by TChris

A columnist at The Daily Tar Heel, the student newspaper at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who started a column with the words "I want all Arabs to be stripped naked and cavity-searched if they get within 100 yards of an airport," has been fired -- not for expressing her repellent views, but for misleading her sources.

Columnist Jillian Bandes told three campus sources - two Arab students and a professor who teaches a course on Arabic - she was writing an article about Arab-American relations, Daily Tar Heel opinion editor Chris Coletta wrote in an article published Thursday.

Bandes lied to her sources. She was actually writing a column about her desire for racial profiling at airports. Her column gave the false impression that the sources she interviewed endorsed her views.

by TChris

In a story that could have been entitled "Stupid Arrest of the Year," TalkLeft reported the plight of a 73-year-old diabetic grandmother and church elder who was arrested for allegedly looting sausages in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In defiance of the Constitution's prohibition of excessive bail, the woman's bail was set at $50,000. Her long overdue release from custody speaks to the power of the press:

Despite intervention from the nation's largest senior lobby, volunteer lawyers from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and even a private attorney, the family fought a futile battle for 16 days to get her freed.

Then, hours after her plight was featured in an Associated Press story, a local judge on Thursday ordered Maten freed on her own recognizance, setting up a sweet reunion with her daughter, grandchildren and 80-year-old husband.

Look for this prosecution to disappear quietly. A witness attests that the charge is bogus.

by TChris

The Innocence Project at Illinois State University hopes that a documentary will arouse interest in the 1993 murder conviction of Dale Helmig.

Missouri newspapers have begun to re-examine the case since the Innocence Project produced "A Matter of Innocence: The Story of Dale Helmig" that will be shown Tuesday at ISU.

There is ample reason to question Helmig's guilt. Helmig's supporters argue that police and prosecutors built a circumstantial case against Helmig while ignoring evidence pointing to two other suspects.

by Last Night in Little Rock

The NY Times reports today that G.O.P. Split Over Big Plans for Storm Spending. I wrote here that the federal government had a moral obligation to pay for the damage and reconstruction.

Suddenly, the big spenders become misers.

by TChris

As a general rule, the federal government shouldn’t be in the business of micro-managing a school’s curriculum, even if the school receives federal funding. Still, it’s easy to understand Senator Byrd’s frustration that schools have done a poor job of teaching the history and meaning of the United States Constitution.

In December he inserted into a giant spending bill a passage requiring every American school receiving federal money to teach about the Constitution on Sept. 17, the date it was signed in 1787.

Constitutional history is an unlikely subject at the massage and cosmetology schools that are subject to the law, and there are reasons to fear congressional interference with local control of schools. Do we want the federal government telling schools that they should teach intelligent design alongside, or instead of, evolution?

Byrd is nonetheless right to believe that people need to know more about the Constitution.

Summer is definitely over. I have court at 8:30 and again at 2:00 and yet again at 3:30. On the plus-side, the weather in Denver is perfect, even driving from court to court is a pleasure and I have the best day job in the world. Also, my latest post is up on Huffington Post, and maybe TChris or Last Night in Little Rock will be around.

On the minus-side, I don't have a Blackberry or other means of posting when I'm away from my desk, so feel free to keep each other up-to-the-minute with news and your views. I'll be back tonight.

If you need something to get you started, check out Bill Maher, speaking to President Bush:

"On Your Watch, We've Lost Almost All Of Our Allies, The Surplus, Four Airliners, Two Trade Centers, A Piece Of The Pentagon And The City Of New Orleans”...

A pre-publication, 40% discount offer has been extended until September 21 for Alan Ellis' indispensable Federal Prison Guidebook (pdf). First published in 1998, this is the best one yet. Not only does it include a listing of all federal prisons and updated information, but it also contains a much expanded chapter on practice tips, an updated and revised chapter on “How to Do Time,” a new chapter on “How to Secure a Favorable Prison Placement,” an article entitled “Getting Out Early: The Bureau of Prisons Drug Program,” a user friendly listing of all federal prisons that contain the BOP RDAP program and more. It will be sent out in late October.

A retarded man upon whom a jury declined to impose the death penalty has been killed by another inmate in an Indiana prison. The prosecutor called it "poetic justice." The cop on the case said, "I see it as a higher court passing judgment...I think he got what he had coming."

Where do these prosecutors and cops come from?

In a letter to House Intelligence Committee Chair Peter Hoekstra yesterday, the Justice Department balked at turning documents related to the Plame investigation over to Congress. It said that Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald advised that to do so would interfere with his criminal investigation, which "lawyers close to the investigation" (read, lawyers for those under investigation) expect to be concluded in the next few weeks.

As we reported here, yesterday the House Judiciary Committee and International Relations Committee, in party-line votes, rejected a Congressional Resolution of Inquiry into the leak of the identity of former covert operative Valerie Plame. As expected, the House Intelligence Committee today also rejected the Resolution of Inquiry, again on a party line vote. As Murray Waas says tonight,

Had the resolutions of inquiry been adopted, they would have lead to the first independent congressional inquiries of the Plame affair, and perhaps even the public testimony of senior Bush administration aides, such as Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff, and I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, about their personal roles.

by Last Night in Little Rock

The New York Times quotes NOLA Mayor Nagin as saying that parts of New Orleans will be open this weekend, "with the French Quarter fully open for business a week from Monday."

I'm making plans to be there for the opening, if not sooner because parts of the French Quarter are already open, assuming I can clear my calendar. It is for next week, but that may be too soon.

My wife says it's because I'm apparently drawn to disasters. We were at Ground Zero two weeks later in 2001. The stench of death hung over lower Manhattan, but the City had regained most of its spirit by then, but there was a sense of everybody being subdued.

As far as I'm concerned, anything that divides the Republicans is a good thing. The Wall St. Journal has a (free) article up for tomorrow on how conservatives who are balking at Bush's spending plans are worried that voters may stay home from the polls in the mid-term elections.

...conservatives' rebelliousness threatens a range of Bush initiatives before Congress. Moreover, Republican strategists worry that widespread disenchantment among the party's bedrock conservatives could lead many to stay home in next year's midterm elections.

Uh-oh. Alan Dershowitz discusses what he has learned from listening to Judge Roberts:

1. He will not overrule Roe v. Wade, though he will not extend it beyond current Supreme Court holdings.

2. He will dramatically lower the wall of separation between church and state, and be a reliable vote with Justices Scalia and Thomas on this critical issue.

3. He will uphold the death penalty against both substantive and procedural challenges and will narrow the opportunity of death row inmates to challenge their convictions.