by Last Night in Little Rock

The San Francisco federal grand jury investigation Barry Bonds' alleged steroid use disbanded today without indicting him on anything. Last weekend, Sports Illustrated (SI.com) was anticipating his indictment. Even his lawyer was anticipating an indictment, and he apparently went public to soften the blow.

But, the U.S. Attorney announced today that the investigating is continuing with the new grand jury that starts next week.

Kevin Ryan, the U.S. attorney for Northern California, has the option of swearing in a new grand jury to continue hearing the case, and Anderson's subpoena indicates that is what Ryan will do.

In a statement released today, Luke Macaulay, spokesman for Ryan, did not address that question, but said the investigation was far from over.

"Much has been accomplished to date, and we will continue to move forward actively in this investigation -- including continuing to seek the truthful testimony of witnesses whose testimony the grand jury is entitled to hear," he said.

Now, this is really just a matter of waiting for the other shoe to drop.

by TChris

A legal challenge to AT&T's cooperation with the Bush administration's warrantless eavesdropping program survived dismissal today, as U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker rejected the administration's oft-repeated claim that any scrutiny of its domestic spying programs would endanger national security.

"It might appear that none of the subject matter in this litigation could be considered a secret given that the alleged surveillance programs have been so widely reported in the media,'' Walker said.

Walker also wrote that he did not see how allowing the lawsuit to continue could threaten national security.

"The compromise between liberty and security remains a difficult one,'' Walker said. "But dismissing this case at the outset would sacrifice liberty for no apparent enhancement of security.''

Rep. John Conyer's (D-MI) is suing President Bush over the enactment of the Federal Deficit Rediction Act. Shorter version: The House and Senate passed different versions of the bill and even though they went to conference, the House never voted on the version passed by the Senate as a House clerk changed a provision in the Senate version and Bush signed it into law. Bush can't sign a bill unless it has been agreed to by both the House and Senate.

The Government moved to dismiss (pdf) Rep. Conyer's lawsuit, and last night, he filed his motion and brief in opposition.

No one in the House of Representatives voted on the version of the bill which was signed into law. The Senate version was never presented in the House for a vote. .... The Deficit Reduction Act needed to be passed by the House of Representatives in the same form that it passed the Senate. The Act never did and thus the Act is not valid. A law is not validly enacted if even "one of paragraph of that text" is different.

This seems pretty basic to me. The House members were disenfranchised. If this process is approved, what's to stop Bush from signing into law any bill passed by only one house of Congress? As Conyers said:

I'm guest-blogging for Eric Alterman today over at MSNBC's Altercation. The topics: Sen. Lindsay Graham, Bush's stubbornness on Guantanamo, Sen. Mike DeWine's pulled ad with phony 9/11 pics (done by the same company that did the swift boat campaign against John Kerry) and Joe Lieberman's new backer, Bill Clinton.

Earlier today Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported that Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora criticized Hezbollah:

Saniora reportedly told Milan-based newspaper Corriere della Sera that the Shiite militia has been doing the bidding of Syria and Iran, and that it could only be disarmed with the help of the international community and once a cease-fire had been achieved in the current Middle East fighting.

"Hezbollah has become a state within a state. We know it well," Saniora was quoted as saying, for the first time leveling such an accusation against guerrillas that effectively control southern Lebanon. "It's not a mystery that Hezbollah answers to the political agendas of Tehran and Damascus," Saniora was quoted as saying. "The entire world must help us disarm Hezbollah. But first we need to reach a cease-fire."

But Saniora's office says he was misquoted and his words got lost in translation:

by TChris

Is Dr. Anna Pou a hero or a criminal? Some physicians think Louisiana's attorney general is on shaky ground charging Dr. Pou and two nurses with murdering patients who were stuck at New Orleans' Memorial Medical Center during Hurricane Katrina.

By all accounts, Dr. Pou is a skilled and dedicated physician. She chose to stay at the hospital for days after the hurricane passed, hampered by heat, the absence of electricity, and dwindling supplies of medicine. The prosecution claims that Dr. Pou and two nurses "went from room to room with a set of syringes and vials, injecting at least four patients with a combination of drugs intended to kill those who could not easily be evacuated from the hospital."

The state's forensic pathologist found traces of both morphine and a central nervous system sedative in the tissue samples of several patients who died, drugs that they were not supposed to have in their bodies.

But what does this prove? That a doctor in desperate circumstances engaged in mercy killings, or that she used whatever drugs she had at hand to ease the suffering of patients while awaiting rescue?

The Cato Insitute has an interactive map of dozens of botched drug and paramilitary raids in which civilians and officers were unnecessarily killed. While you're there, check out the 100 page "white paper" by Radley Balko, a dogged critic of the militarization of police.

From the executive summary:

Americans have long maintained that a man's home is his castle and that he has the right to defend it from unlawful intruders. Unfortunately, that right may be disappearing. Over the last 25 years, America has seen a disturbing militarization of its civilian law enforcement, along with a dramatic and unsettling rise in the use of paramilitary police units (most commonly called Special Weapons and Tactics, or SWAT) for routine police work. The most common use of SWAT teams today is to serve narcotics warrants, usually with forced, unannounced entry into the home.

Lewis "Scooter" Libby's lawyers have notified the Court and Patrick Fitzgerald that they intend to call a memory expert at Libby's trial. While it's long been known they intended to rely on a memory defense and that they have been consulting with a pre-eminent memory expert, they were mum on whether they would call an expert at trial.

In their July 17 filing (pdf), Libby's lawers said they have provided the expert's name and qualifications to Fitzgerald. They sought (and received) an extension until July 31 to outline the specific details of the expert's testimony and to file a motion requesting the admission of the expert's testimony at trial.

Libby has long maintained that memory lapses were the cause of any misstatements in his grand jury testimony and interviews with FBI agents. He says that he was too preoccupied with important national security matters to remember the details of his conversations with FBI investigators, the grand jury and reporters about Valerie Plame Wilson.

In March, Libby's team confirmed that it had retained Daniel L. Schachter of Harvard to consult with the case.

The House of Representatives today failed to overide Bush's veto of the stem cell research bill. The bill is now dead for the year.

....Within hours of the East Room ceremony, the House hurriedly took up a measure to override the veto, but the vote, 235 to 193, fell 51 short of the two-thirds majority required. Fifty-one Republicans, 183 Democrats and 1 independent voted to override, while 4 Democrats joined 179 Republicans in voting to keep the veto intact.

The Pitkin County (Aspen) Sheriff's office has released Ken Lay's autopsy report (pdf). The Sheriff's office states in its press release:

On July 19th 2006 The Pitkin County Sheriff's Office received the full autopsy results of Mr. Kenneth Lay from Dr. Robert Kurtzman. The manner of death has not changed, and is classified as natural. The immediate cause of death was classified as arteriosclerotic cardio vascular disease. Based on these findings this case is now closed, there is no evidence of any criminal activity. The post mortem report is available on www.aspenpitkin.com.

Shorter version: Lay had clogged arteries. The Aspen Daily News reports:

by TChris

While ducking the question of whether Karl Bullock's federal sentence of 100 years for distributing heroin is reasonable, the Seventh Circuit, vacating the sentence and remanding for a new sentencing hearing before a different judge, had this to say (pdf) about the sentence:

One hundred years is a long time--one year longer, in fact, than the standard lyrical shorthand for an unimaginably long sentence.¹

[1]See, e.g., Bruce Springsteen, "Johnny 99" ("Well the evidence is clear, gonna let the sentence, son, fit the crime / Prison for 98 and a year and we'll call it even, Johnny 99."); Bob Dylan, "Percy's Song" ("It may be true he's got a sentence to serve / But ninetynine years, he just don't deserve."); Johnny Cash, "Cocaine Blues" ("The judge he smiled as he picked up his pen / Ninety-nine years in the Folsom pen / Ninety-nine years underneath that ground / I can't forget the day I shot that bad bitch down."); Ed Bruce, "Ninety-Seven More To Go" ("Ninety-nine years go so slow / When you still got ninety-seven more to go."); Bill Anderson, "Ninety-Nine" ("The picture's still in front of my eyes, the echo in my ears / When the jury said he's guilty and the judge said ninety-nine years."); Chloe Bain, "Ninety-Nine Years" ("The sentence was sharp, folks, it cut like a knife / For ninety-nine years, folks, is almost for life."); Guy Mitchell, "Ninety-Nine Years" ("Ninety-nine years in the penitentiary, baby, baby, wait for me, around twentyfifty-five we'll get together dead or alive.").