University of Colorado interim chancellor Phil Stefano announced at a news conference today that Ethnic Studies Professor Ward Churchill has received a notice of termination. His written statement is here.

The decision follows his review of the 20 page report on Churchill submitted by CU's Standing Committee On Research Misconduct and recommendations from the school's provost and a dean. The committee voted six to three that Churchill should be fired as opposed to suspended without pay.

Live blogging the Chancellor's statement:

The issues initially were did Churchill's statements exceed the boundaries of protected speech and did he engage in research or teaching misconduct or fraudulent misrepresentation?

The finding was that the content and rhetoric about 9/11 victims were protected by the First Amendment. The allegations regarding plagiarism and research misconduct were referred to standing committee. After referral, the committee found that allegations of ethnic misresprentation did not warrant further action.

Why am I not surprised? Justice Alito was the swing vote today in a decision that upheld Kansas's death penalty law that the Kansas Supreme Court had ruled unconsitutional.

Justices split 5-4 in the term's oldest case, which was argued in December before Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's retirement. A new argument session was held in April so that Alito could break a deadlock.....The state law says juries should impose death sentences if aggravating evidence of a crime's brutality and mitigating factors explaining a defendant's actions are equal in weight.

Justice David H. Souter, writing for the liberals, said the law was "morally absurd."...Souter said that "in the face of evidence of the hazards of capital prosecution," maintaining a system like the one in Kansas "is obtuse by any moral or social measure."

Via How Appealing: You can access the oral argument transcripts here and here. Additional information about the case is available at this link.

A really bad law will go into effect in Georgia on July 1. It prohibits anyone on the sex offender registry from living within 1,000 feet of any one of the hundreds of thousands of Georgia's school bus stops. (Text of law is here, in pdf.) As a result of this law, people will be forced from their homes and unable to live in urban and suburban areas.

The Southern Center for Human Rights filed a lawsuit on behalf of 8 offenders to block implementation of the law. Today, a Judge granted a preliminary injunction as to those 8 plaintiffs.

The law does not distinguish between offenders with a 20 year old conviction for having had sex with an 16 year old when they were 18 and violent sexual predators. Here are a sampling of the crimes for which the 8 plaintiffs were convicted (from the Complaint, in pdf ):

I'll make my point at the outset: Mainstream media will not weaken Daily Kos. Daily Kos is more than just Markos. It's a community of diarists whose views on issues may or may not mesh with his. What Markos has done is provide progressives, those who feel their government and the ideals of our country are being hijacked by the radical right, with a place to express themselves. If Markos retired to a remote island off of Fiji tomorrow, Daily Kos would continue for years.

Markos has never held himself out as the Pied Piper of the netroots. He repeatedly has expressed his discomfort at the media's attempts to cast him in this light. He has no ambitions of being the maestro or rock star of the movement. I have known Markos for 4 years. He designed TalkLeft. I've spent time with him and his family in San Francisco and at their home in Berkely. I've hung out with him in Washington, Boston, New York and Denver. Here's how I see him.

Update: Murray tells his story in his own words. Empty Wheel weighs in with some personal experience of her own.

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The intrepid reporter Murray Waas had a secret. He's decided to tell. Howie Kurtz in the Washington Post has the details. Murray is a cancer survivor. At age 26, he was told 90% of people with his kind of cancer are dead within two years. He sued the George Washington Medical Center and won $650,000, a verdict upheld on appeal, for failing to properly diagnose him. Happily, the doctors were wrong, and despite a recurrance in 2000, he is now cancer-free.

Just another reason to stop spending so much money on Iraq and take care of our own in need:

Thousands of U.S. veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are facing a new nightmare - the risk of homelessness. The U.S. government estimates several hundred vets who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan are homeless on any given night across the country, although the exact number is unknown.

The reasons that contribute to the new wave of homelessness are many: some are unable to cope with life after daily encounters with insurgent attacks and roadside bombs; some can't navigate government red tape; others simply don't have enough money to afford a house or apartment

[hat tip Patriot Daily.]

Who knew the she-pundit is a long-standing Deadhead? Via Amanda at Pandagon and Sadly No, here's the Jambands interview with the divine Ms. C.

She estimates she's been to 67 Dead concerts and reports she doesn't smoke pot. One of the funniest quotes:

I fondly remember seeing the Dead when I was at Cornell. It was the day of the fabulous Fiji Island party on the driveway "island" of the Phi Gamma Delta House. We'd cover ourselves in purple Crisco and drink purple Kool-Aid mixed with grain alcohol and dance on the front yard. Wait - I think got the order reversed there: We'd drink purple Kool-Aid mixed with grain alcohol and then cover ourselves in purple Crisco - then the dancing. You probably had to be there to grasp how utterly fantastic this was.

Copyright 2006, Chicago Tribune.

Carlos de Luna was texecuted in December, 1989. A new investigation by ace Chicago Tribune reporters Maurice Possley and Steve Mills, in the three part series Did This Man Die for...This Man's Crime begins today and shows another man confessed to the murder and other evidence points to de Luna's innocence.

Part One of the series is here.

Newsweek runs two blogger profiles today. One is an overt attack on Markos of Daily Kos, the liberal blogosphere and politicians who seek their support. The other is a total puff piece on conservative Hugh Hewitt and his plans to combine right-wing talk radio with right-wing bloggers and build an effective right wing political movement.

Why the venom towards Markos and the hailing of Hewitt? Both pieces come off as being written by journalists with a right-wing agenda. Even the accompanying photos show the bias. In the piece on Kos, there is no picture of him [added: on the first page of the article] only of Bush protesters in Washington state which has nothing to do with the article. For the Hewitt article, there's a nice calm photo of Hugh in suit and tie standing in front of what could be a courthouse right under the headline. It's like they are equating liberals with anarchy and conservatives with justice.

Andrew Sullivan at Time reviews Stephen Miles' book, Oath Betrayed, about doctors who violated the Hippocratic oath by helping to coverup torture of prisoners in Iraq.

Sullivan concludes

After a while, you get numb reading these stories. They read like accounts of a South American dictatorship, not an American presidency. But we learn one thing: once you allow the torture of prisoners for any reason, as this President did, the cancer spreads. In the end it spreads to healers as well, and turns them into accomplices to harm.

There's a lot going on today, feel free to weigh in on these or other topics:

• Crooks and Liars has finally left Radioland behind and moved to Wordpress. The site looks the same but will be so much easier for us to navigate and John to manage.

• Jane's sister writes in at Firedoglake to thank everyone for their kind words on their mother's passing. And Parachutec does Late Nite FDL with a video of Bob Dylan doing Subterranean Homesick Blues. The tag line of TalkLeft since inception has been "The pump don't work cause the vandals took the handles." Great choice.

• The Miami 7 are chickenfeed: See Juan Cole. I hope he won't mind me quoting a couple of paragraphs:

That was quick. After writing yesterday about the new Iraqi Government's proposed peace plan to be presented Sunday, 11 insurgent leaders have already rejected it.

Representatives of 11 Iraqi insurgent groups told The Sunday Times yesterday that they would reject the peace offer because they did not recognise the legitimacy of the government.

A senior commander authorised to speak on behalf of other groups warned that they would continue to fight. "As long as there is an occupation and an illegitimate government, the resistance and insurgency will continue," he said.

Newsweek has more on Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's "master plan."