Poor judgment and unnecessary violence on the part of a police officer in Seattle will cost local taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars. Here's what happened:

[Romelle] Bradford was a 20-year-old volunteer at the Rainier Vista Boys & Girls Club in 2006 and was chaperoning a dance when rival groups began to make trouble. Police were called, and Bradford, according to testimony and court records, was wearing a red staff T-shirt and identification when a rookie police officer, Jacob Briskey, ordered him to stop running toward the altercation.

Bradford, who testified he did not know the officer was speaking to him, continued on when the then-24-year-old officer knocked him hard to the ground and threatened to "knock him the [expletive] out" if he tried to get back up. Bradford was arrested and spent a night in jail.

A federal jury awarded Bradford $269,000. The city hired a private law firm that has billed more than $138,000 to defend the case and the court will probably order the city to pay Bradford's attorneys' fees (although likely less than the $271,000 they're requesting). If the city loses a planned appeal, thousands more will be paid to the attorneys on both sides of the case. All because a police officer roughed up and arrested a young man who was just trying to do his job.

Erin Rosa at Colorado Independent reports that the prison guards union sent out a questionnaire to the candidates asking what they would do to address the critical underfunding and understaffing of federal prisons.

The federal Bureau of Prisons is facing a budget crisis, and correctional officers working in the nation's prisons are concerned that understaffing is jeopardizing the safety of inmates and employees. But despite these issues, presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain's campaign has so far declined to answer a questionnaire about bureau funding and staffing woes, according to a government employees union.

The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents approximately 15,000 federal correctional officers in Colorado and across the nation, recently sent out a three-question survey to McCain and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama asking for their views on understaffing and funding of prisons.

More...

Kevin Drum writes:

OBAMA vs. McCAIN....Gallup's latest Obama-McCain tracking poll shows exactly what you'd expect: now that Obama is firmly the Democratic candidate, he's making up considerable ground. There will be more ups and downs, especially around the conventions, but I'll bet that Obama never has much less than a five point lead for the rest of the campaign.

(Emphasis supplied.) I'll take that bet - IF Obama does not pick Hillary Clinton as his VP. I would expect an Obama drop the day, if it comes, Obama does not choose Hillary Clinton as his VP.

See, for those who do not get it, I am not arguing that Hillary Clinton is entitled to be VP, I am arguing that it is in Obama's best interest to choose her as it will insure his victory in November.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

Greg Sargent notes this from Barack Obama:

By the way, I'm going to be partnering with Elizabeth Edwards, we're going to be figuring all this out."

As Greg writes:

The key political context here, of course, is that back in April, Elizabeth revealed that Obama's health care plan wasn't her favorite [she expressly preferred Hillary Clinton's plan]. Enlisting her as a public voice on health care could obviously help with the Obama camp's outreach to women and help win over skeptics in general.

I have no opinion on the merits of the respective health care plans, but it is an interesting move to the LEFT by Obama (now in GE mode) and to a unified position on health care in the Democratic Party. Very interesting.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only.

Legal Schnauzer asks a smart question about the Justice Department's prosecution of Don Siegelman: if what Siegelman did (acting in support of a campaign contributor) is illegal, why isn't the Justice Department prosecuting his Republican successor for doing much the same thing?

Now, let's consider the case of current Alabama Governor Bob Riley, a Republican. Riley took a sizable campaign contribution from supporters of a biotechnology center in Huntsville and helped steer millions of state dollars to the project. ... Has Riley gotten in trouble with federal prosecutors for what appears to be a "quid pro quo" very much like the one Siegelman allegedly arranged? Heck, no. ...

(more ...)

The old John McCain abhorred intolerance:

In 2000, when he was running against Mr. Bush for the Republican nomination, Mr. McCain castigated Pat Robertson and the Rev. Jerry Falwell as “agents of intolerance.”

The new John McCain embraces intolerance:

The campaign has been peppering over 600 socially conservative grass-roots and national leaders with regular e-mail messages — highlighting, for example, Mr. McCain’s statement criticizing a May 15 decision by the California Supreme Court overturning the state’s ban on same-sex marriage, or his recent speech on his judicial philosophy. ... Charlie Black, one of Mr. McCain’s senior advisers, recently sat down with a dozen prominent evangelical leaders in Washington, where he emphasized, among other things, Mr. McCain’s consistent anti-abortion voting record.

Who says McCain is against change? He changes all the time. John McCain: the candidate who wants to return America to the 19th Century.

First wife issues are nothing new. Lots of politicians have them. But John McCain, who will face some trouble from a segment of voters over his current wife Cindy's past prescription drug troubles, cannot be pleased today to see his first wife and mother of his three oldest children in the news.

Surprisingly, Carol McCain is defending him, even though he left her after his return from Vietnam and re-emergence as a war hero. Carol charitably says he was having a sort of "midlife crisis." Many others say it was because she had been horribly disfigured in a car accident and gained a lot of weight. [More...]

Courtesy of Al Hunt:

[S]ome Clintonistas persist in the whiny complaint that it was all about sexism. . . . Clinton herself complained of the "deeply offensive" sexual discrimination she faced particularly in the media . . .

Here's my question, is discussing the pervasive sexism in the Media now whining? Really? You sure you want to put it that way Al Hunt?

This is the "it's only sexism" version of the malign acceptance of sexism. I wonder if it too is acceptable. Sadly, it probably is.

Speaking for me only

Gas is $4.00 across the country. Driving to Aspen this weekend, I paid $4.27 a gallon. I knew better than to wait to refill until reaching Aspen, where everything costs more. Sure enough, one station in town was charging $4.65.

It's going to keep rising. I think we'll see $5.00 across the country in July. The New York Times says rural residents are being hit the hardest.

Across broad swaths of the South, Southwest and the upper Great Plains, the combination of low incomes, high gas prices and heavy dependence on pickup trucks and vans is putting an even tighter squeeze on family budgets.

Here in the Mississippi Delta, some farm workers are borrowing money from their bosses so they can fill their tanks and get to work. Some are switching jobs for shorter commutes. People are giving up meat so they can buy fuel. Gasoline theft is rising. And drivers are running out of gas more often, leaving their cars by the side of the road until they can scrape together gas money.

The Democrats need to reach out these rural voters on the gas issue. They make up 26% of the voting public. [More...]

Here's a late night open thread for those of you with something to say.

The Bush administration's extraordinarily unsuccessful attempt to engineer a series of show trials at Guantanamo is about to accelerate.

The Pentagon has declared the Guantanamo war crimes trials a national priority and will more than double the number of military lawyers assigned to them ... . [A]bout 108 uniformed military lawyers [will] be added to the prosecution and defense teams in the next three months.

You think this has nothing to do with the upcoming election? Then why, after warehousing "enemy combatants" (or whatever the administration is calling them today) for the last six years without a single trial, have trials (perhaps including death penalty trials) become a sudden priority?

Pressed for details on the timing, [Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas] Hartmann said, "I don't know that it always wasn't the No. 1 priority but I know that it was formally declared the No. 1 priority in the last two or three weeks" by Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England.

Is the administration orchestrating an election year reminder of 9/11 in a sudden rush to judgment at Guantanamo? (more ...)

Right wing bloggers are talking about a post on TalkLeft in which I supposedly called Keith Olbermann "a shameless hack." Unfortunately, they didn't read correctly and I didn't call Olbermann that. TalkLeft and I do not engage in name-calling.

I checked the link, and Big Tent Democrat had added an update to one of my April posts, using his initials BTD to clearly indicate it was written by him, calling Olbermann a "“the most shameless ridiculous hack on TV.”

Since it was my post, and the right wing blogs are attributing it to me rather than BTD or even TalkLeft, I deleted BTD's update from my post.

So if you are looking for me calling KO "a shameless hack" you aren't going to find it because I never said it.