Frances Newton is scheduled to be executed in Texas tomorrow night. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee gave a press conference today, urging that Newton be granted a reprieve.

Ms. Newton's habeas sought to raise three independent claims:

• The first is that she is actually innocent, and that had she received effective counsel, no rational juror would have convicted her.
• The second is that she is actually innocent of the sentence (meaning she should not have been sentenced to death).
• Thirdly, her conviction and sentence violate the due process clause, because the State has destroyed potentially exculpatory evidence

Links:

• Committee to Free Frances
• Austin-Statesman Editorial
• Austin Chronicle

Update: Law Prof Glenn Reynolds, writing over at his MSNBC blog, sums up a general consensus of opinion on today's hearings: The Senators bloviated, speechified and repeatedly touted themselves. In agreement: Slate's Dahlia Lathwick, Ann Althouse and me. Although none of them mentioned Jeff Sessions who I thought was the worst of the bunch.

Update: I tuned in to watch a little bit of the hearings. Sen. Jeff Sessions has been speechifying against abortion without asking a question for almost five minutes. I can't believe he wasn't interrupted and told to ask a question.

There will be a break and then Sen. Feingold will question Judge Roberts at 5:05pm. I hope he asks about the death penalty like he did at Roberts' 2003 confirmation hearing. If you're not by a tv, you can watch here.

The radical right isn't happy with Roberts' answers. One commenter there says, "...this nomination is shaping up as the biggest failure of the Bush presidency."

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Original post:

Here's an open thread on Judge John Roberts' confirmation. My latest Scoring Scotus, Judge Roberts Speaks, is up at Eric Alterman's Altercation today.

Say hello to CBS's new blog, The Public Eye. One of the bloggers there is Brian Montopoli, formerly of the Columbia Journalism Review. Brian was one of the bloggers with press credentials for the Democratic convention - and even though he hung out with us liberals, he strived to provide non-partisan coverage. He is an excellent choice for CBS, and I bet it's not long before we see him on the CBS evening news.

Sharon Bush, ex-wife of President Bush's brother Neil, got a big court victory today. The slander suit against her alleging she falsely claiming Neil fathered his current wife's child (while they were having an affair but still married) has been dismissed.

"Mrs. Bush obviously feels vindicated and feels as though the entire matter was in bad faith," her attorney, David Berg, said Monday. The lawsuit by Robert Andrews of Houston had accused Sharon Bush of spreading rumors that his son, Thomas Alexander Andrews, then 3, was fathered by Bush while he was having an affair with Andrews' then-wife, Maria Andrews. She later divorced Andrews and married Bush.

Background here.

Via Steve Audio: The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights has sued Tyson Foods for maintaining segregrated bathrooms in its work area.

A lawsuit filed today alleges that Tyson Foods, Inc. is responsible for maintaining a segregated bathroom and break room, reminiscent of the Jim Crow era, in its Ashland, Alabama chicken processing plant. Twelve African-American employees filed a complaint in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama, alleging that a “Whites Only” sign and a padlock denied them access to a bathroom in the Ashland plant. The complaint states that numerous white employees had keys to the bathroom that were not provided to African-American workers.

by TChris

The president who never accepts blame uttered some surprising words today:

President Bush said Tuesday that "I take responsibility" for failures in dealing with Hurricane Katrina ...

Of course, the president hedged his acceptance of responsiblity:

"To the extent the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility," Bush said.

Given the efforts of Bush supporters to deflect blame to state and local officials, or to the victims of Katrina, it isn't clear that Bush believes the government he oversees was remiss in any significant degree. Still, he acknowledged the obvious: "Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government," including, presumably, the government he was elected to run.

by TChris

The hunger strike at Guantanamo (last reported by TalkLeft here) continues to grow. At least 128 detainees are participating in the protest, although the actual number is probably larger.

The hunger strike began in the first week of August, and, according to newly declassified accounts of detainees provided by their lawyers, has gradually spread across several camps at the prison. Detainees allege they have been severely beaten and are deeply frustrated at their indefinite detentions. Some have been held for 3 1/2 years without facing charges.

Lawyers for the prisoners assert that more than 200 detainees are refusing food. An earlier hunger strike in June and July ended after military authorities met with a small group of detainees and promised improvements in their living conditions.

Don't miss Arianna today on how the GOP intends to turn Katrina to their benefit:

Two weeks in, Katrina has turned into an all-you-can-eat-right-wing-policy buffet.

And, as is so often the case with these tireless champions of crony capitalism, the main course at this opportunistic smorgasbord is “privatization”. And the target du jour is FEMA. The subtext is that the Katrina debacle somehow proves that disaster relief is no business for the government and should be turned over to the Halliburtons of the world (after all, they’ve done such a great job supplying our troops and reconstructing Iraq, right?).

Of course, FEMA’s Katrina failures have far less to do with some inherent big government bugaboos than with the way Bush and the partisan hacks he installed there turned a successful, widely-praised cabinet level agency (one that then-Gov. George Bush took time to praise in a debate with Al Gore in 2000) into a denuded and incompetently managed after-thought.

by TChris

“Join the Army. Die in Iraq.” Lacking an effective recruiting slogan, the Army National Guard and Army Reserve both fell “far short” of their annual recruiting goals for fiscal 2005, ending this month. Despite offering financial incentives, appealing to patriotism, and asking Congress to raise the maximum enlistment age to 42 (soon AARP members will be asked to join), the regular Army will also miss its recruiting goals.

by TChris

The WaPo-ABC poll numbers aren't as bad as the Newsweek numbers, but if the president actually read the newspaper, he wouldn't be happy with them.

The bungled response to the hurricane has helped drag down Bush's job-approval rating, which now stands at 42 percent -- the lowest of his presidency -- in the Post-ABC poll and down three points since the hurricane hit two weeks ago. Fifty-seven percent disapprove of Bush's performance, a double-digit increase since January.

Even some members of Bush's own party appear to have lost faith in their leader: The president's overall approval rating among Republicans has declined from 91 percent in January to 78 percent in the latest poll.

Memeorandum, which is a daily stop for bloggers who want to know what other bloggers are reporting on, has gotten a major bloglift (y.i.c.t.p.)

It's a big change. I had some advance notice having had the opportunity to view the Beta months ago. I'm liking the final version better than the beta, but it will still take some getting used to.

I'm not a big fan of change, it upsets my equilibrium, but I think once I get used to the new Memeorandum, I'll realize it's a big advance.

by Last Night in Little Rock

As previously reported here, the NRA was slow to speak out about confiscation of guns in NOLA. They did today:

National Rifle Association leader Wayne LaPierre slammed New Orleans authorities Monday for seizing legal firearms from lawful residents. "What we’ve seen in Louisiana--the breakdown of law and order in the aftermath of disaster--is exactly the kind of situation where the Second Amendment was intended to allow citizens to protect themselves, " LaPierre said.

"When law enforcement isn’t available, Americans turn to the one right that protects all the others--the right to keep and bear arms," LaPierre said. "This attempt to repeal the Second Amendment should be condemned."

Usually, the NRA is right on this kind of thing. It took them as long to swing into action as the Bush Administration.