proper treatment." And presumably, if the CIA still is playing body snatcher, it's no longer doing it on Italian soil. 

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