More facts have come to light in the shooting death of Steve McNair. Police yesterday ruled the death a homicide, a fairly obvious conclusion given that McNair was shot twice in the head and twice in the stomach. The remaining question is whether the single shot in the head of McNair's girlfriend resulted from another homicide or a suicide.

One of the factual uncertainties noted in our original post -- that the presence of a gun was not immediately apparent when the police arrived -- has been resolved by news that the gun was found under the girlfriend's dead body. Evidence in support of the murder-suicide theory became stronger today as police revealed a report that the girlfriend purchased a gun a couple of days before she was found dead. While the police have wisely refrained from jumping to conclusions, this increasingly looks like a tragic case of murder-suicide.

In response to news coverage of the 133 death row inmates who have been exonerated and spared execution, death penalty proponents make the argument (pdf) that the list of exonerated inmates is overly inclusive because it includes inmates whose convictions were reversed but whose actual innocence was never conclusively established.

Dan Rodricks at the Baltimore Sun contacted the Death Penalty Information Center, which keeps track of the exoneration count, to ask for a response to that criticism. The DPIC explained what it means to be "exonerated" and therefore included in the count:

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Greg Sargent gets a White House reaction to Joe Biden's comments on Israel bombing Iran. and then runs well, an incorrect headline and story imo. First the WH reaction:

I asked White House spokesperson Tommy Vietor whether Biden was articulating the administration’s official position, and he emailed “The Vice President refused to engage hypotheticals, and he made clear that our policy has not changed. Our friends and allies, including Israel, know that the President believes that now is the time to explore direct diplomatic options, as with the P5+1.”

Of course this is nonsense. Biden did engage a hypothetical. The rest of the answer is contrary to what Biden said. And thus, Sargent's description of the WH response is also rather nonsensical:

The Michael Jackson memorial service at Staples in L.A. is Tuesday at 1pm ET. 1.6 million applied for tickets awarded online through a computer-generated lottery system. 1 of every 182 who applied received a ticket. From CNN's website:

Tomorrow, join CNN and CNN.com/LIVE for all day coverage of the Jackson Memorial. Don't miss special primetime coverage of the day's events beginning at 8p.m. ET.

CNN will also broadcast the event online. How many plan to watch? The current tally from a poll on its website: 82% won't watch. Five other networks will broadcast the event live.

Dan Abrams new site, Mediaite, launches today. Howard Kurtz has a rundown: it plays to the celebrity factor of journalists, and is described as "When HuffPo meets Gawker."

I've been following their twitter feed for weeks now, probably because I know and really like Dan Abrams, having guested on his shows for years, I like the site'sconcept. Rachel Sklaar is Editor at Large.

With separate pages for TV, print and online, the site aggregates plenty of content, like other media-focused portals, while also offering opinionated takes on scandal coverage, journalistic feuds, ethical questions and sundry embarrassments.

Dan's last show on MSNBC had a "Beat the Press" segment. This sounds similar. He was always the most energized during that portion, almost gleeful at times. He reportedly has funded the new site himself and it's lean, with just 5 staffers. [More...]

NYTimes:

As the ousted Honduran president, Manuel Zelaya, headed by plane toward Honduras Sunday evening, huge crowds of his supporters clashed with soldiers and riot police at the airport as the interim government vowed to prevent him from landing. As all of Honduras stood in suspense, the interim president, Roberto Micheletti said he was willing to negotiate with the Organization of American States . . .

I do not know what Micheletti has in mind but it might be this - offer to reinstate Zelaya in exchange for a promise by Zelaya to completely forego his attempt to alter the Honduran Constitution to allow him to run for another term (as Hugo Chavez in Venezuela did and as Alvaro Uribe of Colombia is proposing.) the Honduran Supreme Court ruled Zelaya's attempts unconstitutional but he put forth a "nonbinding" referendum anyway. It was Zelaya's determination to hold the referendum that precipitated the coup that removed him. I speculate that if Zelaya agrees to let that go, he could be reinstated. Elections are currently scheduled for November 29. Zelaya can not run in that election under current Honduran law.

Pro-Zelaya reporting by my friend Al Giordano, who reports Zelaya landing in Nicaragua. Not exactly helping Obama out on this one - Venezuelan planes landing in Nicaragua? Oy.

speaking for me only

Barry Wingard represents Fayiz Mohammed Ahmed al-Kandari, a Kuwaiti who has been detained at Guantanamo for seven years. While Kandari is no longer subjected to "enhanced interrogation techniques," his life hasn't otherwise improved since President Obama ordered Gitmo's closing. It has, in fact, worsened in some respects.

Fayiz reports that a small number of military guards have begun to punish any detainee resistance or infraction, even minor ones such as talking back or hanging towels in the wrong location. The special unit of guards known as the Immediate Reaction Force — whom the cell-block guards call for assistance — has increased its number of bruising “cell extractions,” he says; almost every day, a detainee is forcibly removed from his cell as the guards show the prisoners who is in charge. Fayiz was extracted from his cell three times in a 10-day period this spring.

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I have very much disagreed with my co-bloggers on the coverage of Sarah Palin generally, and specifically since her announced resignation. But I think Open Left has the goods on Palin's hypocrisy on media criticism:

A fair question for Governor Palin would be - do you admit you were wrong in your prior comments about media criticism of Hillary Clinton? Cuz she was.

Speaking for me only

I thought this post from Digby might be of interest:

Is it just me or were Joe Biden's comments on Stephanpoulos this morning somewhat ... uhm ... startling?

Plunging squarely into one of the most sensitive issues in the Middle East, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. suggested on Sunday that the United States would not stand in the way of Israeli military action aimed at the Iranian nuclear program. . . .

What was funny to me was Biden's explanation - "Israel can determine for itself — it’s a sovereign nation — what’s in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else . . ." While Digby rightly wonders if Biden's, um timing, given what' going on Iran, is um, helpful, my thought is about Obama's supposed line in the sand on Israeli settlements on the West Bank. I'm not one to rush into the I/P controversy, and it is not my intention to do so here. But here's a question - is Joe Biden really up to the job? He is a mistake machine.

Speaking for me only

Heat in the south is being mitigated by storms, but the rest of the country seems to be enjoying sunny, pleasant weather. You probably have better things to do than reading a blog, but if not, here's an open thread. It's open to all topics, but lets throw out a rhetorical question for starters: what kind of jerk boards an airplane, stranding his newlywed wife in an airport in Malaysia, because he thought she was taking too long in the bathroom?

When a public figure like Sarah Palin drops a bombshell resignation on the public without providing a reasonable contemporaneous explanation, the public figure should anticipate that public reactions will include speculation about the reason for her decision. Given the questions Wayne Barrett raised last year about the relationship between materials used to build Palin's house and materials used on state projects by contractors who received lucrative state contracts, it isn't surprising that some people wondered whether Palin's resignation was related to a criminal investigation.

Jeralyn pointed out a significant flaw in that theory: the expiration of the statute of limitations probably precluded prosecution, even if wrongdoing occurred. As Jeralyn noted yesterday, the FBI put an end to the speculation by announcing that Palin is not under investigation. And as Jeralyn reported in an update to that post, despite inviting speculation by making a sudden and unexplained announcement, Palin is threatening legal action against the speculators. How bizarre is that? [more ...]

The inaptly named California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (what rehabilitation would that be?) was forced to propose new lethal injection procedures and to seek public comment upon them for a 60 day period that ended June 30.

By the end of the 60 days, more than 7,000 people had submitted comments to CDCR. Nearly all objected to implementing the regulations. Many called on the CDCR to disclose the costs of carrying out executions, something the CDCR has refused to do even though disclosing the costs is required by law.

On Tuesday, CDCR held a public hearing on the proposed rules. More than one hundred people attended; only two supported the resumption of California's death penalty. [more ...]

Joe Biden told an interviewer that the Obama administration "misread how bad the economy was." The obvious question: How is that possible? The crappy state of the economy was clear to the rest of the (non-Republican) country, as was the need for an aggressive stimulus package. Only now is the administration realizing that the economy is really really bad?

The former head of Internal Affairs at the Baltimore Police Department, Joann Branche, says "the department is rife with corruption and turns a blind eye to bad officers patrolling the streets." Branche was fired in April for allegedly backdating documents so that disciplinary charges (which must be filed within a year of the alleged misconduct) would appear to have been timely filed. The president of the black police officers' union claims that Branche allowed charges against white officers to lapse while she pursued charges against black officers.

Blanche was fired five months after being promoted and given a $30,000 raise, a fact that lends some credibility to her contention that charging decisions were micromanaged by a Deputy Police Commissioner who interfered with her decision-making. According to Blanche, punishment was based on who the accused officer knew and back-door deals were struck with officers who were well connected.

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Another legacy of the War on Drugs and the punitive lock-em-up mentality of the get tough on crime crowd is coming home to roost: Children of the incarcerated.

Federal data shows that 1.5 million kids have a parent in prison. Usually it's the father:

The chances of seeing a parent go to prison have never been greater, especially for poor black Americans, and new research is documenting the long-term harm to the children they leave behind. Recent studies indicate that having an incarcerated parent doubles the chance that a child will be at least temporarily homeless and measurably increases the likelihood of physically aggressive behavior, social isolation, depression and problems in school — all portending dimmer prospects in adulthood.

“Parental imprisonment has emerged as a novel, and distinctly American, childhood risk that is concentrated among black children and children of low-education parents,” said Christopher Wildeman, a sociologist at the University of Michigan who is studying what some now call the “incarceration generation.”

Sentencing laws are at least partially to blame. [More...]