Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean is reportedly planning to step down from his post in January.

Howard Dean is reportedly preparing to step down as chairman of the Democratic National Committee, a move one party official said comes as no surprise.

The Huffington Post reports that while there was some speculation Dean’s successful work with Barack Obama’s campaign might lead him to stick around for a second term, he plans to leave his post in January.

DNC Secretary Alice Germond told FOXNews.com that Dean was already expected to limit himself to one term, though he hasn’t made any formal announcements.

“Whoever is chair has historically done it for one term,” she said. “I think there was already an assumption that (Dean would) be moving on to something.”

It’s uncertain where Dean would go from the DNC, where he reigned over two consecutive elections in which Democrats picked up double-digit gains in Congress.

Click here to read the story on Dean in The Huffington Post.

The president-elect’s advisers quietly craft a proposal to ship dozens, if not hundreds, of imprisoned terrorism suspects to the United States to face criminal trials

President-elect Barack Obama’s advisers are quietly crafting a proposal to ship dozens, if not hundreds, of imprisoned terrorism suspects to the United States to face criminal trials, a plan that would make good on his promise to close the Guantanamo Bay prison but could require creation of a controversial new system of justice.

During his campaign, Obama described Guantanamo as a “sad chapter in American history” and has said generally that the U.S. legal system is equipped to handle the detainees. But he has offered few details on what he planned to do once the facility is closed.

Under plans being put together in Obama’s camp, some detainees would be released and many others would be prosecuted in U.S. criminal courts.

A third group of detainees — the ones whose cases are most entangled in highly classified information — might have to go before a new court designed especially to handle sensitive national security cases, according to advisers and Democrats involved in the talks. Advisers participating directly in the planning spoke on condition of anonymity because the plans are not final.

The move would be a sharp deviation from the Bush administration, which established military tribunals to prosecute detainees at the Navy base in Cuba and strongly opposes bringing prisoners to the United States. Obama’s Republican challenger, John McCain, had also pledged to close Guantanamo. But McCain opposed criminal trials, saying the Bush administration’s tribunals should continue on U.S. soil.

The plan being developed by Obama’s team has been championed by legal scholars from both political parties. But it is almost certain to face opposition from Republicans who oppose bringing terrorism suspects to the U.S. and from Democrats who oppose creating a new court system with fewer rights for detainees.

It drew criticism from some detainee lawyers shortly after it surfaced Monday.

“I think that creating a new alternative court system in response to the abject failure of Guantanamo would be a profound mistake,” said Jonathan Hafetz, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney who represents detainees. “We do not need a new court system. The last eight years are a testament to the problems of trying to create new systems.”

Laurence Tribe, a Harvard law professor and Obama legal adviser, said discussions about plans for Guantanamo had been “theoretical” before the election but would quickly become very focused because closing the prison is a top priority. Bringing the detainees to the United States will be controversial, he said, but could be accomplished.

“I think the answer is going to be, they can be as securely guarded on U.S. soil as anywhere else,” Tribe said. “We can’t put people in a dungeon forever without processing whether they deserve to be there.”

The tougher challenge will be allaying fears by Democrats who believe the Bush administration’s military commissions were a farce and dislike the idea of giving detainees anything less than the full constitutional rights normally enjoyed by everyone on U.S. soil.

“There would be concern about establishing a completely new system,” said Rep. Adam Schiff of California, a member of the House Judiciary Committee and former federal prosecutor who is aware of the discussions in the Obama camp. “And in the sense that establishing a regimen of detention that includes American citizens and foreign nationals that takes place on U.S. soil and departs from the criminal justice system — trying to establish that would be very difficult.”

Obama has said the civilian and military court-martial systems provide “a framework for dealing with the terrorists,” and Tribe said the administration would look to those venues before creating a new legal system. But discussions of what a new system would look like have already started.

“It would have to be some sort of hybrid that involves military commissions that actually administer justice rather than just serve as kangaroo courts,” Tribe said. “It will have to both be and appear to be fundamentally fair in light of the circumstances. I think people are going to give an Obama administration the benefit of the doubt in that regard.”

Though a hybrid court may be unpopular, other advisers and Democrats involved in the Guantanamo Bay discussions say Obama has few other options.

Prosecuting all detainees in federal courts raises a host of problems. Evidence gathered through military interrogation or from intelligence sources might be thrown out. Defendants would have the right to confront witnesses, meaning undercover CIA officers or terrorist turncoats might have to take the stand, jeopardizing their cover and revealing classified intelligence tactics.

In theory, Obama could try to transplant the Bush administration’s military commission system from Guantanamo Bay to a U.S. prison. But Tribe said, and other advisers agreed, that was “a nonstarter.” With lax evidence rules and intense secrecy, the military commissions have been criticized by human rights groups, defense attorneys and even some military prosecutors who quit the process in protest.

“I don’t think we need to completely reinvent the wheel, but we need a better tribunal process that is more transparent,” Schiff said.

That means something different would need to be done if detainees couldn’t be released or prosecuted in traditional courts. Exactly what that something would look like remains unclear.

According to three advisers participating in the process, Obama is expected to propose a new court system, appointing a committee to decide how such a court would operate. Some detainees likely would be returned to the countries where they were first captured for further detention or rehabilitation. The rest could probably be prosecuted in U.S. criminal courts, one adviser said. All spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing talks, which have been private.

Waleed Alshahari, who has been following Guantanamo issues for the Yemeni Embassy in Washington, said the plan being discussed by the Obama team was an improvement over the current system. He said, however, he expects most detainees to be released rather than stand trial.

“If the U.S. government has any evidence against them, they would try them and put them in jail,” Alshahari said. “But it has been obvious they have nothing against them. That is why they have not faced trial.”

With more than 90 Yemeni detainees at Guantanamo, the country is home to the largest group of prisoners. The United States and Yemen have negotiated but failed to reach a deal on a prisoner release.

Whatever form it takes, Tribe said he expects Obama to move quickly.

“In reality and symbolically, the idea that we have people in legal black holes is an extremely serious black mark,” Tribe said. “It has to be dealt with.”

YouTube took its first step towards a comprehensive movie service, reaching a deal with a big Hollywood studio to start showing full-length television shows and films.

The video-sharing Web site is set to announce that it will host TV episodes and movies from the archives of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) in its latest step to boost advertising revenue.

The deal is expected to be the first of many. It emerged over the weekend that the site, which is owned by Google, was in negotiations with other Hollywood studios. One report from the CNET news Web site suggested a YouTube movie service could be available within 90 days.

MGM will post videos from full-length action movies such as “Bulletproof Monk” and “The Magnificent Seven,” and its decades-old “American Gladiators” program. They will be free to watch, with advertising running alongside the video.

In October, YouTube forged a similar partnership with CBS to run full-length archived TV shows, including “Star Trek” and “Beverly Hills 90210.”

The new partnerships put YouTube in more direct competition with Hulu, the online video site owned by News Corporation and General Electric’s NBC Universal.

• Click here to read the rest of this story in the Times of London.

LONDON — Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown will push for a new international financial system that updates the Bretton Woods agreement in a speech to be delivered Monday evening.

Brown will call for the reforms at the G20 summit to be held in Washington next weekend.

“The British Government … will begin to begin a new Bretton Woods with a new IMF that offers, by its surveillance of every economy, an early warning system and a crisis prevention mechanism for the whole world,” Brown will say at his speech at the annual Lord Mayor’s banquet in London.

Brown will also say the U.S and Europe must provide the leadership for the creation for a new international order.

“The trans-Atlantic relationship has been the engine of effective multi-lateralism for the past 50 years. I believe the whole of Europe can work closely with America to meet the great challenges which will test our resolution and illuminate our convictions,” he will say.

Brown’s calls for a reformed IMF will echo calls by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz of Columbia University. Stiglitz told a U.N. General Assembly panel on the global financial crisis last month that the system created at the 1944 conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, which established the international monetary protocols governing trade, banking and other financial relations among nations, needs to be updated.

Brown has already discussed IMF reforms with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel and has called on countries such as China and the oil-rich Persian Gulf states to fund the bulk of an increase in the International Monetary Fund’s bailout pot.

Brown will also say the world faces five major challenges — to promote democracy, fight terrorism, strengthen the global economy, tackle climate change and resolve conflict.