As I’ve been reporting here, the Justice Department has been relying heavily on the privilege to try to dismiss cases that could reveal embarrassing information about government actions — much to the dismay of supporters of civil liberties and open government, many of whom also strongly supported Obama.

But refusing to support the State Secrets Protection Act could also prove embarrassing, observes Sargent. This is because when the bill was first introduced last year, its co-sponsors included then-Sens. Joe Biden (D-Del.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), now both senior members of the Obama administration.

As I’ve written before, the bill — which would limit the executive’s ability to use the evidentiary privilege to dismiss outright legal challenges to government conduct — was reintroduced this year by Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Arlen Spector (R-Pa.), Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) and Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), as well as Reps. Jerold Nadler (D-N.Y.), John Conyers (D-Mich.) and others in the House.  The bill was reintroduced in February, just as the Obama administration stepped into the Bush administration’s shoes — and began arguing that “state secrets privilege” required the dismissal of several sensitive cases alleging torture, warrantless wiretapping and other illegal activity by the Bush administration.

Last month, a Biden spokesperson said the vice president-elect intended to remain in the Senate long after President-elect Barack Obama stepped down from his own seat in Illinois in case he was needed for a “critical vote.”

Now that there seems to be little chance that an economic stimulus package will be ready for a vote before Inauguration Day, it doesn’t look like Biden will be urgently needed in the upper chamber before he takes his new office.

Update: MSNBC reports the resignation is effective Thursday. The headline has been updated to reflect this. Apologies for the omission.

The release is expected later today at 4:30 p.m. EST. Taking at face value the transition team’s assertion that the U.S. attorney’s office requested the release be delayed so as not to interfere with the ongoing investigation, we can forgive the transition for waiting until today to unveil the report, which it says has been ready for a week.

However, the report will come out late in the afternoon before Christmas eve — which essentially amounts to a two-day holiday, when news consumption tends to drop dramatically. Despite all accounts suggesting there is nothing juicy in the report, the timing gives the appearance that there is something to hide.

It would have been nice to see the report first thing this morning, so it could be examined and digested today, before the holiday. Following eight years of the Bush administration, in which secrecy and late-Friday/holiday information dumps were the M.O., one very easy way for President-elect Barack Obama to signal the end of those bad old days would be to release information, good or bad, without regard to the ebb and flow of the news cycle.

Cheney last week even admitted he personally approved waterboarding — i.e., torture — setting the stage for President Bush to issue a pardon, insisting that in the process he’d saved American lives.

Cheney must know that claim rings hollow: even the recent bipartisan Senate Armed Services Committee Report found just the opposite, concluding that the administration’s interrogation techniques “damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority.”

Still, it was a convenient public excuse offered up to give Bush cover for issuing a pardon, not only to Cheney but to everyone involved in approving torture and other illegal interrogation methods.

Some Democrats, at least, are trying to prevent that.

On November 20, Rep. Jerrold Nadler introduced H.R. 1531 to urge Bush not to pardon himself or his co-conspirators in war crimes. The bill now has 9 co-sponsors.

Democrats.com is collecting signatures to support the bill, and circulating a petition to support another bill, sponsored by Rep. Jerrold Nadler, Sen. Carl Levin, and VP-elect Joe Biden – urging Eric Holder, as the future Attorney General, to open an investigation.

While seated at a table with the past and future vice presidents, Obama gave a statement to reporters about the meeting. As the press were being herded out of the room, a reporter called out a question asking if Obama was aware of Blagojevich’s efforts to “sell” Obama’s recently-vacated Senate seat, which Obama agreed to answer.

“I had no contact with the governor or his office, and so we were not — I was not aware of what was happening, and as I said it is a sad day for Illinois. Beyond that I don’t think it’s appropriate to comment.”

I couldn’t help but notice that Obama slipped and started to say “we were not aware,” before correcting himself and saying he was not aware of what was happening. This might lend some credibility to a local news report out of Chicago that Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s chief of staff, blew the whistle on Blagojevich’s activities. If this was the case, Emanuel would have had contact with the governor or his office on the matter.

Here is part of Obama’s statement on the meeting with Gore, the pool report:

“The purpose of this meeting today was to listen and learn from Vice President Al Gore on the extraordinary work that he has done around the issue of climate change. All three of us are in agreement that the time for delay is over. The time for denial is over. We all believe what the scientists have been telling us for years now, that this is a matter of urgency and national security, and it has to be dealt with in a serious way. That is what I intend my administration to do.”

Obama also reaffirmed his commitment to use the current economic crisis as an opportunity to create green jobs, increase energy efficiency and reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil.

Update: TPM reports that a source close to Emanuel says the tip-off story is false.

At a minimum, if the president wants to get someone on the phone who’ll criticize Summers/Geithner from the left they’ll know where to call.

Sen. Joe Biden (WDCpix)

Increasingly incensed at being shunted to the media sidelines while his Republican counterpart’s every utterance makes global news, Sen. Joe Biden, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, has clearly decided to fight fire with fire.

“The current world economic crisis has come about because people keep dropping quarters that roll away and fall over the edge of the earth,” Biden claimed today, in a speech before an group of astrophysicists. In the same address, the veteran Delaware senator called for a blue-ribbon federal commission to study why the same thermos that keeps cold liquids cold also keeps hot liquids hot.

Casting aside his usual carefully reasoned arguments on geopolitics, the national deficit and other key election issues, Biden — whose new plan for boosting a faltering economy is to transfer all the money in the nation’s millions of Monopoly sets to the federal Treasury -– seems instead to be aiming squarely at the lowest common intellectual denominator.

“He may never become a media darling like Gov. Palin,” admits one campaign insider, “but hey, Joe offered to appear on “Saturday Night Live” a month ago and they said he wasn’t interesting enough. He’s got to start playing catch-up.”

“Playing catch-up” would seem to include Biden’s assertion that Palin “pals around” with known witches; his call for an extension of the “Star Wars” space-weapon program to attack highway speeders, and a new plan to catch Osama bin Laden by calling his cell phone, pretending to be a pizza deliveryman and asking for directions.

“I think that threw a scare into the Palin camp,” one Biden aide confided. “It also threw a scare into the Obama camp,” he admitted, “but we can’t let them win the dimwit sweepstakes by default. From now until Nov. 4, Joe’s going to be fighting brainlessness with brainlessness.”

This may explain why Biden today charged that Palin is actually smarter than he is — stating that he doesn’t know the difference between a moose, an elk, a caribou and a musk ox , even if he can’t see France from the living room window of his Delaware home.

Bruce McCall, a humorist, is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. He is the author of “All Meat Looks Like South America: The World of Bruce McCall” and “Zany Afternoons.”

Instead, the campaign tapped Portman to push young people who already support Obama to press their parents to do the same. It’s part of a larger effort by the Obama campaign, “The Talk,” that aims to turn its sizable edge among young voters into a persuasion machine.

“Are you sure if your parents are voting for Obama?” asks the campaign pitch. “If not, you may be the only person who can convince them.” There’s a website with videos, policy information and tips especially for parental outreach:

Think about their perspective. If they are Republican, or are concerned about Barack’s policies, think about where they are coming from and what makes them think the way that they do.

Don’t wait until the last minute — it might take a few conversations for you to convince them, so start as early as possible.

Portman recorded her video in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she stumped for Obama and had “the talk” with her grandmother. Eat your heart out, Sarah Silverman:

PRODUCTION NOTES: This short, simple video turns on Portman’s personal appeal — with the kind of tight close-ups you don’t see in the campaign’s Biden YouTube collection. Drawing in young people with star power, the video swiftly redirects them to “The Talk” website.

Sixty percent of likely voters said Sen. Barack Obama’s connection to former Weatherman William Ayers is “not a legitimate campaign issue,” compared with 37 percent who believe it is. The survey also asked about Obama’s ties to the Assn. of Community Organizers for Reform Now, or ACORN — another McCain campaign target — and found 49 percent do not think it is a legitimate issue, as opposed to 40 percent who say it is, with 11 percent “unready to express an opinion.”

The poll contains another shot of bad news for the McCain campaign. A majority of respondents, 52 percent, said Sen. John McCain’s pick of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate makes them “less confident” in McCain’s judgment, to 38 percent who said the choice makes them more confident in McCain’s decision-making.

In contrast, 56 percent said Obama’s choice of running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, made them more confident in the Democratic presidential nominee’s judgment, to 31 percent who said it made them less confident.

Independent voters mirrored the overall results on the question of how the Palin pick influences their confidence in McCain’s judgment, with 51 percent expressing less confidence over the Palin pick, versus 39 percent who said they were more confident. While Palin, not surprisingly, is far more popular among Republicans, with 70 percent saying the choice makes them more confident in McCain’s decision-making, the poll found some troubling results for the McCain campaign among several key demographics. From the survey press release:

Views of the Palin selection, naturally, are highly partisan. But majorities of moderates (62 percent), young adults (59 percent) and women (56 percent) all say it makes them less confident in McCain’s judgment. (More women than men say so.) So do near majorities, 48 percent, of white women and married women alike.

With the race shaping up into a battle for undecided and moderate voters, the implication that a large majority of moderates believe Palin is an example of poor judgment on McCain’s part may not bode well for the GOP presidential nominee — particularly if the voters view McCain’s age, and therefore the possibility of a Palin presidency, as a problem.

On Wednesday, at 1:35pm, DeLong noted the contrast between Sen. John McCain shrinking from mentioning Ayers in the debate — even as his campaign “spent several days making an issue of Obama’s ties to the former Weatherman.” So DeLong issued a basic challenge: “If McCain believes Ayers is a worthy campaign issue, he should probably be willing to raise it to Obama’s face.”

By Wednesday night, of course, Sen. Barack Obama shared the same thought. “We’ve been seeing some pretty over-the-top attacks coming out of the McCain campaign over the last several days,” Obama told ABC, stressing that during the debate, McCain “wasn’t willing to say it to my face.”

By Thursday afternoon, this face-off dare was the Obama campaign’s message priority.

“[McCain] could not bring himself to look Barack Obama in the eye and say the same things to him,” said Sen. Joe Biden. “In my neighborhood, when you’ve got something to say to a guy, you look him in the eye and you say it to him,” he added. Last night, an article about that attack topped all the political stories online, according to Memorandum.

This pushback is adept because it avoids any defensiveness. Instead, it is emphasizing that there is something wrong with McCain’s behavior. By leaning into the potential debate attack, the Obama camp is trying to steal any thunder from a last-ditch offensive. If McCain doesn’t raise it next week, Democrats can argue that he copped out — that even McCain doesn’t think Ayers is a big deal.

If McCain does play the Ayers card at the final debate, the Obama camp can argue that McCain only acted under pressure — erratically switching his strategy under pressure from Obama.