by TChris

Religious intolerance has reached an extreme in Pompano Beach, Florida, where a mosque seeks zoning approval to relocate and expand.

The new mosque would have a social hall, basketball court and playground, open to all. It would also be a storm shelter and a place to vote.

This civic asset would seem uncontroversial, but it's vehemently opposed by (among others) Rev. O'Neal Dozier, pastor of Worldwide Christian Center. Why? Because -- according to Dozier -- Muslims are categorically "dangerous" and "terrorists."

The Wall St. Journal is offering a free middle east news tracker.

YouTube has video posts from Haifa and Beirut.

As many TalkLeft readers know, Terry Kindlon of Albany, NY is an outstanding criminal defense lawyer who reads and comments often on TalkLeft about military service. He was a decorated Marine during Vietnam, sustained some injuries, is married to my friend Laurie Shanks, also an outstanding defense lawyer in Albany, and their son Lee, age 30, is a captain in the Marines and a military lawyer who recently returned from Fallujah, where he also served as a Judge Advocate.

He has an op-ed in the Albany Times available here at Common Dreams, that is a must read for those who truly care about our military and soldiers.

Here's some of what Terry has to say, but go on over and read the whole thing:

There will be two hearings today in the Duke Lacrosse players' alleged rape case. One will be a hearing for the uncharged Duke lacrosse players:

Attorneys for the uncharged players want to prevent District Attorney Mike Nifong from gaining access to Duke records of the home addresses of uncharged team members and records of their use of student identity cards. The lawyers argue the information is protected by federal privacy laws.

The other is a pre-trial conference for the three charged players, but Colin Finnerty's lawyer says he doesn't anticipate much of substance to be discussed.

Dan Quayle walked out of John Mellencamp concert Friday when he heard Mellencamp introduce his song "Walk Tall" with a dedication "to everyone hurt by policies of the current Bush administration."

For Mr. Qayle, here's what you missed:

The New York Times calls out Bush for his executive arrogance, as displayed this past week regarding Guantanamo and the NSA warrantless wiretapping program.

Over and over again, the same pattern emerges: Given a choice between following the rules or carving out some unprecedented executive power, the White House always shrugged off the legal constraints. Even when the only challenge was to get required approval from an ever-cooperative Congress, the president and his staff preferred to go it alone. While no one questions the determination of the White House to fight terrorism, the methods this administration has used to do it have been shaped by another, perverse determination: never to consult, never to ask and always to fight against any constraint on the executive branch.

Dave of Seeing the Forest reprints his 2004 post on the military draft and says it is just as important now. I agree. We need to keep Bush in check and vote these guys out. If you are draft-age, or like me, have a kid who is, pay attention.

A collection of my posts on the draft is here.

Here are some details of post-9/11 bills calling for the draft. More here.

Where's Country Joe when we need him? And Arlo? And Bruce? (scroll to the bottom for that one.)

by TChris

Yesterday, Last Night in Little Rock took issue with Justice Scalia's assertion in Hudson v. Michigan that the exclusionary rule isn't needed to deter police misconduct because "modern police forces are staffed with professionals." Complementing LNiLR's comment on the unprofessional and inexperienced members of the Las Vegas Police Department is David Feige's Boston Globe reminder that the New York Police Department spent nearly 12 years trying to locate evidence that led to the exoneration of Alan Newton. A professional police department might have considering looking in the evidence locker assigned to that case, where it was finally found. If this is "professional" conduct, what does an incompetent police department look like?

Like LNiLR, Feige is baffled by Scalia's vision of unerring law enforcement. Feige calls the Newton exoneration "a poignant rebuke" to Scalia's opinion in a different case, Kansas v. Marsh.

Like millions of other people this weekend, I've been trying to find some objective discussion of Israel and Lebanon. It's easier said than done. Here's Newsweek's latest, bringing Iran into the mix. Syria's in the middle of this too, there just wasn't room in my post title to include it.

Have at it, just remember all anti-semitic comments and those with profanity, personal attacks and name-calling will be deleted upon my return.

Update: Jewish bloggers are live-blogging the war.

Update: Pajamas Media is following every news development.

Crooks and Liars has the video of Bob Novak's appearance on Meet the Press this morning. Christy at Firedoglake provides her view.

Shorter version: Novak now claims he made a mistake when he told Newsday one week after his infamous column in which he outed Valerie Plame that his primary source gave him Valerie Plame Wilson's name.

Novak, in an interview, said his sources had come to him with the information. "I didn't dig it out, it was given to me," he said. "They thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it." [my emphasis]

Memories weaken upon the passage of time, they become comingled with post-event information --things the person experiencing the event later hears and reads about the case -- so that often it is no longer possible to distinguish between their original memory of the event and the blended memory that is created by what they heard, observed or later learned from others. Novak's memory is undoubtedly a mish-mosh now, but it wasn't one week after the event.

I'm going with what Novak said then: his primary source, who is no partisan gunslinger, not only told him Joseph Wilson's wife had a role in sending him to Niger but supplied her name.

Here's one post from last week on Novak Then vs. Novak Now.

Update: Editor and Publisher has the majority of the transcript.

With all the war going on in the world tonight.....here's Buffy Saint Marie's 1970 live television performance of Universal Soldier, which she says she wrote to express "individual responsibility for war and how the old feudal thinking kills us all."

It starts about 1 minute, 15 seconds in, but the first minute gives a good glimpse into what live tv music shows looked like in the pre-MTV age.

This was one of the first songs I learned to play on the guitar in the late 60's and I played it so many times I can still recite the words. But for those of you who can't, here they are:

by TChris

Federal judges have more discretion to impose reasonable sentences than they had before the Supreme Court's Booker decision, but the limits of that discretion remain unclear. We know only that federal sentences must not be "unreasonable."

Was it unreasonable to sentence Michael Martin to 7 days of incarceration? The Eleventh Circuit thinks the sentence was just as unreasonable as the original imposition of straight probation, which it reversed. District Judge U.W. Clemon is testing the limits of his discretion, and might have kept ratcheting the sentence up a week at a time if the Eleventh Circuit hadn't tossed him off the case (decision here in pdf).

Michael Martin is a former HealthSouth executive who pled guilty to conspiracy to commit securities fraud and mail fraud.