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.

by Last Night in Little Rock

CNN just reported on air that tonight's speech in NOLA by the President would be a "defining moment" for his presidency. Wrong.

His defining moment, to me, was when he stupidly said "nobody thought the levee would break" when the NOLA doomsday scenario was on everybody's mind who ever had a sentient thought about the fact a hurricane could destroy NOLA. Key words: "sentient thought."

by TChris

As this report notes, John Roberts answered few substantive questions during his confirmation hearings. This is standard practice in post-Bork hearings, and Roberts, who has coached other judicial candidates in the art of the non-answer, was careful to say nothing that could stir controversy.

"We're rolling the dice with you, judge," Biden said, "because you won't share your views with us. You've told me nothing in this Kabuki dance. The public has a right to know what you think."

"You've being less forthcoming with this Committee than any nominee who has ever come before us," said New York Democratic Senator Charles Schumer. "This process is getting more and more absurd," he added.

When he did venture an opinion, Judge Roberts tried to satisfy everyone (or, at least, to offend no one). As Emily Bazelon observes, Judge Roberts opined that justices who voted to replace Plessy (separate but equal is consistent with equal protection) with Brown (racial segregation violates equal protection) were not overreaching activists (placating the left) but were actually giving effect to the original intent of the Fourteenth Amendment (placating the right).

by TChris

TalkLeft reported here the death of 13-year-old Travis Parker at a Georgia-run “therapeutic” wilderness camp. Camp counselors held Parker down for more than an hour while ignoring his repeated requests for his asthma inhaler. Since that report, six camp counselors have been charged with Parker’s murder.

Sam Shoemaker, the man responsible for training the counselors, claimed that face-down restraint has been used at Appalachian Wilderness Camp for 17 years. It was reported today that the state fired Shoemaker for failing to cooperate with its investigation when he refused to take a polygraph examination concerning camp practices.

Outrage of the day: a 73-year old woman has been kept in jail on a $50,000 bond in New Orleans for looting $63.00 in sausages. To top it off, she says she's innocent.

Merlene Maten undoubtedly stands out in the prison where she has been held since Hurricane Katrina. The 73-year-old church deaconess, never before in trouble with the law, now sleeps among hardened criminals. Her bail is a stiff $50,000. Her offense? Police say the grandmother from New Orleans took $63.50 in goods from a looted deli the day after Katrina struck.

Family and eyewitnesses have a different story. They say Maten is an innocent woman who had gone to her car to get some sausage to eat but was wrongly handcuffed by tired, frustrated officers who couldn't catch younger looters at a nearby store. Not even the deli owner wants her charged.

Read the whole thing, this is just crazy. She's now being held in the state prison.

by TChris

Congress passed a resolution yesterday honoring the 50th anniversary of Rosa Parks' refusal to sit at the back of the bus.

This is the text of the resolution (H. Con. Res. 208):

If I lived in Massachussetts, I'd be very alarmed about this:

Governor Mitt Romney raised the prospect of wiretapping mosques and conducting surveillance of foreign students in Massachusetts, as he issued a broad call yesterday for the federal government to devote far more money and attention to domestic intelligence gathering.

In remarks that caused alarm among civil libertarians and advocates for immigrants rights, Romney said in a speech to the Heritage Foundation ... ''How many individuals are coming to our state and going to those institutions who have come from terrorist-sponsored states?" he said, referring to foreign students who attend universities in Massachusetts. ''Do we know where they are? Are we tracking them?"

How did this guy get elected? First he wants to reinstate the death penalty with a law he claims is fail-safe, when no such law is possible, and now this. A giant raspberry to Gov. Romney.

Here are some arguments against legislation to increase criminal penalties for hate crimes at the federal level--they come from an article I wrote in 2000, (from the last paragraph, I assume it was sometime after the murder of Matthew Shephard):

• The federal judiciary released a statement recently expressing constitutional and practical concerns about hate crime laws. The underlying criminal activity of a hate crime, such as robbery, assault, or murder, traditionally falls under state jurisdiction. The concern is that by passing federal hate crime laws, there will be a mass federalization of crime which should and could be adequately handled at the state level instead of overburdening our already overwhelmed federal courts.

• There is no evidence to suggest that hate crime laws will have a deterrent effect upon hate crimes.

• In many cases, it is very difficult to prove a hateful motivation for the criminal act. The decision to charge a hate crime as such should not be left to law enforcement. The F.B.I., for example, includes gestures and other body language in its hate crime statistics. Prosecutions to date in some cases have been based upon bigoted statements made several years before the act in question.