Dan Rather's lawsuit against CBS has reignited debate on the question of President Bush's Texas Air National Guard service. The allegedly fake documents (I think they were faked) overshadowed what I believe was an overwhelming case that Bush obviously was derelict in his duty. Eric Boehlert revisited the issue:

The simple, yet apparently elusive, truth is that CBS' report on Bush and the National Guard could have (and should have) been broadcast without the controversial memos. And if it had been, the results would have been exactly the same. Meaning, the documents were irrelevant because they provided texture (the supposed frustration of Bush's commander), not new facts about Bush's service. Yet journalists pretend the memos are the National Guard story and that without them, questions about Bush's military dodge disappear. Why do they think that? Based on the coverage last week, it's clear that journalists who mocked Rather still don't have the slightest clue what the established facts of the Guard story are.

More.

I'm getting ready to leave leaving for Madrid for the annual Lexis-Nexis Legal Advisory Board meeting.

Big Tent Democrat, TChris and maybe LNILR will be posting in my absence, so be sure to check in. The Dems are debating tonight and Larry Craig's plea withdrawal hearing is today, and I'm pretty sure they will cover those as well as any other big news. We'll also do diary rescues, (details here) so feel free to contribute your own posts.

I'll be checking in occasionally. In the meantime, here's an open thread.

Update: For legal readers out there, if you have an opinion of what Lexis Nexis and/or Martindale Hubbell are doing right and what they need to improve, or are willing to share your perception of their value and service to your practice, please send me an e-mail. I won't share your name if you ask me not to. They really would like to know. (And I might get extra brownie points at the meeting.)

This is disturbing:

Nooses were left in a black Coast Guard cadet's bag and in the office of a white officer who conducted race relations training after the incident, leading a congressman to call Tuesday for a thorough military investigation.

A Coast Guard probe was unable to determine who left the nooses, said Chief Warrant Officer David M. French, a spokesman for the Coast Guard Academy.

This is even more disturbing:

A task force found that minority members comprised 13.5 percent of the Coast Guard's student body, compared with 16 percent in 1991, Cummings said. Minorities comprised only 7 percent of the faculty and staff, and fewer than 1 percent of captains on active duty are black, Cummings said.

The Supreme Court has agreed to review a Seventh Circuit decision upholding Indiana's voter ID law. In a piece published yesterday, Adam Liptak questioned whether Judge Posner's opinion for the Seventh Circuit represented a privileged view that is out of touch with the reality of low income life:

“It is exceedingly difficult to maneuver in today’s America without a photo ID,” Judge Posner wrote for a divided panel of the federal appeals court in Chicago in January, upholding an Indiana voter identification law enacted in 2005. “Try flying, or even entering a tall building such as the courthouse in which we sit.”

But somewhere between 13 million and 22 million Americans of voting age, most of them poor, get by without driver’s licenses, passports and other kinds of government documents bearing their pictures, perhaps because they do not have the money to drive, much less to fly.

Liptak also exposed the latest justification for passing laws that burden the right to vote in the name of preventing the virtually nonexistent problem of fraudulent voting. more ...

The Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether the use of lethal injections to execute inmates -- a procedure that may inflict unnecessary pain and suffering -- violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishments.

The high court will hear a challenge from two inmates on death row in Kentucky - Ralph Baze and Thomas Clyde Bowling Jr. - who sued Kentucky in 2004, claiming lethal injection amounts to cruel and unusual punishment. Baze has been scheduled for execution Tuesday night, but the Kentucky Supreme Court halted the proceedings earlier this month.

There are, of course, broader reasons to oppose the death penalty, as a new ABA study of capital punishment in Ohio demonstrates.

The system is full of racial and geographic imbalances, too many defendants don't get adequate legal help and too many protections of offenders' rights are absent from the capital punishment process, according to a 30-month review of Ohio's death penalty system by the American Bar Association.

The authors of the report want Ohio to suspend executions until the flaws in its criminal justice system are corrected. That would be good advice for every state that relies on death as a punishment.

Yawn:

The G.O.P. has spent the last 40 years insulting, disenfranchising and otherwise stomping on the interests of black Americans. Last week, the residents of Washington, D.C., with its majority black population, came remarkably close to realizing a goal they have sought for decades — a voting member of Congress to represent them.

. . . This is the party of the Southern strategy — the party that ran, like panting dogs, after the votes of segregationist whites who were repelled by the very idea of giving equal treatment to blacks. Ronald Reagan, George H.W. (Willie Horton) Bush, George W. (Compassionate Conservative) Bush — they all ran with that lousy pack.

More...

David Brooks writes a love letter to Mark Penn:

Clinton has established this lead by repudiating the netroots theory of politics. . . . But Clinton has relied on Mark Penn, the epitome of the sort of consultant the netroots reject, and Penn’s approach has been entirely vindicated by the results so far.

. . . [T]he netroots are losing the policy battles. . . . Democratic domestic policy is now being driven by old Clinton hands like Gene Sperling and Bruce Reed.

And while Clinton may not go out of her way to offend the MoveOn types, on her TV rounds on Sunday she made it obvious that she’s not singing their tune. On “This Week With George Stephanopoulos,” Clinton could have vowed to vacate Iraq. Instead, she delivered hawkish mini-speeches that few Republicans would object to.

Is Brooks right? Hardly. Take Iraq for instance. Hillary said:

I have voted against funding this war, and I will vote against funding this war as long as it takes.

This is contra to every bit of advice given by Mark Penn and the DLC. As for other policy issues, it would be interesting to know which ones Brooks thinks Hillary is moving away from the Netroots on. Universal health insurance? Global warming? Brooks has let his hatred of bloggers cloud his judgment. More.

Omar Khadr turned 21 in Guantanamo this week. He's been detained there since he was 15.

A military judge threw out the charges against him on jurisdictional grounds in June. Another judge later upheld that decision.

Today, the U.S. Court of Military Commission Review issued its first opinion. It reinstated the charges against Omar.

The ruling reverses a military judge's June 4 ruling that the tribunal system created by Congress did not have authority to try detainees unless they were first determined to be unlawful enemy combatants.

The New York Times has this more in-depth report on the ruling.

My all-time favorite quote on Omar Khadr is by Jeanne D'Arc at her now defunct Body and Soul blog:

He's eighteen years old. When he was captured in Afghanistan, he was fifteen -- a child turned into a soldier by parents from hell. And our government's response to this victim of child abuse was to abuse him further.

His lawyers have alleged he was tortured.

More...

Clyde Haberman in the New York Times piles on about Rudy Giuliani's wierdness, a trait he says is well known to New Yorkers and the rest of us are getting to see for the first time.

New Yorkers are well acquainted with at least one other version. That would be Rudy the loopy. The weirdness factor, as some have called it, is as much a part of the Giuliani package as 9/11, banished squeegee men and shuttered porn parlors.

After reviewing the NRA call and his comment in London about how he was one of the most famous people in America, Haberman gives some other examples.

More...

Minnesota prosecutor Christopher Renz has responded to Senator Larry Craig's Motion to Withdraw his Guilty Plea.

Denying Craig's motion "prevents further politicking and game playing on the part of the defendant in relation to his plea," Renz wrote.

Renz wrote that Craig didn't decide to withdraw his plea until after he was hurt by the publicity of the allegations...."The defendant chose to plead guilty and consciously took that risk. The defendant's current pursuit of withdrawal of his guilty plea is reactionary, calculated and political."

Renz also complains that if Craig is allowed to withdraw his plea, there will be a "deluge" of similar requests from other defendants. His support for that belief apparently is a single call received from another defendant.

Renz writes of several calls he had with Craig before the plea. In one, his notes say he advised Craig to seek counsel.

You can read the 41 page memorandum brief here (pdf). His affidavit (with attachments)is here.

Some thoughts:

Christy at Firedoglake writes about Newt Gingrich's lastest announcement that if he can raise $30 million in the next three weeks, he'll hop in the presidential race seeking the Republican nomination.

Perhaps Newt thinks his marital history won't matter. Before examining his political record, let's take a look back at his personal story. From a post I wrote in 2002, Republican Sexual Hypocrisy:

In 1981, Newt dumped his first wife, Jackie Battley, for Marianne, wife number 2, while Jackie was in the hospital undergoing cancer treatment. Marianne and Newt divorced in December, 1999 after Marianne found out about Newt's long-running affair with Callista Bisek, his one-time congressional aide. Gingrich asked Marianne for the divorce by phoning her on Mother's Day, 1999. [Source: New York Post, July 18, 2000, Newt's Ex Wife Aiming to Pen Book by Bill Sanderson, available on lexis].

More....

A pot-smoker is arrested every 38 seconds in America. The newest figures for 2006 show marijuana arrests are at an all-time high. Via NORML:

Police arrested a record 829,625 persons for marijuana violations in 2006, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's annual Uniform Crime Report, released today. This is the largest total number of annual arrests for pot ever recorded by the FBI. Marijuana arrests now comprise nearly 44 percent of all drug arrests in the United States.

89% of those arrested in 2006 were charged only with possession. And, get this:

The total number of marijuana arrests in the U.S. for 2006 far exceeded the total number of arrests in the U.S. for all violent crimes combined, including murder, manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault.

In the past 15 years, marijuana arrests have increased by 188%. As NORML says,

"This effort is a tremendous waste of criminal justice resources that diverts law enforcement personnel away from focusing on serious and violent crime, including the war on terrorism."