An era may be coming to an end. Cuban leader Fidel Castro handed over the reins of power Monday to his brother Raoul Castro following surgery. Apparently, the 79 year old Fidel, who has outasted nine U.S. Presidents, developed complications.

White House reaction:

White House spokesman Peter Watkins said: ''We are monitoring the situation. We can't speculate on Castro's health, but we continue to work for the day of Cuba's freedom.'' The State Department declined to comment Monday night.

Major General Geoffrey Miller, former commander of Guantanamo, has resigned. You can read his letter here. (pdf.)

Miller chose to retire without seeking promotion and a third star, in large part because his legacy has been tarnished by allegations of abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, according to military officials and congressional sources. Miller had hoped to retire in February, but his departure was delayed because members of the Senate Armed Services Committee wanted to question him while he was still in uniform about his role in implementing harsh interrogation techniques at the two prisons.

Miller was allowed to retire only after he assured members of the Senate panel in writing that he would make himself available to testify if called. Congressional sources from both political parties said yesterday that they were not satisfied with several investigations into Miller's actions while he was commander at Guantanamo Bay and are still skeptical of his truthfulness in Senate testimony after the Abu Ghraib abuse surfaced in spring 2004.

When is a website liable for posting nasty stuff about other people? Take a look at Don't Date Him Girl, a website that allows women to post trashy stuff about men they think have cheated on them, as a warning to other women. (You can search their site here to see if you are listed.)

Pittsburgh criminal defense attorney Todd Hollis wasn't amused when he was listed. He sued Tasha Joseph, the website owner, two other women, one of whom he alleges wrote the initial post, another he says wrote a follow-up post, and five unnamed "Does" who posted or commented about him on the site. The complaint is here (pdf). How Appealing has been following the case and posted links to the website owner's Motion to Dismiss (pdf) and accompanying affidavit (pdf).

Now, according to How Appealing,

Bump and Update: More tales from the Twilight Zone about the TalkLeft content that disappeared down the rabbit hole. I've been working all day getting TalkLeft back on track (a big thanks to TChris for all his posting). Here's what happened. The hosting company moved TalkLeft on July 26 to a different server and didn't notify me. They left TalkLeft on both servers, so the only way I had of figuring out something was wrong was when I uploaded some pictures and pdf files to the server and they didn't show up on the site.

They moved the server because for the past two weeks I had been telling them that TalkLeft was running really slow and inexplicably would go down for 15 minute periods. Alexa says TalkLeft loads slower than 90% of other sites on the internet. So I asked them to check into it. They did and told me nothing was wrong on their end and I should have someone check the applications and Movable Type templates on TalkLeft. I hired someone to do this at $100 an hour. After three days, he told me nothing was wrong with the templates or applications and made some suggestions for speeding up the site, and said he believed it was a problem with the server.

All of the trial exhibits in the case of Zacarias Moussaoui are now online at the court's website. You can access them here. (hat tip How Appealing.)

The AP is reporting that new documents obtained by an FOIA request show that the detainees at Guantanamo repeatedly have been abusive to the guards.

Pentagon incident reports reviewed by The Associated Press show Military Police guards are routinely head-butted, spat upon and doused by "cocktails" of feces, urine, vomit and sperm collected in meal cups by the prisoners.

They've been repeatedly grabbed, punched or assaulted by prisoners who reach through the small "bean holes" used to deliver food and blankets through cell doors, the reports say. Serious assaults requiring medical attention, however, are rare, the reports indicate.

Contrast this with the report issued by Seton Hall Law School in early July, Guantanamo Detainees in Detention (pdf) also based on official Pentagon documents:

by TChris

Reasonable minds can differ about the degree to which illegal downloading of music harms artists or recording companies. Some argue that few artists ever see their royalties anyway, and that the free distribution of their music encourages more people to attend concerts where artists are more likely to profit. Others argue that recording companies can't stay in business if music is stolen rather than purchased.

However you come out on that debate, the recording industry's heavy-handed practice of suing parents, grandparents, and other unwitting computer owners for file sharing by kids or grandkids, often without their consent or knowledge, isn't creating sympathy for the industry. Papers are filed in court and the defendants are given an ultimatum: pay us a few thousand dollars or we seek a lot more in court, including attorney's fees. Everyone settles, and the settlement proceeds fund more suits. For some people, it's an expensive lesson: pay attention to what your kids are doing on the computer. For others, it's a nightmare.

Iola Scruse of Louisville, a 66-year-old grandmother on Social Security, said her three teenage grandchildren downloaded music using an Internet account in her name. Her case ended up as a default judgment because she did not respond to the lawsuit. So Scruse, who also is racking up medical bills for dialysis, must pay $6,000 for the 872 songs her grandchildren downloaded, in addition to court fees.

(Guest Posted by Big Tent Democrat)

Honey you do me wrong but still I'm crazy about you
Stay away too long and I can't do without you
Every chance you get you seem to hurt me more and more
But each hurt makes my love stronger than before
I know flowers go through rain
But how can love go through pain

Ain't that peculiar
A peculiar ality
Ain't that peculiar baby
Peculiar as can be

On July 3, Newsweek columnist Jon Alter wrote:

These are the stakes: if Rove can successfully con Democrats into ignoring Iraq and reciting their laundry list of other priorities, Republicans win. It's shameful that the minimum wage hasn't been raised in nine years and that thousands of ailing Americans will ultimately die because of Bush's position on stem-cell research. But those issues won't get the Congress back for Democrats. Iraq can.

Last December, Joe Lieberman wrote that Our Troops Must Stay:

by TChris

TPM Muckraker reports that Democrats have counted the number of laws and regulations that the Bush administration has violated. The number -- with specifics to be revealed (perhaps later this week) in a report prepared by the House Judiciary Committee Democrats -- is greater than two dozen. Is that all?

by TChris

Documents suggest that New York City Mayor Bloomberg lied when he denied that politics played any part in his decision to deny protesters access to the Great Lawn in Central Park during the 2004 Republican Convention. The Bloomberg administration claimed to be "motivated by a concern for the condition of the expensively renovated Great Lawn or by law enforcement's ability to secure the crowd," even though documents produced in a lawsuit show that the police preferred to have protestors gathered together in that location.

Those documents ... suggest that officials were indeed motivated by political concerns over how the protests would play out while the Republican delegates were in town, and how the events could affect the mayor's re-election campaign the following year. ...

[T]he documents, which are part of the lawsuit brought by the National Council of Arab Americans and the Answer Coalition, an antiwar civil rights group, indicate that politics and appearances were at the center of the administration's strategy and that Mr. Bloomberg was more intimately involved in the discussions over demonstrations in the park than he said.

by TChris

Colorado permits felons to vote after they finish serving a sentence. Because parole did not exist when the Colorado Constitution was enacted, the ACLU argued that a sentence ends (for voting purposes) when a felon is released from prison on parole. In a decision released today, the Colorado Supreme Court disagreed.

''Of course we agree with Danielson that parole did not exist at the time Colorado adopted its constitution, but this does not mean that the General Assembly was constrained from punishing crimes with sentences that include custody while the convicted person is being transitioned to community and before restoration of his or her full rights,'' the ruling said.

by TChris

Some people think that prisoners deserve any evil that befalls them during incarceration. Some don't think about prisoners at all -- out of sight, out of mind. But prison violence should concern everyone, because most prisoners will eventually be released, and years of victimization can destroy an inmate's ability to begin a law-abiding, productive life. Worse, it can turn a casual criminal into a vicious predator. That's why society should pay attention to prison rape.

"It's a real and serious problem," said Malcolm Feeley, professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley. "It may be the single largest shame of the American criminal justice system, and that's saying a lot."

The problem of prison rape is exacerbated by laws that treat juvenile offenders as adults, setting up vulnerable young men as prey for violent inmates.