Adwatch has reviewed Hillary Clinton's newest campaign ad, featuring her mom, Dorothy Rodham.

Rodham looks younger than her 88 years and appears to be plainspoken, genuine and apolitical. Her description of her daughter comes off as heartfelt and unscripted.

Here's the 30 second ad, judge for yourselves.

Joe Biden is bad on crime issues.

Joe Biden brought us the Rave Act and has been a supporter of increased rights for law enforcement and wiretapping. Here's his voting record on issues of import:

• Voted YES on loosening restrictions on cell phone wiretapping. (Oct 2001)
• Voted YES on prohibiting same-sex marriage. (Sep 1996)
• Rated 60% by the ACLU, indicating a mixed civil rights voting record. (Dec 2002)(Note: he improved in subsequent years.)
• Rated 36% by NARAL, indicating a mixed voting record on abortion. (Dec 2003) (Note: he improved in later years.)

He also introduced this doozy of a bill:

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Idaho Senators Larry Craig and Michael Crapo are blocking President Bush's choice to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

The nominee is Massachussetts U.S. Attorney Michael J. Sullivan, whom Bush nominated a year ago and who has been serving as Acting Director of the agency.

Crapo's spokesman, Lindsay Nothern, said the senator has heard from a number of gun dealers, gn owners and others in Idaho who "have concerns about ATF policies regarding gun sales and even ownership. Maybe the federal government is getting a little too aggressive with people who haven't done anything wrong."

Members of Second Amendment Groups are not happy with Sullivan:

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A big mistep by New Hampshire Clinton advisor Michael Sheehan today.

He said voters should study Mr. Obama’s background as they chose a candidate, warning that Republicans would scour for new details about a period of Mr. Obama’s life more than 20 years ago when he admitted using marijuana and cocaine. According to The Post’s Web site, Mr. Shaheen said, “It’ll be: ‘When was the last time? Did you ever give drugs to anyone? Did you sell them to anyone?’ There are so many openings for Republican dirty tricks. It’s hard to overcome.”

The most important part of the story:

Clinton spokesman, Phil Singer, said, “These comments were not authorized or condoned by the campaign in any way.”

....In a statement later, Mr. Shaheen said, “I deeply regret the comments I made today, and they were not authorized by the campaign in any way.”

Ike Turner died Wednesday at age 76.

Turner, was born in Clarksdale, Miss., and was brought up there by his mother after his father, a minister, was beaten to death by a white mob. As a child Ike spent time at the local radio station, WROX, a hub for Delta blues performances. According to Mr. Turner’s autobiography, the D.J.s taught him how to cue up and segue records, sometimes leaving him alone on the air when he was 8 years old.

....in 1958, he heard Anna Mae Bullock, who joined the group and quickly became its focal point as Tina Turner. The band was soon renamed the Ike and Tina Turner Revue.

Here's a photo retrospective.

There will be a Democratic debate tomorrow in Iowa, where the January 3 primary essentially is a toss-up between Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards.

In light of the Supreme Court decision this week in Kimbrough v. U.S. (pdf)authorizing federal judges to consider the great disparity in penalties for crack and powder cocaine offenses in deciding whether to sentence crack defendants below the federal sentencing guidelines ("...it would not be an abuse of discretion for a district court to conclude when sentencing a particular defendant that the crack/powder disparity yields a sentence “greater than necessary” to achieve §3553(a)’s purposes") and yesterday's decision by the U.S. Sentencing Commission to make retroactive the recent and relatively minor crack cocaine sentencing guideline reductions, I'm hoping the candidates will be asked their positions on mandatory minimum sentences and what they will do as President to change them.

I've put together a chronology of how the mandatory sentences came about and what efforts to change or resist changing them have been made since.

In light of yesterday's decision by the U.S. Sentencing Commission to make the reduction in federal sentencing guidelines for crack cocaine offenses retroactive, many are wondering just how these reductions will be effected.

The Sentencing Commission has answered this in part by modifying U.S.S.G. 1B1.10. Here's the new version. [Note: changed to user friendly link]

The Republican candidates are tripping over each other in their quest to become the toughest on immigration. Mitt Romney has released his first attack ad on immigration while Rudy Giuliani now says he wanted to deport New York City's 400,00 undocumented residents. the undocumented deported from New York City. And now, the Minutemen have endorsed Mike Huckabee.

The founder of the Minuteman Project, the anti-illegal immigrant group, endorsed Republican Mike Huckabee on Tuesday....At a news conference hastily arranged to cope with a crippling ice storm, Huckabee brought out Minuteman head Jim Gilchrist, whose private group patrols the Mexican border on its own to keep out illegal immigrants.

"For months now, I've been searching for a candidate to support for president of the United States," said Gilchrist. He said he settled on Huckabee as the candidate whose plans were most likely to halt "this illegal immigrant invasion problem."

Ryan Lizza in the New Yorker explains why this Republican anti-immigration strategy may backfire and cost them the election. It's a long article, but here are some snippets:

More like this please:

In what's likely to be seen as a privacy-friendly move, IAC Search & Media's Ask.com search engine Tuesday announced a ew feature called AskEraser that deletes a user's search activity data from the company's servers.

When enabled by the user, the feature will completely delete search queries and associated cookie information from Ask.com servers -- including IP addresses, user IDs, session IDs and the text of queries made, according to the company. In most cases, the deletion will take place within a few hours of the time a search is completed, the company said.

It's not a panacea, but a step in the right direction: [More....]

Radley Balko, the journalist-blogger who has relentlessly followed the unjust conviction and death (now life) sentence of Cory Maye in Mississippi, has just returned from his fifth trip there and a week of visiting with Cory's family. He provides a very moving update.

If you don't remember the details of Cory's case, TChris recounted them a while back:

The police broke down Maye's door during a drug raid in Mississippi. The officers claimed they knocked, but having gone to the trouble of securing a "no knock" warrant, that claim is suspect. Maye, not realizing that the people invading his house in the middle of the night were police officers and concerned about the safety of his young daughter, shot an intruder without realizing he was shooting a police officer. The officer turned out to be the son of the police chief. The police turned out to have busted down the wrong door; their warrant was for the adjoining unit in the duplex where Maye lived. Maye is black; the officer and jury were white; and Maye, who seems to have been acting in self-defense, was nonetheless sentenced to death.

Since then, Cory's death sentence was changed to life without parole. Radley writes that he's recently been moved to Parchman, Unit 32. [More...]

Sen. Edward Kennedy released a statement today praising the Sentencing Commission's retraoctivity decision regarding the minor reductions in crack cocaine sentencing guidelines. He also urges passage of S. 1685 which he co-sponsored with Diane Feinstein, Arlen Specter and Orrin Hatch (that ought to tell you right there it's not a good bill.)

The bill insufficiently cuts the disparity between crack and powder. Instead of 5 grams of crack, the threshold for the 5 year mandatory minimum sentence would be 25 grams. For powder, it's currently 500 grams.

Instead of 50 grams of crack, the bill makes the threshold for the 10 year mandatory minimum sentence 250 grams. The threshold for powder is currently 5 kilograms (5,000 grams.)

The bill does eliminate the mandatory minimum for first timers who possess for personal use.

Joe Biden's bill, S. 1711, co-sponsored by John Kerry, Russ Feingold and Carl Levin is better. It equalizes the penalties between crack and powder at the current powder levels. But, the reductions are not retroactive, so they won't help the 19,500 offenders currently serving the disparate sentences.

And, as usual, Biden can't leave well enough alone. He has to go and increase funding for the war on drugs. [More....]

The Washington Post released results from a new presidential poll today.

Among all Republicans and GOP-leaning independents, Giuliani's national lead is as low as it has been since the campaign began. And among likely Republican voters, 25 percent now back Giuliani, while 19 percent back Huckabee, whose support jumped from 9 percent last month. Romney ranks third at 17 percent, with Thompson at 14 percent and McCain at 12 percent. In the new poll, Giuliani is at his lowest level to date among conservatives, down nine points over the past month to 19 percent.

For the Dems:

The Democratic race has changed little nationally, according to the new poll, with Clinton now enjoying the support of 53 percent of likely Democratic voters to 23 percent for Obama. Edwards remains in third with 10 percent. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, Sen. Joseph Biden Jr. (Del.), Rep. Dennis Kucinich (Ohio) and Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (Conn.) registered in the low single digits.

These are national numbers and don't reflect the much closer numbers in the early primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.