Since 2005, I've been following the case of Australian Schapelle Corby, sentenced to 20 years in an Indonesian hellhole of a prison for allegedly smuggling 10 pounds of pot into Bali in a boogie board on a vacation, despite some evidence the pot was planted, possibly by a ring of airline baggage handlers, although that theory has since been discredited.

Her story will be told in Ganja Queen, airing on HBO on Monday, June 30.

Ganja Queen is the harrowing story of Schapelle Corby, a young Australian woman who is accused of international drug trafficking after ten pounds of marijuana are found in one of her bags while on holiday in Bali. Proclaiming her innocence, she finds herself locked in a life-and-death courtroom battle. The film is a chilling reminder of the risks all travelers take when visiting countries with vastly different criminal justice systems and cultural mores.

On Friday, Schappelle was taken from the prison to an Indonesian hospital where she is on a suicide watch. Her last appeal was denied in March. [More...]

The Denver National Convention Committee (DNCC) announced today that the August convention in Denver will be simulcast in Spanish:

In keeping with its commitment to make the 2008 Democratic National Convention the most accessible and technologically-savvy event of its kind, the Democratic National Convention Committee (DNCC) announced today that Comcast Corporation will produce simultaneous, online streaming coverage of the Convention in Spanish at DemConvention.com and make available a broad range of Convention content through its signature On Demand service.

...From the Comcast Media Center, based in the Denver metro area, Comcast will provide live, gavel-to-gavel Spanish-language interpretation of all Convention activities from the Pepsi Center to be streamed online at DemConvention.com from August 25-28. This marks the first time a national political Convention has been completely simulcast in Spanish and made available to a worldwide audience.

Spanish is the primary language of 35 million Americans. World-wide, there are more than 300 million people who speak Spanish.

Digby writes one of the great grafs you will see:

What we have . . . is the portrait of a Village hero, the ultimate master of the only game that matters --- ostentatiously capitulating to conservatism. It's the biggest accolade a Democrat ever gets, like winning a congressional Oscar, and the preening Hoyer is happy to make his acceptance speech in the pages of the Drudge Daily. This one is sweeter than most because he managed to capitulate to the congressional minority and the most unpopular president in history on an issue of fundamental constitutional principle which contained little political risk to uphold. A truly bravura performance. In fact, it's worthy of a lifetime achievement award.

Surrender Steny would like to thank the Dean of the Washington Press Corps for his inspiration and support and of course, the new budding Dean, Joe Klein . . .

Speaking for me only

***

The Justice Department finally gets around to confirming old news:

Justice Department officials over the last six years illegally used “political or ideological” factors to hire new lawyers into an elite recruitment program, tapping law school graduates with conservative credentials over those with liberal-sounding resumes, a new report found Tuesday.

Remember Monica "I didn't mean to" Goodling?

It's particularly troubling that the Civil Rights Division was filled with lawyers who don't much care about civil rights. [more ...]

On February 26, 2008, Senator Barack Obama said:

The American people must be able to trust that their president values principle over politics, and justice over unchecked power. I’ve been proud to stand with Senator Dodd in his fight against retroactive immunity for the telecommunications industry. Secrecy and special interests must not trump accountability. We must show our citizens – and set an example to the world – that laws cannot be ignored when it is inconvenient. Because in America – no one is above the law.

(Emphasis supplied.) That was then. What about now Senator Obama? Please also note that in October 2007, Obama's spokesman said:

To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies.

Nancy Pelosi is fast becoming the most disagraceful Democratic official in Washington, DC. Lynn Sweet reports:

Pelosi does not spend a lot of time worrying about sexist remarks people make. . . . “Is there sexism? Probably so,” said Pelosi. . . . Of course there is sexism, we all know that. I mean but it is a given, it is a given . . .

Pelosi said she wanted to know more facts before she made a final pronouncement about sexism and the Clinton candidacy. "I myself find that I get a tremendous upside from being a woman and I don't spend a lot of time worrying about sexist remarks that people make."

(Emphasis supplied.) Sexism? 'Who cares?' says Nancy Pelosi. What a disgrace.

Speaking for me only

The surge is working ... not so well.

Beyond the declines in overall violence in Iraq, several crucial measures the Bush administration uses to demonstrate economic, political and security progress are either incorrect or far more mixed than the administration has acknowledged, according to a report released Monday by the Government Accountability Office.

Can you believe that the Bush administration might not be entirely accurate in its assessment of the surge?

Administration figures, according to the report, broadly overstate gains in some categories, including the readiness of the Iraqi Army, electricity production and how much money Iraq is spending on its reconstruction.

[more ...]

M.J. Rosenberg writes:

[I]t is silly to get bent out of shape when [Obama] says something he may or may not believe in order to win . . . That is precisely what I want him to do . . .

I suppose that is why Rosenberg supported the Obama campaign's saying:

Proving once again that [Hillary Clinton] will say and do anything to win . . .

All the "outrage" Rosenberg expressed about the Clinton campaign was just a big lie apparently. Now my own view is that ALL pols will say and do anything to win - the trick for us as citizens is to make the politically wise thing to do be the things we want the pols to do. That is why we hold their feet to the fire:

Richard Cohen writes:

the difference between McCain and Obama -- . . . McCain is a known commodity. . . . As his North Vietnamese captors found out, there is only so far he will go, and then his pride or his sense of honor takes over.

[McCain] embodies a quality for which the country yearns: integrity. He is a man of his word. . . . McCain must remain true to the principles he has enunciated in his disagreement with Bush over the Geneva Conventions and similar matters. Compromise is not a dirty word, but abandonment of principle is a different matter entirely. The United States cannot conduct itself as its enemies have. We do not torture. . . .

But John McCain voted against banning torture by the CIA:

The idea that obscenity can be defined by contemporary community standards has always been controversial. Why should First Amendment protections differ depending upon the majority viewpoint in one's community of residence?

The idea is even sillier in the age of the internet and satellite broadcasting. What does "community" mean? The internet community spreads across all boundaries. If two people in two different communities are watching the same movie or viewing the same website in the privacy of their own homes, why should one be less entitled to First Amendment protection than the other? Why should your neighbor's opinion make your private activity a crime? How is a person to know if obscenity is accepted in a particular community? Do you need to take a survey of community standards before you crack open Tropic of Cancer?

A creative defense to an obscenity trial in Florida is making use of Google data to show that Pensecola computer users have very low standards indeed (or, at least, that they share the typically raunchy interests of many members of every community). [more ...]

Via MYDD:

"Anybody who claims this [FISA Capitulation bill] is an okay bill, I really question if they've even read it." "Democrats enabled [this]," Feingold went on. "Some of the rank and file Democrats in the Senate who were elected on this reform platform unfortunately voted with Kit Bond who's just giggling he's so happy with what he got. We caved in."

Glenn Greenwald has video:

This speaks for itself:

Charlie Black, a top adviser to Republican John McCain, apologized this afternoon for suggesting that another terrorist attack on US soil would help McCain's prospects. In an interview with Fortune magazine, Black declared, "Certainly it would be a big advantage to him."

Gosh, if only that would happen. Meanwhile, this headline proclaims the shocking news that John McCain hit his head on a low-hanging roof, while the article says it was a low-hanging door. Which was it, sir? A roof or a door? The world demands to know!