By Big Tent Democrat

TPM on the Texas Caucuses reporting:

A lot of readers have wondered why the Texas caucuses have been so slow to report to the media. The answer: They're not reporting in great numbers anymore, and they don't actually have to. Nonetheless, we might still have a decent estimate of the final result for you to consider.

. . . The results that have come in came from a voluntary system set up in order to help the media get an idea of what to expect the final delegate result to be. . .

Heck of a way to pick a nominee. Yep, love those caucuses.

The AP reports:

The FBI acknowledged Wednesday it improperly accessed Americans' telephone records, credit reports and Internet traffic in 2006, the fourth straight year of privacy abuses resulting from investigations aimed at tracking terrorists and spies.

....[The breach was] caused, in part, by banks, telecommunication companies and other private businesses giving the FBI more personal client data than was requested.

Details will be forthcoming in a report by the Justice Department Inspector General. [More...]

By Big Tent Democrat

Is Donna Brazile upset about this?

Obama campaign advisers are already making good on promises to confront Hillary much more aggressively on new fronts, hammering her on a conference call over her failure to release her tax returns.

. . . In response, Hillary spokesperson Howard Wolfson sought to shift the discussion back to the Rezko story, a tale the Hillary camp will be hitting on relentlessly in the weeks ahead. "Their tax returns since they left the White House will be made available on or around April 15," Wolfson said, speaking of the Clintons. "Instead of making false attacks, we urge Senator Obama to release all relevant financial and other information related to indicted political fixer Tony Rezko."

Are we getting the vapors yets? For the record, I personally could not care less about seeing Clinton's tax returns or Obama's Rezko records.

By Big Tent Democrat

Via Marc Ambinder:

A joint statement from the governors of Florida and Michigan:

“The right to vote is at the very foundation of our democracy. This primary season, voters have turned out in record numbers to exercise that right, and it is reprehensible that anyone would seek to silence the voices of 5,163,271 Americans. It is intolerable that the national political parties have denied the citizens of Michigan and Florida their votes and voices at their respective national conventions.

According to the DNC and RNC, Florida and Michigan have violated party rules by moving up their primaries. Today, we each will call upon our respective state and national party chairs to resolve this matter and to ensure that the voters of Michigan and Florida are full participants in the formal selection of their parties' nominees. We must restore the rights of the more than 5 million voters whose voices have been silenced.”

(Emphasis supplied.) Pssst, Governors, do I have a plan for you. Commenter Coral Gables brings us the FL Dem Party reaction:

By Big Tent Democrat

Kevin Drum writes:

Atrios:

The campaigns and candidates themselves may not get nasty, but I get the sense that supporters of the various candidates are getting angrier at the other camp. Sure a lot of this is just relatively harmless virtual world internet flaming, but it has real world manifestations too.

This has sort of taken me by surprise too. I'm reminded of the old saying that the smaller the stakes, the more vicious the battle. Obama and Clinton are obviously different in some important ways, but overall there just aren't any huge gaps between them, either in ideology or governing theory. . . . I confess that I have a hard time understanding the level of vitriol that the race has produced among supporters on both sides. . . .

Yep. On the flip, I will show you what I mean.

The jury has been selected in Tony Rezko's federal criminal trial. Opening arguments are tomorrow. Each side is expected to take an hour to present their arguments.

The Judge is not disclosing which jurors were selected, either by number or name.

The new sentencing guidelines with reductions in crack cocaine sentences went into effect two days ago.

In two days, the courts have granted 400 motions for sentence reductions. A few inmates have been able to leave jail immediately.

These reductions are modest in size, don't apply to everyone and should be heralded by everyone concerned about justice and fairness. The exceptions, not surprisingly, are the Bush Administration and Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who continue to criticize the reductions.

Sentencing Law and Policy has much more on how the implementation of the reductions is progressing.

I'm looking forward to a Democratic President in November who will provide Congress with an impetus to move on legislation that will eliminate the sentencing disparity between crack and powder once and for all, and also reduce or eliminate the true cancer on the criminal justice system -- mandatory minimum drug sentences.

The ACLU and BlackElectorate.com have teamed up to start a new public awareness project focusing on the
"devastating effects of felony disfranchisement on this country’s African-American community."

How bad is the problem?

One out of every seven - or 1.4 million - African-American men is disfranchised and cannot vote due to a felony conviction. This rate is nearly seven times the national disfranchisement rate of one in 41 adults.

Consider the vote in Texas yesterday:

Over half a million Texan citizens will be unable to vote due to a felony conviction. Over 165,000 of those disfranchised Texans are black,” said Laleh Ispahani, Senior Policy Counsel with the ACLU Racial Justice Program. “Disfranchisement runs contrary to fundamental precepts of democracy, human rights, and of giving people a second chance, a chance at true rehabilitation.”

The ACLU's page on felon disfranchisement is here. A state by state guide is here.

Dr. Steven Hayne, Mississippi's medical examiner for hire, had his faulty forensic work exposed when two inmates, wrongfully convicted in separate child murders, were exonerated a few weeks ago after serving 15 years in prison. The Innocence Project has more on his background and on the two clients recently released.

There's more news today, as the Innocence Project has filed open records requests on Dr. Hayne.

The Innocence Project and the Mississippi Innocence Project today issued 23 formal Public Records Act requests that will show the extent to which discredited medical examiner Steven Hayne is using state facilities to conduct autopsies – and potentially using federally-funded crime labs for forensic work that is fraught with negligence and misconduct.

More...

A FISA compromise is in the works. At a meeting yesterday, sponsored by the American Bar Association, Kenneth Wainstein, assistant attorney general for national security, pointed out something that hasn't gotten wide attention: Foreign to foreign doesn't really mean that when it comes to e-mail.

At the breakfast yesterday, Wainstein highlighted a different problem with the current FISA law than other administration officials have emphasized. Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, for example, has repeatedly said FISA should be changed so no warrant is needed to tap a communication that took place entirely outside the United States but happened to pass through the United States.

But in response to a question at the meeting by David Kris, a former federal prosecutor and a FISA expert, Wainstein said FISA's current strictures did not cover strictly foreign wire and radio communications, even if acquired in the United States. The real concern, he said, is primarily e-mail, because "essentially you don't know where the recipient is going to be" and so you would not know in advance whether the communication is entirely outside the United States.

Corrente Wire has more. And Raw Story reports the FBI wants the telecoms to get immunity even if they acted in bad faith.

By Big Tent Democrat

Via Blogometer, Mike Lux writes:

[W]e've reached that juncture where it seems better for us to turn our attention to defining McCain rather than carving up each other."

Due respect to Mike, what is stopping you? Unless the us is the candidates, I see no reason why any person, Media organ or blogger who wants to turn their attention to McCain can not do so. What's stopping them?

NBC and bloggers, from list A to Z, are all proclaiming Hillary can not win. Then do not sweat the contest. What's the worry? That Hillary is going to question Obama's experience? Oooooh. And gawd knows John McCain won't right? Morever, are you sure the Media will defend Obama as they do now when Hillary is not his opponent?

A lot of folks are going to be in for a rude awakening if/when Obama gets the nomination and they discover their new BFFs in the Media are not so nice when a Clinton is not the opponent.

By Big Tent Democrat

This is very interesting and very smart by Barack Obama. Apparently he called SNL's Lorne Michaels to complain about SNL's bias:

Complaining about the refs apparently worked a little bit this week. So in addition to my call to [Saturday Night Live producer] Lorne Michaels, hopefully now people think everything has evened out."

I do not think there is any doubt that Obama had his toughest week of Media coverage last week and Obama is right to see SNL is a primary reason for it. The Media does not like being ridiculed. Especially by SNL.

Working the SNL ref Michaels may well get Obama some negative stuff on Clinton and make the Media feel better about giving him good coverage. NOTE - Perhaps Obama was joking. That would make some sense. But the reporting does not indicate it was a joke. FURTHER NOTE - apparently Politico went back and asked if it was a joke. The answer is yes. Ok. I guess the joke was supposed to prove how he, Obama, is not a whiner. Hard to do when you are in the middle of whining BTW.

My view is that for pure comic relief, spoofing Tweety Matthews and Punchline KO Olbermann's incredible spluttering outrage that Clinton refuses to drop out after winning Texas and Ohio is a sure fire comedy classic. But it will be hard to top the original performance. Funniest thing I have seen all year. They could even do Fineman as the Grim Reaper. It was hilarious.