Fall weekends are my favorite. While it's still summer-like weather here, the leaves are beginning to turn and I'm heading outdoors.

If you're online, here's a place for you.

Also, check out our new Diaries:

• Randinho, Weldon Calls it Quits.
• Geekesque, The Vote That Counted
• LarryE, Are You Shocked

Sentencing Law and Policy first reported yesterday that Judge Paul Cassell of Utah is resigning from the federal bench to return to teaching and litigating on behalf of crime victims.

That's fine by me. His agenda has always been promoting victims' rights over those of defendants, eviscerating Miranda rights and pushing the death penalty, making light of false confessions and wrongful convictions.

That he wrote a good opinion in a child porn case finding application of the sentencing guidelines unconstitutional in that case, doesn't make up for the rest. He urged in another case that the guidelines be followed in all but exceptional cases and while he criticized the mandatory minimum 55 year sentence for Weldon Angelos, a 25 year old drug dealer, he imposed it anyway. (The Supreme Court later let the sentence stand.)

I bear no ill will towards Judge Cassell, but I'm glad he's going.

Sen. Diane Feinstein and Orrin Hatch's anti-gang legislation, S. 456, more aptly called the "Gang Fear and Pandering Act" has passed the Senate at a cost of $1 billion.

Even though some of the worst provisions were stripped from the bill before passage, this bill is bad . In June, I listed some of the things wrong with it:

Compassionate conservatism at work again. The Bush Administration is telling New York health officials not to approve chemotherapy for undocumented residents because it's not a medical emergency.

The change comes amid a fierce national debate on providing medical care to immigrants, with New York State officials and critics saying this latest move is one more indication of the Bush administration’s efforts to exclude the uninsured from public health services.

Under a limited provision of Medicaid, the national health program for the poor, the federal government permits emergency coverage for illegal immigrants and other noncitizens. But the Bush administration has been more closely scrutinizing and increasingly denying state claims for federal payment for some emergency services, Medicaid experts said.

While states differ on what is or is not a medical emergency, it should be obvious that the states that define it as "any condition that could become an emergency or lead to death without treatment" is the proper one.

More...

New York Governor Eliot Spitzer deserves praise today for announcing a new policy: Drivers' licenses will be granted to all residents without regard to immigration status.

Under the new rules, the Department of Motor Vehicles will accept a current foreign passport as proof of identity without also requiring a valid yearlong visa or other evidence of legal immigration.

The policy, which does not require legislative approval, will be phased in starting in December.

His reasoning: [More...]

John D.R. Atchison, the federal prosecutor from Florida arrested last week when he flew to Detroit allegedly to have sex with a five year old, tried to commit suicide yesterday.

John D.R. Atchison, 53, used a sheet in an attempted hanging around 4 a.m., said Sanilac County Sheriff Virgil Strickler. Another inmate yelled out to jailers, who kept Atchison from hurting himself, Strickler said.

He was placed on a suicide watch when arrested, but it was lifted at his lawyer's request and after Atchison assured the court he wouldn't try and kill himself.

James C. Thomas of Detroit, Atchison's lawyer, had also asked U.S. Magistrate Judge Virginia M. Morgan to lift the suicide watch on Atchison, based on what his client told him.

"We all operate on the best of intentions," Thomas said today. "At the time, I thought it was the right decision. Apparently, it was a mistake. "I feel as bad about it as anyone."

Atchison has been removed from the jail. Hopefully they will take him somewhere he can get a complete psychiatric evaluation. As I wrote last week, he clearly needs help.

Jena Six defendant Mychal Bell was not released on bail today.

The hearing was not open to the public. Yesterday, a Louisiana appeals court ordered that a hearing occur within 72 hours to determine if Bell could be released. The hearing was held today.

I'm wondering whether a probation revocation proceeding is pending that's preventing his release. According to this source, he was put on probation for a Dec. 2005 battery and it's not up until Jan. 2008. Any one of his subsequent convictions for either the July, 2006 or September, 2006 offenses could trigger a probation revocation proceeding.

I'm not familiar with the juvenile statutes in Louisiana, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's no bail on a first appearance on a probation violation, pending a probable cause hearing. Here's Bell's criminal record (same link):

• a battery Christmas Day 2005, for which he was put on probation until Jan. 18, 2008
• criminal damage to property that occurred on July 25, 2006.
• a battery Sept. 2 and criminal damage to property Sept. 3 (probably 2006)

Update: No verdict today, the jury will resume deliberations Monday.

*******

Here's how to blow a five month trial out of a judge's desire to avoid a deadlocked jury: Let the jury deliberate a week and then change the jury instructions to add new ways the jury can find the defendant guilty. Then, suggest to the jury they change their method of deliberations.

It's hard not to be shocked by what the Judge in the Phil Spector trial did today. He went from this instruction:

...in order to convict Spector of second-degree murder the jury had to find that "the defendant must have committed an act that caused the death of Lana Clarkson." It went on to specify the act was pointing a gun at her, which resulted in the gun entering her mouth while in Spector's hand.

to this one:

Fidler told the panel that to prove Spector guilty, "the people must prove that ... the defendant committed an act with a firearm that caused the death of Lana Clarkson, such as placing a gun in her mouth or forcing her to place the gun in her mouth at which time it discharged, pointing the gun at or against her head at which time it entered her mouth and discharged, pointing the gun at her to prevent her from leaving the house, causing a struggle which resulted in the gun entering her mouth and discharging.

More...

Chris Bowers writes:

[T]he current conservative governing coalition of George Bush, Bush Dogs, congressional Republicans, and anti-MoveOn, anti-Reid Feingold Senators is opposed to the will of 60% of the American people on Iraq.

This conflation of criticism of Move On's ill advised ad (which is, I suppose, what Bowers is referring to; I condemn Move On for the ad and for its efforts to support the horrible Iraq Supplemental this Spring (Bowers also supported at times) and for its silly waste of a "ratchet up the pressure"/Wait for the Godot Republicans strategy this summer) withsupport for continuation of the war is ridiculous.

And it is unfortunate that Chris chose to demand fealty to Move On in this post as he makes a point of mine of longstanding - there is no compromise on Iraq. The choices now are binary - are you for ending the Iraq War? Then support ONLY funding with timelines. Anything else is de facto support for continuation of the Iraq Debacle.

Leave it to the Bureau of Prisons to find a way to unite the religious right and the civil liberties loving left. Despite protests from religious groups, Congress, and defenders of the Constitution, the BOP has refused to overturn its policy of purging religious texts from prison libraries. Only those texts deemed "appropriate" by federal bureaucrats are available for inmates to read.

Outrage over the bureau’s decision has come from both conservatives and liberals, who say it is inappropriate to limit inmates to a religious reading list determined by the government.

If the First Amendment prohibits the government from estabishing a religion, it surely prohibits the government from establishing an approved set of religious texts.

After Florentino Floro Jr was fired from the Philippines Supreme Court, bad things started to happen to the other justices, "including serious illnesses and car accidents." Floro has a simple explanation: one of the three elves with whom he hangs out is seeking revenge.

Floro says the person to blame for the mishaps is one of the elves, "Luis," a "king of kings" who is an avenger. He told the newspaper that the elves help him predict the future, but he has never consulted them when issuing judicial decisions.

Did the elves tell him he was going to be fired?

A very silly line of argument has developed today in the Left blogs. This post by MJ Rosenberg is an example:

I agree with reader JE who wrote: "the Democrats should make them filibuster, and use the term "filibuster" whenever they describe what the Republicans have done, not idiotic characterizations like "we don't have the votes." . . . Make them filibuster. Make it a true filibuster, which stops all other business until a cloture vote occurs. . . ." . . . Why not force the GOP to stay up all night reading the Bible and The Collected Works of Ann Coulter. Let the electorate see them blocking the will off the people. Why would Dems be afraid of that.

Um, how exactly would the Senate Leader be able to do that? The point of a cloture vote is to end debate. The lack of cloture does not mean that debate will occur on the Senate floor.

More.