Kevin at Wizbang is running his third annual weblog awards. (These are different from the Koufax awards in that there are many conservative blogs competing with liberal blogs.)

Kevin's got more categories this year and more liberal choices within the categories. Voting began today, and there is a real-time voting tally so you can see who's winning at any given point. Among the categories and finalists:

• Crooks and Liars is up for best video blog
• Raw Story is up for best media/journalist blog
• Firedoglake and Digby are up for Best of the Top 250 blogs
• Atrios, Daily Kos, HuffPo and Kevin Drum are up for best blog
• Think Progress is up for best group blog
• Jesus' General and Fafblog are up for Most Humorous blog
  
• Sentencing Law and Policy and How Appealing are up for best law blog
• and TalkLeft, TBogg and AmericaBlog are up for best liberal blog

So please, take a moment to go over and vote. You can vote once a day in each category. Voting ends December 15.

Condi Rice is the new Emporer with no clothes, trying to sell Europe a bill of goods, pretending the CIA's secret prisons and renditions are legally legitimate and factually justified. Her first big test comes Tuesday in Germany. Human rights lawyers spoke up today, exposing the falsity of her claims.

Human rights lawyers said some of the cases which have come to light amounted to "disappearing people," a practice recognized as illegal for decades since its widespread use by Latin American governments in the 1970s. "If we're actually taking people, abducting them and then placing them in incommunicado detention, which appears to be the case, we would be actually guilty then of a disappearance under international law, in addition to a rendition," said Meg Satterthwaite of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University School of Law.

Deborah Davis, the woman charged with a crime for refusing to show her identification to an officer while riding on a public bus in Denver, has a court appearance on Friday. There will be a rally at the federal courthouse in Denver to show support for her.

WHAT: Rally for Deb Davis' stand for the Freedom to Travel
WHEN: Friday, the 9th of December at 8:30 AM
WHERE: The steps of the Alfred A. Arraj U.S. Courthouse, 901 19th Street in Denver.

Information about her legal case is available here. Her side of the story is presented here. The statement of the Homeland Security Officer is here (pdf).

What was going through the mind of former Miami cop Jesus Guitierrez when he turned down a plea offer with probation and no jail time on charges he had sex with a 14 year old enrolled in a police teen program over a ten month period?

He rolled the dice, went to trial and was convicted of three counts of lewd and lascivious conduct on a child. The Judge sentenced him Friday to 20 years in prison to be followed by 15 years of probation.

Trials are risky. Guiterrez has a wife and two small children, who will now grow up without a father. If he turned down the deal to get his job back or avoid sex offender registration, banking on the victim crumbling on the stand, he made a poor choice.

It looks like Tom DeLay will not be able to regain his leadership position in the House in January. The judge in his Texas criminal case today refused to dismiss the money laundering charges against him. While the conspiracy charges were dismissed, DeLay now must stand trial, and it is unlikely the trial can be scheduled before the end of the year.

As to the dismissed charges:

by TChris

Adam Bollenbach was 16 when he stole a six-pack of beer from an open garage. Apart from being young, he’s bipolar and suffers from ADHD. His crime merited an apology, repayment for the beer, and enough supervision to assure that he obtained treatment for his mental health problems. So why is this Florida teen serving a ten year sentence?

Months earlier, Adam had been charged as an adult for theft of a bag of potato chips from his school lunchroom. This charge was dropped, but according to the law, once charged as an adult, you cannot be charged as a juvenile.

Adam went before Circuit Judge Ric Howard who admitted that he was using Adam as a teaching tool in front of other juvenile offenders. The result was a sentence of 10 years in prison.

Adam was sentenced for burglarizing a dwelling, but harsh penalties are intended for those who break into homes at night (potentially putting lives, including the burglar’s, at risk), not for unarmed kids who walk into an open garage during the day. Adam’s plight is, in part, the handiwork of the “tough on crime” crowd, who perceive no difference between kids and adults, and who have successfully lobbied compliant legislators to enact laws that punish teenagers instead of helping them. And it’s partly the fault of a judge who is willing to throw a kid away to make an example out of him. From this travesty, other kids are supposed to learn to respect the law?

Is the tide finally turning on Law and Order and its never-ending spinoffs about prosecutors and cops? I hope so. ABC will launch a new series in January called In Justice about defense lawyers in an Innocence Project fighting to free clients who have been wrongfully convicted.

Every year, hundreds of innocent men and women get convicted of crimes they didn't commit. Sloppy police work. False testimony. Biased juries. In the blink of an eye an innocent man can lose his life to the mistakes of an imperfect system. And every year the number of innocents who live without hope behind bars multiplies, while the real criminals walk free.

The leading role goes to a Barry Scheck-type character.

I'm sure Kathleen Sullivan is not amused that her failure to pass the California Bar Exam after this illustrious career is making national news:

A native of New York City, Ms. Sullivan has an undergraduate degree from Cornell University and a law degree from Harvard University. She taught at both Stanford and Harvard before becoming dean of Stanford's law school in 1999. The author of a leading constitutional-law casebook, Ms. Sullivan has argued several cases before the Supreme Court. Earlier this spring, the nation's highest court ruled in favor of one of her clients, a California winegrowers' group, striking down state laws that restricted direct sales from vineyards to consumers.

The New York Post has an incredible story today alleging that Al Pirro, Jeanine's husband, was behind the recent requests by Republican higher-ups for Jeanine to drop the Senate race and run for Attorney General instead. [Via Kevin Drum]

Jeanine Pirro's own husband is working against her in her bid for the U.S. Senate, sneaking around behind her back to lobby a state Republican leader to get her to drop out of the race, sources told The Post. Gov. Pataki also was part of the extraordinary plot to get the Westchester County DA — whom he endorsed for the race before becoming convinced she wasn't up to the effort — to throw in the towel and run for attorney general, not for Senate against Hillary Rodham Clinton, The Post has learned.

Details of the request are here. TalkLeft background on Al Pirro is here. Also see TChris's Pirro Plays the Crime Card.

If you missed my post on why I'm covering Jeanine's run, it's here.

Jane's on fire today with questions for Viveca Novak about her relationship with Karl Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin.

...what exactly was your relationship with Robert Luskin? We will do you the courtesy of presuming you were not buttering each other's toast at the St. Regis like Scooter and Judy, but where does it fall along the continuum, say, from narc/snitch to "let's load up on Manhattans and hit the handbag sale at Barney's?"

Jane has 15 detailed questions for Viveca. I'll add one more:

Why did Bob Woodward choose you and Time Magazine over his own paper and every other reporter in town for his exclusive story on why his source came clean to Fitzgerald?

A feisty defendant, an outspoken defense lawyer and a judge trying, and failing in large measure, to maintain control of the courtroom. Day one of the witness testimony in the trial of Saddam Hussein did not go exactly as planned. Some highlights:

Defense lawyers staged a short walkout when the Judge didn't allow them two minutes to attack the legitimacy of the court. Later, they were allowed to make their argument. Saddam insisted he is not afraid of execution but lost his temper several times.

After the defense lawyers left, Saddam, shaking his right hand, told the judge: "You are imposing lawyers on us. They are imposed lawyers. The court is imposed by itself. We reject that."

Saddam and Ibrahim then chanted "Long live Iraq, long live the Arab state." Ibrahim stood up and shouted: "Why don't you just execute us and get rid of all of this!"

When the judge explained that he was ruling in accordance with the law, Saddam replied: "This is a law made by America and does not reflect Iraqi sovereignty."

If you were arrested in Broward County (Fort Lauderdale area)for a misdemeanor and strip-searched, you should find out more about this class-action lawsuit. [Note: Link removed at request of Miami Herald on 7/09/08.] Miami had a policy of strip-searching almost everyone arrested which is not allowed.

State statute allows strip searches in cases that are violent in nature or involve a weapon or illegal drugs, not for most misdemeanor arrests.... a policy of searching everyone who walks in the door of the jail is illegal, Fort Lauderdale attorney Kevin Kulik said.

BSO detention Deputy Susette Bryant stated in a deposition that she strip-searched detainees when asked between 1999 and 2002. And, she said, ``every person that walked in that door was strip-searched.''