Another terrible idea, this time from Ohio:

Convicted sex offenders in Ohio may be soon be forced to drive cars with a special license plate denoting their offense....Under the proposal, the worst sex offenders - habitual sex offenders, predators, and child-victim predators - would have to display the plate on their vehicle for five years.

Offenders would face a criminal charge if they are caught without the plate, and enablers who loan vehicles to known offenders would face criminal charges, too. If an offender moves out of state, they would get a green sticker.

This is just another shaming punishment and one that will have no effect on the number of sex offenses.

10TV spoke with a local registered sex offender who said this would be a second sentence, once out of prison. A spokesperson for CURE Ohio, which supports former inmates, said the plates would demonize people, and it's more often not an ex-felon, but rather a neighbor or relative, who hurts a child.

I'll be railing against the measure on MSNBC tomorrow at 1:30 pm ET. (Barring getting bumped for a Libby verdict or other breaking news.)

Former Ohio Rep. Bob Ney reports to federal prison tomorrow in Morgantown, W.Va. to begin serving his 30 month sentence.

He sent his friends a farewell e-mail, quoting Garth Brooks' song, "The Dance."

and now i'm glad i didn't know
the way it all would end, the way it all would go
our lives are better left to chance,
i could have missed the pain,
but i'd have had to miss, the dance

A federal judge in Miami today found that Jose Padilla is competent to stand trial.

"This defendant clearly has the capacity to assist his attorneys," Cooke said just hours after she finished four days of competency hearings.

....Cooke said testimony in the competency hearing showed that Padilla understands "legal nuances" of pretrial motions and noted that he had signed a document verifying the truth of allegations made by the defense that he was tortured and mistreated during his years in a Navy brig in Charleston, S.C. "At some time, the defendant was able to discuss some things with his lawyers," Cooke said. "The defendant's situation is unique. He understands that."

Padilla had no reaction in court to the decision. I'm not surprised. He probably had no idea what was going on.

More....

Of all the silly things.

A bill that would ban the sale of marijuana-flavored candy to children in Georgia won approval from a legislative committee this morning, advancing the proposal toward a vote in the House of Representatives.

House Bill 280 calls for a $1,000 fine for those caught selling the sweets, also called “chronic candy” or “pot suckers.” The candy comes in the form of lollipops, gumdrops and other sweets.

Read the comments. One is from a prohibition true believer and former prosecutor and drug agent who thinks the bill is a great idea. The other is from NORML Executive Director Allen St. Pierre, who writes:

Bump and Update: Per Firedoglake, no verdict today, the jury has gone home.

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Libby: Factors to Consider While We Wait

While predicting what a jury will do -- or even where they are in their deliberations -- is fruitless, there are some things to consider in trying to follow along. The first is that we have access to newspaper articles, blog posts, pleadings, etc. They do not.

They do not have transcripts of the trial testimony or opening or closing arguments. They do not even have a copy of the Indictment.

They have jury instructions. They have paper copies of the exhibits. They have their handwritten notes of the testimony.

So, where would they begin once they have selected a foreman and decided to start discussions? Byron York says how he would do it.

More...

And the next chapter of the Walter Reed scandal, the number of mice in Walter Reed is a "national security secret":

Soldiers say their sergeant major gathered troops at 6 p.m. Monday to tell them they must follow their chain of command when asking for help with their medical evaluation paperwork, or when they spot mold, mice or other problems in their quarters.

And yes, the classification line is a joke from me. I know this is not classifying the info. It is just putting a de facto gag order on our soldiers:

Soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center’s Medical Hold Unit say they have been told they will wake up at 6 a.m. every morning and have their rooms ready for inspection at 7 a.m., and that they must not speak to the media. “Some soldiers believe this is a form of punishment for the trouble soldiers caused by talking to the media,” one Medical Hold Unit soldier said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Say hello to the Eyewitness ID Reform Blog

I have corresponded with one of the authors, a Public Defender, and the blog is the real deal.

They will be blogging tomorrow through Saturday from the "Off the Witness Stand Conference" at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

The conference is named for Dr. Munsterberg's collection of essays, "On the Witness Stand," which urged the courts to open their doors to a plethora of social science findings that cast serious doubt on assumptions commonly relied on in criminal proceedings.

Speakers include: Janet Reno, Steven Penrod, Gary Wells, James Doyle, Saul Kassin and Tim O'Toole.

Patrick Doyle of Denver's premier monthly magazine 5280 takes a long look at what holding the Democratic convention in the Denver means for Democrats winning the West in 2008. It's good news.

By holding their convention in Denver, they’ve signaled to the country that they’re marching, knees high, into the West. It’s a bold move, and it’s long overdue: The last time the Dems held a convention in Denver was 1908, and it’s been 80 years since they held a convention west of Chicago or east of California. Over the next six pages, we’ll look at what the West means to the political left.

Among the Topics:

Atrios (who I am not calling stupid here), wonders about the fixation on the Clenis:

Bill Clinton is an incredibly popular person and only our Beltway press could imagine that he would somehow be a "liability" to his wife. Though, to be fair, the subtext of the "concerns" of the Beltway chatterers is that they're really talking not about Bill Clinton, but about the Clenis . . . Why Bill Clinton's past infidelity is more relevant to his wife's candidacy than Rudy Giuliani's own infidelity is to his own candidacy is an exercise left to the reader.

I think that Atrios misses the point here, it is about potential SPOUSAL embarrassment, not about the character of the candidates themselves. I think the press figures as long as we really are going to be counterproductive and trivial in this campaign, why not go whole hog.

So the question is what skeletons are there in Mrs. Rudy Giuliani's closet? Hmmm. Here's one:

The mayor said he and Ms. Hanover would be seeking a legal separation, not a divorce, and that she would not be moving out of Gracie Mansion, the mayor's official residence. Giuliani added that Judith Nathan, a woman he has publicly been seen with, is a good friend. Recent tabloid reports have linked the mayor and Nathan, raising some eyebrows in the New York GOP. "We're very good friends and she and her family are entitled to privacy," Giuliani said last week to reporters who began writing about Giuliani-Nathan sightings around Manhattan. Neither he nor Nathan have elaborated further on their relationship.

So Giuliani's spouse has her own history. Wonder if the Media will speculate about that?

In his last column, Frank Rich did something remarkable, he called someone a liar:

All of this was already going on when Mr. Bush said just before the election that “absolutely, we’re winning” and that “Al Qaeda is on the run.” What’s changed in the few months since his lie is that even more American troops are tied down in Iraq, that even more lethal weapons are being used against them, that even more of the coalition of the unwilling are fleeing, and that even more Americans are tuning out both the administration and the war they voted down in November to savor a referendum that at least offers tangible results, “American Idol.”

In today's semi-mea culpa from John Harris of Politico, he is afraid to say the L word about Republicans on the "slow bleed," while explaining that is precisely what happened:

With a mixture of pride and remorse, I have a confession: I am the author of the Democratic Party's "slow-bleed strategy" for ending the war in Iraq. . . . "Slow bleed" is my phrase. Murtha had nothing to do with it. . . . Republicans['] . . . willingness to wrest words from context -- and to attribute the phrase to Democrats even though it was not theirs -- was demagogic on the part of Republican operatives.

No Mr. Harris, it was lies on the part of Republican operatives. And your refusal to correctly report them as lies is another bit of bad journalism from you. That it is done by every other reporter in Washington does not make it right.

You are "dissembling" when you refuse to accurately describe lies as lies. Shame on you.

As noted here, the jurors' question concerned the false statement charge against Scooter Libby with respect to Count 3 of the Indictment. The jurors were unsure whether they had to find that Libby lied to the FBI in October, 2003 when he said he told Matt Cooper in July, 2003 that reporters were telling the Administration that Joseph Wilson's wife worked for the CIA but he didn't know if that was true.

It's interesting to me that the jury didn't have a question on Count 2 of the Indictment, a similar false statements charge with respect to Tim Russert.

To find Libby guilty on count 2, they must agree that (either or both):

A 96 year old mobster pleaded guilty in Florida today. It's a total trophy conviction (no one, thankfully, is anticipating he will go to jail.)

Albert "The Old Man" Facchiano used a cane in court and needed a special headset to hear the questions from U.S. District Judge James Cohn.

...."Is your mind OK?" Cohn asked Fracchiano, who will be 97 on March 10, in court at one point, a question Facchiano appeared to have trouble hearing. "Oh, yes," he eventually responded. "I can't hear, but I can understand, your honor."

Why did he plead guilty? The Government intended to try him in both New York and Florida. His lawyer says he couldn't have withstood both trials.

What a waste of criminal justice resources.