The Justice Policy Institute has a new report "The Vortex: The Concentrated Racial Impact of Drug Imprisonment and the Characteristics of Punitive Counties," on the racial disparity in the imprisonment of drug offenders.

The report confirms that African Americans are imprisoned in far greater numbers than whites.

Of 175,000 people sent to prison for drugs nationwide in 2002, over half were black, though blacks are 13 percent of the population.

It found no relationship between rates at which people are sent to prison for drug offenses and the rates at which people use drugs. The study said 9.2 percent of blacks use illegal drugs, compared with 8.1 percent of whites.

More....

Remember Wisconsin "political prisoner" Georgia Thompson, whose conviction was reversed by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals drawing questions about the U.S. Attorney's handling of the case?

The State Claims Board has ordered the state to repay her $228,000 in costs and legal fees.

She was wrongfully imprisoned for four months.

Chad Heins, aqe 33, imprisoned for 14 years for a rape and murder he did not commit, has been freed from prison in Florida. He is the ninth DNA exoneration in Florida and the 210th DNA exoneration nationwide. The Florida Innocence Project says:

On Tuesday December 4, 2007, at the Fourth Judicial Circuit Court in Jacksonville, Florida, the Fourth Circuit State Attorney officially dropped the murder and attempted rape charges against Chad Heins in light of results of DNA testing which conclusively prove his innocence. After fourteen years of enduring the torture of wrongful incarceration and the humiliation of being convicted of murdering his sister-in-law, Tina Heins, Chad Heins gained his freedom in time to return to his family in Wisconsin for Christmas.

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The Firedoglake bloglift is continuing. Marcy Wheeler (Empty Wheel) and TBogg have moved their blogs to FDL. Update your bookmarks:

• Empty Wheel
• TBogg

A Tennessee jury has found Michael Lee McCormick not guilty following a retrial of his murder case. McCormick spent 15 years on death row.

Update: C-Span 3 is stream and playing the audio of the hearing now (11:44 am ET). The AP now has a report, Justices Grill Detainees' Lawyer, on how the arguments went.

The Supreme Court today is hearing oral arguments in the consolidated cases of Boumediene v. Bush and Al Odah v. U.S., 06-1196 regarding the rights of Guantanamo detainees to challenge the legality of their confinement in federal courts.

Lawyers for the foreign detainees contend the courts must step in to rein in the White House and Congress, which changed the law to keep the detainee cases out of U.S. courts after earlier Supreme Court rulings. The most recent legislation, last year's Military Commissions Act, strips federal courts of their ability to hear detainee cases.

Solicitor General Paul Clement, representing the administration, said foreigners captured and held outside the United States "have no constitutional rights to petition our courts for a writ of habeas corpus," a judicial determination of the legality of detention.

The Court may have to determine whether Guantanamo Bay in Cuba is really on U.S. soil. [More...]

Paul Krugman notes the radical departure by his fellow Timesperson Kit Seelye from the "Dems claim world is round, GOP disagrees" reporting. Seelye has decided to opine in a news article that Obama is right and Edwards and Clinton are wrong on health care mandates. Krugman writes:

I have a lot of problems with this Kit Seelye piece. It’s kind of weird that the usual “both sides may have a point” reporting gave way to a clear declaration that one side is right — precisely on an issue where many, many health experts believe that Obama is wrong, and that mandates are both feasible and essential.

I have no idea what the right answer is here, but I feel confident Kit Seelye does not either. I know that people like Krugman and Jon Cohn believe Edwards and Clinton are right (see also this),. And I trust them more than I do Kit Seelye, who relies on a person who works for the conservative AEI and an Obama spokesman.

As I said, I have no knowledge n this subject, but the reporting on this complex and debated subject by Seelye is clearly poor. Krugman points to this WSJ article for some good reporting on the subject. It is obvious that the WSJ report by Laurie Meckler is superior to Seelye's work. But Seelye has proven to be a poor reporter for quite some time.

Unlike Time, which blocked all responses to Joe Klein's factually challenged column on FISA, via Matt Yglesias, Slate has published a response by Stephen Metcalf to Will Saletan on race and IQ. The nuts:

Much of Saletan's précis of the rest of the research surveyed in "Thirty Years of Research Into Race Differences on Cognitive Abilities" is highly questionable. His takeaway regarding the "admixture" studies is precisely the opposite of what an American Psychological Association task force concluded the studies show—that more "European" blood in a black American does not make him smarter. Saletan points up the problems with a favorite study of the environmentalists, into the IQ outcomes of children fathered by foreign soldiers and raised by (white) German mothers. This study showed that kids with African fathers scored the same as those with white fathers. But, Saletan says, it suffers from a fatal flaw: Blacks in the military had been screened for IQ. Saletan concludes, "Even environmentalists (scholars who advocate nongenetic explanations) concede that this filter radically distorted the numbers." But this is flatly untrue. The two most prominent environmentalists, Richard Nisbett and James Flynn, have dismissed this very objection. Both have pointed out that white soldiers were also screened, and so had higher IQs than the general white population. James Flynn has argued extensively that the black-white gap in the military was the same as in the population at large.

In essence, Metcalf demonstrates that Saletan, like Joe Klein on FISA, simply did not know what he was writing about. It is to Slate's credit that it was willing to publish such a demolition of one of its regular writers. Score another one for honesty for Washington Post Company, which allowed Krauthammer to be demolished today.

Apparently so says a just released LATimes/Bloomberg poll:

The new numbers -- 17% for Huckabee and 23% for Giuliani -- show a steep slide by the former New York mayor since October's poll (when he had 32%) and a more than doubling of Huckabee support from 7% back then. This could mean the conservative religious vote, variously estimated at 20% to 40% of the Iowa caucuses, appears to be congregating around the genial Arkansan, who until now has lagged in fundraising. Such encouraging results may help donations now.

And the Dems? Better news for Hillary than recent polls:

In the Democratic race, the new Times poll numbers show that despite numerous attacks and Iowa state polls revealing a tight race there among Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama, Clinton remains the solid national frontrunner. Clinton's national support among Democrats is 45%, down slightly from October's 48% but still more than twice that of Obama at 21% (who rose slightly from 17%) and four times Edwards' 11%, which is four points under Undecideds. . . . The Democrats' margin of error is plus or minus 4%; the GOP margin is plus or minus 5%. The poll of 529 Democrats and 428 Republicans was conducted Nov. 30-Dec. 3.

To use seasonal jargon, it appears, as Jeralyn points out Rudy is roasting over an open fire of corruption.

The AP is reporting Rudy Giuliani has stepped down from Giuliani Partners and turned control over to Peter Powers.

The firm, started by the former New York mayor when he left City Hall, earned Giuliani around $4 million last year. The spokeswoman said he would retain his equity stake in the company.

Shell game. It's still his company if he retains his equity interest. Sounds like a p.r. move to better justify not releasing details about the firm's clients.

ABC News has a new Rudy Giuliani tainted friends story, this one about Hank Asher, a one-time drug dealer who cooperated, found redemption (sarcasm) and made a $700 million fortune.

Asher, earlier in his life, had, by his own admission, smuggled plane-loads of cocaine worth millions of dollars from the Bahamas to the U.S. He later cooperated with law enforcement in an effort to end similar smuggling operations.

Since 2005, he has been Giuliani's partner along with the Mayo Clinic in Jari Research, a business set on finding a bone marrow cancer cure and making a profit. Self-educated, worldly, charismatic and larger than life, according to associates, Asher, a high school dropout at age 16, today is worth north of $700 million.

I don't think this is a worthwhile story -- or that it hurts Giuliani. Asher is named but not charged in the indictment of Orange County, CA Sheriff Michael Cardona because he gave the Sheriff and some deputies and their wives Cartier watches.

"On or about December 19, 2002, defendant Deborah Carona and co-conspirator George Jaramillo (assistant Sheriff George Jaramillo) accepted as gifts from H.A., a businessman who owned a data mining software company, yellow gold and diamond Ladies Cartier Watches worth approximately $15,000 each."

Buried on page 3 of the article:

There is no allegation in the document that he [Asher] attempted to influence any purchases or other decisions by the county.

I especially don't think F. Lee Bailey will be happy to be declared dead.

Asher's friends span the spectrum from Rudy Giuliani to Jesse Jackson and the late F. Lee Bailey. His business supporters have included Giuliani, Vice President Dick Cheney, and former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. (my emphasis.)

As far as I know, F. Lee Bailey is still alive. [More...]

Via Wired Magazine, a second sensitive Guantanamo document has been leaked and published by Wikileaks. It contains details about transporting detainees in secret renditions.

You can read it here (pdf).