I'm still working on my taxes which need to get to the accountant tomorrow, and it's a gorgeous day outside so here's an open thread.

Some things to read:

• Sentencing Law and Policy on Sex Offender Ghettos

• Via Norwegianity, take the Online Candidate Quiz.

• The Washington Post reports the Dems are poised to introduce new electronic surveillance legislation./li>

House Democrats plan to introduce a bill this week that would let a secret court issue one-year "umbrella" warrants to allow the government to intercept e-mails and phone calls of foreign targets and would not require that surveillance of each person be approved individually.

• Marcy at Next Hurrah adds her thoughts.

• Law Prof and blogger Ann Althouse has been posting great photos of New York and Brooklyn. Turns out, she's re-located there for the year as a visiting professor at Brooklyn Law.

More...

The show not to miss tonight is Ted Koppel's special on the Discovery Channel: Inside Our Prisons on the broken prison system in California. (9PM ET)

While shooting, Koppel spent a number of days among the general population at Solano. His reporting focuses on the inhabitants of H Dorm, where inmates are stacked in triple-deck bunk beds on an old indoor basketball court. Correctional officers are so badly outnumbered that prison officials keep inmates segregated by race and gang affiliation in a desperate effort to avoid friction and maintain control. Even so, Solano still sees three to four race riots a year. Using smuggled cell phones, gang bosses continue running criminal operations on the street from behind prison walls. At the same time, they’re running drug and prostitution rings inside Solano.

If California doesn't come up with a long-term solution, the federal courts likely will begin ordering the release of prisoners.

It costs as much to house a prisoner in California for a year as it does to send a kid to Harvard. The U.S. incarcerates more people than any other country.

The two hour show is about California, but the same problems exist across the country.

America, Prison Nation.

The big issue on the John Edwards segment of Meet the Press was leaving residual troops in Iraq.

Bill Richardson says he won't leave any. John Edwards says he'll leave non-combat troops there to protect the embassy workers and he'll put combat troops in Kuwait in case they're needed to fight al- Qaeda.

Edwards says Hillary will leave combat-ready troops inside Iraq while he'll leave them across the Kuwait border.

I don't know Obama's position since there were no Obama questions during the interview.

Personally, I tend to think Richardson's position is best, just get out and get out now.

Via Think Progress:

Not clear what Novak means by "weird conduct." But this does demonstrate the conundrum the GOP is in regarding Larry Craig. On the record, there is a conviction for disorderly conduct. Clearly that is not the problem. The problem is the suggestion of homosexuality. Is that the "weird conduct" Novak is talking about? Is it the seeking of anonymous sex in public places? Or is it something else? Something Foley-like? Remember Craig's unsolicited denial of involvement in the Congressional page scandal of the early 1980s? What did the GOP know and when did it know it?

The New York Times has three good reads today:

• Their editorial blasting Bush over torture.
• Frank Rich on Clarence Thomas' "high tech lynching" which has earned him a Supreme Court justice position and surely must have him laughing all the way to bank to collect the royalties on his newly published book comparing the prejudice he's endured to that endured by other African-Americans at the hands of the Klu Klux Klan.

It's useful to watch Mr. Thomas at this moment, 16 years after his riveting confirmation circus. He is a barometer of what has and has not changed since then because he hasn't changed at all. He still preaches against black self-pity even as he hyperbolically tries to cast his Senate cross-examination by Joe Biden as tantamount to the Ku Klux Klan assassination of Medgar Evers. He still denies that he is the beneficiary of the very race-based preferences he deplores. He still has a dubious relationship with the whole truth and nothing but, and not merely in the matter of Anita Hill.

• Maureen Dean takes the acerbic route and writes a nasty article about Thomas, yet it too, has a ring of truth.

Aside from the ridiculous cost and a State Department report saying the U.S. will pay an additional $144 million because the workmanship done so far is shoddy, can someone explain why the U.S. is building the largest U.S. embassy in the world in Iraq?

The embassy, which will be the largest U.S. diplomatic mission in the world, was budgeted at $592 million. The core project was supposed to have been completed by last month, but the timetable has slipped so much that the State Department has sought and received permission from the Iraqi government to allow about 2,000 non-Iraqi construction employees to stay in the country until March.

Do we really need a $736 million, 21 building embassy in Iraq?

It was a pretty boring game with a electrical blackout early on, but it got better in the 8th and 9th innings.

The crowd is electrified right now. It's 2 out in the bottom of the 9th inning.

The Rockies win. This town will be crazy for the next week.

Congratulations, Rcckies. You came out of nowhere and put us on the map.

Paul Waldman writes a good piece about Rush Limbaugh saga. I especially like his connecting Rush's New McCarthyism techniques to the Republican Party New McCarthyism on Iraq:

Think about how much time and effort they expend on convincing Americans that progressives and Democrats are "anti-military," "hate the troops," and even "hate America." So any progressive veteran who criticizes Bush administration policies represents a profound threat to all the arguments they have made. It becomes particularly thorny when nearly the entire current leadership of the conservative movement -- not only media figures like Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly, but also political figures including President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Karl Rove, Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, and many others -- were of draft age during the Vietnam war but managed to stay out of harm's way.

But Democrats and their allies like Move On do not win this battle by aping this strategy, as Move On wrongly did; this battle is won by Democrats standing up against these McCarthyite tactics and, more importantly, standing up to Bush on Iraq. That means not funding the Iraq debacle after a date certain. More.

I'm trying to get my taxes ready for the accountant. I've been working on them for days and it's crunch time.

So, here's an open thread for you. If anyone writes diaries, I'll add a link to them here.

With all the candidates focused on Iowa, now would be a good time for Iowans to ask them what they plan on doing to reduce the racial disparity in prison sentences for blacks and whites when it comes to drug crimes.

It's an issue that affects them directly.

The number of blacks behind bars for drug-related crimes is rising again in Iowa. At the same time, a new anti-methamphetamine law has resulted in fewer new prison admissions for white Iowans.

Officials in drug, corrections and law enforcement circles say it's not yet clear why more blacks are being sent to prison, but the impact is clear: The state's notorious disproportion of blacks behind bars vs. whites is growing again.

How bad is it in Iowa?

Emotions on the issue flared anew this July when the Sentencing Project released its study showing the rate of black incarceration in Iowa was six times that of whites. Feeding that disparity, researchers said, was that blacks make up just 2.3 percent of Iowa's 2.98 million residents.

...Those who defend and advocate for the disadvantaged argue that state leaders have done almost nothing to address the biases in the justice system that contribute to Iowa's notoriety.

The problem also exists at the federal level. It's time the candidates were called on to address it.

John David "Roy" Atchison, the Florida federal prosecutor arrested in Detroit and charged with planning to have sex with a five year old girl, and who unsuccessfully tried to commit suicide days later, has now succeeded.

He hanged himself this morning at the federal prison in Milan, where he was taken after trying to commit suicide last month at Sanilac County Jail, authorities said.

Officials said Atchison, 53, of Gulf Breeze, Fla., had been housed in solitary confinement and was under close supervision, adding that he had shown no signs of despondency.

Very sad. If the charges were true, this was a man in desperate need of psychiatric help. Our system, it seems, is only geared towards punishment.

Troy Davis is on Georgia's death row. He may be innocent.

Tuesday is Troy's birthday. Check out the Troy Davis "Innocence Matters" Video Project.

Troy Davis' birthday is October 9th and to mark this occasion, a coalition of global supporters have organized this video project to wish Troy a 'Happy Birthday' and to reaffirm to the state of Georgia that 'Innocence Matters!

The Troy video project is simple. Using a webcam, camera phone, camcorder or any other recording device, simply record as creatively as possible a positive video of 60-seconds or less wishing Troy a ‘Happy Birthday’ while reaffirming to the state of Georgia that the global support network behind Troy believes Innocence Matters!

There are 35 videos so far. For the non-video savvy, there's also the NCADP's action alert page for Troy with the ability to send a letter.

You can read Troy's story here.