From Dan Abrams' blog (scroll down):

As some of you may know, the son of famed attorney Robert Shapiro died last week from a drug over-dose in California. I consider Bob a good friend.

His son Brent was a graduate of the University of Southern California who spent several semesters on the Deans list. Bob tells us Brent had turned his life around. He was engaged to be married and he had been sober for a one year and a half before he died last week.

I wrote Bob telling him how sorry I was for his loss and asked if there was anything I could do to help. He informed me that his family is starting a foundation to educate children and parents about drug awareness. It’s an effort to eliminate the stigma associated with drug abuse. Their goal is to change perceptions and to get parents and kids talking about it.

This is America? I realize that the 24/7 cable news industry has turned sex offenders into the latest pariahs, but this is over-the-top:

Child-welfare authorities seized a newborn from a hospital Friday and placed the baby in a foster home because his father is a convicted sex offender. A judge granted the mother supervised visitation rights but prohibited visits from the father.

The baby was born Tuesday and the agency obtained an emergency court order Wednesday authorizing it to take the infant after arguing that his safety is in jeopardy because the father pleaded guilty to rape and sodomy two decades ago in New York. The agency also cited concerns about the mother's alleged history of drug abuse, the mother's lawyer said.

The parents did not live together. Where is the evidence that he is a repeat offender or a risk to his child? How old was the victim in his first offense? What's next? A parent with a marijuana conviction stands to lose their kids because authorities think he or she might still be using in the home?

Reuters reports two of Fitzgerald's lead prosecutors, lugging giant legal briefcases, met with the grand jury today.

The grand jury, which expires on October 28, convened on Friday with two of the lead prosecutors present, but it was unclear what issues they were working on since the panel appears to have completed hearing from witnesses....One of the lawyers said prosecutors were likely starting to present their final case to jurors, either for bringing indictments or to explain why there was insufficient evidence to do so.

This should not be unclear at all. The prosecutors draft up the charges they want the grand jury to indict on, there will be discussions and questions and then the grand jury will vote on each charge presented to them.

This is usually TChris's department, but I can't resist.

A rapist was captured after he forced his victim to write him a check and then tried to cash it, police said.

Anthony R. Roberts, 25, was arrested Wednesday night outside a check cashing store, minutes after he left the woman's apartment, police said. Police said Roberts forced his way into her apartment at gunpoint, bound her with tape and raped her. But first he forced her to make out a $1,400 check in his name, and told her to write on it that it was for electrical work, authorities said.

[First posted on October 20, I've bumped it up since reporters are beginning to focus on the March, 2003 rather than June, 2003 date.]

Joseph Wilson wrote in his book and told Tim Russert on Meet the Press that the White House campaign to discredit him began in early March, 2003, after he had appeared on CNN and criticized the Niger documents as forgeries. In an earlier post, I quoted both:

Wilson's Book:

...According to my sources, between March 2003 and the appearance of my article in July, the workup on me that turned up the information on Valerie was shared with Karl Rove, who then circulated it in administration and neoconservative circles.

....Apparently, according to two journalist sources of mine, when Rove learned that he might have violated the law, he turned on Cheney and Libby and made it clear that he held them responsible for the problem they had created for the administration.

Crooks and Liars got a copy of the regret-laced memo Bill Keller of the New York Times sent out to his staff about Judy Miller.

I wish that when I learned Judy Miller had been subpoenaed as a witness in the leak investigation, I had sat her down for a thorough debriefing, and followed up with some reporting of my own. It is a natural and proper instinct to defend reporters when the government seeks to interfere in our work. And under other circumstances it might have been fine to entrust the details -- the substance of the confidential interviews, the notes -- to lawyers who would be handling the case.

But in this case I missed what should have been significant alarm bells. Until Fitzgerald came after her, I didn't know that Judy had been one of the reporters on the receiving end of the anti-Wilson whisper campaign. I should have wondered why I was learning this from the special counsel, a year after the fact. (In November of 2003 Phil Taubman tried to ascertain whether any of our correspondents had been offered similar leaks. As we reported last Sunday, Judy seems to have misled Phil Taubman about the extent of her involvement.) This alone should have been enough to make me probe deeper.

by TChris

The Kansas Supreme Court today struck down a provision in state law that imposed a harsher sentence on sexual contact with minors of the same sex than it imposed on sexual contact with minors of the opposite sex. The state's "Romeo and Juliet" law would have allowed a maximum sentence of 15 months to be imposed on an 18 year old man who had a sexual encounter with a consenting 14 year old girl. That limitation did not apply to an 18 year old man who has a sexual encounter with a consenting 14 year old boy.

The Supreme Court said in a unanimous ruling that a law that specified such harsher treatment and led to a 17-year prison sentence for an 18-year-old defendant "suggests animus toward teenagers who engage in homosexual sex."

"Moral disapproval of a group cannot be a legitimate state interest," said Justice Marla Luckert, writing for the high court.

Via AmericaBlog, the Providence Journal reports:

A Rhode Island Republican Party fundraiser scheduled for tonight featuring Andrew H. Card, White House chief of staff, has been canceled because Card is spending the weekend with President Bush at the presidential retreat at Camp David, Patricia Morgan, Republican state chairwoman, said yesterday.

I suspect they will be discussing replacements for those who about to be indicted, and/or those who have agreed to plead guilty.

I'm still leaning towards believing that Rove and Libby will fall on their swords and have plea agreements in place by next week, to spare their respective bosses, Bush and Cheney, the ugly fallout from a protracted criminal case and from being called as witnesses.

The question is, will Bush pardon them in return for their loyalty before or after they serve any jail time required by the deals?

Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post reports Patrick Fitzgerald and the Justice Department has created a website relating to the Plame Grand jury.

Here it is.

Former White House aides are now charging Libby orchestrated a campaign to discredit Joseph Wilson that continued into 2004. The LA Times reports it has received documents establishing this from the former aides.

Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff was so angry about the public statements of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, a Bush administration critic married to an undercover CIA officer, that he monitored all of Wilson's television appearances and urged the White House to mount an aggressive public campaign against him, former aides say.

Those efforts by the chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, began shortly after Wilson went public with his criticisms in 2003. But they continued into last year — well after the Justice Department began an investigation in September 2003, into whether administration officials had illegally disclosed the CIA operative's identity, say former White House aides.

Who's sticking up for Libby? Cheney Chief Cheerleader Mary Matalin. [hat tip Patriot Daily.]

Bump and Update: Bad news. Kidnapped lawyer Saadoun Sughaiyer al-Janabi has been killed.

*****
Original Post (10/20)

The AP is reporting:

Ten masked gunmen kidnapped the lawyer for one of Saddam Hussein's co-defendants Thursday, police said. Saadoun Sughaiyer al-Janabi, who was in the courtroom for Wednesday's opening session of the trial, is one of two lawyers for Awad Hamed al-Bandar, one of seven Baath Party officials being tried with Saddam.

by TChris

The police want to search a house but they don't have a warrant. They ask the occupants for consent to search. One says yes but the other says no. Can the police search?

In Connecticut, the state supreme court said "no" in a decision released yesterday.

The court ruled 3-2 that opposition to a search by one resident invalidates permission granted by another, which is contrary to most case law on the issue nationwide. Defense lawyers predict the ruling will be troublesome for police, and could apply not only to attempted searches of homes but also to searches of businesses and cars with several occupants.