Duke lacrosse player Colin Finerty's parents are abandoning their silence. His father says he has passed a polygraph administered by a former FBI polygrapher and that he has "eyewitness testimony, phone records and receipts showing it was "impossible" for him to have committed the crimes."

The polygrapher came out of the interview room after administering the recent test and said, "'This boy is innocent. He's telling the truth,'" Kevin Finnerty said. "He passed with flying colors."

Finnerty's mother, Maryellen, said the accuser's photo identification of her son "was sort of a pin the tail on the donkey."

Finnerty's parents are speaking out against the advice of Colin's counsel. An interview with them by Dan Abrams was aired on the Today show Friday. [link here.]

Matt at MyDD is having a YouTube open thread where commenters are posting links to videos. Here's one I have never seen this one before and it's a a crack-up -- Mick Jagger and David Bowie from 1985 performing Dancing in the Streets. Enjoy, and thanks to the commenter at My DD for pointing it out.

Via Kevin at LexBlog: Presidential hopeful John Edwards spoke to the crowd at Gnomedex in Seattle. He got a standing ovation when he left the stage.

One Gnomedex attendee pointed out that the human voice so fundamental to blogs contrasts with the practiced messages delivered by many politicians. Edwards agreed, and acknowledged his own shortcomings in that regard, saying that he can often sense when he is slipping into that mode.

"The problem is that we're so trained and so conditioned over a long period of time that being normal and real and authentic requires you to shed that conditioning," Edwards said of politicians. "It is not an easy thing to do."

I think that's right. I'm sure there are exceptions, but the polticians whose blogs I've read sound like they are reciting their campaign speeches. There's no persona, no sense of human being inside. They are all too predictable, as if three handlers vetted their blogposts to make sure no potential voter would be offended before posting them.

Alberto Gonzales, speaking from Egypt today, says the Supreme Court's Hamdan decision "hampers our ability to deal with terrorists." Shorter version: We're not going to stop holding people indefinitely, without charges and without access to lawyers.

Gonzales emphasized that the court ruling didn't say "that we could not continue to hold enemy combatants indefinitely for the duration of hostilities, which was something the Supreme Court said we could do..." The prison was established in early 2002.

"That path is still available to us. The president of the United States can continue to hold enemy combatants at Guantanamo. But we are looking at ways to provide as many tools as possible to the president of the United States in dealing with terrorists," he added.

Shorter version II: We will use all our political capital to get Congress to approve what the Supreme Court threw out.

Yale law professor Jack Balkin at Balkanization discusses this strategy.

Wow. Who would have thought? Great work by New York defense lawyer Joe Bondy, building on work done by the trial lawyers, Ed Hayes and Bruce Cutler. U.S. District Court Jack Weinstein has tossed almost all of the "mafia cops" convictions because the charges were brought after the statute of limitations perios had expired.

In a shell-shocking written order, a federal judge ruled today that, despite overwhelming evidence of "heinous and violent crimes," the two retired detectives at the center of what has been termed the Mafia Cops corruption case should be acquitted of all federal racketeering charges -- including eight murders -- because the statute of limitations in their case had run out.

....Louis J. Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa.... were found guilty in April of some of the most spectacular corruption charges in the city's history. Although a jury found that Mr. Eppolito and Mr. Caracappa had participated, as paid assassins, in killings for the mob, the judge's order vacated the racketeering convictions on legal -- if not evidentiary -- grounds.

As to the 102 page ruling:

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This is very bad, I sure hope it isn't true. Five U.S. troops are being investigated for rape and murder :

Five U.S. Army soldiers are being investigated for allegedly raping a young woman, then killing her and three members of her family in Iraq, a U.S. military official said Friday.

The soldiers also allegedly burned the body of the woman they are accused of assaulting in the March incident, the official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case.

Site of the incident: Mahmoudiyah, south of Baghdad.

Time for an open thread. Speak your mind, keep us up to date on news and what the other blogs are up to. I'll be back.

• Crooks and Liars has a funny video of Robin Williams on the Late Show doing an impov on Rush's vacation.

• MPP is launching a new marijuana ad focusing on politicans and lawmakers who have smoked pot:

A potentially controversial new ad campaign from the Marijuana Policy Project names prominent public officials, including President George W. Bush, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, former Vice President Al Gore, and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as having admitted to using marijuana. The ad then asks, "Is it fair to arrest three quarters of a million people a year for doing what presidents and a Supreme Court justice have done?"

• Calling All Wingnuts calls into right wing talk radio shows so you don't have to -- and records his interviews.

Update: Bernie pleads guilty. More details here in the New York Times.

******
Former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, who was nominated by Bush to be Homeland Security Chief after being recommended for the job by his pal Rudy Giuliani, will plead guilty Friday to two misdemeanors for failing to report gifts from contractors. The contractors are alleged to have ties to organized crime.

At today's proceeding, Mr. Kerik is expected to acknowledge that while serving as correction commissioner, he paid only a fraction of the cost of a $200,000 renovation to his Bronx apartment that was started in 1999 by associates of the contractor, Interstate Industrial.

Detailed background on the allegations against Kerik is here. Unanswered questions will remain after Kerik pleads guilty today, particularly about how much Rudy knew about Kerik's closeness to the company when he appointed Kerik to the Police Commissioner job in 2000. The Times reports:

Police chiefs of some of the country's largest cities are complaining that Homeland Security is not living up to its promise to share terror-related information with them. It's causing a "growing rift" and some departments are threatening to pull out of the HSA program.

In a report released this week, the homeland-security department's inspector general, Richard Skinner, said that the department's computer network designed to pool information on terrorist threats for police and other federal agencies has been ignored by many of its intended users.

The Homeland Security Information Network, or HSIN, was set up to share secret information with as many as 600 federal, state and local agencies at a cost of $337 million. The department described it as its "backbone" for dealing with national emergencies and terrorist threats. But the report found that officials across the country "are confused and frustrated, without clear guidance on [the network's] role or how to use the system to share information effectively."

Ryan McFaddan, the Duke lacrosse player who sent an offensive e-mail after the party at which the accuser says she was raped, has been reinstated. Details about the e-mail are here.

Also, the county commissioner pondering a run against DA Nifong has gathered the necessary signatures to make it onto the ballot.

This is too funny. Think Progress has the video of Sen. Trent Lott on Fox News with Neil Cavuto today. Lott blasts the Supreme Court decision in Hamdan v. Rumseld and then admits he hasn't finished reading it.

LOTT: I think some people are probably laughing at us. This is ridiculous and outrageous. Now in legal speak, let me say, I have not read the entire opinion, nor the dissents. But preliminarily my opinion is they probably didn't even have jurisdiction. They shouldn't have ruled the way they did. This is not a bunch of pussycats we're talking about here. These are people that have made it clear in many instances that they would kill Americans if they got out. This is Osama bin Laden's driver. And this is one other example of why the American people have lost faith in so much of our federal judiciary. This is a very bad decision in my opinion.