As I am in court, literally as I type this, and will be for the rest of the day, here's an open thread for you.

As for how to get wireless in federal court, it's by using a WAN network through Cingular rather than a WLAN network. Or something like that. All I know is it works.

by TChris

On Wednesday, the San Francisco Examiner reported that a "homeless man suspected of planting a bomb at a Starbucks on Monday has not been charged in connection with the case." Today we learn why, from a story in the San Francisco Chronicle: the "bomb" was "nothing more than a flashlight with corroded batteries."

The Examiner story described the bomb as "an explosive with a fuse stuffed into a flashlight." The story also claimed:

The bomb, which police defused on the scene, is currently at an Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms testing facility in the East Bay, ATF spokeswoman Marti McKee said.

It turns out that "defusing" the bomb meant that police shot it with a water cannon. They thought the bomb exploded. But there was no fuse, no bomb, and no explosion.

[Anonymous authorities] said a muffled noise that police heard when the water cannon hit the object, which they took to be an explosion, may have been the sound of a chemical reaction between the water and the corroded batteries.

Peter Daou has a depressing but accurate assessment of the efficacy of progressive blogging - borne out by the NSA Scandal and the Alito hearings. We're one side of a broken triangle.

This, then, is the reality: progressive bloggers and online activists - positioned on the front lines of a cold civil war - face a thankless and daunting task: battle the Bush administration and its legions of online and offline apologists, battle the so-called “liberal” media and its tireless weaving of pro-GOP narratives, battle the ineffectual Democratic leadership, and battle the demoralization and frustration that comes with a long, steep uphill struggle.

....Unfortunately for the progressive netroots, the intricate interplay of Republican persuasion tactics, media story-telling, and 21st century information flow seems beyond the ken of most Democratic strategists and leaders. The hellish reality progressive bloggers have acknowledged and internalized is still alien to the party establishment. Dem strategy is still two parts hackneyed sloganeering and one part befuddlement over the stifling of their message.

Corporate crime-buster Eliot Spitzer may get a primary challenger for the 2006 New York Governor's race: Tom Suozzi, a Long Island politician.

Suozzi, the Nassau County executive, has the hugely influential backing of Home Depot founder Ken Langone, a Long Island billionaire who has tangled with Spitzer on Wall Street and has vowed to raise "as much money as I can" to help knock off the two-term attorney general.

...."I will leave no stone unturned to help Tom Suozzi wage a very successful and effective campaign," Langone told The Associated Press this week. He added that Suozzi has done a marvelous job as county executive and is "focused like I've never seen a politician in my life."

Suozzi this week filed papers with the State Elections Office to form a fundraising committee for the Governor's race.

The decision won't be out until tomorrow, but Dorothy Moxley, mother of Martha Moxley, tells the Associated Press that prosecutors called her to tell her the Connecticut Supreme Court has rejected Michel Skakel's appeal.

Skakel's trial lawyer, Mickey Sherman, who did not represent Skakel in the appeal, said it's news to him.

"Nothing will ever change my opinion that an innocent man is in jail," he said. "He's simply not guilty."

Skakel was 15 at the time Martha Moxley was murdered. Had he been charged in 1977 when the murder occurred, he would have been tried in juvenile court and if convicted, received a sentence of no more than two years. That's how juveniles were treated back then in Connecticut.

Had Skakel not been related to the Kennedys, he probably never would have been charged and I doubt he would have been convicted.

From my earlier take on the case.

Two Abu Ghraib soldiers accused of using military dogs to threaten and attack prisoners, Sgt. Santos Cardona and Sgt. Michael Smith, are set to go on trial next month. U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the one-time Guantanamo commander sent by Bush to examine Abu Ghraib, has invoked his 5th Amendment privilege against self-incrimination and refused to testify. Army Col. Thomas Pappas has been granted immunity in exchange for his testimony.

Digby is justifiably outraged.

I'm wondering, what's up with the Pappas immunity? Maybe he is going to rat out Miller? Or someone in the CIA? This 2004 USA Today article from 2004 recaps the details, including a sworn statement it had reviewed from Army Lt. Col. Steven Jordan, the top military intelligence officer at Abu Ghraib who oversaw the interrogations. Here's what he had to say about Pappas, after a ghost detainee had died while being interrogated:

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid has issued this statement following the confirmation hearing of Judge Sam Alito: (received by e-mail)

“I have followed the Alito hearings closely. Democrats on the Committee did their jobs by asking tough questions about important issues: civil rights, privacy, environmental protections, the danger of unchecked presidential power and others. Unfortunately, Judge Alito’s responses did little to address my serious concerns about his 15-year judicial record.

“I have not forgotten that Judge Alito was only nominated after the radical right wing of the President's party forced Harriet Miers to withdraw. The right wing insisted that Justice O'Connor be replaced with a sure vote for their extreme agenda. Four days of hearings have shown that Judge Alito is no Sandra Day O'Connor.

“Senate Democrats will meet next week to discuss the nomination.”

The DNA tests ordered by Virginia Governor Mark Warner on Roger Coleman, who was executed in 1992, have come back positive. It was Coleman's DNA that was found at the scene of the crime.

Peter Neufeld, Co-Founder of the Innocence Project, released this statement: (received by e-mail)

“Today, we commend Virginia Governor Mark Warner for his commitment to learning the truth, once and for all, in the Coleman case. Just as he was the first governor to recently order blanket testing of old non-capital cases, as soon as two men were exonerated following testing of the first batch of 30, he is the first and only governor to order posthumous testing in a capital case.

“For the sake of victims, the wrongly accused, law enforcement officials and the public at large, our criminal justice system must be based on finding the truth. DNA testing can provide certainty in many cases because it can confirm guilt, demonstrate innocence or help identify the true perpetrator. We call on governors in every other state to immediately catalog and test evidence in cases of people with claims of innocence who have been executed, so that we can have the certainty in every case that we now have in Roger Keith Coleman’s case.

Think Progress has the official list of who helped Judge Sam Alito prep for his confirmation hearings. (pdf)

Senator Lindsay Graham is not on the list.

Knights-Ridder News Service yesterday defended its reporters' analysis of Judge Alito's 311 published opinions:

"During his 15 years on the federal bench, Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito has worked quietly but resolutely to weave a conservative legal agenda into the fabric of the nation's laws." Assisted by Washington bureau researcher Tish Wells, Henderson and Mintz spent nearly a month reading all of Alito's 311 published opinions, which are available in a commercial database or in the archives of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, where Alito has sat for 15 years.

They concluded that, "although Alito's opinions are rarely written with obvious ideology, he's seldom sided with a criminal defendant, a foreign national facing deportation, an employee alleging discrimination or consumers suing big business."

The original article is here.

Jose Padilla was denied bail in Florida today and pleaded not guilty to the charges against him.

In denying bail, U.S. Magistrate Judge Barry Garber sided with prosecutors who said Padilla likely would flee to avoid trial and that the charges - including allegations that he attended an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan - made him dangerous.

Miami lawyer David Markus was there and has a recap of the hearing.

The Delaware Supreme Court has overturned the death sentence of former lawyer Thomas Capano, convicted of murdering Anne Marie Fahey.

The Court determined the penalty phase was flawed because the jury was not unanimous in its finding that the murder occurred as a result of Capano's substantial planning and pre-meditation.

This was one of those high-profile cases featured prominently by the cable news networks prior to and during trial.