There's a heated--yet very unenlightening--debate happening in the blogosphere about the shooting of an unarmed black man named Oscar Grant III by transit police in Oakland, California.

At The Daily Beast, Stanley Crouch writes that "the left" isn't outraged by black on black crime but police brutality instead. Over at The Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates is outraged at the outrage from those who think that blacks aren't sufficiently outraged by black on black crime. Writes Coates:

"I spent most of last year following Bill Cosby around to standing room only rallies in Detroit, Birmingham and Baltimore, talking to people who were pissed off by a variety of social maladies. Number one amongst them all -- the murder rate among black men."

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Norm Coleman has expanded his search for votes:

The Center for Constitutional Rights has issued a new report on closing Guantanamo. It's as easy as 1-2-3.

• Send home those who can go home
• Secure safe haven for those who cannot, and
• Charge those who can be charged and try them in ordinary federal criminal court.

The full report is available here (pdf). [More...]

The ACLU has launched a new website, You Are Being Watched, "dedicated to tracking the spread of government video surveillance systems throughout American cities. " (From their press release, which should be available here shortly):

“The new site will provide one-stop shopping for users, including the press, who want to know the big picture and the fine details about the spread of video surveillance systems....

The new site will serve as an information clearinghouse to track the deployment of government-run surveillance systems across the United States. It includes a flash map of the United States showing the location of cities that have installed municipal surveillance cameras, a compendium of press clips and other information about camera deployments, links to studies on the effectiveness of surveillance cameras, and other information about the issue.

Video surveillance will not make us safer. It only makes us less free. [More...]

U.S. U.S. Magistrate Judge Ronald Ellis has issued a 22 page opinion (available here) refusing to revoke Bernard Madoff's bond. ABC News has this report. It's a really good opinion. And, I think, the correct ruling. As the Court notes (from the opinion):

Generally, a court must release a defendant on bail on the least restrictive condition or combination of conditions that will reasonably assure the defendant’s appearance when required and the safety of the community. See 18 U.S.C. § 3142[c](1)(B). The issue at this stage of the criminal proceedings is not whether Madoff has been charged in perhaps the largest Ponzi scheme ever, nor whether Madoff’s alleged actions should result in his widespread disapprobation by the public, nor even what is appropriate punishment after conviction.

The legal issue before the Court is whether the Government has carried its burden of demonstrating that no condition or combination of conditions can be set that will reasonably assure Madoff’s appearance and protect the community from danger. 18 U.S.C. § 3142(e).

[More...]

I've been an avid Talk Left reader since the Rave Act days in the early 2000s, so I'm thrilled to be posting here for the first time.

A little bit about me: I've been writing about street crime and criminal justice policy for about a decade now for publications such as the Guardian, New York, and Mother Jones. I'm also the author of a couple of books: Queens Reigns Supreme--about the drug trade in Southeast Queens and a money laundering case against hip-hop record label Murder Inc--and Snitch, which exposed the dangerously unregulated world of federal cooperating witnesses and informants. [More...]

TalkLeft is ringing in the new year with a new blogger -- Journalist and author Ethan Brown.

Ethan has written about street crime and criminal justice policy for New York, The New York Observer, Wired, Vibe, Radar, The Independent, GQ, Mother Jones, The Guardian and Men's Vogue. [More...]

For those of you on the east coast, the show has begun. Here's a thread for the results. (Spoiler alert to those in other time zones- stay away from the comments unless you want to know who won.)

Our red carpet thread is here.

Updates below:

The red carpet arrivals are beginning. You can watch them on E!

Who looks great? Who miscalculated?

It's my favorite part of the show. Last year we didn't get a red carpet because of the writers' strike. And 2007 was just so-so. I think they will put double the effort into this year's show.

Since we are all in different time zones, once the awards start, no spoilers on the winners, please! [Updates Below]

Via Digby, Newsweek hires Stuart Taylor, with an assist from longtime Newsweek Beltway blowhard Evan Thomas, to write an episode of 24:

The issue of torture is more complicated than it seems. . . . Waterboarding—simulating drowning by pouring water over the suspect's mouth and nostrils—is a brutal interrogation method. But by some (disputed) accounts, it was CIA waterboarding that got Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to talk. It is a liberal shibboleth that torture doesn't work—that suspects will say anything, including lies, to stop the pain. But the reality is perhaps less clear.

(Emphasis supplied.) The question I have is simply this - who told Newsweek, Taylor and Thomas that torture works? Sounds like a breach of national security. Maybe we should get Jack Bauer to torture them until they reveal their sources.

Speaking for me only

A familiar question for readers of this blog rears its head again today as Glenn Greenwald revisits the issue, inspired by David Ignatius trotting out the same old Beltway "post-partisan" "unity" tripe. Glenn writes:

Your turn.