The Fourth Amendment restrains the ability of police officers to stop and detain the people they encounter. Unless the officer has a reasonable suspicion that the person has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime, the Fourth Amendment usually prohibits a detention. To frisk the detainee, the officer must have a reasonable suspicion that the person is armed and dangerous.

New York City police are apparently a suspicious bunch, given the number of stops they made last year. They're particularly suspicious of black people.

The New York Police Department released new information yesterday showing that police officers stopped 508,540 individuals on New York City streets last year — an average of 1,393 stops per day — often searching them for illegal weapons. The number was up from 97,296 in 2002, the last time the department divulged 12 months’ worth of data. ... The raw data showed that more than half of those stopped last year were black: an average of 67,000 per quarter.

Given the department's ugly history, transparency in its interaction with the public is important. Until yesterday, the department had stalled the (still incomplete) release of statistical measures of its citizen encounters.

Thank you Mitch McConnell:

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said Friday that his party would unite to block Senate debate next week on a bipartisan resolution opposing President Bush’s troop buildup in Iraq . . .

Some might say this gives Majority Leader Reid one last chance. I would disagree. I think the Republicans have just saved Reid from a colossal blunder. Anything Reid does now will not matter - the introduction of numerous resolutions for vote robs the exercise of any symbolic value. It is just a big nothing now.

Thank you Mitch McConnell.

Everybody knows that the boat is leaking Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
like their father or their dog just died
Everybodys talking to their pocket
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
And a long stemmed rose
Everybody knows
That's how it's goes

I agree with Arianna. Why is the national news covering San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom's extra-marital affair with his campaign manager's wife? If you haven't read about it yet, the wife told her husband who confronted Newsom before quitting. Newsom held a press conference to confirm the rumor and apologize. It made the round of cable news shows as well as the national media.

And now conservatives are predicting that Newsom's chances for higher office have been dashed. By that logic, Rudy Giuliani wouldn't have formed an exploratory committee for President and Newt Gingrich wouldn't say he's draftable for the presidential nomination.

But the real point is that except for those who are family values hypocrites, the media should stay out of politicians' bedrooms. It's nobody's business but their own.

Both Balkanization and Beltway Blogroll today discuss a rash of proposed state bills that would hold bloggers liable for defamatory content posted by others on their website -- and why they seemed doomed to fail.

Note that there is nothing wrong with holding bloggers responsible for defamatory content that they themselves produce, as long as the states' rules are consistent with the constitutional rules of New York Times v. Sullivan and later cases. Section 230 only affects state laws that try to hold a blogger liable for content posted by someone else.

I try to delete what I consider defamatory content once it's called to my attention. But sometimes, people don't tell me about it, they e-mail me when I'm too busy to read e-mail and I don't see it in the comments because I can't read every comment on this site. And TalkLeft isn't one of the highest-trafficked blogs out there -- certainly not in the sense of a Daily Kos, Atrios or their right-wing counterparts.

There's no question it's a drag to read something disgusting about yourself on the Internet. But the remedy it seems to me is to go after the person who wrote it or who further disseminates it, not the person whose site it got posted on. And I think we already have laws on the books for that.

Charles "Cully" Stimson has resigned. Stimson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, is the guy who made the offensive comments about the law firms representing Guantanamo detainees.

Stimson said he was leaving because of the controversy over a radio interview in which he said he found it shocking that lawyers at many of the nation's top law firms represent detainees held at the U.S. military prison in Cuba.

"He believed it hampered his ability to be effective in this position," Whitman said of the backlash to Stimson's comments.

Resignation was his only course of action after his disturbing and contemptible comments. And, Stimson's troubles might not be over.

The Bar Association of San Francisco last week asked the California State Bar to investigate whether Stimson violated legal ethics by suggesting a boycott of law firms that represent Guantanamo Bay detainees.

Looking ahead to next week in the Scooter Libby trial, I doubt that Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby are the only witnesses Team Libby will call in the defense portion of the case.

Let's go back to the list of possible trial witnesses the Court read off to the jury on opening day.

Both NBC reporter David Gregory and former Time reporter John Dickerson are on the list.

Ari Fleischer testified he told them about Joe Wilson's wife working for the CIA on the Africa trip in July, 2003 before Robert Novak's column appeared. He said he learned it from Scooter Libby at lunch on July 7, the day Fleischer left for Africa with President Bush. Dickerson and Gregory were two of the reporters on the trip. Libby denies telling Fleischer about Valerie Wilson.

John Dickerson has been in the courtroom during the trial, blogging for Slate. He writes that Ari is mixed up, he never told him about Wilson's wife working for the CIA.

Notwithstanding the long hours spent in the Scooter Libby trial this week, Judge Reggie Walton had time yesterday to make a ruling in the 16 cases involving Guantanamo detainees.

Shorter version: he put the cases in the freezer until the DC Circuit Court of Appeals rules on whether there's been an ouster of habeas jurisdiction.

In a Daily Kos diary defense attorney David Seth has more on how the decision in practical terms means that there won't be an inquiry into the justification for detaining Gitmo prisoners, some for more than 5 years in our civilian courts.

Justice delayed is justice denied.

Team Libby told the jury in opening argument that the White House initially threw Scooter Libby "under the bus" in an attempt to shield Karl Rove. They did this by having then-White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan initially clear Rove but not Libby.

Then, according to Libby, Vice President Cheney intervened on Scooter's behalf and directed McClellan to also clear Libby. According to White House Press Conference tapes, McClellan did so. The jury has now heard portions of those tapes.

How does Bush enter into this? Jason Leopold and Mark Ash write at Truthout that Ted Wells' purpose in bringing a handwritten note of Cheney's before the jury while David Addington was on the stand was not only to show Libby was upset about Rove being cleared but not him, but also to show how the Veep scratched out "this pres" from his note to McClellan. Read Team Libby's way, the note in original form would read:

"not going to protect one staffer and sacrifice the guy this Pres. asked to stick his head in the meat grinder because of the incompetence of others." The words "this Pres." were crossed out and replaced with "that was," but are still clearly legible in the document.

It stuns me that some Dems and Dem analyzsts seem never to learn the most basic lessons of politics. Four years after proving clearly that political cravenness was the surest way to humiliating defeat, some are, incredibly, urging "caution" again on Iraq. Matt Yglesias writes:

I tend to agree with Ed Kilgore that it would be a mistake to jab the knives in the back of [the Warner] resolution. At the moment, absolutely anything that congress says or does about Iraq is pure kabuki. In kabuki terms, this resolution counts as a repudiation of Bush by Democrats and many Republicans. As policy, from what I can tell this resolution is not-so-wonderful. As kabuki, though, it's good kabuki.

No Matt, it is horrible kabuki. We do not need phony Republican repudiation of Bush, Matt. We do not need a phony nonbinding resolution that embraces the Bush narrative on the Iraq Debacle.

Senator Feingold, apparently one of the few Democrats whose brain (folks love to talk about Feingold's spine when what is most admirable in Feingold is his brain, both for policy AND politics; Feingold was on top of the Iraq issue when the celebrated Rahmbo was still cowering in the corner on the issue) seems to be functioning in Washington, explains it in a manner easy to understand:

A trial that was billed "as a major component in [the government's] war on terrorism" has, predictably enough, ended with an acquittal on the most serious charge.

[Muhammad] Salah, 53, and Abdelhaleem Ashqar, 48, a one-time assistant business professor at Howard University in Washington, had been accused of laundering money for Hamas terrorists fighting to topple the Israeli government.

A jury found both men not guilty of racketeering. Both were convicted of the significantly less serious crime of obstructing justice, and Ashqar was convicted of criminal contempt for refusing to testify before a grand jury.

"This is a great day for justice," said defense attorney Michael E. Deutsch, who represented former grocer Muhammad Salah.

This is why:

I know my wife hasn't seen the following headline yet, or there'd be one hell of an angry, angst-ridden email in my inbox: Oklahoma National Guard to Deploy to Iraq in 2008

It seems that my brigade has been given a warning order to prepare to deploy to Iraq in 2008, about six months after I get home. I don't know if it's the full brigade, or just the parts that haven't deployed recently, but with the new change in army policy, I could conceivably go home this summer and turn around next January and go to Iraq.

Lovely. Just f**cking lovely.

. . . And if I thought that my current deployment would make me less likely to go on this new one, boy did I have another thing coming:

About 85 percent of the soldiers in the 45th Infantry Brigade already have served combat deployments, most in Iraq or Afghanistan. Two of the brigade's units are deployed now. The 1st Battalion, 180th Infantry is in Afghanistan, and the 245th Engineer Company is in Iraq. Wyatt said these soldiers will have the experience that comes with being combat veterans, but he said it will also cause additional stress. "We understand we're asking the families and employers and soldiers to deploy again," Wyatt said.

Erm, Ya think, Sir?!?

I don't know if I'm going to have to go or not. I damn sure ain't volunteering.

Wyatt said he has pushed the Army to put the brigade on alert and issue mobilization orders as soon as possible to allow commanders access to additional equipment and other resources the troops will need. He said he hopes official orders will come in by the end of February. Body armor and some weapons are in short supply to Oklahoma Guardsmen, as National Guard units nationally have shared their resources to equip troops deploying to combat areas.