Last year while patrolling the border, two border agents, Ignacio "Nacho" Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean, stopped a van carrying 743 pounds of pot. The driver, Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila, fled across the border and both agents fired. One of the bullets hit Aldrete-Davila in the behind.

Federal prosecutors convinced a jury in March that the agents had shot a defenseless man and schemed to cover it up. Much of the evidence against them came from the drug runner, Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila, who reported the shooting to a friend at the Border Patrol in Arizona. Aldrete-Davila was given immunity from prosecution by the U.S. attorney's office.

Yesterday, the agents were were sentenced to federal prison terms of 11 years and 12 years.

The Minutemen decried the sentence. Why?

This makes me very uncomfortable. A group in Congress is trying to reach out to faith-based voters to sell them on how Democrats are are a party of faith.

Rather than cede red states to Republicans, the party is buying airtime on Christian radio stations, with the message that Democrats are indeed a party with deep moral convictions.

Moral convictions are fine. Religious-based pitches are not.

I want the Democrats to win in November, but not by pandering to those who want to mix religion and politics.

Update: Scout_Prime at First Draft tells the G-d Dems to get out of the way. I agree. Why don't they follow those calling for the Common Good instead of Republicans?

I am a newcomer to posting here at TalkLeft, but have been a longtime reader and fan of Jeralyn, Chris and LNILR.

What I have found since becoming a poster at TalkLeft is the intelligent and generally civil exchange of ideas and arguments that the TalkLeft community brings. And it can only get better now that TalkLeft has installed Scoop software, the best there is in my opinion. The best voices, and often, the best conversations, will often now be found in the diaries, linked in the right hand column.

Jeralyn has been generous with us in making this investment in Scoop. I wish to emulate her generosity, and ask the TalkLeft community to join me. I am offering a $500 matching contribution to TalkLeft - I will match your contributions dollar for dollar up to a maximum of $500. Thus, you can double the value of your contributions, be they 10, 25, 50 or whatever you can give, courtesy of my wallet. I think Jeralyn can count on the TalkLeft community to express its gratitude for her hard work and generosity with a litle generosity of our own.

Matt Stoller posits:

Now, this race is exceptionally strange, because it means that Connecticut is cutting against the national tide pretty aggressively. . . . Is the war is less important in Connecticut than nationally? I don't think so. Could it be Lamont? Is it because Lamont didn't successfully paint himself as opposed to the war? Not likely. So what is going on, exactly? . . . {I]n a nutshell. Joe Lieberman has promised to end the war in Iraq, and it's a message that a substantial number of antiwar Democrats, Republicans, and unaffiliated voters want to hear. . .

Boy does Matt give the Lamont campaign a free pass here. Lieberman has not said anything substantive on Iraq for months, including the primary campaign, and Lamont has let him get away with it. Lamont's campaign was given terrible advice and took it - broaden the message. For those who care, on the other side what I think the Lamont campaign should be talking about 24/7.

Having failed to convince three successive juries of John "Junior" Gotti's guilt (as TalkLeft reported here, here, and here), the government is finally admitting defeat. In a Friday news dump, embarrassed federal prosecutors announced that they won't pursue a fourth trial.

As of now, Republicans appear to be headed toward losing at least 20 House seats—perhaps 30 to 35 or even a few more. The competitive races are there: 45 GOP-held seats are vulnerable and another 18 are potentially so.

In the Senate, the Republicans will most likely lose five or six seats. Six, of course, would give Democrats control of the chamber. It’s possible— though less likely—that the GOP will lose as few as four or as many as seven Senate seats.

The Minnesota Court of Appeals held that compulsory DNA testing required by Minnesota law on persons charged with a felony. Court distinguishes all the cases involving those convicted of a felony. In re C.T.L., 2006 Minn. App. LEXIS 149 (October 10, 2006) (I know this case is 10 days old, but I get them from Lexis when Lexis posts them.)

This apparently is the first case to deal with such a statute. Cases have uniformly held that DNA testing after conviction for any felony are constitutional. Based on that, legislatures have tried to go one step further, to test everyone on arrest, apparently oblivious to the fact that most felony arrests do not result in convictions for a felony.

From the holding:

So WaPo and the NYTimes tell us the Iraq course will be changed after the elections:

The growing doubts among GOP lawmakers about the administration's Iraq strategy, coupled with the prospect of Democratic wins in next month's midterm elections, will soon force the Bush administration to abandon its open-ended commitment to the war, according to lawmakers in both parties, foreign policy experts and others involved in policymaking.

But the fact is atrios is right:

I don't know if they're saying this stuff to try to force a change or if they're saying this stuff to try to convince pissed off voters that maybe they're going to get a clue but either way nothing is going to happen. This is George Bush's game of Risk, and he's not going to quit.

Just ask Tony Snow:

Press secretary Tony Snow yesterday dismissed a dramatic about-face in policy -- such as a division of the country or phased withdrawal -- as a "non-starter" and called the idea that the White House will seek a course correction in Iraq "a bunch of hooey."

Michael DeWayne Johnson was 17 18 years old when he was charged in Texas with killing a convenience store clerk. He was sentenced to death.

Johnson was to have faced his Texecutioner last night. Hours earlier, despite 15 minute checks by guards, Johnson slit his own throat and used his blood to write on his cell wall, "I did not shoot him."

Prison spokeswoman Michelle Lyons said Johnson cut his jugular vein and an artery in his right arm with a blade fastened to what appeared to be Popsicle sticks. He was last seen alive at 2:30 a.m. as guards made their regular four-times-an-hour death-watch check of his cell.

Lyons said the blade was small, possibly fashioned from a disposable razor. She said Johnson's cell had been searched for weapons several days before the incident.

Michael DeWayne Johnson died at age 29, beating the Texecutioner of the opportunity to kill him by mere hours. He had had no prior convictions.

Johnson always maintained his innocence in prison interviews. What if he was telling the truth?

Even if Democrats win both the House and Senate in November, and even if they have the courage to repeal the odious Military Commissions Act, the president would veto the repeal. That leaves the judiciary to stand up for the Constitution. After years of being seeded by conservative jurists, will the courts be up to the task? Professor Erwin Chemerinsky's answer: don't count on it.

It is not hyperbole to say that this act is among the worst ever adopted in its disregard for the Constitution. ... What is troubling in looking back at history is that courts have generally failed to stand up to the political process when such clearly unconstitutional laws have been adopted.

Arizona is stealing money from innocent people, then challenging them to prove their entitlement to its return. And this, the state's Attorney General says, is a "model of due process." It's more a model of thievery.

Arizona has been seizing wire transfers into the state, as well as some wire transfers into Mexico. So far, the state has taken about $17 million. It claims to grab only cash transfers that it deems "suspicious" -- those it believes facilitate the smuggling of immigrants into the country -- but it seems to regard any large transfer from or to someone with an Hispanic name as evidence of illegality. If your money is taken and you want it back, you have to satisfy the state that you acquired it legitimately. So much for the presumption of innocence.

Bush and Lieberman, h/t Stoller:

You know, the Democrat Party made a clear statement about the nature of their party when it came to how they dealt with Senator Joe Lieberman. He's a three-term Democrat from Connecticut who supports completing the mission in Iraq. He took a strong, principled stand, and he was purged from the Democrat Party.

. . . There's only one position in the Democratic Party that everybody seems to agree on. If you want to be a Democrat these days, you can be for almost anything, but victory in Iraq is not an option.

President George Joe McCarthy Bush and Senator Joe McCarthy Lieberman:

If we just pick up as Ned Lamont wants us to do and get out by a date certain, it will be taken as a tremendous victory by the same people who wanted to blow up these planes in this plot hatched in England and it will strengthen them and they will strike us again."

And don't forget Dick "Iraq is going remarkably well" Cheney:

[W]hen [the terrorists] see the Democratic Party reject one of its own . . . it would seem to say a lot about the state the party is in today."

You see Bush, Cheney and Lieberman have a plan:

Does America have a good plan for doing this, a strategy for victory in Iraq? Yes we do.