Judd Legum, founder of the Center for American Progress blog, Think Progress, is running for the state legislature in Maryland.

In 2007, Judd became the research director for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. As to running for Congress, Judd says:

I learned at ThinkProgress what can be accomplished if you combine serious policy ideas with engaging political communication. I want to take what I’ve learned and bring progressive values to the state capital in Maryland.

Judd answered questions today over at Crooks and Liars. There's more over at Daily Kos.

Maryland would be fortunate to have Judd as a legislator. I hope you will go on over to his Act Blue page and contribute. His Republican opponent is an extremist, especially on marriage issues: [More...]

The Associated Press has always come down hard on internet sites that inappropriately (in its view) reproduce its content. Now, it's going to go even further:

[AP Chairman]Singleton said AP would work with Internet portals and other partners who properly license content and would pursue legal and legislative actions against those who don't.

"We can no longer stand by and watch others walk off with our work under misguided legal theories," he said at AP's annual meeting in San Diego.

So make sure when you reply in comments (or write a diary) you stay within their parameters -- no reprinting of more than a short paragraph with a link to the source article. Hopefully, that's still okay. [More....]

Glenn writes it up. It looks really really bad. I'll need to read it more closely but at first blush, it looks really bad.

When I get a chance to read the brief, I'll add to this post.

Mumia Abu-Jamal, on death row in PA for 25 years, will not get a new trial. The Supreme Court rejected his petition today.

The petition was based on the exclusion of African-Americans from his jury. Last year, the Third Circuit refused to reinstate his death sentence.

But the epic struggle over the fate of Abu-Jamal, who has become an international symbol in the debate about the death penalty, is not over. The nation's high court is still weighing the state's petition to have his death sentence reinstated.

Jeffrey Sachs writes:

Cynics believe that the Geithner-Summers Plan is exactly what it seems: a naked grab of taxpayer money for Wall Street interests. Geithner and Summers argue that it's the least bad approach to a messy situation, in which we need to restore banking functions but don't have any perfect ways to do that. If they are serious about their justification, let them come forward to confront their critics and to explain to the American people why the other proposals are not being pursued.

Let them explain the hidden and not-so-hidden risks to the American taxpayer of the plan that they have put forward. . . . So far Geithner and Summers tell us that their plan is the only option, but without a word of further explanation as to why.

(Emphasis supplied.) Precisely.

Speaking for me only

That's according to a new study from Joshua D. Coval, a professor of Business Administration at Harvard, and Princeton economist Jakub W. Jurek.

Coval and Jurek write that the prices of toxic assets reflect fundamentals and that the low prices are not--as Geithner and Treasury argue--the result of "fire sales."

"Policies that attempt to prevent a widespread mark-down in the value of credit-sensitive assets," Coval and Jurek write, "are likely to only delay – and perhaps even worsen – the day of reckoning."

[More...]

Nate Silver writes about the Pew poll showing President Obama with the widest partisan divide in recent years:

These are highly partisan times in America. "Bipartisanship" (or, in the Obama nomenclature, "post-partisanship") makes for a catchy campaign slogan, but is difficult to execute upon in practice.

Knock me over with a feather. Who could have predicted that? I guess politics has not changed forever. Can we concentrate on the policy changes now?

Speaking for me only

A basic tenet of criminal procedure is that after arrest, you have the right to be brought before a judge without undue delay. (Think, Mallory v. U.S., 1957 and McNabb v. U.S., 1943.)

The Supreme Court upheld that principle today and threw out a confession, even though it was voluntary, because the cops waited too long to take the federal bank robbery suspect to court.

Today's case is Corley v. U.S., written by Justice Souter. The opinion is here (pdf). [More...]

Defenders of Tim Geithner criticized William Black for arguing that the Prompt Corrective Action Law mandated regulatory receivership for insolvent banks. I noted and discussed the criticism here. Now the subject of the criticism, Black himself, has responded along the lines I brought forth:

By now, everyone knows about the United States' torture policy. What we do not know expressly is who precisely was involved. We know that President Bush, Vice President Cheney, CIA Director Tenet, his deputy John Brennan (now an Obama NSC deputy), Yoo, Bybee and many others were involved. The details are important and need to be investigated of course, but the big push to not release three torture memos seems a strange place to draw the line. And yet it is being reported that Obama deputy John Brennan has cajoled CIA Director Leon Panetta to join him in opposing the release of these memos despite the approval of Attorney General Holder and now it is being reported that the Republican Senate caucus is threatening to go nuclear if the memos are released:

One senior lecturer at the University of Chicago is dissatisfied with the Geithner Plan:

Even if it is successful, the [Geithner Plan] will add very little new capital to the banks — roughly only the amount paid for toxic assets that is over and above their current value.

[More...]

Former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens' criminal conviction is history, but the Judge is still going. Today (yes on Sunday) Judge Emmett Sullivan entered two orders (available on PACER):

• MINUTE ORDER as to THEODORE F. STEVENS. The Court, sua sponte, directs that by no later than 10:00 a.m. on April 6, 2009, the government shall provide to the Court copies of all material gathered post-trial and produced to the defendant. The government shall also provide to the Court all exculpatory evidence, witness interviews, 302s, and affidavits gathered, created and/or reviewed as part of the investigation into the Joy Complaint, and the attorneys notes regarding the April 15, 2008 interview with Bill Allen, whether or not that material has been produced to the defendant. Signed by Judge Emmet G. Sullivan on April 5, 2009. (AS) (Entered: 04/05/2009)

[More...]