Happy blogiversary to us! With traveling, I forgot it's TalkLeft's birthday. 4 years old.

13 million plus vistors, 22 million plus page views, 14,500 entries and 192,000 comments.

Wow. Thanks to all of you for sticking with us.

Update: Thanks to Kevin for his blogiversary praise for TalkLeft -- no chopped liver here!

by TChris

The police have little incentive to obey the constitutional requirement to knock and announce their presence before busting down doors to serve search warrants, thanks to a 5-4 Supreme Court decision issued today. Justice Alito provided the tie-breaking vote.

The Court ruled that suppression of the results of the search -- the usual remedy when evidence is acquired in violation of the Constitution -- is too extreme when police fail to knock-and-announce. The dissent voiced the obvious response:

"The court destroys the strongest legal incentive to comply with the Constitution's knock-and-announce requirement,'' Breyer wrote for the four dissenters.

by TChris

By sneaking in and out of Iraq, the president avoided adding himself to this tragic statistic:

The number of U.S. military deaths in Iraq has reached 2,500, the Pentagon said on Thursday, more than three years into a conflict that finds U.S.-led forces locked in a struggle with a resilient Sunni Arab insurgency. ...

In Washington, the Pentagon also said 18,490 U.S. troops had been wounded in the war, which began in March 2003 with a U.S.-led invasion to topple President Saddam Hussein.

Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed.

Update: Here's the compassionate response from the White House:

Reacting to the new milestone on combat deaths, White House press secretary Tony Snow said, ''It's a number.''

by TChris

In even numbered years, Republicans attack the Constitution. Having failed to write homophobia into the Bill of Rights, Republicans are reduced to making their biennial appeal for a partial repeal of the First Amendment. When Democrats are dared to support the rights of (relatively rare) flag burners, they need to make clear that it is the Constitution they support.

Once again, we round up the commentaries that denounce this nonsense:

Bob Kerrey in the Washington Post. If our First Amendment is altered to permit laws to be passed prohibiting flag desecration, would we like to see our police powers used to arrest an angry mother who burns a flag? Or a brother in arms whose disillusionment leads him to defile this symbol of the nation? I hope the answer is no. I hope we are strong enough to tolerate such rare and wrenching moments. I hope our desire for calm and quiet does not make it a crime for any to demonstrate in such a fashion. In truth, if I know anything about the spirit of our compatriots, some Americans might even choose to burn their flag in protest of such a law.

by TChris

The president has a bunch of people -- "enemy combatants," he likes to call them -- at Guantanamo, and he doesn't know what to do about them (other than keeping the press away so prisoners can't benefit from "publicity stunts" like, um, suicide). He told us today that he'd "like to close Guantanamo" because reports of torture and suicide just give people an "excuse" to criticize the U.S.

We don't need an excuse to criticize your administration, Mr. President. You and your helpers provide fresh cause for alarm every week. Banning the press won't shield you or your administration from warranted criticism. Guantanamo has severely damaged the credibility of the United States, and our elected representatives need to hear us object to misdeeds that tarnish our country's reputation.

by TChris

Unless a law enforcement officer is trying to stop a suspected murderer or other serious felon, there's little reason to engage in a dangerous high speed pursuit when a driver fails to heed a squad car's red and blue lights. It makes no sense to put innocent drivers and pedestrians at risk to stop a common offender when he or she can be arrested more safely at work or at home the next day.

In March, TalkLeft wrote about proposed legislation in California that would repeal a law giving immunity to officers who engage in a reckless pursuit. That bill was introduced after a police officer chased a 15-year-old driver who stole her mother's car. Speeds increased as the girl tried to elude the pursuing officer, until she collided with a van, killing a 15-year-old passenger.

CNN reports (text here, "A police chase gone bad" available in today's "most watched video" section) on the languishing legislation, and on the larger issue of "dinosaur police chiefs" who refuse to adopt policies that would limit the discretion of officers to pursue at high speeds. As this article suggests, high speed chases are "an emerging public health problem," one that accounted for more than 7,000 deaths between 1982 and 2004.

So much for freedom of the press. Journalists have been forced to leave Guantanamo in the wake of the suicides.

In the aftermath of the three suicides at the notorious Guantanamo prison facility in Cuba last Saturday, reporters with the Los Angeles Times and the Miami Herald were ordered by the office of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to leave the island today.

A third reporter and a photographer with the Charlotte Observer were given the option of staying until Saturday but, E&P has learned, were told that their access to the prison camp was now denied.

I'm on the road today. Here's a place for you to keep each other informed of the news -- and your opinions. Try to keep it civil, ok?

I'm headed to Washington, D.C. today for the Annual American Constitution Society Convention, "Democracy and the Rule of Law." If you're in D.C. and into progressive law-related subjects, check it out.

It opens Friday morning with an address by Sen. Hillary Clinton, who got a decidedly mixed review at the Take Back America Conference yesterday.

At the ACS convention (full schedule here) the topics and speakers are outstanding. I'm looking forward to hearing Sen. Gary Hart speak on restoring the balance to our separation of powers, the ACLU's Ann Beeson, law Prof David Cole and Marc Rotenberg on challenging post 9/11 policy, Richard ben Veniste and Eric Holder on policing the Justice Department, Abbe Lowell on representing the high profile defendant, Lucas Guttentag on Immigration reform,
Yale law prof Jack Balkin on the Constitution and many many more.

I'll be on a panel Saturday morning called "Leakers and the Press" with 9th Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt, and Law Professors Maimon Schwarzschild and Geoffrey Stone. I don't think I've ever been on a panel with a federal judge before, so that should be extra fun.

Karl Rove may be skating in PlameGate, but there are a lot of lingering, unanswered questions. Here's a few that come to mind.

• Did Karl Rove lie to investigators in the fall of 2003? If so, why is he not being prosecuted for it?

• Does Fitz no longer believe Rove and Bob Novak coordinated their stories about their July 9 conversation?

• Is Fitzgerald absolving everyone in the White House Iraq Group of criminal culpability?

• Who was Robert Novak's source? Who was Bob Woodward's source? Who was Walter Pincus's source?

• Why did mainstream reporters (David Schuster of MSNBC comes to mind) say a few weeks ago they believed Rove would be charged? That seemed to be the consensus of opinion. What changed?

Update: Swopa at Needlenose has some questions of her own.

Jim Vanderhei in the Washington Post reports:

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove will not be indicted in the CIA leak investigation, his attorney announced yesterday, a decision that signals that a special prosecutor's probe is unlikely to threaten any other Bush administration officials.

With Rove's situation resolved, the broader leak investigation is probably over, according to a source briefed on the status of the case.

David Johnston in the New York Times reports:

The last Duke thread is full. Here's a place to keep the conversation going.