The New York Times Magazine has a feature article on the death penalty, The Needle and The Damage Done.

Lethal injection challenges are now underway in almost every state with a death penalty.

As a result of those cases, about 12 of the 38 states that have the death penalty have issued temporary bans on executions, and in one, New Jersey, a legislative commission recently recommended abolishing its death penalty altogether.

A very young Neil Young.

How do you know when you visit a business' web site that glowing blog comments aren't written by the business and passed off as coming from a consumer? You don't. Britain is set to do something about it.

Hotels, restaurants and online shops that post glowing reviews about themselves under false identities could face criminal prosecution under new rules that come into force next year.

Businesses which write fake blog entries or create whole wesbites purporting to be from customers will fall foul of a European directive banning them from “falsely representing oneself as a consumer”. From December 31, when the change becomes law in the UK, they can be named and shamed by trading standards or taken to court.

Naming and shaming will also be used.

I have been extremely critical of the push from many to have the Congress concentrate on stopping the commencement of war in Iran instead of ending the war in Iraq. My basic premise is that Bush's only possible legal rationale for initiating a military conflict with Iran is by arguing that Iran is interfering in the Iraq conflict. As I have stated, the 2002 Iraq AUMF is a blank check to the President and could conceivably be argued as the basis for striking Iran based on Iran's alleged involvement in Iraq. Not surprisingly, the Bush Administration is indeed arguing that Iran is meddling in the Iraq conflict:

The most lethal weapon directed against American troops in Iraq is an explosive-packed cylinder that United States intelligence asserts is being supplied by Iran. . . . Any assertion of an Iranian contribution to attacks on Americans in Iraq is both politically and diplomatically volatile. The officials said they were willing to discuss the issue to respond to what they described as an increasingly worrisome threat to American forces in Iraq, and were not trying to lay the basis for an American attack on Iran.

Riiiiiiight. So, is it even possible to say now that a war with Iran does NOT run through Iraq? One normally would say no BUT the drive for Congressional action on Iran may actually blunder into actually declaring the President CAN attack Iran without Congressional approval, depsite the fact that this is just plain wrong.

You Tube has been on a witch hunt lately, removing copyrighted videos. To me, the real value of You Tube has been the music videos. I just checked my saved favorites list, and 10 (of 27) are no longer available. That totally devalues You Tube for me.

It's not just music either, it's also television segments they are removing.

Thank goodness for John Amato of Crooks and Liars who posts the tv videos on his own servers.

Politics TV will also be hosting their own stuff.

Thanks to Tom Maguire for pointing this out. After Judith Miller's testimony, Libby lawyer Ted Wells told the judge he would be moving for a judgment of acquittal on a count pertaining to her. He didn't explain it at the time. Neil Lewis of the New York Times writes:

The Libby defense won a victory of sorts when Judge Reggie B. Walton agreed to exclude part of one of the five felony counts against Mr. Libby. But it remained unclear whether the change, which was not contested by the prosecutors, would matter in jury deliberations.

Tom picks out the part that will be deleted:

Barack Obama's in. A crowd of 5,000 is expected in Springfield, Ill as he makes his announcement.

For Obama, the nation's only black senator, it's an opportunity to compare his political message to that of Abraham Lincoln, another former Illinois legislator who stood in the same building and warned of the dangers of national division.

Obama's website will be running live streaming coverage of the announcement.

What holds 400 illegal immigrants from 30 countries, 170 of them children? The T. Don Hutto Family Detention Center, for which the Corrections Corporation of America receives $2.8 million per month.

A jail by any other name is still a jail. A detention camp is still a detention camp. That the prisoners wear scrubs instead of orange jumpsuits or pink underwear doesn't change a thing.

The Government invited the media today. Surprise, for the first time there was pizza on the menu. How humane. They brought in plastic potted plants to warm up the place. The Government says its more like a community college than a jail.

What a farce. Can the "students" leave? Of course not. It's a jail.

More...

I haven't been following the case of Lt. Ehren Watada, the soldier who refused to deploy to Iraq because he believes the war to be illegal and immoral, who proceeded to a courts martial trial this week, only to have the judge declare a mistrial at the prosecution's request after it had presented its witnesses.

What was up with that? Here's one view. And another.

Rudy Giuliani is trying to cover his pro-choice stance of the past. Rather than doing a direct flip-flop, he's praising President Bush's right-wing extremist judges.

In his recent travels, he has directed questions on the issue toward a discussion about judges, saying he would appoint jurists who believe in interpreting, not making, the law: judges, he said, like Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel A. Alito Jr., who he has said he believed would place limits on Roe v. Wade.

“On the federal judiciary I would want judges who are strict constructionists because I am,” he said last week in South Carolina. “I have a very, very strong view that for this country to work, for our freedoms to be protected, judges have to interpret, not invent, the Constitution.

I am all in favor of amnesty for undocumented residents. President Bush's plan is neither amnesty nor open borders, but in response to critics who say it is, Karl Rove reportedly gave this ridiculous justification for Bush's plan at a women's luncheon this week:

According to a congressman's wife who attended a Republican women's luncheon yesterday, Karl Rove explained the rationale behind the president's amnesty/open-borders proposal this way: "I don't want my 17-year-old son to have to pick tomatoes or make beds in Las Vegas."

The Corner's Mark Krikorian responds:

There should be no need to explain why this is an obscene statement coming from a leader in the party that promotes the virtues of hard work, thrift, and sobriety, a party whose demi-god actually split fence rails as a young man, a party where "respectable Republican cloth coat" once actually meant something. But it does seem to be necessary to explain.

Rove's comment illustrates how the Bush-McCain-Giuliani-Hagel-Martinez-
Brownback-Huckabee approach to immigration strikes at the very heart of self-government. It is precisely Rove's son (and my own, and those of the rest of us in the educated elite) who should work picking tomatoes or making beds, or washing restaurant dishes, or mowing lawns, especially when they're young, to help them develop some of the personal and civic virtues needed for self-government. It's not that I want my kids to make careers of picking tomatoes; Mexican farmworkers don't want that either. But we must inculcate in our children, especially those likely to go on to high-paying occupations, that there is no such thing as work that is beneath them.

[hat tip Raw Story.]

Live Medical Examiner Press Conference

She was virtually dead on arrival at the hospital.

Excluded any physical injury such as blunt injury or asphyxia.

No determination of the cause of death. More tests are needed. But, there was no finding of prescription drugs in her stomach. Chemical tests are needed. No conclusion. Three possibilities: medical problems, medication related; combination.

Police Chief says there is no evidence of a crime. No illegal drugs found, only prescripton medicine. Everyone has cooperated fully.

Original Post: 2/8/06
R.I.P. Anna Nicole Smith

Anna Nicole Smith is dead at 39. May she rest in peace. She had such a troubled life.