Mark David Chapman, the killer of John Lennon, was denied parole today.

This is an open thread.

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals today upheld the dismissal of Valerie Plame Wilson and Joseph Wilson's lawsuit against Dick Cheney, Scooter Libby and Karl Rove.

Plame and Wilson accused the four men of violating their constitutional rights by leaking Plame's identity to the media in retaliation for a New York Times opinion piece by Wilson that questioned the Bush administration's basis for going to war in Iraq.

The decision ``allows outrageous government conduct to go unpunished,'' said Melanie Sloan of Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group that represented Plame and Wilson. She said the group is considering asking the full D.C. Circuit to review the case and an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Today's opinion is here.The trial court's opinion dismissing the suit is here. More background here.

A British drug warrior has come to the realization that drug abuse should be treated as a public health problem, not as a crime.

A former senior civil servant who was responsible for coordinating the government's anti-drugs policy now believes that legalisation would be less harmful than the current strategy. Julian Critchley, the former director of the Cabinet Office's anti-drugs unit, also said that his views were shared by the "overwhelming majority" of professionals in the field, including police officers, health workers and members of the government.

Critchley points out that "enforcement and supply-side interventions ... have no significant, lasting impact on the availability, affordability or use of drugs." His belief "that New Labour's policy on drugs was based on what was thought would play well with the Daily Mail readership, regardless of evidence of what worked," parallels the belief of American politicians that a "tough on drugs" attitude plays well with the voting public despite overwhelming evidence that the criminal justice approach has failed. When will our policy makers have the courage to learn the obvious truth that Critchley has embraced?

Russia says it has punished Georgia enough:

President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia agreed on Tuesday to the terms of a cease-fire that could end the clashes in Georgia, saying Russia had “punished” Georgia enough for its aggression against the separatist enclave of South Ossetia.

Get the message?

Attorney General Michael Mukasey today said there will be no prosecutions from the investigation into hiring practices of U.S. Attorneys.

“Where there is enough evidence to charge someone with a crime, we vigorously prosecute,” he said. “But not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime,” he said. As the inspector general’s report acknowledged, the hiring violations were such a case, because the wrongdoing violated federal civil service law, but not criminal law, he said.

“That does not mean, as some people have suggested, that those officials who were found by the joint reports to have committed misconduct have suffered no consequences,” Mr. Mukasey said. “Far from it. The officials most directly implicated in the misconduct left the Department to the accompaniment of substantial negative publicity.

Pablo Valenzuela deserves to be charged with battery for pepper spraying a West Palm Beach police officer on May 26. But the officers who punched and kicked him after his hands were cuffed behind his back are equally deserving of criminal charges. One officer has resigned and two have been placed on administrative leave, but none of them are immune from prosecution. With clear video evidence of their misconduct, why haven't they been arrested?

This comment is even more puzzling:

West Palm Beach Police Chief Delsa Bush says "there was a thin line basically between giving officers a commendation and then ending up having to discipline them."

Bush said "having the video I chose to substantiate the charge of the use of excessive force." So without the video she would have given commendations to officers who beat up a handcuffed suspect?

Matt Yglesias writes about where you can hold the Olympics without feeling like a moral hypocrite:

With Russia beating up on Georgia at the very same time as the Olympics are underway in Beijing, it’s perhaps inevitable that the conversation has now turned to the propriety of Russia hosting the 2014 winter games while under the rule of a “bad actor” regime. This, combined with the boomlet earlier this year for the idea of boycotting the Beijing games, makes me wonder if it wouldn’t be better to adopt a policy of trying to award the Olympics only to unimportant countries.

Well, that sounds nice and all, but of course it will not work, because at bottom, the Olympics are a big commercial enterprise. Whoever ponies up the money, gets the games. And yes, lots of times out and out bribery of IOC officials is involved. I was struck by this part of Matt's piece though:

Declaring in no uncertain terms that it was calling it own tune - that it was providing the world with its Tom Friedman "suck on this" moment, Russia today announced a halt to military operations in its conflict with Georgia:

President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia announced Tuesday that he had ordered a halt to his country’s military operation in Georgia, although he did not say that troops were pulling out and he insisted that Russian forces were still authorized to fire on enemies in South Ossetia. The president said Russia had achieved its military goals during five days of intense fighting . . .

(Emphasis supplied.) Achieved its goals indeed. Russia rendered a lesson to the world this week. It will play by its rules, not anyone else's. And in a sign of the inability of the American Media to grasp what is obvious, a NYTimes editorial states:

The United States and its European allies must tell Mr. Putin in the clearest possible terms that such aggression will not be tolerated.

Oh really? And how do you propose to do that NYTimes? They talk of this:

The Atlantic has released a series of internal memos from the Hillary Clinton campaign. The memos are here.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign was undone by a clash of personalities more toxic than anyone imagined. E-mails and memos—published here for the first time—reveal the backstabbing and conflicting strategies that produced an epic meltdown.

....What is clear from the internal documents is that Clinton’s loss derived not from any specific decision she made but rather from the preponderance of the many she did not make. Her hesitancy and habit of avoiding hard choices exacted a price that eventually sank her chances at the presidency.

Greg Sargent at Talking Points Memo and the Caucus at the New York Times provide some analysis. Jake Tapper at ABC News suggests the memos "appealed to prejudice" and in this later post, refers to a memo written after Iowa in which Mark Penn talked about "releasing the tapes" to counter Obama. Tapper asks, "What tapes?"

The New York Times examines the pros and cons of Indiana Senator Evan Bayh as Sen. Barack Obama's vice presidential candidate.

Shorter version: The cons are that his early pro-war position stands in stark contrast to Obama's repeated emphasis on his own early opposition to the war in Iraq and Bayh is bland and unlikely to excite voters.

The pros are he has economic experience and his youthful appearance bolsters Obama's message of "generational change."

If not Bayh, then who? Sebelius or Kaine or someone the media has overlooked or counted out?

Sen. Barack Obama has relased his first plan I'm on board with: no income tax for seniors making less than $60,000 a year.

Critics say the seniors would be getting too much of a break because of Medicare and Social Security.

Seniors can't live on Social Security and Medicare alone. And if they have to go into a nursing home, Social Security doesn't pay for that. A typical nursing home in Colorado is $6,500 a month just for room and board. Medicare picks up some therapy and medication, but that room and board is a huge amount of money to pay. The only break is if you end up in the nursing home after a medical injury and need rehabilitation, which runs about $10,000 a month, Medicare pays for 120 days. Then, you are on your own.

Medicaid only helps if the people are poor, in which case they likely won't owe income tax anyway.[More...]

Most of you are no doubt watching the Olympics. I'm watching IFC, which is showing one of my favorite films, "O Brother Where Art Thou," which came up in somewhat controversial fashion the other day in one of my threads.

"O brothers, let's go down, down in the river to pray!"

This is an Open Thread.