Until I watched the video, I thought maybe there wasn't much to complain about with this story.

A 15-year-old girl is facing a felony battery charge from a curfew violation incident in which a city police officer struck and pepper sprayed her after she bit him — actions shown in a police videotape released Thursday. Fort Pierce Police Chief Sean Baldwin said he stands by how Officer Dan Gilroy handled the July arrest.

The video changed my mind. I come down on the girl's side. First off, why arrest teens on curfew violations? Why not just give them a citation?

Even if arrest is warranted for a curfew violation, handcuffing a teen in back is unnecessary force. It's painful. They are children. Surely he could have cuffed her in front. She's screaming in pain and then he slams her face into the car hood. It's not until afterwards that she finally bites his hand (which is protected by a glove.) Then he hits her and sprays the pepper spray directly in her eyes.

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Rush Limbaugh is in his final month of probation. When the month is up, the charge of doctor shopping will be dismissed without his ever having had to enter a plea. He will have a clean record.

According to records, he'll have made an estimated $50 million while on conditional liberty.

"All's well that ends well," he said, contemplating the Oct. 31 finish of his 18-month probation, barring unforeseen trouble. "The system is what it is," Limbaugh, 56, said from his oceanfront compound in Palm Beach. "I became addicted to drugs because of a medical condition" - a bad back - "and I'm convinced now that most addicts come to a point where they do drugs just to stave off withdrawal.

The details of Rush's plea bargain are here.

According to court documents, investigators alleged Rush obtained 2,000 pills over a five month period. What a great job his lawyer, Roy Black, did for him. I'm sure it cost him a pretty penny but I hope he appreciates it.

When we last checked in on the Darren Mack case, the prosecutor had been found to have engaged in unethical conduct by speaking with Mack to elicit a confession even though he knew Mack's family had retained counsel for him. The conversation was suppressed.

Mack is accused of killing his wife and then shooting the couples' divorce judge. He was on the lam in Mexico for days before surrendering. He's represented by David Chesnoff of Las Vegas (former partner of Mayor Oscar Goodman) and Scott Freeman.

Today, after three days of jury selection in Reno failed to yield sufficient jurors due to pretrial publicity, the judge ordered the trial moved to Las Vegas.

Mack has plead not guilty by reason of insanity.

The three much maligned and wrongfully charged Duke lacrosse players filed their civil suit against ex-DA Mike Nifong and the City of Durham today.

The three former Duke lacrosse players wrongly accused of rape filed a sweeping civil rights lawsuit today against the city of Durham, a host of police officers, former District Attorney Mike Nifong, and the DNA laboratory hired by the disbarred former prosecutor.

The 162-page lawsuit called the case "one of the most chilling episodes of premeditated police, prosecutorial, and scientific misconduct in modern American history, which resulted in charges brought and maintained against three innocent Duke University students and lacrosse players over a period of more than one year. "

Here's what the players want. The copy of the complaint is here (pdf).

The Defendants:

At the elite colleges - dim White kids
By Peter Schmidt

September 28, 2007

AUTUMN AND a new academic year are upon us, which means that selective colleges are engaged in the annual ritual of singing the praises of their new freshman classes.

Surf the websites of such institutions and you will find press releases boasting that they have increased their black and Hispanic enrollments, admitted bumper crops of National Merit scholars or became the destination of choice for hordes of high school valedictorians. Many are bragging about the large share of applicants they rejected, as a way of conveying to the world just how popular and selective they are.

What they almost never say is that many of the applicants who were rejected were far more qualified than those accepted. Moreover, contrary to popular belief, it was not the black and Hispanic beneficiaries of affirmative action, but the rich white kids with cash and connections who elbowed most of the worthier applicants aside.

White Man's Burden.

First the cheers. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has declared the war on drugs a failure.

"If you want to get serious, if you want to reduce crime by 70% in this country overnight, end this war on drugs," he told reporters at City Hall on Thursday. "You want to get serious, seriously serious about crime and violence end this war on drugs."

The mayor maintained local jails are overcrowded with people incarcerated for drug offenses, taking up room that could be used to hold more violent criminal offenders. He said violent criminals with lengthy felony records are being turned loose, too often.

San Francisco Sheriff San Francisco Sheriff Mike Hennessey agrees with him.

Now the jeers. San Francisco is initiating a program of busting the homeless on "quality of life" crimes.

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Good on the Progressive Caucus:

Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), the House Majority Leader, postponed a press conference announcing new reforms of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act after progressive lawmakers banded together and said they would fight any legislation that did not include a set of eight principles on wiretapping that preserve the "rule of law."

"What's most significant is that the Progressive Caucus came together and said to the leadership that all 72 of us require that these provisions be included," said Caroline Fredercikson, Legislative Director for the American Civil Liberties Union. "This changes the dynamic significantly."

Rep. Hoyer had planned to roll out the new FISA reform bill at 1:30 PM today. A spokesperson from his office told the Huffington Post that the House Intelligence Committee had decided to postpone completion of the legislation, though it's not clear that the announcement from the Progressive Caucus influenced their decision. Votes in the House were also canceled today. The committee was not available at press time.

Now do the same on any Iraq funding without a date certain to end the Debacle.

Ezra Klein wrote a great piece taking apart the very silly Roger Cohen's lament that "liberal hawks" like himself are misunderstood. They are NOT neocons Cohen insists. Ezra responded:

This shouldn't be necessary to say, but increasingly, it seems like the only point worth making to the commentariat. American politics isn't about you. It's not about your ideas, or your personal vision of the world, or your purity. . . . It is the impact of your ideas, and your commentary, that matters. . . . Here's why: Roger Cohen is not president. George W. Bush is. And until Roger Cohen's foreign policy vision integrates itself with an understanding of American power, and how ideas interact with the current administration, he is, effectively, a neoconservative, or, worse, an enabler of the neoconservatives who's able to advocate for their policy agenda without needing to answer for their failures.

(Emphasis supplied.) Great stuff. But it is worth asking this question - are progressive pundits, progressive blogs, and progressive activists considering how their "ideas interact with the current administration?" I think not. There is precious little discussion from most about the fact that the only way to stop the Bush Administration's Iraq Debacle is to not fund it after a date certain. So either they are of the view that NOTHING can stop the Iraq Debacle while Bush is President (and if they think so, they should say so), or they are just as guilty of the narcissism Klein accuses Cohen of. Moreover, while George Bush will not be President after January 2009, neither will Ezra Klein or any other progressive pundit, blogger or activist. More.

A sickening story out of Los Angeles.

A suburban sheriff’s station has had deputies vying to book the most people and impound the most vehicles, and the Los Angeles County sheriff said Thursday that he had ended the competitions.

Results from the competitions, called Operation Any Booking and Operation Vehicle Impound, had been posted on a wall in the Lakewood station. Two hundred deputies are based in Lakewood, which is the local police force for 120,000 residents in five cities southeast of Los Angeles, Artesia, Bellflower, Hawaiian Gardens, Lakewood and Paramount.

L.A. Sheriff Baca says there will be no repercussions.

“They’re not acceptable,” he said. “They’re not appropriate. But no harm, no foul. The only disciplinary action I’ve taken is saying to the lieutenant who organized them, ‘Hey, knock this’” off.

Let's see if the courts agree when the lawyers for those busted during the period of the competition start challenging the arrests in court.

I've gotten tagged by the Blawg Review's La Meme Chose: Simply the Best. While they didn't name TalkLeft, others who got tagged did (thank you Law Sites and Deliberations) so now it's my turn.

Without further ado, here's my list of daily reads of blogs covering legal issues or blogging.

• Sentencing Law and Policy
• How Appealing
• Scotus Blog
• Balkanization
• Bench Conference
• WSJ Law Blog
• Stand Down Texas Project
• Drug War Rant
• Grits for Breakfast
• Real Lawyers Have Blogs

(Since LNILR contributes to TalkLeft, I'm not naming his Fourth Amendment blog -- or the blogs who named TalkLeft -- to avoid the appearance of favoritism and reciprocity.)

Honorable mention goes to Capital Defense Weekly, the DUI Blog, the White Collar Crime Blog and Think Outside the Cage.

There are many great law blogs out there and I hope you'll check all the lists going around.

A federal judge in New York today granted downward departures from the sentencing guidelines and sentenced a lawyer couple who pleaded guilty to insider trading to probation.

The husband had cancer and was dependent on the wife's health insurance from her job. The wife wanted to take care of her husband while he was ill.

[Defense lawyer] Breen said that Ms. Collotta's life was a "wreck" because of her actions and she needed to stay out of prison to care for her sick husband, who depends on her for the health insurance provided by her job.... Ms. Collotta tearfully told the court, "I fear that he will die without his wife and his best friend by his side."

The interesting part of the story for me is this comment by the Judge.

"This is one of those cases in which the defendants before the court are at the bottom of the food chain and those who have profited the greatest" are likely to receive a lighter sentence because of cooperation with the government."

Appearing on Air America Radio today, Elizabeth Edwards criticized Rush Limbaugh regarding his Vietnam draft deferment.

My classmates went to Vietnam, he did not. He was 4F. He had a medical disability, the same medical disability that probably should have stopped him from spending a lifetime in a radio announcer’s chair; but it is true, isn’t it? If he has an inoperable position that allows him not to serve, presumably it should not allow him to sit for long periods of time the way he does.

I think this is a serious enough offense for the people who fund him, who buy ads and allow him to be on the air, need to be asked if this is what they really stand for, do they think it is all right for someone who has never served to denigrate the men and women who have simply because they are expressing an opinion. Frankly, I thought that is what we are fighting for.

According to Snopes, Rush did ultimately receive a 4-F classification after submitting a letter from his personal doctor. There is no record of him being examined by military doctors. His medical condition: a pilonidal cyst.

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