Innocent people are convicted in Georgia, just like everywhere else. The problem will only grow worse now that Georgia, in an effort to trim the state budget, plans to lay off 17 public defenders in Fulton County.

On Monday, the county’s chief judge, Doris L. Downs, called the layoffs “irresponsible.”

For every public defender laid off, the same fate should befall a prosecutor. Why should those who are committed to defending the rights of the accused carry the weight of the state's failure to generate the tax revenues needed to make the criminal justice system operate fairly? [more ...]

At a press conference today, Sen. Barack Obama said he will not ask Jim Johnson to step down from his VP selection committee despite his ties to Countrywide Mortgage. Obama said he will not vet the vetters.

Obama: "These are not folks who are working for me."

The Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) released its latest report on the inmate population in America's jails and prisons. The headline spins "Slower Growth..." The reality: Our prison population increased once again, and we now have 2.3 million in our nation's prisons and jails.

The report is available here. Chief findings, according to the DOJ press release:

• Between January and June 2007, the prison population increased by 1.6% (or 24,919 prisoners), compared to a 2% increase during the first six months of 2006.
• The number of prisoners sentenced to more than 1 year increased 1.7% between December 31, 2006 and June 30, 2007, or at about the same rate as the total number of prisoners under jurisdiction.
• Between 2000 and 2007, the number of inmates in custody in prisons or jails increased by 367,200. Male inmates (315,100) accounted for 86% of the increase to the custody population. Female inmates (52,100) made up the remaining 14%.

I'm not big on expending time and energy on impeaching Bush and Cheney. They'll be gone soon enough and I'd rather spend my time arguing against McCain and another four years of the same.

Nonetheless, the articles of impeachment are an important read as a reminder of the crimes perpetrated by the Bush Admnistration and as a warning that they should never again be tolerated. The full text of the 35 articles is available here (pdf). You can sign a petition to support them here.

For more, check out AfterDowningStreet, Kucinich.us (temporarily on server overload)and Democrats.com

Congress is investigating grants awarded by the Justice Department to fight crime. Murray Waas, Brian Ross and Anna Schecter have the details. Of particular concern are the funds awarded by the Justice Department's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

One $500,000 grant was given to a golf group. A former staffer says the anti-crime funds are given to programs with the "right" connections.

A key witness will be a former employee of Flores' office, Scott Peterson, who says the grants were awarded based more on politics than merit. "This is cronyism, this is waste, fraud and abuse," Peterson told ABC News in an interview aired on Nightline Monday night. Peterson says the money for the golf program is one of a number of grants awarded to lower-ranked applicants rated in rankings compiled by Justice Department staff members.

"It's a lot of our taxpayer money that's supposed to go for some of our most vulnerable children," Peterson said.

A report released today by Human Rights Watch finds the conditions at Guantanamo are causing undue mental suffering among the detainees.

More than two-thirds of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, including many cleared for release or transfer, are being housed in inhumane conditions that are reportedly having a damaging effect on their mental health, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today.

The 54-page report, “Locked Up Alone: Detention Conditions and Mental Health at Guantanamo,” documents the conditions in the various “camps” at the detention center, in which approximately 185 of the 270 detainees are housed in facilities akin to “supermax” prisons even though they have not yet been convicted of a crime.

More...

For the past decade, John McCain has been the Media Darling of Washington. Paradoxically, I believe a lot of his trouble with the GOP base stemmed in large part from his carefully cultivated Media status as a "maverick," even though the record demonstrates that he was no maverick at all.

Now the Media Darling is Barack Obama and McCain's potential path to victory depends, imo, in part, on picking a fight with the Media. He certainly can not win on the issues and thus he needs to negatively brand Obama. With the Media unwilling to do to Obama what it did to Bill Clinton, Gore, Kerry and Hillary Clinton, McCain must now abandon his old Media constituency and strike at both Obama and the Media. Turkana points to this Politico piece that discusses the McCain execution of this strategy:

REM in South Africa:

This is an open thread.

Digby wrote this on Saturday:

I have written before that I don't believe Obama's win is attributed to [sexism], carrying a heavy historical burden of his own. But that doesn't mean it didn't happen. Acknowledging that doesn't create a "toxic legacy" and neither is it just the sad lament of "lonely people" (translation: lonely old women.) But I'm sure those memes will catch on and we'll all be told that we imagined it all. (Youtube is our new best friend.)

Clinton's campaign ripped open a hole in our culture and forced us to look inside. And what we found was a simmering cauldron of crude, sophomoric sexism and ugly misogyny that a lot of us knew existed but didn't realize was still so socially acceptable that it could be broadcast on national television and garner nary a complaint from anybody but a few internet scolds like me. It was eye-opening, to say the least.

As a card carrying internet scold, I will not be shut up about this, or anything else, including Keith Olbermann's unprofessionalism.

Speaking for me only

What do Barack Obama and the Democrats have to offer young evangelicals and Catholics? We'll soon find out. Obama is launching the Joshua Generation Project to bring more of them on board with his campaign.

The name is based on the biblical story of how Joshua's generation led the Israelites into the Promised Land. A source close to the Obama campaign tells The Brody File the following:

"The Joshua Generation project will be the Obama campaign's outreach to young people of faith. There's unprecedented energy and excitement for Obama among young evangelicals and Catholics. The Joshua Generation project will tap into that excitement and provide young people of faith opportunities to stand up for their values and move the campaign forward."

Why would evangelicals and Catholics support a pro-choice candidate? Is he planning on modifying his position? Are his campaign speeches going to incorporate religion even more than they have in the past?

Where is this headed? [More...]

Percy Levar Walton was scheduled for execution tomorrow. Virginia Governor Timothy Kaine today commuted his sentence to life without parole.

Walton has a history of mental isslness that has gotten progressively worse while in prison. Kaine determined Walton is mentally incompetent, not fully aware of the punishment he is about to suffer and why he is to suffer it. While Kaine issued temporary stays for Walton in the past, today he issued his final decision and commuted the sentence.

Gov. Kaine's statement is here.

"After reviewing the information, I was compelled to conclude that Walton was seriously mentally impaired and that he met the Supreme Court's definition of mental incompetence. Because one could not reasonably conclude that Walton was fully aware of the punishment he was about to suffer and why he was to suffer it, I decided that his execution could not proceed at that time.

Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan has agreed to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on June 20th about the leak of Valerie Plame's identity.

He will be asked about Dick Cheney's role.

President Bush's former spokesman, Scott McClellan, will testify before a House committee next week about whether Vice President Dick Cheney ordered him to make misleading public statements about the leaking of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity.

In his new book, "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception," McClellan said he was misled by others, possibly including Cheney, about the role of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby in the leak. McClellan has said publicly that Bush and Cheney "directed me to go out there and exonerate Scooter Libby."

McClellan is represented by Michael Tigar and his wife, Jane Tigar. Doesn't get much better than that. (Update: Jason Leopold has more on McClellan at the Public Record.)