King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has shown some mercy and granted a pardon to the victim of a gang rape who was sentenced to 200 lashes because she was in the company of a man other than her spouse at the time of the crime.

The rape took place a year and a half ago in Qatif, a small Shiite town in the Eastern Province, the center of Saudi Arabia’s oil industry. The woman, who has been publicly identified only as the “Qatif girl,” said she met a former boyfriend to retrieve a photograph of herself. They were sitting in a car when seven men attacked, raping them both.

As I wrote here, the original sentence of 90 lashes was upped to 200 lashes after her lawyer complained to the media. Back to today's news:

Commenting on the pardon, the Saudi justice minister, Abdullah bin Mohammed al-Sheik, told Al Jazirah that the king fully supported the verdicts against the woman but had decided to pardon her because it was in the “interests of the people.”

“On one hand this tells people, ‘We support our system and we will punish you if you violate it,’” he said. “Yet he’s also showing mercy. Throughout, he’s making it clear that he is not disagreeing with the judge’s opinion on this sensitive issue of sexual chastity, but he believes that there is a higher interest to be served by the pardon, whether that’s relationships between Shiites and Sunnis, or international opinion.”

Thank you King Abdullah.

Update: A transcript of Gov. Corzine's remarks is here.

New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine today signed the bill passed by the N.J. legislature last week abolishing the state's death penalty. (Background here.)

In an extended and often passionate speech from his office at the state capitol, Mr. Corzine declared an end to what he called “state-endorsed killing,” and said that New Jersey could serve as a model for other states.

“Today New Jersey is truly evolving,” he said. “I believe society first must determine if its endorsement of violence begets violence, and if violence undermines our commitment to the sanctity of life. To these questions, I answer yes.”

New Jersey is the first state to legislatively ban the death penalty in more than 40 years. The eight men on New Jersey's death row will now serve life in prison without parole.

In Rome, Italy, lights will flush through the arches of the Coliseum for 24 hours in recognition of the repeal.

States that still have the death penalty include: [More]

Noah Shachtman at Wired reports on a bill passed last week banning gang members from serving in the military. He writes:

It's a problem that's worse -- and more complicated -- than you think. I've talked to Marine officers in Anbar province who swore by their gang-bangers: No one else could spot criminal activity on a base more quickly; no one else could find so many holes in the base's protection.

But when these guys come home, it can become a nightmare -- with gangs equipped with military gear, and trained in close-combat tactics.

More from the Army Times and Stars and Stripes.

CREW won a battle in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia today when Judge Royce Lamberth ordered the White House to turn over visitor logs of 9 religious commentators, including James Dobson, Gary Bauer and Jerry Falwell.

Visitor records are created by the Secret Service, which is subject to the Freedom of Information Act. But the Bush administration has ordered the data turned over to the White House, where they are treated as presidential records outside the scope of the public records law.

But U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth ruled logs from the White House and Vice President Dick Cheney's residence remain Secret Service documents and are subject to public records requests.

Lamberth refused a second request by CREW pertaining to the Jack Abramoff investigation. CREW wanted the judge to prevent the Secret Service from destroying its copies of visitor logs after tendering them to the White House. Lamberth said he lacked jurisdiction over the request. However,

Because the logs were declared Secret Service records, however, they cannot be destroyed without approval from the National Archives.

Update: Consideration of the bill has been postponed to January due to the number of proposed amendments and lack of time to consider them.

Update: Here's the transcript of Dodd's speech.

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The Senate is debating S. 2248 to overhaul FISA. The bill contains retroactive immunity for the telecom companies.

A vote will begin shortly on whether to accept the bill. Right now they are moving to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed.

You can watch live on C-Span3.

Update: The Roll Call vote is happening. The room looks more than three-quarters empty. By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum requirement is waived. 60 votes are needed to move forward with the bill. Clerk calls roll.

Sen. Leahy is expected to file a substitute bill stripping the telecoms of immunity.

Vote tally: Boxer, Feingold, Cantwell, Brown, Harkin, Wyden, Cardin, Kerry, Menendez and Dodd voted in the negative so far. Leahy and Durbin voted yes, as did Feinstein, Schumer, Kennedy, Specter, Levin and Ken Salazar. Again, this is the motion to invoke cloture to allow the bad Senate Intel Committee bill to proceed.

Vote total: Cloture is invoked. 76 to 10. Motion is agreed to. Harry Reid: No one intends to talk for 30 hours but some want to talk post-cloture. Reid wants everything from now on to take 60 votes, except for final passage. The rules don't require it, but they do take 60 votes to stop a filibuster. They are arguing about that now.

More...

Bump and Update: It's a done deal. Lieberman has endorsed John McCain for President.

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Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard reports Sen. Joe Lieberman will endorse John McCain for President in New Hampshire tomorrow.

This is not surprising to me -- it's just two of your father's Oldsmobiles sticking together. MSNBC asked in January whether a McCain-Lieberman ticket was not a possibility.

More....

Adam Liptak in the New York Times has a new column on the recent sentencing guideline reductions for crack cocaine. He posits that as a result of the reductions, Congress may be less likely to reduce mandatory minimum penalties for crack cocaine since Judges now have more discretion in sentencing and Congress won't want to give judges unfettered discretion.

There are several bills kicking around Congress meant to harmonize cocaine sentencing laws. But, perhaps perversely, the Supreme Court’s decisions last Monday may make Congressional action less likely. Letting judges have too much discretion does not sit well with some legislators, and that discretion can be controlled through mandatory minimums.

His source for that theory is former (very conservative) Judge and victims' rights advocate Paul Cassell. I've never agreed with Cassell about anything, particularly his attempts to repeal Miranda rights, push the death penalty and make light of false confessions and wrongful convictions, but I sure hope he's wrong on this one.

Liptak describes the penalties for powder as if they are way too lenient,

Fifty grams of crack equals a guaranteed 10 years. It takes five kilograms of powder to mandate the same sentence. Five kilos is a lot of cocaine.

I think that's a backwards way of looking at it. The better view is that ten years is a long jail sentence -- for any non-violent drug offense, regardless of the quantity.

I'm wondering if Liptak's use of the phrase "a lot of cocaine" is the result of someone whispering in his ear that the only way the crack penalties go down is if the powder penalties go up. That would be a terrible injustice.

The pending reform bills are here. Two call for equalization. The bills could be put on the agenda early next year. It's time to start contacting your Senators and Congresspersons and telling them to equalize the crack and powder cocaine penalties at the current powder levels. Two wrongs don't make a right.

Aside from 9/11, there's nothing Rudy Giuliani touts more than his crime record. Now, even that is being exposed. Former U.S. District Court Judge John Martin, who was Rudy's predecessor as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, has an op-ed in today's New York Times, The Office I Left Giuliani.

What set Martin off was Rudy's defense of his judgment regarding Bernie Kerik on Meet the Press, saying it had to weighed against his other accomplishments. Rudy said:

“How can I not have pretty good judgment about the people who work for me and not been able to turn around the United States attorney’s office?”

Martin responds:

But Mr. Giuliani’s claim to have turned around the Manhattan United States attorney’s office is not only untrue, it is an insult to the outstanding men and women who have served in that office over the last 50 years.

More...

Bottom line: The Senate must reject the Senate Intelligence Committee bill's with provisions for telecom immunity. It must insist that any bill passed carries protections for Americans against wiretapping that comport with the Fourth Amendment.

The ACLU says:

This week the Senate will consider making vast changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and will determine whether telecommunications companies should be held liable for their role in President Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program.

...."When the FISA Amendments Act of 2007 comes to the Senate floor this week, Congress has a duty and an opportunity to protect the Fourth Amendment and rein in the executive's spying power.

More...

Sunday, Hillary Clinton launched her Hill-a-Copter tour which will take her to 99 Iowa counties by Thursday. A reporter from the Boston Globe is accompanying the tour.

Tomorrow, she will be on all six morning shows: ABC's Good Morning America, NBC's Today, CBS' Early Show, Fox News Channel's Fox & Friends, MSNBC's Morning Joe and CNN's American Morning.

Her latest endorsements: Former Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey and Maine Governor John Baldacci. The other governors supporting her are New York's Eliot Spitzer, New Jersey's Jon Corzine, Ohio's Ted Strickland, Maryland's Martin O'Malley, Arkansas' Mike Beebe and Michigan's Jennifer Granholm.

Obama's getting help from a long-time friend, Mike Jordan, an insurance agent from Chicago who goes to Iowa every weekend to stump for the candidate. At an Iowa town hall meeting, Obama addressed how he'd create a better educated workforce. He also "pledged to bring troops home within 16 months of taking office." At a news conference just before the town hall meeting in Saturday, Obama focused on toy safety.

Joe Biden told a group in Iowa they don't want a candidate without foreign policy experience. [More...]

In another outrageous attempt at grabbing power that does not belong to it, the Bush Administration is now seeking to control which military lawyers get promotions:

The Bush administration is pushing to take control of the promotions of military lawyers, escalating a conflict over the independence of uniformed attorneys who have repeatedly raised objections to the White House's policies toward prisoners in the war on terrorism.

The administration has proposed a regulation requiring "coordination" with politically appointed Pentagon lawyers before any member of the Judge Advocate General corps - the military's 4,000-member uniformed legal force - can be promoted.

In a nutshell,

Under the current system, boards of military officers pick who will join the JAG corps and who will be promoted, while the general counsels' role is limited to reviewing whether the boards followed correct procedures. The proposed rule would impose a new requirement of "coordination" with the general counsels of the services and the Pentagon during the JAG appointment and promotion process.

It's our unitary executive at work again. [More...]

As someone with a parent in a nursing home, I am very glad to learn that Hillary Clinton and Tom Harkin (D-IA) have introduced a bill "that would force a federal agency to make public its list of the nation's worst nursing homes."

The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has compiled a list of 128 nursing homes that have repeatedly fallen in and out of compliance with government health and safety regulations and caused harm to their residents. Those so-called "special-focus facilities" are now subject to more frequent government inspections.

Two weeks ago, the agency released an abbreviated, public version of the list that identified only 52 of the facilities. The agency refused to release the full list of 128 homes, even though it had already provided the full list to nursing home association lobbyists at the American Health Care Association.

The lobbying group that got the full list is the Alliance for Quality Nursing Home Care. [More...]