The jury found Dzhokhar Tsarnaev guilty on all 30 counts today.

The Boston Globe, in an editorial, urges a life sentence.

For jurors who believe execution should be reserved for the worst criminals, the lawyers laid out a clear path to conclude Dzhokhar wasn’t even the worst of the Tsarnaevs.

....Tsarnaev was 19 at the time of the bombing; he was apparently a heavy drug user; he had no prior criminal record. By themselves, none of these would seem like a particularly good reason to spare him, but taken as a whole, and alongside evidence of his brother’s dominant role, they should plant seeds of doubt.

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Via USA Today:

For more than two decades, the Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration amassed logs of virtually all telephone calls from the USA to as many as 116 countries linked to drug trafficking, current and former officials involved with the operation said. The targeted countries changed over time but included Canada, Mexico and most of Central and South America.

Federal investigators used the call records to track drug cartels' distribution networks in the USA, allowing agents to detect previously unknown trafficking rings and money handlers

The program began under Bush I and continued throught the terms of the next three Presidents. It was carried out by DEA's "intelligence arm" with little oversight. It was stopped by AG Eric Holder in 2013. [More..]

A South Carolina police officer has been charged with murder in the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man. The shooting was captured on video. The man was running away and the officer fired 8 shots, striking him in the back.

The officer, Michael T. Slager, 33, said he had feared for his life because the man had taken his stun gun in a scuffle after a traffic stop on Saturday. A video, however, shows the officer firing eight times as the man, Walter L. Scott, 50, fled.

...“When you’re wrong, you’re wrong,” Mayor Keith Summey said during the news conference. “And if you make a bad decision, don’t care if you’re behind the shield or just a citizen on the street, you have to live by that decision.”

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The federal judge presiding over the never ending victims rights lawsuit seeking to overturn a federal non-prosecution agreement against Jeffrey Epstein yesterday ruled Jane Doe #3, aka Virginia Roberts, and Jane Doe #4 cannot join Jane Does 1 and 2 as parties to the lawsuit. He also ruled that if called as witnesses for Jane Does 1 and 2, their evidence will have to be admissible, relevant and non-cumulative.

More importantly, the judge ordered all of Roberts' claims against Alan Dershowitz, Prince Andrew and others stricken from the record, finding her allegations amounted to "redundant, immaterial, impertinent, or scandalous matter.” In doing so, the Court said it was acting on its own accord, which made a ruling on Dershowitz' motion to intervene unnecessary. [More...]

Our last open thread is full. Here's a new one, all topics welcome.

Sen. Rand Paul has announced he is running for President.

A quote from his speech:

“I say the phone records of law-abiding citizens are none of their damn business,” Paul said of government officials.

His banner read:

“Defeat the Washington machine. Unleash the American dream.”

Any takers here?

The alternates in the Boston Marathon Bombing trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were disclosed today after closing arguments. The 12 jurors deciding his fate include 7 women and 5 men.

In closings today, the Government said Jahar and Tamerlan were partners and Jahar wanted to punish America. Reporter Jim Armstrong of WBZ in Boston has a lot of quotes from both side's closings on his twitter feed here.

Judy Clarke agreed Jahar committed the bombings, but focused on the different roles of the brothers. [More...]

Jury Closing Arguments are in Tsarnaev today.

I'll be in court most of the day.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

#Shami Witness, aka Mehdi Masroor Biswas, was denied bail today by a Special Terrorism Court in Bangladore. The court also granted police another 6 months to file charges. The request was made a month ago.

Shami Witness, the prolific tweeter and disseminator of ISIS news, with 17,000 followers on Twitter, was arrested in December. Four months later, formal charges have yet to be filed and the court just got around to hearing his application for bail. [More...]

President Obama just re-tweeted this out. I like it. The Obamas' personalities have really grown on me during the past 7 years. In 2008, I thought they were too stiff and formal and difficult to read. Now they seem much more comfortable with themselves and they are enjoyable to watch.

Tikrit is in shambles following it's "liberation" from ISIS. The U.S. and Iraq are now investigating incidents of rampant looting, burning of Sunni homes and businesses, summary executions and and beheadings of Sunni and ISIS captives by the self-proclaimed victors, the Iran-backed Shi'ite militias and the Iraqi military.

American and Iraqi officials called for investigations on Friday into reports that Iraqi security forces were summarily executing captives and looting property in Tikrit, and warned that such abuses could undermine the international effort to defeat the Sunni extremists of Islamic State.

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Happy Passover everyone.

And for tomorrow, Happy Easter!

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.