The Vera Institute has completed a bipartisan report on our prison system for Congress. 13.5 million people are jailed each year. On any particular day, more than 2.2 million people are locked behind bars. The cost for all this is a staggering $60 billion per year. Not only are our prisons failing them, so is the American public. And while violent crime has dropped, we are not any safer.

"We should be astonished by the size of the prisoner population, troubled by the disproportionate incarceration of African-Americans and Latinos, and saddened by the waste of human potential," the panel said in a report to be presented to Congress on Thursday.

by TChris

Shortly after being reelected in 2004, Arlen Specter earned the wrath of conservative extremists by suggesting that anti-abortion judges would have difficulty winning Senate confirmation. Specter learned the power of conservative outrage when his chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee was threatened. Specter executed a quick flip-flop by assuring extremists that he "would never apply any litmus test on the abortion issue."

A year-and-a-half later, the inability of conservative extremists to govern has been exposed, and their death grip on Specter has weakened. While Specter has shown little inclination to oppose any of the president's judicial nominees, he's recently been slapping the Bush administration, apparently content in the knowledge that the president and his supporters are too weak to hit back with any force.

Yesterday, the Justice Department sent Matthew Friedrich to stonewall the Judiciary Committee's interest in Alberto Gonzales' assertion that journalists can be prosecuted for divulging classified information. Specter put up a fuss when Friedrich dodged his questions.

How about an open thread today? Haven't had one in a while and there's lots to talk about.

by TChris

The first hot button right wing issue of the political summer -- the proposed amendment to "protect marriage" by prohibiting states from allowing gays to marry -- failed to advance today on a Senate vote of 49-48. Pro-amendment senators who championed the doomed amendment claimed that the issue was worth debating to show "progress" toward its eventual passage. The 2004 vote was 50-48. Not much progress toward bigotry this year.

The Republican Senate is now free to move on to other hot button social issues in its valiant attempt to avoid talking about rising deficits, global warming, chaos in Iraq, inadequate cargo inspection, and the other burning issues of the day that Republicans are incapable of confronting. Speaking of burning, the next non-issue Republicans will raise to distract voters is likely to be a recycled attempt to amend the Constitution to prohibit flag burning. Have you seen much flag burning in the U.S. lately?

by TChris

Five African American and two Hispanic police officers sued the Greenwich Police Department, alleging a pattern of race discrimination in hiring and promotions, of creating a hostile work environment, and of racially disparate law enforcement:

[The lawsuit] charges that the department disproportionately detained and arrested members of minorities and cites other examples of what the plaintiffs consider questionable conduct, including the use of highly offensive language to refer to racial minorities and a tendency to "mock African-American complainants, witnesses and arrestees, imitating their speech and mannerisms."

by TChris

It seems as if a week rarely passes without news that another inmate has been cleared by DNA testing. Today's victim of an incorrect identification ("arrested after a woman identified him from a photo as the man who abducted her as she was getting into her car") is James Tillman, convicted of rape and kidnapping 18 years ago. He walked out of prison yesterday, thanks to the good work of the Connecticut Innocence Project and a prosecutor who agreed that Tillman deserved a new trial.

As the judge pointed out, eyewitness testimony can be "devastatingly inaccurate." Think of all the people behind bars who were convicted of crimes that don't involve DNA evidence. How many of them are innocent victims of a mistaken identification? With no hope of DNA testing to exonerate them, how many will serve their entire sentences for crimes they didn't commit?

Exotic dancer Kim Roberts doesn't want to wait for the courtroom to tell her story. Here she is in Vanity Fair.

With every statement she makes, she provides impeachment for the defense on her prior statements. Will she never learn?

Republican Senator James Inhofe (Okla.) at today's gay marriage debate in the Senate (sorry for the caps, that's how I received it from The Senate Majority:

{14:24:36} (MR. INHOFE) (NOT AN OFFICIAL TRANSCRIPT }AS YOU SEE HERE, AND I THINK THIS IS MAYBE THE MOST IMPORTANT PROP WE'LL HAVE DURING THE ENTIRE DEBATE, MY WIFE AND I HAVE BEEN MARRIED 47 YEARS. WE HAVE 20 KIDS AND GRANDKIDS. I'M REALLY PROUD TO SAY THAT IN THE RECORDED HISTORY OF OUR FAMILY, WE'VE NEVER HAD A DIVORCE OR ANY KIND OF A HOMOSEXUAL RELATIONSHIP.

The great keyboardist, singer and songwriter Billy Preston has died at age 59. He suffered from kidney failure and had received a transplant that didn't take. He was on dialysis for a long time. Roger Friedman has more on Billy Preston's website.

Among his credits (received from TL commenter Rocker):

1970) Let It Be -- including "Get Back"
(1970) All Things Must Pass (George Harrison)
(1971) Sticky Fingers (Rolling Stones)
(1971) The Concert for Bangla Desh (George Harrison And Friends)
(1971) There's a Riot Goin' On (Sly & the Family Stone)
(1972) Exile on Main Street (Rolling Stones)
(1973) Goats Head Soup (Rolling Stones)
(1974) It's Only Rock'n Roll (Rolling Stones)
(1975) Blood on the Tracks (Bob Dylan)
(1975) "You Are So Beautiful" (Joe Cocker's biggest hit)
(1976) Black and Blue (Rolling Stones)

The Wall St. Journal (free link) assails Fitzgerald and backs Scooter Libby today.

There is all the difference in the world between seeking to respond to the substance of Mr. Wilson's charges, as Mr. Libby did, and taking revenge on him by blowing his wife's cover, which was the motive originally hypothesized by Bush critics for the Plame exposure. The more of Mr. Fitzgerald's case that becomes public, the more it looks like he has made the terrible mistake for a prosecutor of taking Joe Wilson's side in what was essentially a political fight.

Christy at Firedoglake responds. And check out the perfect photo for her post.

From yesterday's sentencing hearing of the two mob cops convicted of carrying out 8 murders for the mob while they were on the police force: Right after defendant Louis Eppolito used his right of allocution to proclaim his innocence and invite the victims' families to visit him in jail so he could prove it to them

It was at this point that without warning and certainly without permission, a large man wearing a seashell necklace suddenly stood up.

"Mr. Eppolito!" he yelled from the gallery. "Do you remember me?"

Apparently baffled, Mr. Eppolito said, "No."

"I'm the guy you put away for 19 years! I'm Barry Gibbs! You don't remember me? You don't remember what you did to me? To my family?"

The marshals quickly led the man outside, as the courtroom burst into applause.

Judge Jack Weinstein will impose a life sentence on the two crooked cops, assuming they don't win their motion for a new trial based on ineffective assistance of counsel at a June 23 hearing. The pair are claiming Bruce Cutler and Eddie Hayes were inadequate defenders. Eppolito's new lawyer is Joe Bondy.

by TChris

If it's important for an elected representative or staffer to take a "fact-finding" trip, it's reasonable for taxpayers to pay for the trip. If the trip isn't in the public interest, the politician or staffer should stay home, or pay for the trip out of his or her own pocket.

Over a 5½-year period ending in 2005, members of Congress and their aides took at least 23,000 trips -- valued at almost $50 million -- financed by private sponsors, many of them corporations, trade associations and nonprofit groups with business on Capitol Hill. ...

A nine-month analysis of congressional disclosure forms for travel from January 2000 through June 2005 done by the Center for Public Integrity, American Public Media and Northwestern University's Medill News Service turned up thousands of costly excursions -- at least 200 trips to Paris, 150 to Hawaii and 140 to Italy.