by TChris

States from time to time attempt to craft their rules of evidence or procedure, either legislatively or judicially, to make the prosecution's case easier to prove while disadvantaging criminal defendants. Like many states, South Carolina has a rule limiting the circumstances under which a defendant can introduce evidence that a third party is actually the guilty culprit. The South Carolina Supreme Court expanded that rule by disallowing evidence of third party guilt when there is strong forensic evidence pointing to the defendant's guilt.

In a unanimous opinion authored by its newest Justice, the U.S. Supreme Court today reversed the conviction of Bobby Lee Holmes. Criminal defendants have a constitutional right to present a defense, and while that right may be balanced against reasonable rules of evidence and procedure, South Carolina went too far in its attempt to rig the system in the prosecution's favor. The South Carolina court assumed that the forensic evidence was so strong as to negate the evidence that someone else was guilty, but didn't seem to notice the defense evidence that substantially weakened the probative value of the forensic evidence.

Time Magazine explores the gas price crisis and notes the irony -- I'd call it hypocrisy -- of Bush now blaming it on the oil companies.

Who's suffering? Consumers, airlines, Detroit, truckers and Fedex, to name a few.

Who's profiting? The oil companies, oil-field-service firms, oil workers, petroleum engineers and geologists, oil traders in New York City's Mercantile Exchange -- and Iran and Venezuela:

The Washington Post reports on Blogads' survey of political blogreaders. It's not the 20-something crowd.

In an unscientific Web survey of 36,000 people, Blogads reported that political blog readers tend to be age 41 to 50, male (72 percent), and earn $60,000 to $90,000 per year. Two in five have college degrees, while just a tad less have graduate degrees.

The full survey results can be found here. TalkLeft's results are here. What do the results mean?

Millions of immigrants across the United States will take a sick day from work and school to peacefully march in protest of Congress' ill-conceived and overly punitive immigration reform proposals and to demand the recognition that is due them as an indispensable part of our labor force. This is not unprecedented in our country's history.

On May 1, 1886, workers in the U.S., many of them immigrants, took to the streets to protest oppressive working conditions. Over the course of the next several days, there was bloodshed and repressive police tactics, but thereafter, all workers in the U.S. incurred the benefits of an 8 hour, 5 day workweek, the right to unionize and other needed protections.

Today there will be rallies, boycotts and work closures. What do the marchers and protesters want? As NNIR puts it,

[They are] demanding recognition as indispensable members of U.S. society, with the right to living wages, safe working conditions and protections. They want the same rights as any other member of the U.S.: the right to travel, work, live, study and worship freely and safely, and to reunite their families without discrimination and violence.

Check it out...GAG by KATS

Bush and Cheney, war, oil, the CIA and lots more...listen to the whole thing.

It's easy to see why we love Gangsta rap
Look at America, who's more Gangsta than that

The episode tonight is JohnnyCakes.

Tony is tempted by a real-estate offer; Vito is wowed by an act of heroism; AJ looks to "diversify."

I thought last week's episode was just so-so. Maybe that's because the two weeks before that were so good. I suspect A.J. will get into big problems tonight.

Let us know what you think of tonight's show.

Bush is elevating Iran into a crisis situation. But there is no crisis. Josh Marshall calls it correctly.

The only crisis with Iran is the crisis with the president's public approval ratings. Period. End of story. The Iranians are years, probably as long as a decade away, and possibly even longer from creating even a limited yield nuclear weapon. Ergo, the only reason to ramp up a confrontation now is to help the president's poll numbers.....The period of peril the country is entering into isn't tied to an Iranian bomb. It turns on how far a desperate president will go to avoid losing control of Congress.

[Via Atrios.] As Juan Cole reports, the IAEA report (pdf) released Friday found no proof of an Iranian Nuclear Weapons Program. Iran has promised to cooperate with weapons inspectors and insists it is only acquiring uranium for nuclear power, not nuclear bombs.

The Boston Globe today has a report on President Bush's extraordinary power grab.

President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution.

Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, ''whistle-blower" protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research.

Here's a comparison with other presidents. The founding fathers would turn over in their graves if they learned how Bush has decimated the separation of powers doctrine. Glenn Greenwald has more:

by TChris

President "I'm a uniter, not a divider" Bush should embrace the patriotism displayed by Spanish-speaking Americans who enjoy listening to a version of the national anthem in their native language. Not so.

"I think the national anthem ought to be sung in English," Bush said at the White House after an independent music producer released a Spanish-language version of "The Star-Spangled Banner."

Bush is pandering to the likes of Minuteman Peter Lanteri, who maintains that the song is "a slap in the face to America." A song that praises America and its national values can't reasonably be considered disrespectful to America, but reason isn't the driving force that motivates the criticism.

Rather than dividing the country, as critics claim, the song unites people who share a love of the country.

by TChris

The culture of corruption morphs into a culture of decadence as federal investigators search for evidence that a defense contractor provided former Rep. Duke Cunningham and other legislators with prostitutes.

A limousine would pick up Cunningham and a prostitute and take them to the ADCS hospitality suite, Wade reportedly told investigators. Federal agents are investigating whether other legislators had similar arrangements with Wilkes or Wade, a business associate of Wilkes who ran his own defense contracting company, MZM Inc. [emphasis added]

Caution: Mitchell Wade will soon be sentenced for bribing Cunningham. People who accuse others to save themselves should be viewed with suspicion. Wade's account is partially corroborated, and the corroboration provides an interesting connection that may also merit the investigators' attention:

Two of Wilkes' former business associates say they were present on several occasions when Shirlington Limousine & Transportation Service of northern Virginia brought prostitutes to the suite. ...

Last year, Shirlington won a $21 million contract from the Department of Homeland Security.

by TChris

A juror in the trial of Hamid Hayat regrets her vote to convict. Arcelia Lopez swore in an affidavit that she was pressured to put an end to the jury's deliberations by casting the final vote to return a guilty verdict. Lopez said she "never once throughout the deliberation process and the reading of the verdict believed Hamid Hayat to be guilty."

Lopez said she went to a medical clinic Saturday with a migraine headache and believed "my health and physical well-being were being affected by the pressure from the other jurors to change my vote."

It isn't unusual for jurors to succumb to pressure -- jurors don't like to spend days in a small room eating stale pizza -- and it's almost impossible to overcome a verdict with the testimony of a juror who has second thoughts about the outcome. This report, however, suggests that the jury may have been exposed to media accounts of the trial -- the kind of extraneous influence that would provide a more fruitful ground for attacking the verdict.

There's follow-up news on the Duke Lacrosse player accuser's filing of a report in 1996 claiming three men raped her in 1993, when she was 14. Her ex-husband now says he encouraged her to file the report. The accuser's father, meanwhile, said the earlier rape didn't happen -- or at least he never heard about it.

Kenneth McNeil, a Durham man who was married to the woman for 17 months, said in an interview Friday that three years after the incident, he urged her to make the report to Creedmoor police to help her overcome the trauma. "I wanted them to pay for what they did," said McNeil, who was then engaged to the woman.

He has no first hand-knowledge of the incident, which occurred when the accuser was in high school. Here's what he says she told him during their engagement: