Via Marcy at Next Hurrah and ScoutPrime at First Draft:

A Vermont law firm with overseas clients, including one at Guantanamo Bay, believes the Feds are wiretapping their telephone calls. In a letter to their clients, the firm wrote:

“Although our investigation is not complete, we are quite confident that it is the United States government that has been doing the phone tapping and computer hacking,” said the letter, dated Oct. 2.

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The Associated Press has a very intimate and honest interview today with Hunter Thompson's wife, Anita. The occasion is the recent release of her new book, The Gonzo Way, which I wrote about here at 5280.

In her new book, "The Gonzo Way: A Celebration of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson," Thompson says her husband built his career with a tireless dedication to the craft of reporting, a keen awareness of his own shortcomings and his personal blend of patriotism: loving his country while mistrusting authority.

And in a wide-ranging interview, she spoke about a rift between her and Hunter Thompson's son and the agonizing doubts that dogged her in the days after her husband's suicide.

Anita has become a good friend of mine since Hunter's death -- I hope you'll read the interview, and if you're a fan of Hunter's writing, get the book. If you missed my recap of spending a weekend in June at Owl Farm, you can read it here. My video of Owl Farm from 2006 is here.)

Also check out Anita's Owl Farm blog. Here's a photo I took of Anita and Hunter's son, Juan.

Since generally I don't think what the She-Pundit with long blonde hair says is of any import, I haven't written about the latest imbroglio over her comments about perfecting Jews. While I got that it was insulting, I didn't have any idea what it meant, having never heard the term before. Nor was I inclined to look it up.

Inadvertantly, I came across this LA Times commentary which explains it very well and has convinced me that it's a dangerous concept that needs to be exposed for its anti-semitism.

First, her comments on the Donny Deutsch show:

At one point, Deutsch asked her what an ideal country would be like, and she replied that it would be one in which everyone was "a Christian." Deutsch, who happens to be Jewish, protested that Coulter was advocating his people's elimination. She responded that she simply hoped to see Jews "perfected" through conversion to Christianity.

What it means:

Ricardo Sanchez:

In a sweeping indictment of the four-year effort in Iraq, the former top American commander called the Bush administration’s handling of the war incompetent and warned that the United States was “living a nightmare with no end in sight.” In one of his first major public speeches since leaving the Army in late 2006, retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez blamed the administration for a “catastrophically flawed, unrealistically optimistic war plan” and denounced the current “surge” strategy as a “desperate” move that will not achieve long-term stability. . . . “There was been a glaring and unfortunate display of incompetent strategic leadership within our national leaders,” he said, adding later in his remarks that civilian officials have been “derelict in their duties” and guilty of a “lust for power.”

Cue Rush. We got another Jesse Macbeth on our hands.

The Netherlands has banned psychodelic mushrooms after some tourists died.

Magic mushrooms, more properly known as psilocybe, contain the psychedelic chemicals psilocybin and psilocin.

"We intend to forbid the sale of magic mushrooms," said justice ministry spokesman Wim van der Weegen. "That means shops caught doing so will be closed."

Unbelievable. The guards at the Florida boot camp have been acquitted in charges arising from the death of Martin Lee Anderson. (Background here and here.)

[A] video showed the boy was kicked and hit repeatedly by guards.....A second autopsy found the boy died of suffocation because his mouth was blocked and he was forced to inhale ammonia smelling salts, which resulted in a blockage of his airway. The medical examiner said he died as a result of the "actions of the guards."

Here's what's been happening at teen boot camps.

Bump: Because this needs more attention and we've blogged so much the past day it already fell off the front page.

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Via USA Today:

Since 2006, the Justice Department has yet to spend any of the $8 million set aside by Congress for DNA tests for convicts to prove their innocence while it has used $214 million to collect DNA from convicted criminals and improve crime labs, records show.

"DNA evidence is such a powerful tool in proving guilt or innocence that it's inexcusable not to use it," says Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the chief sponsor of a bill to provide more funding for what is known as innocence testing. If spent, the $8 million could affect dozens of cases, says Barry Scheck, a defense lawyer who specializes in using DNA to overturn convictions.

I'm not surprised, given DOJ's opposition to the Innocence Protection Act all along. By the time the bill was passed, it was stripped of the most meaningful protections and turned into a victims' rights bill, even being renamed The Justice For All Act.

So today we learn, according to the National Institute of Justice (the DOJ's non-partisan research arm that administers the funds) the reason even the paltry (by comparison) $8 million isn't being spent is a deficiency in the law.

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The New York Daily News reports that Rudy Giuliani pal Bernie Kerik, already disgraced from his failed nomination for Homeland Security Secretary and guilty pleas for state tax violations, is sending his lawyers to Washington for a last-chance meeting with the Justice Department to avoid indictment on federal tax charges:

Kerik's lawyers recently agreed to waive the statute of limitations on the tax charges until Nov. 17, which will allow them to make one last plea to try to ease the pain.

Kerik will go to the Justice Department in Washington in the coming weeks to try to get expected criminal tax charges reduced to civil fines.

Kerik still faces probable charges of bribery and obstruction of justice over a secret meeting with former Giuliani officials in Tribeca in 1999.

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Congratulations to Al Gore and the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change who were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize today.

He said he would donate his half of the $1.5m prize money to the Alliance for Climate Protection, reported the news agency Reuters.

Via Spencer Ackerman, this is just rich:

CIA Director Michael Hayden is going after the agency's independent watchdog, Inspector General John Helgerson. Hayden wonders if Helgerson -- who is not appointed by the CIA director -- hasn't gone too far in investigating how the agency conducts detentions and interrogations. . . . Helgerson has for years been perceived as overly aggressive in reviewing CIA techniques in the war on terrorism.

. . . [T]he investigation, headed by Hayden confidante Robert L. Deitz, is now a full-fledged exploration of how Helgerson conducts his work. It comes as Helgerson is "nearing completion" on several reports into interrogations, renditions, and detentions, reports The New York Times.

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The first results of the Death in Custody Reporting Act are in: 2,002 people died while being arrested in the U.S. between 2003 and 2005.

At least 2,002 people died during their arrests by state and local law enforcement officers from 2003 through 2005, the Justice Department reported yesterday. Of those suspects, officers themselves killed more than half, 80 percent of whom, the officers reported, had threatened or assaulted them with a weapon.

Drug and alcohol intoxication was the second-leading cause of death, accounting for 13 percent of the total, followed by suicide, accidental injuries, and illnesses or other natural causes.

While the number is a small percentage of those arrested, the number of those arrested is a shocker: 40 million people.

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As the Supreme Court considers whether lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment, Florida, whose procedures have also come under state challenge (background here, here and here) has also been holding hearings.

Florida's leading death penalty case, Lightbourne, didn't focus on the lethal cocktail he'll likely be shot up with but the records and abilities of the lethal-injectors themselves -- an issue that came to the fore with the Department of Corrections' botched execution of Miami killer Angel Diaz, who took 34 minutes to die on Dec. 13.

Florida's Department of Corrections made some changes after the Diaz execution. Check out the "Shake and Shout" procedure the states' attorney is defending:

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