The Dalai Lama gave a keynote speech yesterday in Aspen, a day after John McCain visited him there.

In Saturday's speech, he didn't mention McCain. Anita Thompson was there, and writing in HuffPo today, recaps the Dalai Lama's talk.

She begins:

My late husband, Hunter S. Thompson, said that he was a teenage girl trapped in the body of an elderly dope fiend. I realized something as I watched the highest ranking monk of Tibetan Buddhism: His Holiness is a teenage girl trapped in the body of a Dalai Lama! It was all very familiar, indeed spectacular, as I observed his demeanor during the keynote address he gave at the Aspen Institute Saturday. I have studied the Dalai Lama's teachings, practiced another form of Buddhism, and am even more curious now because Hunter was so often compared to him.

Here's what the Dalai Lama had to say on war in the 21st century: [More...]

The California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice is trying to understand why California's prosecutors seek the death penalty in some cases but not in others. More particularly, the Commission wants to know if the race of the victim or of the defendant influences that decision.

Since capital punishment was reinstated in California in 1977, death sentences against black defendants, but not Latinos, have been disproportionately enormous by almost every measure: population, homicide rates, victim data and the sentencing patterns of other states. California's 5-to-1 ratio of blacks on death row to blacks in the state population, measured in percentages, is much higher than the ratios in Texas, Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina. The national average is 3 to 1. ...

Twenty-four percent of the people arrested for homicide are black, but blacks make up 36% of the current death row population. Latinos are 46% of homicide arrestees but 20% of death row inmates.... In death sentences against all ethnic groups, 59% have involved a white victim. Yet whites are only about 22% of homicide victims.

Prosecutors have not been forthcoming in answering the Commission's questions. [more ...]

I think Obama has this election won barring some unforeseeable event. But I find it silly when Obama supporters tie themselves in knots to explain away non-positive news. Not to pick on anyone in particular, but tremayne at Open Left provides a prime example of this silly stuff:

This took way too long:

The Army formally apologized Saturday for the wrongful conviction of 28 black soldiers accused of rioting and lynching an Italian prisoner of war in Seattle more than six decades ago. ... In addition, the soldiers' convictions were set aside, their dishonorable discharges were changed to honorable discharges and they and their survivors were awarded back pay for their time in the brig.

All but two of the soldiers are dead. One, Samuel Snow of Leesburg, Fla., planned to attend the ceremony but wound up in the hospital instead because of a problem with his pacemaker.

In 2002, Obama legal advisor Cass Sunstein wrote:

President Bush's choice stands on firm legal ground insofar as he seeks to use military commissions to try people who planned and participated in the September 11 attacks (and similar actions).

In 2006, the Supreme Court decided Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, where it stated:

Together, the UCMJ, the AUMF, and the DTA at most acknowledge a general Presidential authority to convene military commissions in circumstances where justified under the “Constitution and laws,” including the law of war. Absent a more specific congressional authorization, the task of this Court is, as it was in Quirin, to decide whether Hamdan’s military commission is so justified. . . The[] facts cast doubt on the legality of the charge and, hence, the commission; . . . the offense alleged must have been committed both in a theater of war and during, not before, the relevant conflict. But the deficiencies in the time and place allegations also underscore—indeed are symptomatic of—the most serious defect of this charge: The offense it alleges is not triable by law-of-war military commission.

More . . .

Oh she tries to retain her cynical worldly approach and the title tries to stir up trouble, but Maureen Dowd got, to use her phrase, Obamarized. She portrays Obama as the anti-presumptuous one. Some snippets:

After 200,000 people thronged to see Obama at the Victory Column in Berlin, christening him “Redeemer” and “Savior,” it turned out Sarko [French President Nicolas Sarkozy] was also Obamarized, as the Germans were calling the mesmerizing effect. “You must want a cigarette after that,” I teased [Obama] after the amorous joint press conference, as he flew from Paris to London for the finale of his grand tour.

“I think we could work well together,” he said of Sarko, smiling broadly.

More . . .

Less cheery, more political version from Fahrenheit 911 here.

Is anyone still up? Here's an open thread for night owls and early birds.

The New York Times Magazine has an 7 page article on Afghanistan and the opium crop, with a headline asking if the country is a "narco state."

The author's suggestions for fixing the problem include these steps:

1. Inform President Karzai that he must stop protecting drug lords and narco-farmers or he will lose U.S. support. Karzai should issue a new decree of zero tolerance for poppy cultivation during the coming growing season. He should order farmers to plant wheat, and guarantee today’s high wheat prices. Karzai must simultaneously authorize aggressive force-protected manual and aerial eradication of poppies in Helmand and Kandahar Provinces for those farmers who do not plant legal crops.

2. Order the Pentagon to support this strategy. Position allied and Afghan troops in places that create security pockets so that Afghan counternarcotics police can arrest powerful drug lords. Enable force-protected eradication with the Afghan-set goal of eradicating 50,000 hectares as the benchmark.

More...

It's fun to look for your house, or maybe your car, or maybe you, on Google Street View. It's not so fun if the Google camera caught you walking out of a strip club, but still, streets are public property, and that's the chance you take when you exit onto a public sidewalk.

Google crossed the privacy line, though, when it trespassed on private property in rural Sonoma County.

Up a single-lane road outside Freestone, Google went past a gate with a "no trespassing" sign and captured images on private property. Several residences can be seen on the property, including an up-close shot of someone's living room window.

This isn't the first time Google has treated private property as if it were a public street. Google was sued for taking pictures along a private road in Pittsburgh. What's next? Pictures of nude sunbathers on private beaches? [more ...]

The victim of Bob Novak's hit-and-run, Don Clifford Liljenquist, has this charitable reaction:

"Bob Novak is the one that hit me? Well, everybody knows who Bob Novak is! He's a famous journalist! . . . I was struck by Bob Novak? . . . Well, I think that makes it a great story!"

Yes it does. More about Liljenquist:

[T]he victim of syndicated columnist Robert Novak's hit-and-run pedestrian scuffle is not, as earlier reported by us and everyone else, 66 years old -- he's 86 years old. And homeless. And forgiving. And kind of tickled at all the attention.

Liljenquist thinks it's possible that Novak didn't see him, given that Novak wasn't paying attention. It would be difficult to charge Novak with hit-and-run if that's the testimony Liljenquist would give. Novak caught a break by colliding with a nice guy. He's likely to skate with only the "failure to yield" ticket he was given at the scene.

Your turn to ponder the fact that the Yankees lead the Red Sox 7-3 in the bottom of the 6th inning at Fenway, threatening to move one game back of the Sox for the wild card (the Rays lead the division by 1 over the Sox and 3 over the Yanks.) If the Yanks hold on, it will be their 8th straight win.

Oh by the way, just 35 days until the Rainbows of Hawaii visit the Florida Gators to kick off (well, it kicks it off for me) the 2008 college football season. Go Gators!!

This is an Open thread.

A proposed law would empower the federal government to seize your computer if you use it to violate a copyright law by downloading a song or movie for which you didn't pay. Doesn't that penalty seem a bit excessive?

The bill would also empower the federal government to bring civil suits for copyright infringement -- doing what the RIAA now does in its abusive lawsuits against (mostly) college students who download copyrighted music. This seems like the kind of "big government" that conservatives should deplore. If copyright holders feel infringed, they should bring their own lawsuits rather than counting on the government to do it for them. Surely our scarce federal resources are better spent elsewhere -- repairing bridges, building levees, strengthening port security, and doing the countless other things that benefit society as a whole rather than businesses that should spend their own money to protect their own intellectual property.

The bill enjoys the misguided sponsorship of Democratic Senators Patrick Leahy and Evan Bayh. Can't they find something more productive to do with their time?