Received by email, news that the Supreme Court granted certiorari in two sentencing case to replace Claiborne, which (as TalkLeft noted here) was rendered moot when Claiborne was shot to death.

Kimbrough v. United States, Case No. 06-6330 was a crack case in which the 4th Circuit reversed per curiam the defendant's below-range sentence, holding that "a sentence that is outside the guideline range is per se unreasonable when it is based on a disagreement with the sentencing disparity for crack and powder cocaine offenses," see United States v. Kimbrough, 174 Fed. Appx. 798 (4th Cir. 2006).

The Supreme Court also agreed to hear another case out of the 8th Circuit raising the same issue that had been raised by Claiborne: whether a court must have "extraordinary justifications" in order to impose an "extraordinary" below-range sentence. The case is Gall v. United States, No. 06-7949, and the 8th Cirucit's opinion can be found at United States v. Gall, 446 F.3d 884 (8th Cir. 2006).

The Connecticut Assembly and Senate passed a bill that permits people suffering from certain health conditions to grow their own marijuana. It isn't clear whether Gov. Rell will sign it.

"In the past, she has been sympathetic to helping the terminally ill and those with debilitating symptoms find relief," [spokesman Rich] Harris said, "but she would frankly prefer to see the policy change at the federal level since it is a chronic problem for any state that takes up the issue."

We'd all prefer to see the federal government do the right thing, but state action is the best way to make that happen. When enough states have legalized medical marijuana, federal legislators will get the message. Sometimes it takes a personal tragedy to bring them around.

State Representative Marie Lopez Kirkley-Bey, a Democrat from Hartford who is deputy speaker, said she had been “vehemently opposed” to the legalization of marijuana for medical purposes and voted against such bills in the past because she feared a negative impact on children. But she changed her mind when two of her cousins died of cancer last year.

“When I saw the pain and suffering they endured while trying to maintain their dignity and composure, the bill came to my mind,” Ms. Kirkley-Bey said. “There was a feeling that before, I didn’t do the right thing.”

It's never too late to do the right thing. Gov. Rell should sign the bill.

Here's Colin Powell making sense.

"If it was up to me, I would close Guantanamo. Not tomorrow, but this afternoon. I'd close it," he said.

"And I would not let any of those people go," he said. "I would simply move them to the United States and put them into our federal legal system. The concern was, well then they'll have access to lawyers, then they'll have access to writs of habeas corpus. So what? Let them. Isn't that what our system is all about?"

More ...

The last episode of the Sopranos. It all ends tonight.

Were you satisfied?

Monday Update: I hated it. I watched it again tonight to see if I felt differently. I didn't. It teased and manipulated and then didn't deliver.

It's no surprise to learn of decisions within the Bush administration that seem arbitrary. By what standard did the administration decide to remove religious texts from chapel libraries in federal prisons?

Inmate Moshe Milstein told the judge by telephone that the chaplain at Otisville removed about 600 books from the chapel library on Memorial Day, including Harold S. Kushner's best-seller "When Bad Things Happen to Good People," a book that Norman Vincent Peale said was "a book that all humanity needs."

The book ban is supposedly "intended to prevent radical religious texts, specifically Islamic ones, from falling into the hands of violent inmates." What makes an Islamic religious text "radical"? Are there objective standards that the Bureau of Prisons applies equally to all religious texts without regard to the religion they advocate?

"A lot of what we are missing were definitely prayer books or prayer guides and religious laws on the part of the Muslim faith," [inmate Douglas Kelly] said.

In our unitary executive branch, perhaps it's the Decider himself who decides which religious texts are fit for inmates to read.

Joe Klein just asks for it. Now he blathers on the Scooter Libby sentence:

I have a different feeling about Libby. His "perjury" . . .[why in quotes joe? He was convicted of 2 counts of perjury and two counts of obstruction of justice] would never be considered significant enough to reach trial, much less sentencing, much less time in stir if he weren't Dick Cheney's hatchet man.

Joe Klein's basis for this statement? Why nothing but his own imagination. Lying to a grand jury and obstruction of justice are considered serious crimes by every prosecutor I know. They are often prosecuted. See here:

A federal jury yesterday found Allegheny County Sheriff's Capt. Frank Schiralli guilty of perjury for telling a grand jury that he never kept lists of deputies who bought tickets to fund-raisers for Sheriff Pete DeFazio. . . . The two-week trial was the first to develop out of a federal investigation of macing, abuse of power and other illegal activity in DeFazio's office, a probe that began in January.

And here:

Writing in The Hill, Byron York laments the fact that Judge Walton is "determined" to send Scooter Libby to jail pending his appeal:

At sentencing this week, Walton also said that he saw no reason why Libby shouldn’t be behind bars sooner rather than later — in other words, that he should begin serving his sentence while his appeal is underway. Why the hurry? These days it’s often the case that when a defendant is judged no danger to society and no danger to flee the country, he is allowed to remain free on appeal.

Tom Maguire seconds the motion. I had the same thoughts when I first heard this. But we were all wrong. I think it is due to the fact that York, Maguire and I are not well versed in criminal law. You see, going to jail pending appeal is the norm, not the exception. The relevant statute says:

I'm at the NORML conference.

We're creating a blog with Blogger.

Tommy Chong was here yesterday. Here's a picture of him and me.

Gotta go now. More later.

This is an open thraad.

Joe Lieberman stakes out a position held only by Dick Cheney:

"I think we've got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq," Lieberman said. "And to me, that would include a strike over the border into Iran, where we have good evidence that they have a base at which they are training these people coming back into Iraq to kill our soldiers."

(Emphasis supplied.) If our soldiers were not in Iraq, they would not be subject to these attacks Lieberman. As I have said many times, the way to stop war with Iran is to end the Debacle in Iraq.

On a related note, noted "extremist" hunter Joe Klein discovers that there is no such thing as a precipitous withdrawal:

Somewhat lost in the pleasure that Judge Walton's now famous footnote has provided, is the question of whether law professors make a credible argument that Fitzgerald's appointment runs afoul of the Appointments Clause of the Constitution. The law professors argue:

The dispositive Constitutional question then is whether the Office of Special Counsel to which Mr. Fitzgerald was appointed is inferior office within the meaning of the Appointments Clause.

If it is not an "inferior" office, all agree, then it is subject to Presidential appointment and Senate confirmation. But there is more to it than that. Patrick Fitzgerald was a duly appointed and confirmed U.S. Attorney. Does that matter? Not only does it matter, it decides the case imo. Let's explore these issues on the flip.

David Broder would have done himself a favor if he had read the Washington Post reporter who actually covered the Scooter Libby trial, Carol Leonnig before he penned his embarrassing regurgitation of GOP Talking Points. Published the same day Broder wrote his nonsense, Leonnig wrote, in part:

3. Libby didn't leak Plame's identity.

Oh, brother, am I tired of this one. Libby wasn't charged with the crime of knowingly leaking classified information about Plame; he was charged with lying to investigators. But the overwhelming weight of the evidence at the trial -- including reporters' notes of their interviews with Libby -- showed that Libby had indeed leaked classified information about Plame's identity, even though that wasn't what put him in the dock. The jury agreed that Libby lied when he said that he'd been telling reporters only what other reporters had told him about Plame's role at the CIA.

What is unclear is whether Libby knew she was a covert CIA agent at the time he discussed her with reporters -- a key point in determining whether this was an illegal leak. But Walton said that Libby "had a unique and special obligation" to keep such secrets, well, secret.

Oh brother Carol, are you and a lot of people tired of the nonsense from your colleague David Broder.

He never fails to live down to my expectations. David Broder can be counted on to repeat the false GOP talking point, this time on Scooter Libby's obstruction of justice:

Like other special prosecutors before him, Fitzgerald got caught up in the excitement of the case and pursued Libby relentlessly, well beyond the time that was reasonable. Nonetheless, on the fundamental point, Walton and Fitzgerald have it right. Libby let his loyalty to his boss and to the administration cloud his judgment -- and perhaps his memory -- in denying that he was part of the effort to discredit the Wilson pair. Lying to a grand jury is serious business, especially when it is done by a person occupying a high government position where the public trust is at stake.

Earth to David Broder. Obstruction of justice blocks the investigation of the underlying crime. Libby's perjury was part of obstructing Fitzgerald's investigation of the underlying crime. We will not know if there was an "underlying crime" (Broder's phrase for knowingly disclosing the identity of a covert intelligence officer in violation of the IIPA) BECAUSE of Libby's obstruction. The man is pure and simple, an idiot, not very bright. He is appropriately, the Dean of the Washington Press Corps. What an indictment of the Washington Press Corps.