Banishment laws turn a problem into someone else's problem. More importantly, they inhibit rehabilitation, increasing the likelihood that the banished offender will return to crime. Keeping offenders under close supervision near their friends, families, jobs, and treatment providers is a better way to protect society from recidivists. TalkLeft discussed banishment laws in more detail here.

Laws that tell sex offenders not to live within 1,000 or 2,000 feet of parks, schools, and day care centers amount to banishment from urban areas. The laws have been challenged in Indianapolis and Iowa, while a proposed law was rejected in Covington, Kentucky. Yesterday, a federal judge blocked enforcement of a banishment law that was enacted via California's ballot initiative. The legal challenge to the law was filed by a former sex offender who has lived uneventfully in the same neighborhood for 20 years, but who may be forced to move if the new law stands.

Where did the time go? I left Denver on Monday to be in D.C. for CNN's election night blogger party. I returned late Wednesday, and have court this morning at 8:30 a.m. I feel like the elections hijacked my life. I'm sure my clients feel the same way.

So I hope readers will forgive me as I take a day to re-enter my life, which as much as I sometimes wish could be spent blogging 24/7, just is not the case. In truth, it's a privilege to do both -- to have an opportunity to effect change in the real world of criminal injustice and opine here in the virtual world.

Major thanks to TChris and Big Tent Democrat for their great contributions here -- hopefully they have a bit more energy and time than I do today. In case they don't and even if they do but something else is on your minds, here's an open thread for you.

Texas executed Willie Shannon last night, it's 24th texecution of the year.

Shannon spoke directly to the widow, two children and brother of his victim, Benjamin Garza, and acknowledged that he "took a father."

"It wasn't my fault. It was an accident," he said of the shooting.

Shannon, 33, smiled and hummed as witnesses filed into the death chamber, and said he was going to heaven. He said if he saw his victim, he would ask Garza for forgiveness: "I'll say when I see him, 'I'm sorry.'" He urged the relatives of his victim to "go home, have fun, smile. I'm happy. Why should I lie now. I have no anger. I have no fear."

Ten minutes later at 6:24 p.m, he was pronounced dead.

I'm not expecting the new Congress to abolish the federal death penalty. When it comes to justice for the criminally accused, we didn't get a progressive Congress yesterday, we got a centrist Democratic one. Believe me, I'm thrilled we got that. It's way better than what we had under the Republicans. But I'm not expecting any major reforms for criminal justice for the accused.

The best we can hope for is the rejection of radical right judges and their covert sponsors, the Gang of 14. Filibustering should be safe now.

More about Willie Shannon is here.

Raw Story reminds us of Karl Rove's (to be polite) over-confidence or (to be more accurate, take your pick) disingenuousness or state of denial:

Rove said that he was reviewing 68 polls a week, and that "unlike the general public, I'm allowed to see the polls on the individual races," as opposed to public polls reported in the media.

"You may be looking at four or five public polls a week that talk about attitudes nationally, but that do not impact the outcome," Rove said.

Rove claimed that the polls "add up to a Republican Senate and a Republican House."

"You may end up with a different math, but you're entitled to your math," Rove said. "I'm entitled to 'the' math."

Full transcript of interview which can be heard at NPR.

The TL kid called laughing to tell me Jon Stewart did a bit on last night's CNN blogger party showing my interview. Colin at Scoophost (which now hosts TalkLeft) sent me what Jon Stewart had to say:

"Yes, apparently partying blog style means typing on a laptop while not partying. At one point, a blogger [you] was being interviewed about blogging while watching herself being interviewed about blogging. I wonder if she'll blog about that."

Not only did I blog about that, I'm blogging about this. And we did party, there was an open bar and many of us partook liberally after dinner. But, thanks, Jon, I appreciate the exposure for bloggers.

[And thanks to Atrios for posting the clip.]

The AP reports that Jim Webb has won the Senate race in Virginia. George Allen is set to concede, probably tomorrow.

Democrats completed an improbable double-barreled election sweep of Congress on Wednesday, taking control of the Senate with a victory in Virginia as they padded their day-old majority in the House.

Kudos, Dems. Thanks to all the voters who came out and registered their voice.

Cindy Sheehan was arrested outside the White House gate for "interfering with a government function." Cindy and 50 protestors wanted to share with their president the signatures of 80,000 Americans who agree that he shouldn't attack Iran. This is known as petitioning the government for a redress of grievances, a right protected by the First Amendment.

The "government function" with which Cindy interfered apparently consisted of ignoring Cindy's request to accept the petitions.

"It was taking too long for them to decide whether to accept them or not, so we just delivered them," said Sheehan, who waited about 15 minutes with other protesters before tossing the petitions over the fence.

Anti-abortion activists have worked for years to reshape the judiciary with judges who believe Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided. If they eventually convince a Supreme Court majority that the Constitution does not protect a woman's right to choose abortion, they'll focus next on state legislatures. This election gives reason to hope that most voters would reject their efforts to criminalize abortions.

The Supreme Court heard argument today in a case that asks whether a federal law prohibiting some medical procedures (the breadth of the law is a disputed issue in the case) violates the Constitution. Because it contains no exception when those procedures are needed to preserve the woman's health, the lower courts concluded that the law contravenes a woman's right to make important choices about her own life. That conclusion seems compelled by Supreme Court precedent, so the question is whether the addition of Justice Alito and Chief Justice Roberts (and the subtraction of their predecessors) will change the direction of the Court's abortion decisions. Justice Alito asked no questions during the two hour session, perhaps because he knew the press and public would scrutinize his words for clues to his thinking.

If the right to choose is at risk in the Supreme Court, the country's voice was strong in its opposition to anti-abortion positions yesterday. South Dakota voters rejected a sweeping criminalization of abortion that contains no exception when an abortion is needed to save the mother's life, while Kansas voters booted anti-abortion crusader Phill Kline out of his position as the state's attorney general.

In a discussion I was having prior to the election, Paul Newman's The Verdict came up and it brought to mind the closing argument of Newman's character Frank Galvin, and then I saw it on Fox Movie Channel this evening:

You know, so much of the time we're just lost. We say, "Please, God, tell us what is right; tell us what is true." And there is no justice: the rich win, the poor are powerless. We become tired of hearing people lie. And after a time, we become dead... a little dead. We think of ourselves as victims... and we become victims. We become... we become weak. We doubt ourselves, we doubt our beliefs. We doubt our institutions. And we doubt the law. But today you are the law. You ARE the law. Not some book... not the lawyers... not the, a marble statue... or the trappings of the court. See those are just symbols of our desire to be just. They are... they are, in fact, a prayer: a fervent and a frightened prayer. In my religion, they say, "Act as if ye had faith... and faith will be given to you." IF... if we are to have faith in justice, we need only to believe in ourselves. And ACT with justice. See, I believe there is justice in our hearts.

It seemed an apt metaphor for what Democrats across the country had felt about politics in our country for the past years - the distrust, the powerlessness, the victimhood, the doubt of our institutions and ourselves.

But yesterday a nation of citizens rose up and had faith and delivered political justice. It was a good day.

Unlike most folks, I love the spin that a Democratic tsunami was a win for centrism. I adopt Broderism for this purpose. Consider the real exercise of politics - defining the middle.

A Democratic landslide is a win for centrism, if not conservatism:

There's spin and then there's spin. Larry Kudlow is playing dirty pool: "Look at blue dog conservative Dem victories, and look at Northeast liberal GOP defeats. The changeover in the House may well be a conservative victory, not a liberal one."

Jim Webb is the poster boy for this argument. WONDERFUL! Jim Webb the pro-choice, pro-civil unions, pro-minimum wage, pro-balanced budgets, pro-environment, anti-privatizing social security, anti-Iraq War conservative. I'll take it. So Webb is the right side of the political argument and then we move left for the other side - say Bernie Sanders. The middle is somewhere between  Bernie Sanders and Jim Webb. Sign me up.

Some of you may know that I think Jon Tester may be the most significant politician to emerge from this election. I think he can and does represent a new breed of Democrat - authentic, comfortable with his identity, proud to be a Democrat, not afraid to fight and yes - from the West.

I have been speechifying against the proposed Barack Obama model of new Democrat that has captured the fancy of the Beltway. I think that Obama has the wrong political formula for the Democratic future. I think Jon Tester has the right one.

Voter turnout in North Carolina was low, a product of having no Senate race this year. Turnout was higher in District 11, where voters elected Heath Shuler to replace Republican Rep. Charles Taylor.

Turnout was also high in Durham County, where District Attorney Mike Nifong won reelection, despite his questionable (at best) handling of the Duke rape allegations. Nifong's challengers, Lewis Cheeks and Steve Monks (a write-in candidate), drew 39 percent and 12 percent of the vote, respectively, giving Nifong a plurality of the total votes.