There's a must-read article in Salon today, Dreams Unrealized on the failure of the civil rights movement in the U.S., in the context of the yeoman's job foreign poverty lawyers are doing for the poor and those facing the death penalty in the U.S.:

While it may be easy for American tourists to turn a blind eye to their own third world, a steady stream of young Australians and Europeans have been coming to Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas and the rest of the deep South for years to serve the needs of the indigent people throughout these states.

As the co-director and recruiter for Reprieve U.S., an organization that sponsors and places volunteers at poverty law offices, it is always mildly surprising and embarrassing to me to hear these bright and passionate people explain that they are applying either to work for the poor in the criminal justice system in Texas or to help build shelters in Guatemala, and are unable to determine where the needs are greater. What seems most shocking to our volunteers is the complete disregard that the U.S. government has paid our clients throughout their lives, failing to provide housing, healthcare, education and other basic needs.

[Via Capital Defense Weekly]

by TChris

Another pledge of allegiance case might work its way to the Supreme Court.

U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton ruled that the pledge's reference to one nation "under God" violates school children's right to be "free from a coercive requirement to affirm God."

TalkLeft background on the case that reached the Supreme Court, only to go unresolved on the merits, is here.

Let's have some praise where praise is due: For the inmates in Louisiana who have pitched in as first responders and other helpers for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

[James]Cox, a prisoner for nearly 30 years, is serving time for armed robbery at the Washington Correctional Institute. In the past two weeks, though, he has also been a first responder, one of dozens of inmates in orange jumpsuits who have been driving forklifts, clearing debris and handing out food and water to people living here near the Mississippi line.

As Louisiana digs out from Hurricane Katrina, convicts have been opening roads with axes and chainsaws and doing other useful work. At Angola State Penitentiary, near Baton Rouge, inmates produced mattresses for shelters. Some prisoners have even donated money from what little they are paid so evacuees can buy postage stamps.

by TChris

Douglas Dowd asks whether this description of the "New South," written in 1940, applies to the nation as a whole today:

Violence, intolerance, aversion and suspicion toward new ideas, an incapacity for analysis, an inclination to act from feeling rather than from thought, an exaggerated individualism and a too narrow concept of social responsibiity, attachment to fictions and false values..., too great an attachment to racial values and a tendency to justify cruelty and injustice in the name of those values, sentimentality and a lack of realism... .

Dowd's answer, informed by history and current events, is here.

This weekend, another Minuteman-style group is gearing up to “patrol” the California-Mexico border at various points between the Pacific Ocean and the Arizona state line. As they head to the South Bay and drive past Chicano Park on I-5, this group will see the above 50 × 10 foot canvass painted to resemble a movie billboard.

Cazamigrantes is Spanish for migrant hunters. The billboard was designed by local artist Susan Yamagata and painted by Southwestern College’s Border Arts Workshop. It was commissioned by Latino organizations in San Diego.

Several people have e-mailed me this week to let me know the site is loading so slowly it's become a source of frustration. If you are having the same problem, please add a comment here. I am going to contact my hosting company to see if there is something they can do, but I'd like to get a handle on the size of the problem. Please be patient.

by TChris

A federal marshal who shot another driver after a traffic altercation in Maryland has been sentenced to 15 years in prison. A jury rejected Arthur Lloyd's claim that he acted in self-defense. The verdict isn't surprising if this description of the evidence is accurate:

by TChris

A NY Times editorial explains why the Pennsylvania House passed a bill that would prevent individuals on probation or parole from voting.

The Pennsylvania bill represents an odious attempt by lawmakers to undo a state court ruling overturning a law that required newly released prisoners to wait five years before getting the right to vote. Republican lawmakers who disliked the court ruling liked it even less when community activists in Democratic parts of the state began to inform ex-felons that they now had the right to return to the polls.

Voting is a right of citizenship. Voting fosters rehabilitation by allowing ex-offenders to feel a connection to others, to be woven into the social fabric. The counterproductive and undemocratic bill is likely to die in the Pennsylvania Senate, but the Times is right to label this attempt to suppress voting rights as "shameful" and "reprehensible."

by Last Night in Little Rock

The LA Times today has an op-ed today, Roberts' bad decision by legal ethicists Stephen Gillers, David Luban and Steven Lubet that John Roberts was in the process of being interviewed for his appointment to the Supreme Court while he was deciding Hamdan v. Rumsfeld on the constitutionality of Gitmo military tribunals. (Roberts did not write the opinion, but he voted on the three judge panel.)

Judicial ethics and 28 U.S.C. § 455 mandated recusal. But, neither of those legal constraints kept Justices Thomas and Scalia from making George Bush president in 2000. Thomas' wife worked on Bush's transition team (§ 455(b)(5)(iii)) and Scalia's son worked for one of the law firms representing Bush (albeit not directly involved; § 455(b)(5)(ii)).

The "appearance of impropriety" standard applies. If it looks bad, that is enough.

by TChris

Today in Iraq:

Terrorists loyal to al Qaeda claimed responsibility for a wave of deadly attacks across Iraq that left more than 100 people dead today, saying they were retaliating for a military offensive against insurgents in the northern city of Tal Afar.

by Last Night in Little Rock

CNN.com last night posted this story: 'People making decisions hesitated' / More officials' jobs may fall to Katrina response criticism with a video link to who knew what and when before Katrina struck.

And Michael Brown's magnanimous resignation is not the first.

Update: Never Mind, Positions have been filled.

From the Southern Center for Human Rights: Volunteer criminal defense attorneys and paralegals are needed this weekend in Louisiana:

When the levee broke in New Orleans, about 7000 men, women, and children were locked up in Orleans Parish Prison (OPP) and other area jails. After 2 days of chaos and rising water, people who were locked up were shoved onto
buses and scattered to 35 facilities throughout the state. They were sent without papers, and the OPP computer system is underwater. Many of the folks now sitting in DOC custody were in OPP waiting for bond, serving 5 day sentences for public drunkenness, waiting to be processed in/out, etc. They are now locked down in Louisiana's DOC, a notoriously mean-spirited bureaucracy that has very little capacity to reconnect families or even verify information that would allow these folks to be released & reunited with their families.