Every few weeks since 2005, I've been checking the Australian news for updates on Schapelle Corby, a 29 year old Australian who is serving 20 years in a hellhole of an Indonesian prison for smuggling 4 kilos of pot into Bali in her boogie board, a crime of which she has always maintained her innocence.. I only post updates here when there's been some actual news. (All TalkLeft coverage is accessible here.)

Schapelle's sister, Mercedes Corby, and her Balinese husband were spending five months in Bali when Schapelle was arrested. Mercedes'poignant, very moving account of how all their lives have changed is in last Sunday's Telegraph.

Thursday, there was a news article saying Australia and Indonesia are still haggling over words in the draft of their prisoner exchange treaty, which would allow Schapelle to return to Australia to finish serving her sentence.

More....

Update [2007-4-21 13:45:27 by Big Tent Democrat]: KagroX documents the Dem cavein. Yep, I told you so when I urged defeat of the House Iraq supplemental funding bill. Let's hope Bush vetoes. It is our only hope for ending the Debacle by 2008.

Jonathan Alter is one of the better journalists around, maybe one of the best. But he has lost his bearings on Iraq. On Keith Olbermann's program "Countdown" last night, he berated President Bush for leaving the "tough decision" of withdrawing from the Iraq Debacle for the next President and not a moment later criticized Democrats like me that believe the Congress should set a date certain for NOT funding the Iraq Debacle, in other words, Reid-Feingold. He calls the toothless approach of nonbinding benchmarks and timelines "shrewd" politics. Set aside the moral repugnancy of not ending the Debacle (funding a war for political purposes strikes me as one of the most reprehensible ideas I have ever heard), Alter has mislabeled the toothless so-called "ratcheting up the pressure" approach "shrewd." It is supremely stupid. And Jon Alter himself has explained why, as he did in his column urging Democrats to not fear Karl Rove's promise to run on "cut and run" in 2006:

Rove is focused again on what he does best: ginning up the slime machine. Anyone who dares criticize President Bush's Iraq policy is a "cut-and-run" Democrat. The White House's object here is not to engage in a real debate about an exit strategy from Iraq; that would require acknowledging some complications, like the fact that Gen. George Casey, commander of the multinational forces in Iraq, believes it's time to start bringing some troops home. The object is instead to either get the Democrats tangled up in Kerryesque complexities on Iraq—or intimidate them into changing the subject to other, less-potent issues for fear of looking like unpatriotic pansies. These are the stakes: if Rove can successfully con Democrats into ignoring Iraq and reciting their laundry list of other priorities, Republicans win.

Alter thinks that a Democratic Congress can get away with just "talk" now. He is wrong. The country will now hold a Democratic Congress jointly responsible for Iraq if they do not end the Debacle.

Dan Froomkin at the Washington Post notes President Bush used his speech at Tipp City to push for religious revival.

One of the things I try to assure the families and the students and the faculty of that fine university was that there are a lot of people around our country who are praying for them. It's interesting here in Tipp City, the first thing that happened was a moment of silence, a moment of prayer, to provide -- at least my prayer was, please comfort and strengthen those whose lives were affected by this horrible incident. It really speaks to the strength of this country, doesn't it, that total strangers here in Ohio are willing to hold up people in Virginia in prayer. And I thank you for that. And my message to the folks who still hurt in -- at Virginia Tech is that a lot of people care about you, and a lot of people think about you, a lot of people grieve with you, and a lot of people hope you find sustenance in a power higher than yourself. And a lot of us believe you will."

I like Maureen Dowd's writing. I really do. But if she is going to continue to write about the politcs, she needs to attend to her daddy complex. In writing about the silly Edwards haircut story, Dowd reveals the psychological block she has in writing about politics - she needs to overcome her Elektra complex:

Speaking of roots, my dad, a police detective who was in charge of Senate security, got haircuts at the Senate barbershop for 50 cents. He cut my three brothers’ hair and did the same for anyone else in the neighborhood who wanted a free clip job. Even now, Mr. Edwards could get his hair cut at the Senate barbershop for $21 or the Chapel Hill Barber Shop near his campaign headquarters for $16.

Guess she is bidding for the "daughter of a police detective" vote. Memo to MoDo, just cuz daddy did it that way does not mean doing it some other way is wrong.

But in all seriousness, every significant defect in Dowd's writing, from her outrageous writings on Clinton, Gore, Hillary Clinton, Republicans and Democrats, really can be traced back to this. She needs to address that.

Last week I wrote about California prison officials going behind the backs of legislators and authorizing and beginning construction of a new death chamber at San Quentin.

Friday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger issued an order halting construction on the project.

Of course, it's not that Arnold is opposed to the death penalty. It's that he wants the project properly budgeted and submitted to the legislature.

Schwarzenegger, a Republican who supports the death penalty, will present a revised budget plan to the legislature next month that will serve as the framework for final budget talks.

But, the Judge who recently found California's execution procedures unconstitutional only gave the state until May 15 to come up with a new plan.

His concerns have put lethal injections in California on hold and threaten to end the procedure in a state that had 664 inmates on death row as of last week. A few have been awaiting execution since the late 1970s. San Quentin's cramped death chamber, built in 1938, was originally designed to gas prisoners.

Update: Law Prof Doug Berman at Sentencing Law and Policy contrasts Schwarzenegger with New York's Governor Eliot Sptizer, with praise for Spitzer.

Journalist Dave Cullen has an article on Slate today about the similarities and differences between Va. Tech killer Cho Seung-Hui and Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the Columbine killers.

Dave, who is writing the definitive book on Columbine to be published in 2008 (and who wrote this TalkLeft diary on the myth of the school shooter profile a few days ago) spent the better part of this week conferring with top experts on psychiatry and violence, to sort out the leading theories on what drove Cho. He also examines how Cho compares to the Columbine killers, and in particular, how he does not.)

This being the anniversary of Columbine, also take a look at Dave's 2004 Slate article on Columbine and the myths behind it.

In his weekly roundtable blowhard pundit segment, with Ed Rollins, NY Daily News' Michael Goodwin and Dem strategist Hank Sheinkopf, Lou Dobbs and his group skewered Sen. Harry Reid for saying "Iraq is lost."

ROLLINS: It's not fair to the men and women who are there to basically say, they are losing a war. They are in a police action. They aren't fighting a war anymore....
DOBBS: Thank you for saying that.

Not ten seconds later, Dobbs said:

I believe William Odom, General William Odom will be proved exactly right in his characterization of our involvement in Iraq.

Victory Is Not an Option
The Mission Can't Be Accomplished -- It's Time for a New Strategy
By William E. Odom
Sunday, February 11, 2007

Hmmmm. Is Lou Dobbs emboldening . . .?

Why did it take five weeks for Pat Tillman's family to learn that his death was caused by friendly fire? This is why:

Within hours of Pat Tillman's death, the Army went into information-lockdown mode, cutting off phone and Internet connections at a base in Afghanistan, posting guards on a wounded platoon mate, and ordering a sergeant to burn Tillman's uniform.

Wounded by the same friendly fire, Spc. Jade Lane was puzzled to find guards stationed at his hospital bed in Afghanistan.

Later, he said, he learned the reason for their presence: The news media were sniffing around, and Lane's superiors "did not want anyone talking to us," he said.

From another soldier, who learned about Tillman's death when it was reported to the Forward Operating Base where he was assigned:

"The phones and Internet had been cut off, to prevent anyone from talking about the incident," he told investigators.

As TalkLeft reported here, the Seventh Circuit reversed Georgia Thompson's conviction and ordered her immediate release from prison before issuing a written decision. (Additional TalkLeft posts here and here raise questions about US Attorney Biskupic's handling of the prosecution.)

Today the Seventh Circuit issued its well-reasoned opinion (pdf) explaining the reversal. There's a lesson in it for Congress, as well as for overreaching federal prosecutors:

This prosecution, which led to the conviction and imprisonment of a civil servant for conduct that, as far as this record shows, was designed to pursue the public interest as the employee understood it, may well induce Congress to take another look at the wisdom of enacting ambulatory criminal prohibitions. Haziness designed to avoid loopholes through which bad persons can wriggle can impose high costs on people the statute was not designed to catch.

KagroX writes a great post on what Rep. David Obey (D-WI) needs to do now in the Iraq supplemental funding bill conference:

With the bill now heading into a House-Senate conference, and rumors floating that the Senate conferees may seek to strip the much-vaunted timelines and withdrawal triggers from the bill, it seems to me that Chairman Obey has a unique obligation to insure that the teeth of the bill -- such as they are -- remain in the final conference report.

Nobody, as far as I can recall, was ever pressing Congress to "make it illegal to proceed with the war." While that certainly would be a welcome development, it's an innovation created and touted by Obey, and offered unsolicited by him as a defense against the "idiot liberals" who were working to end the war but were, in his mind, "screwing it up."

To each question the activists posed, Obey's every answer was premised on the same objection: "That's not how it works."

Well, now we're seeing how it does work, Mr. Obey. . . . The burden to make sure it remains "illegal to proceed with the war," at least according to the terms of the bill that emerges from conference, is yours.

KagroX's point is entirely missed by MYDD's Chris Bowers, who had no qualms in whipping the Out of Iraq Caucus to vote for the incredibly flawed House bill, but now objects to KagroX pressuring Obey to hold the line. No one doubts that Obey is a great Congressman dedicated to ending the war. What is at issue is whether Obey's stated strategy will work. As Kagro says, for it to work, the binding timeline, such as it is, must survive conference. If Obey's argument meant anything, then Rep. Obey has to fight hard in the conference to keep binding timelines in the bill. That is KagroX's point. How can that be quarreled with?

In light of all the evidence that wrongful convictions are a serious and systemic problem in our criminal justice system (including the conviction of Timothy Atkins, who served 20 years for a murder he didn't commit), one would think prosecutors would desire to fix the errors that lead to wrongful convictions. Why don't they?

One reason change is unlikely is the pressure to win. Successful prosecutors win convictions. Fairness? It's a desirable quality, but to some an unaffordable luxury when it threatens to impinge on a conviction.

Konrad Moore, a supervising deputy public defender in Kern County, California, discusses how the "win at all costs" mentality is affecting (and infecting) the trial of Phil Spector at the expense of fairness.

After the FBI searched his home earlier this week, Rep. John Doolittle (in consultaton with House Minority Leader John Boehner) decided to step down from his seat on the House Appropriations Committee. Doolittle expressed his understanding that "recent circumstances may lead some to question [his] tenure on the appropriations committee."

A GOP aide, who asked not to be identified because the issue is sensitive, said that the party's leaders, after losing control of Congress in a campaign that highlighted ethical lapses by Republicans, wanted to show they were responding swiftly to any possible scandal.

Swiftly? The Doolittle scandal has been in the news for more than a year.