An attorney in Waco, Texas has been arrested for kidnapping her client on his wedding day.

What was she thinking? Attorney Paula Allen bonded a client out of jail, he failed to appear and she was held liable for $5,000.

In an attempt to collect, she and some associates allegedly showed up at the client's wedding and kidnapped him. The client was handcuffed, which is against the law in Texas, even for bounty hunters.

They drove to the police station, but didn't turn the client in. Instead, they allegedly drove around for four hours while they had the client call family members on a cell phone trying to raise $20,000 the client owed Allen for the bail bond forfeiture and attorneys' fees.

The client escaped. The lawyer got no money, but a felony charge.

[Via How Appealing.]

by Last Night in Little Rock

"Brokeback Mountain," the movie of a love affair between two cowboys who later marry women and must deal with their love for each other, was voluntarily banned in Utah, which is not surprising since even renting an R rated movie at Blockbuster is impossible (you get the sanitized made for airplanes or TV versions there).

It opened in Little Rock last night to a sold out crowd, with the theater manager saying, essentially, "if there is a market, we'll show it."

by TChris

Former Attorney General John Ashcroft implemented the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS), which required thousands of Arab and Muslim men "to report to local immigration offices across the United States to be registered, fingerprinted, photographed and interrogated."

NSEERS was so poorly conceived and badly managed that it created chaos and fear. Trust between the immigrant community and law enforcement was severely strained, and in the end, there was no evidence that any terrorists were apprehended as a result of the effort.

Although parts of the program have been suspended, it continues to cause harm.

VA Governor Mark Warner leaves office today. Some are criticizing his attempts to make our criminal justice system a fairer place. They are off-base. He is not a "soft on crime" politician.

But in four years as governor, Mr. Warner has incrementally and with little fanfare established groundbreaking policies on the use of DNA testing to confirm, or challenge, criminal convictions, many of them in death penalty cases. Last week, he became the first governor to order a DNA test involving a man who had already been executed.

The actions of Mr. Warner, who leaves office on Saturday, have established new middle ground in the polarized world of death penalty politics. Unlike former Gov. George Ryan of Illinois, who ordered a moratorium on executions in 2003, Mr. Warner has not called for halting executions, and he still supports capital punishment. His goal, he has said, has not been to undermine the system but to make sure it works.

by TChris

In 1982, Alan Crotzer was sentenced to 130 years in prison for armed robbery and rape. A victim picked him out of a lineup. He's been serving that sentence for more than half his life.

One of the actual perpetrators admits that Crotzer is innocent, and Florida prosecutors, to their credit, acknowledge that new DNA testing casts "significant doubt'' on his guilt. They've agreed not to oppose a motion to vacate Crotzer's sentence.

Congratulations to the Florida Innocence Initiative for its work on Crotzer's behalf.

Cingular has issued a press release saying it has obtained temporary restraining orders against two internet sites that have been selling customer phone records online.

Cingular today obtained a Temporary Restraining Order from the U.S. District Court in Atlanta, GA, against two companies, Data Find Solutions, Inc. and 1st Source Information Specialists, Inc. Several weeks ago, Cingular filed a civil lawsuit alleging that these companies unlawfully obtained and disseminated Cingular customer records. The court has now granted Cingular's request for a Temporary Restraining Order in order to halt these companies' ability to obtain and sell Cingular customer records.

Cingular believes that 1st Source now owns Locate Cell and Cell Tolls, and that the two sites formerly were owned by Data Find.

AmericaBlog was able to obtain Wesley Clark's Sprint cell phone records for $89 from Locate Cell. CNN reported tonight it was able to buy a producer's Sprint cell phone recrods for the same price. John of AmericaBlog reports that he was able to buy his own Cingular calls from Locate Cell.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger denied clemency today for 76 year old Clarence Ray Allen who at 76, is blind, wheelchair bound, suffering from severe diabetes and heart disease. Unless the federal courts or Supreme Court intervene, he will be executed on January 17.

"The spectacle of Mr. Allen being wheeled into the death chamber, unable to walk and unable to see those who have come to witness his execution, violates all standards of decency and would amount to nothing more than the purposeless and needless imposition of pain and suffering prohibited by the Eighth Amendment," said Annette Carnegie, one of Allen's attorneys.

....California's death row houses five men older than 70; 34 are ages 60 to 69. Viva Leroy Nash, 90, of Arizona is the nation's oldest death row inmate. No execution date has been set.

TalkLeft background is here.

by TChris

Edward Mueller filed a municipal complaint against Stephen Acropolis, alleging that Acropolis violated a Brick Township, New Jersey ordinance that prohibits the display of political campaign signs more than 30 days before an election. Mueller listed eight addresses where Acropolis’ signs were posted. Why this should be Acropolis’ problem is unclear, since the signs weren’t on his property, but Mueller wants Acropolis to be held responsible because he was “at the top of the ticket.”

Acropolis reasonably points out that the ordinance stifles political speech and is likely unconstitutional. He also wonders why Mueller, a journalist as well as a losing candidate, would want to squelch political expression:

[Acropolis] finds it peculiar that Mueller, who publishes the weekly Brick Township Town News and Sampler, would try to stifle a residents' right to free speech. “If Ed Mueller was a newspaperman who cared about free speech, he wouldn't have signed the complaint," Acropolis said.

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.