Should judges be armed in the courtroom? This reminds me of a scene out of one of my favorite law movies, And Justice for All, starring Al Pacino and Jack Warden.

A Jacksonville, Fla., judge drew his handgun when an accused child molester was attacked by an alleged victim's father in court. "I didn't know if he was going after me or the bailiffs or the defendant," Circuit Judge John Merrett told The (Jacksonville, Fla.) Times-Union.

The father, who had not seen the defendant before the court appearance, hurdled a railing and landed several punches on the handcuffed and shackled man before bailiffs restored order. Merrett said that once he saw the situation was under control, he handed his gun to the court clerk and asked her to lock it in a drawer. Merrett has a concealed weapon permit and said he'd do the same thing again, the newspaper reported.

The public defender is complaining and wants to talk to the Chief Judge about whether judges should be armed in court.

More...

The family of Pat Tillman is not taking yesterday's report on his death quietly.

"The Army continues to deny the family, and the public that pays for the Army with its taxes, access to the original investigation, and the sworn statements from that investigation,” the statement read, adding that eyewitnesses’ statements of Corporal Tillman’s death have been altered. “This is not a misstep. It is evidence tampering.”

The Pentagon report, released on Monday, said officers had suspected early on that Corporal Tillman had been killed by American troops in an accidental fratricide, not hostile fire, as was initially reported. But despite their suspicions, it said, officers did not immediately inform the family of the possibility of such a death, in violation of Army regulations. As a result, four generals, and five other officers, will face disciplinary action.

But the Pentagon found no criminal wrongdoing or evidence of a cover-up in the death...

Pat Tillman's mother was on Countdown tonight, and she said she could not rule out that her son was killed intentionally.

Amidst the celebration, is it uncouth of me to point out that the Iraq supplemental funding bill that will come out of conference will almost certainly contain a NON-binding withdrawal timeline?

Markos writes:

Reid did an incredible job of keeping Democrats together. I mean, he even brought Ben Nelson aboard! Pretty impressive.

Hello? He got Nelson and Hagel because the language was NON-binding! Did anyone hear Hagel's floor speech on the issue? HE stressed that point.

Now the headlines are fun and all but here is some constructive advice for the "pragmatists" - you want to force Bush to veto? Then you have to place MAXIMUM pressure on Pryor, Nelson, Hagel, Smith and any other soft supporters in the Senate. They must be made to accept a binding timeline. If that happens, I will apologize to every "pragmatist" I have criticized on this. At the least, if such a bill is passed, Bush WILL veto it, particularly if the March 31, 2008 date holds.

A lawsuit filed by nine former military prisoners against Donald Rumsfeld and military officers has been dismissed on the ground that they are immune from suit when they make decisions about the treatment of prisoners. Here's what the prisoners alleged:

The lawsuit contends the prisoners were beaten, suspended upside down from the ceiling by chains, urinated on, shocked, sexually humiliated, burned, locked inside boxes and subjected to mock executions.

Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights First had argued that Rumsfeld and top military officials disregarded warnings about the abuse and authorized the use of illegal interrogation tactics that violated the constitutional and human rights of prisoners.

Calling the case "lamentable," Judge Thomas Hogan ruled that "authorizing monetary damages remedies against military officials engaged in an active war would invite enemies to use our own federal courts to obstruct the Armed Forces' ability to act decisively and without hesitation." Obstructing the government's illegal behavior isn't such a bad thing, is it? Holding Rumsfeld accountable wouldn't be such a bad thing, either.

The Senate voted down the Cochran Amendment, intended to strip the Senate version of the Iraq supplemental funding bill. Every Republican excepting Hagel and Smith voted for the Cochran Amendment. Two Democratic Caucus members, Lieberman and Pryor, voted for the Cochran Amendment and against the non-binding withdrawal timeline.

The next action is a conference, as the House and Senate bills are in conflict, at least ostensibly. The House bill claims to set a firm deadline for withdrawal, August 31, 2008. The Senate bill sets a nonbinding goal of March 31, 2008. What emerges from the conference. A broken tooth or none at all?

And then what?

The Senate will vote on an amendment - the Cochran Amendment (Thad Cochran is a GOP Senator from Mississippi) to its toothless version of the Iraq supplemental funding bill today. Debate is going on now.

The debate is on a current Republican amendment to strip the bill of its nonbinding provision of setting a goal of removing all combat troops involved in the Iraq Debacle by March 31, 2008. Oh by the way, the provision is NON-binding!! And it is likely to be stripped out!!

Sam Rosenfeld finds the closeness of the vote on stripping the NON-binding withdrawal date significant:

[T]he saga of the congressional war supplemental bill has really taken a dramatic turn in the last two days toward a confrontation with George W. Bush himself over a Senate-House conference bill that does in fact include language calling for withdrawal from Iraq.

This is what we are reduced to -- making NON-binding goals for withdrawal from the Iraq Debacle a SIGNIFICANT achievement! This is the big pragmatic win! You have to be kidding me.

FBI Director Robert Mueller's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee amounts to this: Yes, we abused our Patriot Act authority by spying on Americans who weren't suspected of terrorism, even though we promised that we wouldn't, but now that we've been caught, we really really promise not to abuse that authority again, so please don't take it away.

Senator Leahy's response:

"Last year the administration sought new powers in the Patriot Act to appoint U.S. Attorneys without Senate confirmation and to more freely use National Security Letters," Leahy said in opening remarks. "The administration got these powers, and they have badly bungled both."

Last week, Leahy said "we need to consider whether Congress went too far" when it removed restrictions on FBI use of national security letters. The Senate should remove that authority altogether. If the FBI wants to snoop into personal information, it should get a warrant.

I'll be live-blogging the Joseph Nacchio insider trading trial for 5280 this afternoon. There's a lot of posts up here already today, but in case you want more, here's an open thread.

There will also be an open thread tomorrow since it's a travel day for me.

The blogosphere is all over the map on whether Monica Goodling has the right to invoke her 5th Amendment privilege against self-incrimination and refuse to testify before a Congressional committee investigating the firing of U.S. Attorneys.

• Christy at Firegoglake
• Eric as Is That Legal?
• Talking Points Memo
• Appellate lawyer Peter Goldberger in the comments to Big Tent Democrat's post here yesterday

I think she has the right to take the 5th. And, here's what a TalkLeft reader, who happens to be a former high-ranking Justice Department official during the Clinton Administration, whom I have known for many years and have the utmost respect for, writes in to say:

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Good news from New York. An appeals court has reversed a murder conviction because the Judge refused to allow an expert is eyewitness identification to testify. The 13 page opinion is here.

The holding:

For the reasons that follow, we hold that where the case turns on the accuracy of eyewitness identifications and there is little or no corroborating evidence connecting the defendant to the crime, it is an abuse of discretion for a trial court to exclude expert testimony on the reliability of eyewitness identifications if that testimony is (1) relevant to the witness's identification of defendant, (2) based on principles that are generally accepted within the relevant scientific community, (3) proffered by a qualified expert and (4) on a topic beyond the ken of the average juror. Taking into account that trial courts generally have the power to limit the amount and scope of evidence presented, we nevertheless conclude that, in this case, the court erred when it precluded the testimony of defendant's eyewitness identification expert in its entirety.

Sad news from the White House today. Tony Snow's cancer has not only returned but spread to his liver. Cancer is not a political disease. I feel badly for him.

May he keep an optimistic attitude and keep up the fight.

In the discussion on the Iraq supplemental funding bill, it seems to me that the arguments in favor of the House bill were based mainly on messaging, not the substantive result of the bill. Certainly Markos' argument is expressly so, seeing the political play as geared towards the 2008 elections. As I wrote, I respect that view more than the one which pretends that the House bill is a "first step" to future steps that will lead to an end to the US deployments in Iraq. Today, EJ Dionne produces a hybrid of the two arguments in favor of the House bill:

Last week's narrow House vote imposing an August 2008 deadline for the withdrawal of American troops was hugely significant, even if the bill stands no chance of passing in the Senate this week in its current form. The vote was a test of the resolve of the new House Democratic leadership and its ability to pull together an ideologically diverse membership behind a plan pointing the United States out of Iraq.

Well, the plan sort of points for a moment but it does NOTHING to get the country moving in the direction it is pointing. Reading the headlines today does not tell you what things will look like months later. The House bill will look bad in a matter of weeks, months and next year when it matters most. Because it is devoid of substantive action on Iraq.