Manhattan's District Attorney, Robert Morgenthau, took some heat in an election contest for apparently prosecuting the wrong men for the 1990 shooting of a bouncer outside the Palladium nightclub. He asssigned Daniel Bibb to reexamine the case. Bibb reported that "the two imprisoned men were not guilty, and that their convictions should be dropped." Yet Bibb was told to defend their convictions in the face of strong evidence that the men were innocent. Was Morgenthau unwilling to concede a serious mistake for fear that voters might punish him?

Remarkably, Bibb admits that he defied his bosses and threw the case when the defendants asked for a new trial.

He tracked down hard-to-find or reluctant witnesses who pointed to other suspects and prepared them to testify for the defense. He talked strategy with defense lawyers. And when they veered from his coaching, he cornered them in the hallway and corrected them. “I did the best I could,” he said. “To lose.”

Bibb got his wish, and both men are free today. Bibb resigned in 2006. [more ...]

Is Bob Barr the new Ralph Nader?

A fiery former GOP congressman who gained national prominence for doggedly pursuing impeachment of President Clinton has some Republicans worried he'll play spoiler in a tight presidential contest.

Bob Barr's Libertarian Party bid for the White House is the longest of long shots, but political experts say he may be able to exploit the unease some die-hard conservatives still feel about Sen. John McCain, the Republican nominee-in-waiting. Combined with the surge in turnout among Democrats during the primaries and a difficult political climate for Republicans, they see what could be a recipe for trouble for the GOP.

"Bob could be the Ralph Nader of 2008," said Dan Schnur, a GOP consultant in California who worked on McCain's 2000 campaign but is not involved in this year's contest.

George Bush is the greater spoiler for Republicans in 2008, but any damage Barr can do to the Republican cause is welcome. Here are some memorable Barr moments, in addition to leading the impeachment fight:

This link will direct you to a nice piece of writing by Chris Floyd on Torturegate.

By week's end, the evidence that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and other top government officials had deliberately created a system of torture which they knew was illegal – indeed, a capital crime – under U.S. law was so plain, so overwhelming, and so handily concentrated that it broke through the levees of institutional cover-up and media complicity that had held this clear truth at bay for so long. The grim facts had finally worked their way into "conventional wisdom." It was now permissible for good "centrist" folk to speak of such things, even condemn them, without being automatically relegated to ranks of "the haters," the "unserious," the "shrill partisans," etc.

Floyd warns against a "line of defense ... that would allow the purveyors of conventional wisdom to vent a bit of righteous outrage at official wrongdoing without actually having to do anything about it or admitting of any flaws in their fundamentalist doctrine of American exceptionalism." He adds that Barack Obama "has given every indication he too sees the Administration's high crimes as "dumb policies" that don't require any legal redress." The whole piece is worth a read.

What do you think about Google bombing John McCain?

A political blogger is using a technique known as "Google bombing" to enlist the aid of fellow partisan bloggers to boost the search engine rankings of nine news stories that reflect poorly on Republican presidential candidate John McCain. ... The articles [Chris] Bowers is using range from a story about McCain voting to filibuster a minimum wage hike to an item about the Senate passing an expanded GI bill despite opposition from McCain.

Bowers on the ethics of Google bombing:

Richard Epstein does not often write things I agree with but he did today about the Boumediene decision, where he echoes my consistent critique of the DC district court and DC circuit court decisions:

Enemy prisoners of war are never granted [habeas], either in the United States or abroad. What matters is whether a prisoner is or is not an enemy combatant. The defendants in Eisentrager, German war criminals, admitted being enemy combatants. The six plaintiffs in Boumediene, accused of plotting an attack on the American Embassy in Bosnia, claim they are not. They should be entitled to challenge both the government’s definition of an enemy combatant and the factual basis of their arrest. And they should be able to do so, as the court stressed, under standard habeas corpus procedures that allow them to present evidence and confront witnesses, and not under the paltry procedures outlined by the 2006 Military Commissions Act.

(Emphasis supplied.) Precisely.

Can you imagine spending a quarter century in prison for crimes you didn't commit?

DNA testing last year showed Steven Phillips was innocent of a 1982 sexual assault and burglary. In January, additional testing found that DNA evidence from the rape matched another man, Sidney Alvin Goodyear, who died in prison about a dozen years ago.

Can you imagine, after being convicted despite your innocence, having to decide whether to maintain your innocence on related crimes, a stance likely to result in life imprisonment, or to plead guilty just for the chance to die outside of prison walls? [more ...]

I'm out for the afternoon.

If you're stuck at work or staying inside to avoid high temperatures -- or any other reason -- here's a place to chat.

A former police chief who was convicted of murdering his ex-wife has been spared the death penalty.

After listening to the wishes of the victim’s family, Northumberland County District Attorney Tony Rosini withdrew his plan to seek the death penalty and recommended the defendant receive life imprisonment without parole for murdering his ex-wife.

It's always heartening to see a murder victim's family choose to set aside the natural desire for "life for a life" vengeance and to accept confinement as an appropriate punishment.

Glenn Greenwald catches Time magazine presenting some of its typical bad reporting:

A compromise deal to extend the federal government's domestic spying powers . . . has drawn attacks from both sides of the political spectrum. The right is unhappy at concessions made to protect civil liberties; the left is furious that the Democrats allowed the domestic spying powers to be extended in any form.

It must be a decent and reasonable compromise if both the extremes on the Right and Left are angry about it -- except the whole premise is patently false. The Right isn't attacking the bill at all; they're ecstatic about it.

(Emphasis supplied.) Which brings me to John Cole's odd post equating FISA to a poker hand:

Maureen Dowd spends her column today trying to toss off jokes about the French while revealing her outrage that the French are not outraged about Carla Bruni. It is a pathetic attempt to be cool when on the inside her squareness and zealous righteousness is chafing to get out.

In this same edition of the New York Times, the Public Editor Clark Hoyt has some scathing criticism of her columns on Hillary Clinton:

Dowd’s columns about Clinton’s campaign were so loaded with language painting her as a 50-foot woman with a suffocating embrace, a conniving film noir dame and a victim dependent on her husband that they could easily have been listed in that Times article on sexism, right along with the comments of Chris Matthews, Mike Barnicle, Tucker Carlson or, for that matter, Kristol, who made the Hall of Shame for a comment on Fox News, not for his Times work.

Dowd's defense is precious:

A Japanese newspaper is reporting that China has declared that those suffering from leprosy, AIDS and other ailments may not enter the country during the Olympics. Yohei Sasakawa, a human rights activist, philanthropist and the World Health Organization's special ambassador for the elimination of leprosy, is asking China to change its policy.

According to Sasakawa, China has published a "guideline to Chinese law for foreigners coming to, leaving or staying in China during the Olympics," which states that, "anyone with listed diseases such as yellow fever, cholera, VD, leprosy, infectious pulmonary tuberculosis or AIDS will be prohibited" from entering the country during the games.

99% of the world population is believed to be immune to leprosy:

Leprosy is a chronic bacterial disease that mainly affects the skin and nerves. Left untreated it can result in deformity. It is cured using multi-drug therapy and is only very slightly contagious, and 99 percent of the people in the world have a natural immunity to it, according to the Nippon Foundation.

More...

Between the capitulation on FISA and the revelations about the torture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others in the CIA's secret black hole prison in Poland, it's time to express a little outrage.

This is an open thread.