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.

President Bush issued 29 pardons today. I "Lewis" Scooter Libby was not among them.

That doesn't mean one won't be forthcoming now that Libby has dropped his appeal. Bush has said previously he wouldn't give a pardon while the appeal was pending. Since Libby only announced his intent to withdraw the appeal yesterday, it could just be a matter of timing. Bush can grant pardons until he leaves office in 2009.

Here's the full list. Included is one commutation of a crack cocaine sentence -- see below.

The ACLU announces:

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) announced today that it will not make public orders and legal papers pertaining to the scope of the government's authority to engage in the secret wiretapping of Americans.

This is only the third time the FISC has issued an opinion publicly and the first time it has ruled on a substantive motion made by any party other than the government.

Here's today's FISA Court opinion and an AP article discussing it.

By a unanimous vote, the U.S. Sentencing Commission has made its November, 2007 reduction in crack cocaine penalties retroactive. The effective date is March, 2008. The statement is here.

This is very good news, but note the limitations:

Not every crack cocaine offender will be eligible for a lower sentence under the decision. A Federal sentencing judge will make the final determination of whether an offender is eligible for a lower sentence and how much that sentence should be lowered. That determination will be made only after consideration of many factors, including the Commission’s direction to consider whether lowering the offender’s sentence would pose a danger to public safety. In addition, the overall impact is anticipated to occur incrementally over approximately 30 years, due to the limited nature of the guideline amendment and the fact that many crack cocaine offenders will still be required under Federal law to serve mandatory five- or ten-year sentences because of the amount of crack involved in their offense.

I'm busy at work this afternoon so here's an open thread. A few requests:

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Now, your turn, all subjects welcome.

Update: The Commission has unanimously voted for retroactivity. Press Release is here. Reaction and newer post here.

****

[Note: This is a long post, covering the issues of the guidelines, mandatory minimums, the informant system of sentence reduction and the need for Congress to act to change the law.]

The U.S. Sentencing Commission will vote today on whether to make the recently enacted small (two level) guideline reduction for crack cocaine offenses retroactive so that some of the 19,500 inmates currently serving federal crack sentences can benefit from it. It is widely expected they will vote for retroactivity and I'll update and bump this post when they do.

The thing to remember is, this doesn't solve the problem. The much bigger problem is with mandatory minimum sentences. Only Congress can change those. Neither yesterday's Supreme Court decisions nor the guideline reduction addresses this problem. Today, like yesterday, judges are powerless to go below the 5 or 10 (or in some cases 20) year mandatory minimum sentence unless the defendant cooperates with the Government and the Government asks the judge to impose a lower sentence. The judge can't do it on his own -- or at the request of a defendant. That's just wrong-headed.

More...

A quick hit.

The Ombudsman for ESPN identifies what is wrong with today's Media:

. . . I call out ESPN for practices common to its cable news peers, such as bloated coverage of the moment's hot-topic stories and the mad dash from scant information to voluminous opinion. Often, the questions I pose ESPN executives can be, and often are, answered with a version of "That's just the way the 24/7 media is today." But I am not ombudsman for CNN or Fox News. I am charged with monitoring ESPN, looking at how its coverage affects sports and sports journalism . . .

"That's the way the 24/7 media is today" is the excuse of all of today's Media. ESPN's Ombudsman seems to be the only person who understands that answer is unacceptable.

Bring on Huckabee? A new CNN Poll shows he would lose by double digits in a general election.

In head-to-head matchups -- the first to include Huckabee -- the former Arkansas governor loses to Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York by 10 percentage points (54 percent to 44 percent), to Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois by 15 points (55 percent to 40 percent) and to former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina by 25 points (60 percent to 35 percent).

Edwards does the best against all Republicans.

On the Democratic side, Edwards performs best against each of the leading Republicans. In addition to beating Huckabee by 25 percent and McCain by 8 percent, the North Carolina Democrat beats Romney by 22 percentage points (59 percent to 37 percent).

CNN's polling director Keating Holling says: [More]