In South Dakota's first death penalty case with a female defendant, a jury yesterday voted for life in prison without parole over a death sentence.

A jury on Wednesday spared the life of a woman who killed an acquaintance and hacked up her body with a chainsaw, sentencing her to life in prison without parole.

The victim's mother told the defendant's mother:

"We pray for you every day asking that God may touch your heart, that you may come to know his love and that you repent of your sins and seek God's forgiveness," she said.

Dee VanderGiesen told Wright's mother, Carolyn Tucker: "We both have lost our daughters. One to death and the other to prison time for as long as she lives. May God's grace be shown to you at this time of pain in your life."

The prosecution's facts:

More...

The Harvard Crimson praises Massachusetts Gov. Devall Patrick for reevaluating mandatory minimum sentencing laws. So do we.

Mandatory minimum sentences eliminate a judge’s ability to fit the punishment to the crime. ... Furthermore, since the law cannot anticipate every possible situation, in some infamous situations mandatory sentencing requirements can lead to punishments that are wildly disproportionate from the offense. The example most familiar to Harvard students is a Massachusetts law that adds at least two years to a drug sentence if the violation occurred within a 1,000-foot radius of a school property. Ten of Harvard’s houses count as within such an area, as does most of the City of Boston.

The editorial's logic undermines its conclusion that more reasonable mandatory minimums might serve a beneficial purpose. There will inevitably be circumstances under which a mandatory minimum will be widely understood to be unfair. Sentencing judges should always have the freedom to show mercy where mercy is deserved.

The New York Times asked four attorneys what questions they would ask Alberto Gonzales. Truth be told the questions are, imo, pretty awful and not much related to the issues at hand. But only one set of questions had me bursting in laughter. Read what the co-founder of the Federalist Society would ask:

Congress’s Role By Steven G. Calabresi

1. Can politics truly be kept out of the investigations into the recent dismissal of several United States attorneys if such oversight is being led by a senator who is himself responsible for the election of Democratic senatorial candidates in 2008?

[He's talking about Schumer and the silly GOP talking point that somehow a Senator involved in electing Dems can't do his job as Senator. First, the investigation is being led by the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Sen. Patrick Leahy, not Schumer. Second, every Senator will be involved in getting folks of their party elected. By Calabresi's logic, no one in Congress can investigate anything ever. This is one of the stupidest talking points in the history of talking points.].

2. Doesn’t the Constitution make the president the law enforcement officer in chief precisely so he can make sure that all 93 United States attorneys are following the law enforcement priorities that he was elected to enforce? And doesn’t the Constitution specifically limit Congress’s role in removal of United States attorneys to impeaching them or their superiors for high crimes and misdemeanors?

[More nonsense. The President and his Attorney General are supposed to enforce the priorities of the Congress, to wit, enforce the laws passed by Congress, not his "law enforcement priorities." As for the Congress' role, this is not a subject Calabresi should be bringing up since the Bush Adminsitration engaged in some dirty stealth language changes in laws in orer to circumvent Congress' role in CONFIRMING US attorneys]

A new Washington Post - ABC News poll finds Rudy Giuliani's lead shrinking while Hillary maintains her advantage:

Giuliani remained the front-runner in the national poll, but his support has eroded. In a late-February Post-ABC News poll, 44 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents preferred Giuliani for the nomination; that figure is down to 33 percent. Support for McCain held steady at 21 percent.

Giuliani's support dipped in part because of the possible entry of former senator Fred Thompson (Tenn.) into the GOP race. Thompson ran third in this poll, with 9 percent, tying him with former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.

As for the Democrats:

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Republican Rep. John Doolittle, on the FBI's appearance at his home yesterday with a search warrant authorizing the seizure of records pertaining to his wife's company, Sierra Dominion Financial Solutions Inc.:

"My wife has been cooperating with the FBI and the Justice Department for almost three years and that cooperation is going to continue in the future," Doolittle said. "I support my wife 100 percent and fully expect that the truth will prevail."

Here's a tip: if you're cooperating with the FBI and they show up with a warrant, the cooperation isn't going all that well.

The search occurred the same day that Kevin Ring, a former Doolittle aide who went on to work for Abramoff, abruptly resigned his law firm job without explanation.

TalkLeft noted the Doolittle/Abramoff connection in this 2005 post.

As the chickens came home to roost with Justice Alito casting the deciding vote today in the SCOTUS' upholding of a federal ban on a pregnancy termination procedure used primarily late in the pregnancy term, I thought I would trot out a post I wrote on the politics of choice, when the Alito nomination was pending.

The post:

Just as in every other Supreme Court nomination, the ScAlito nomination has at its center the issue of Roe v. Wade. Many other issues of course are always significant, but Roe is the touchstone. Inevitably, at least here, the arguments lead to whether it is "good politics" for Dems to support Roe. Of course, for many if not most of us, politics simply won't be a consideration on the issue. But I also think these folks are wrong to argue that Dems should retreat on Roe.

Will anyone take notice now that at least one military expert is saying the only way to sustain our protracted ground war in Iraq is to bring back the draft?

The Senate Armed Services Committee heard testimony Tuesday that increasing the size of the Army and Marine Corps may not resolve severe and growing personnel problems. There was even talk of returning to the draft to fill the ranks.

....Lawrence Korb, a former senior Pentagon personnel official now affiliated with the Center for Defense Information and the Center for American Progress... [said] The all-volunteer force was never designed for a protracted ground war, but that is exactly what it faces, he said.

“If the United States is going to have a significant component of its ground forces in Iraq over the next five, 10, 15 or 30 years, then the responsible course is for the president and those supporting this open-ended and escalated presence in Iraq to call for reinstating the draft.”

There just aren't enough quality recruits the experts say to fill the need of Bush's war.

Other states have protested or complained about the Real ID Act, but Montana is the first to Just Say No to its implementation.

Gov. Brian Schweitzer said "no, nope, no way, hell no" Tuesday to national driver's licenses, signing into law a bill supporters say is one of the strongest rejections to the federal plan. The move means the state won't comply with the Real ID Act, a federal law that sets a national standard for driver's licenses and requires states to link their record-keeping systems to national databases.

Here's why:

"We also don't think that bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., ought to tell us that if we're going to get on a plane we have to carry their card, so when it's scanned through they know where you went, when you got there and when you came home," said Schweitzer, a Democrat.

TalkLeft coverage of this awful law is collected here.

Update [2007-4-18 18:51:54 by Big Tent Democrat]: Some images from NBC of the VA Tech shooter.

Update [2007-4-18 17:28:28 by Big Tent Democrat]: On Hardball, NBC reporter Jon Dienst said that the NBC Nightly News will air some of the video which the VA Tech shooter mailed to them between the first snd second shooting.

CNN reporting on TV. Will provide more when I can get it.

Also, the NYTimes is reporting that the VA Tech shooter, Cho, sent materials to NBC between the first and second shootings.

From the NYTimes:

A Virginia court document said that in 2005 a special justice in Virginia declared Mr. Cho mentally ill and an “imminent danger to others,” a CNN report said. The new information, disclosed by police in a news conference today, raises questions about whether warning signs about Mr. Cho’s behavior and problems were handled effectively by police and the university.

More to come.

The latest CNN Poll shows a trend that most reasonably intelligent persons should be able to discern:

In the latest CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll, taken April 10-12, 69 percent of Americans say things are going badly for the United States in Iraq. That's the most negative assessment yet recorded, up from 54 percent who thought things were going badly last June and 62 percent in October. (Full poll results [PDF])

Let's try it this way:

June 2006 54%
October 2006 62% +8

April 2007 69% +7

Every 4 to 6 months 7-8% of the remaining Americans who do not believe the Iraq Debacle is a debacle come to their senses. I know what you are asking, 'what does this have to do with Reid-Feingold?' Simply this.

By March 31, 2008, how many Americans will there be left who do not believe the Debacle is a debacle? Even better, how many will think it by NOVEMBER 2008? The right place to be politically is to be seen as the Party doing everything it can to END the Debacle. That means supporting Reid-Feingold NOW.

CNN, to their credit, makes this as plain as possible:

Asked which side they take in the standoff between Congress and President Bush, the result is not close: 60 percent of Americans side with the Democrats in Congress and 37 percent with the President.

Just so no one is in doubt that Rudy Giuliani either will change any position for a vote or is a dictator at heart who will trample our rights, here's his statement on today's Supreme Court decision upholding the the federal partial birth abortion ban,

“The Supreme Court reached the correct conclusion in upholding the congressional ban on partial birth abortion,” Giuliani said in a statement on the 5–4 decision. “I agree with it.”

In 2000, during his aborted run for the Senate, he promised differently:

...he said he would not vote to restrict a woman’s right to undergo the procedure. Now, with social conservatives believed to be a major factor in the GOP primary, Giuliani joined the other top-tier Republicans in applauding the court’s ruling.

Wasn't it just a few weeks ago he wanted to leave it to the states?

More below, including John Edwards and Barack Obama's criticism of the decision.

In James v. US, a case interpreting the Armed Career Criminal Act (I confess I had no idea this law existed before today), Justice Scalia and Alito disagreed. Justice Alito, writing for the Court, opined that "attempted burglary," as defined by Florida law, is a "violent offense" under the ACCA, relevant to the sentencing of James. Three prior "violent offenses" convictions, as defined by the ACCA, mandated a 15 year sentence.

In dissent, Justice Scalia objected to Alito's opinion, arguing that Alito gave no guidance to lower courts for determining what "residual offenses" would fall under the ACCA's "violent offenses" provision, labeling Alito's approach "entirely ad hoc."