Steve Chapman at the Chicago Tribune asks:

Nine years into the 21st Century, why isn't every squad car in America equipped with a dashboard video camera? Why do we persist in relying on the slippery, self-interested, incomplete and unverified accounts of opposing participants when we have the means to see the truth with our own eyes?

Chapman spotlights an arrest of a driver who, according to the arresting officer, was "lurching and unable to walk a straight line or stand on one foot." The squad car's video recorder showed the driver keeping his balance during his field sobriety tests.

[more ...]

A Texas politician finally had a good idea in the realm of criminal justice. Responding to more than fifty wrongful convictions around the state, State Sen. Royce West introduced a bill that would increase the penalty from a misdemeanor to a felony when a prosecutor withholds evidence that is favorable to a defendant. The bill also lifts the statute of limitations on "official oppression" cases.

Of course, even if the law is changed, the toothier law will be meaningless unless prosecutors are willing to charge other prosecutors who withhold evidence. How often do you expect to see those prosecutions?

To be fair, other politicians in Texas have had other good ideas that would help address the problem of wrongful convictions: [more ...]

Last year, over at 5280.com, I wrote about the case of Montana county prosecutor Robert Eddleman who was charged with cocaine offenses (pdf). Eddleman's co-defendant and significant other, Terri Jabs Kurth, is the daughter of Denver furniture mogul Jake Jabs, who is very familiar to Coloradans as he is a staple on late night television commercials.

This week, Eddleman and Kurth pleaded guilty. Eddleman was jailed pending sentencing, Kurth was not.

It's interesting that the charges here are not that the couple sold drugs....it's that they bought drugs and held parties at their homes where people used them.

It's hard to have sympathy for a prosecutor who breaks the drug laws, but jailing him pending sentencing seems over the top. I also wonder whether Kurth got bond because she's less involved or because she agreed to forfeit $50,000. to the feds. [More...]

Here's what's going on that I haven't had time to write about:

• Janet Napolitano says we're going to be more involved in the war against the Mexican drug gangs. Coming soon:

  Ms. Napolitano indicated there would be more so-called outbound enforcement: checking people and vehicles leaving the U.S. to see if they are carrying contraband. She said those efforts wouldn't hamper the job of stopping illegal immigration into the U.S.

• The New Mexico Legislature votes to abolish death penalty. Law Prof Doug Berman notes a peculiarity -- that if repealed, it may not apply to the two already on death row.

[More...]

This story has been going the blog rounds. This is the part that stood out for me:

Julie Mason, a White House correspondent and blogger for The Washington Examiner [and a former White House reporter for The Houston Chronicle, said] yes, news consumers care about the minutiae[.] “When I talk to normal people, they want to know what these people are really like away from the camera,” she said.

Let me put it this way Ms. Mason, you are not talking to "normal people" if they care what Bob Bauer and Anita Dunn are "really like." They are not normal people if they KNOW who Bob Bauer and Anita Dunn are. (No offense intended to the "powerful" Bauer couple.)

Speaking for me only

Via Paul Rosenberg, this is an interesting call for class warfare from Newt Gingrich:

Mr. Gingrich said today that there were "socialists" on many newspaper editorial boards, and he suggested that businesses reconsider advertising in papers that oppose their views. "I think it's perfectly legitimate in a free society for people to decide where they'll put their money and their impact," he said in an interview on the Fox television network.

I happen to think it is perfectly legitimate too. I think it would be absolutely imbecilic for corporations to do this -- they would be inviting themselves to be targets of retaliatory boycotts. In short, they will not do it imo. They'll try to influence politics in more traditional ways (by contributing, through individuals and lobbyists of course, to political canmpaigns.) But I would find it rather hypocritical of the Right to not denounce Gingrich's statements in light of their constant cries of "censorship" from the Left. I expect that I will hear crickets from the Right on this.

Speaking for me only

In a rather ridiculous article, the WaPo front pages an opinion as news. The opinion forwarded is:

In his inaugural address, President Obama proclaimed "an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics." It hasn't taken long for the recriminations to return -- or for the Obama administration to begin talking about the unwelcome "inheritance" of its predecessor.

. . . Upon entering the White House in 2001, Bush pinned the lackluster economy on his predecessor, using the "Clinton recession" to successfully argue in favor of tax cuts that won some Democratic support. But for Obama, who built his candidacy on a promise to rise above Washington's divisive partisan traditions -- winning over many independent voters and moderate Republicans in the process -- blaming his predecessor holds special risks.

This is particularly puerile nonsense. I remind the WaPo of one Bush 2000 phrase - "I am a uniter, not a divider." That said, Obama did engage in the post partisan unity schtick, thus inviting this nonsensical line of attack. More . .

See also Jeralyn. While the Obama Administration got the headline it wanted, "Obama Will Not Use "Enemy Combatant" label, that is really meaningless. How the Obama Administration will define "enemy combatants" is a little bit more important. There are a few potentially meaningful changes, see Lyle Denniston. But I think the important aspect of the Obama Administration detention policy is what standard of review is to be applied by courts in habeas (and other types of proceedings for person captured and held overseas) proceedings of Executive decisions to detain. At footnote 2 of its brief (PDF) to the court, the Obama Administration asserts:

The Obama Administration has blown its first chance to signal change from the Bush Administration in the treatment of detainees.

In a case brought by four detainees at Guantanamo alleging torture (details of Rasul v. Rumsfeld here,) the Obama Justice Department has filed a brief arguing that detainees have no constitutional rights and that, even if they did, the Administration officials are immune from liability

In another Guantanamo case, the Justice Department argues in a brief (pdf)that the U.S. has the right to indefinitely hold detainees. The Attorney General's press release is here.

As a smokescreen, the DOJ doesn't use the word "enemy combatent." No one's buying that by not using the term, Obama's taking a different position from Bush.

[More...]

d-day points us to this tripe from Howard Fineman on Tweety's show, proving yet again that the Media does not understand economics:

Fineman: it's not only depressing it's counterproductive because if the new mantra is that we have to live within our means then congress has to do it too and we all have to pitch in, there has to be some . . . real hard choices made. The president keeps saying we're going to have to make hard choices. Which choices are they and how is the congress making them?

(Emphasis supplied.) It is really amazing that these fools continue to expose their unwillingness to try and understand the most rudimentary economics. The United States and the world are in an economic spiral now because aggregate demand had dropped precipitously. Since interest rates are at the lower zero bound, the only way to raise aggregate demand now is by government spending. Indeed, we need massive government spending. And here these fools are obsessed with "earmarks" (obviously they learned economics from "Don't know much about economics" John McCain. It is a disgrace.

Speaking for me only

This is an Open Thread.

Update (TL): If you missed Jon Stewart and Jim Cramer, you can watch the full unedited videos at HuffPo here.

In a game that no one but JeffinAlabama and I will be following at this site, Florida meets Auburn tonight in a de facto play-in game for the NCCA tourney. Go Gators!

This is an Open Thread.