The Washington Post reports that Republican candidate Fred Thompson's good buddy since the mid-90's, Philip Martin of Tennessee, who also supplies the plane for Thompson's campaign trips, has a criminal past:

Martin entered a plea of guilty to the sale of 11 pounds of marijuana in 1979; the court withheld judgment pending completion of his probation. He was charged in 1983 with violating his probation and with multiple counts of felony bookmaking, cocaine trafficking and conspiracy. He pleaded no contest to the cocaine-trafficking and conspiracy charges, which stemmed from a plan to sell $30,000 worth of the drug, and was continued on probation.

So, he gets a deferred in state court for pot, violates probation, pleads "no contest" (same effect as a guilty plea) to coke (more than a kilo's worth, if my memory serves me correctly as to what coke sold for back then) and gets continued on probation with no jail time?

Sounds like he cooperated big time. [More...]

Rolling Stone Magazine is turning 40. It just released its first digital issue. I was a teenager when it first came out and read it religiously. I subscribed for years. I still read it from time to time.

So, it's painful for me to see there's been a brouhaha in the media this week about Jann Wenner and Corey Seymour's biography of Hunter Thompson. For a quick recap, check out:

• This NY Daily News article
• The LA Times Review which really hurt Hunter's wife, Anita Thompson
• This Washington Times article defending Hunter's later writing and Anita
• Anita responding on her Owl Farm Blog.

I'm not going to slam Wenner's book, I haven't read the whole thing -- just the 8 pages of excerpts in Rolling Stone last month, which I read on an airplane and enjoyed. Even Anita says there's some good stuff in the book.

But Anita very much disagrees with Wenner's characterization of Hunter (see the LA Times review)at the end of his life, his criticism of Hunter's ESPN reporting and the impression he gives that Hunter did nothing worthwhile after leaving Rolling Stone.

On Hunter's ESPN reporting, his activism and the impact he made during the final years of his life, I feel qualified to weigh in and I'm going to side strongly with Anita (and not just because she's my friend.)

More...

Bump and Update: Barack Obama did the "Live From Saturday Night" opening line...he was good!

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It seems like an incongruous choice, but I bet Brian Williams is good tonight on Saturday Night Live.

From this new interview, he's got a sense of humor and may not be as strait-laced as he sometimes comes off doing the news.

What's your favorite medication?
Ambien.
....When's bedtime?
My natural body clock bedtime is 2 to 3 a.m. See Ambien.

On the human side:

More...

(larger version here.)

Via Sentencing Law and Policy, the Criminal Law Committee of the Judicial Conference ( a body of federal judges established by Congress with the purpose of enacting policy for our federal courts) is urging the Sentencing Commission to make the recent reductions in crack cocaine sentencing guidelines retroactive. The letter is available here (pdf.)

There are 19,500 inmates serving time for crack cocaine in federal prisons. Some other good links:

• Sentencing Project and its letter (pdf)to the Commission urging retroactivity. It's crack reform sentencing page is here.

• Families Against Mandatory Minimums

Newsweek today:

In a new NEWSWEEK poll, Hillary Clinton took the heat at this week's Democratic debate and emerged undamaged.

....The New York senator gets 44 percent of the overall Democratic vote, compared to 24 percent for Obama (down a point since NEWSWEEK's August poll) and 12 percent for Edwards (down two points). She is the first choice of 45 percent of self-identified Democrats (compared with 39 percent of Democratic "leaners"). She also trounces Obama among Democratic female voters (48 to 19 percent) and enjoys a marginal lead among male Democratic voters (38 to 32 percent). Obama runs better among younger Democratic voters and minorities.

What with calling Hillary Rudy and promising leadership starting a year from now, Obama has been pretty busy. It turns out the politics of his moment on Kyl Lieberman required he skip the vote to go to New Hampshire. Via Alegre, CNN reported that:

I have an important point to make on that Iran vote... Obama claimed "he did not get enough notice to return to dc to make that vote but 2 Democratic Senate sources tell CNN that all senators were advised the night before that the vote would come up the next day and Senator Obama should have known that vote was coming."

If this is true, Obama has some explaining to do. Apparently Obama did not think leading on opposing Kyl Lieberman mattered at the time.

As Atrios remarked a week or so ago, for candidates who hold office now, the best way to demonstrate leadership is to LEAD in the office they hold now. On Iraq, FISA, Mukasey and other issues, one candidate has taken the lead consistently - Chris Dodd. The frontrunners who sit in the Senate, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, have been incredibly cautious, and sometimes counterproductive (remember Obama on playing chicken with the troops on Iraq). Today, Obama pretends he has been presenting bold leadership, when his has been a crass, empty and conventional campaign. But he thinks we have not noticed:

Much has been said about the exchanges between Senator Clinton and myself this week. Now, understand that Hillary Clinton is a colleague and a friend. She’s also a skilled politician, and she’s run what Washington would call a “textbook” campaign. But the problem is the textbook itself. It’s a textbook that’s all about winning elections, but says nothing about how to bring the country together to solve problems. As we saw in the debate last week, it encourages vague, calculated answers to suit the politics of the moment, instead of clear, consistent principles about how you would lead America. . . .

Who is Obama kidding here? We have seen your performance in the Senate, Senator Obama. To call it vague and calculating is an understatement.

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CNN is reporting Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has declared a state of emergency and suspended the Constitution and imposed martial law.

• Emergency rule declared, constitution suspended, Chief Justice expelled
• Troops enter Supreme Court, court declares emergency illegal
• Ex-PM Benazir Bhutto said to be returning to Pakistan from Dubai
• Most media channels off the air due to an apparent media blackout

I haven't been following Pakistan much, what's going on?

Does this candidate sound like Rudy?

There is no doubt that Iran poses a threat. It has armed terrorists beyond its borders, maintains an illicit nuclear program, and its leaders have issued belligerent threats that are a concern to us all. . . . We do need to tighten sanctions on the Iranian regime, particularly on Iran's Revolutionary Guard, which sponsors terrorism far beyond Iran's borders.

This guy?

U.S. Senate candidate Barack Obama suggested Friday that the United States one day might have to launch surgical missile strikes into Iran and Pakistan to keep extremists from getting control of nuclear bombs.

And so on. It so happens that I agree with a lot of what I am quoting from Obama. I strongly disagree with any calls for resolutions of any type from the Senate on Iran. Kyl-Lieberman was a horrible mistake.

But when Obama said Hillary was like Rudy on Iran, that was a lie. It would be a lie to say Obama is like Rudy. Here's my new request from our Presidential canidates - I am setting the bar low - no more bald faced lying. Be more nuanced in your misstatements.

The New York Times has a new, five page article article on Rudy Giuliani's Bernie Kerik problem, explaining how it casts doubt on his credibility, his leadership potential and his judgment.

I've written about this so many times, most recently here, but there are some new tidbits in the article, so let's review. For a theme, think, "The Red Flags Rudy Didn't See."

The principal flag, while not being the first one, dates to 2000, before Rudy made Bernie police commissioner. It concerns Kerik's lobbying activities for Interstate, a construction company with reputed mob-ties and millions in city contracts that employed both Kerik's brother and Larry Ray, his good friend and best man at his wedding.

Initially, Rudy said he didn't know about Kerik's ties to Interstate or Ray at the time.

“I was not informed of it,” Mr. Giuliani said then, when asked if he had been warned about Mr. Kerik’s relationship with Interstate before appointing him to the police post in 2000.

In 2006, Rudy got called to the grand jury investigating Kerik. He acknowledged that Ed Kuriansky, then the city's investigations commissioner, had told him he briefed Rudy on the matter. But, Rudy told the grand jury, he didn't recall that Kuriansky had told him specifically about Kerik's ties to Interstate or Larry Ray.

More....

The Hollywood Writers Strike will start Monday.

There will be a "last ditch" effort to avoid the strike Sunday when both sides meet with a federal mediator.

On one side: "CBS Corp.; NBC Universal, a unit of General Electric Co.; and The Walt Disney Co., owner of the ABC network." On the other: Writers Guild of America.

First casualties, probably Monday night: the late-night talk shows, from Leno and Letterman to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. All are expected to go to repeats.

After that: Day time talk shows and the soaps.

What the writers are fighting for: a fair share of the profits from dvd sales and internet programming.

What to do instead of watching tv? Read more blogs. Support the writers.

More here.

Update: More on juvenile Tate in the news today here and more thoughts below the fold.

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At 4:00 am this morning, hours before he was to face U.S. District Court Judge Richard Matsch for sentencing in a fraud case, banker Edward P. Mattar, III took a sledge hammer and knocked out a window in his 27th floor apartment, two blocks from Denver’s federal courthouse, and jumped to his death.

A few hours later, 20 miles away in Golden, Colorado, 19-year-old Nathan Quinn Tate faced a state court judge for sentencing following a jury verdict of guilty of first degree murder. His defense to the killing of his friends’ father, who had surprised the pair during a burglary of the father’s residence, was insanity, but the jury didn’t accept that. Nathan Tate was 16 at the time of the murder. The Judge imposed the sentence required by law in Colorado for first degree murder: Life without the possibility of parole.

Two lives lost to the criminal justice system, one to suicide, one to a sentence of life in prison. Surely there must be a better way.

(cross-posted at 5280.com)