From Law Prof Doug Berman at Sentencing Law and Policy: The 8th Circuit upholds a sentence of 8-plus years for two ounces of pot:

I will leave it to readers to decide for themselves which judges on the Eighth Circuit seem to have their judgment clouded by the wicked weed in US v. Chauncey, No. 04-1529 (8th Cir. Aug. 25, 2005) (available here (pdf)). The defendant in Chauncey, as a result of a criminal history leading to his classification as a career offender, received a sentence of 100 months after being convicted of possessing with intent to distribute less than two ounces of marijuana. According to Judge Lay's dissent, "Chauncey's undisputed purpose was to help [his friend] obtain marijuana to alleviate the painful effects of her multiple sclerosis."

Go read the rest.

Former federal prosecutor John Loftus anchors a segment on Fox News called "Inside Scoop with John Loftus." I've never seen it or even heard of it before. But, I likely won't be watching.

A couple whose home was wrongly identified on national television as belonging to an Islamic radical has faced harassment, and police are providing special protection.

But the alleged Islamic radical moved out three years ago. Randy and Ronnell Vorick are the current residents. Loftus gave out the home address on his show.

Yale Law Prof and blogger Jack Balkin explains why the Administration should turn over memos from Judge John Roberts to then-Reagan aide Patrick J. Buchanan in March 1986 on the subject of aid to Nicaraguans who were fighting the leftist Sandinista government. Background from the Washington Post is here. Balkin writes:

....during his time in the Reagan Administration John Roberts offered advice on the establishment of the Nicaraguan Humanitarian Assistance Office (NHAO), an organization used by the Reagan Administration to circumvent the Boland Amendment. For those of you who don't remember, the Boland Amendment made it illegal for U.S. intelligence agencies to provide covert funding to the contras in Nicaragua.

Balkin says that to get around the amendment, Reagan approved a plan by John Poindexter and Oliver North to sell anti-tank and anti-aircraft missles to Iran, the funds from which were then provided to the contras.

David Swanson of After Downing Street is in Crawford blogging about Camp Casey. He writes:

I came to Crawford today, and it's a little different from DC in several ways, but mostly it's hotter. I've been to both Camp Caseys, and am blogging this from the cool of the Crawford Peace House. At Camp Casey 1, I went across the road and talked to the half-dozen pro-war protesters. (There are police in the middle who have declared that there must be no interaction, but I didn't ask their permission.) I asked the pro-warers what they would tell Cindy Sheehan her son died for. Some of them couldn't come up with any reason for the war. A couple of them came up with this: Saddam Hussein would not have allowed Cindy Sheehan to protest on his road, and the war is being fought to protect that right in the US.

For our readers in Miami, experiencing Hurricane Katrina, and those bummed out by the MTV Award pre-show cancellations:The Grateful Dead (sing along with an audio clip here):

What do you want me to do,
to do for you to see you through?
this is all a dream we dreamed
one afternoon long ago
Walk out of any doorway
feel your way, feel your way
like the day before

Just a box of rain -
wind and water -
Believe it if you need it,
if you don't just pass it on
Sun and shower -
Wind and rain -
in and out the window
like a moth before a flame

It's just a box of rain
I don't know who put it there
Believe it if you need it
or leave it if you dare.

That song can cheer anyone up.

Digby's on fire - again. All of Digby's writing this summer has been exceptional - this is one of my favorites.

The time is coming when the Washington Press Corps, the Administration and even the networks won't dictate the stories and the slant of coverage. There are too many bloggers now ready to swarm, like a fly on the Administration's neck. They may swat us, but we will just show up again, on its arm, its shoulder, its cheek. They can't control the Cindy Sheehan stories, the takeover of our judiciary, the debacle of the War in Iraq and the War on Drugs. We are gaining.

Marc Cooper writes that he learned at poker boot camp how to tell when Rumsfeld is lying...which is all the time.

When people start sucking their lips into their mouths, they’re probably lying or bluffing. That’s what I was taught this past weekend in a poker boot camp by former FBI counter-intelligence officer Joe Navarro.

Joe was offering us campers a seminar on how to read body language. When it came to the lesson on lip-sucking, he emphasized the above point by saying: “That’s why every time you see Don Rumsfeld on TV his lips pretty much altogether disappear.”

There's lots more. [Via Kevin Drum and Crooks and Liars]

Giblets at the inimitable Fafblog today:

Oh sure, so Chavez wants to sell you gas now. But what he won't tell you is that it's commie gas. Infiltrating your engine, redistributing wealth in your carburetor, nationalizing your internal combustion engine, assasinating czars in your windshield wiper fluid! Oh, he has plans. Dark red Marxist plans - and they're headed right for your gas tank! You were warned, America - you were warned!

Also highly recommended, Medium Lobster at Fafblog on the birth of Iraq.

Arianna reports that U.N. Ambassador John Bolton is having a very private reception at the Waldorf Astoria tonight. The conservative press has been invited, but look who's been excluded:

...some of the people who won't be there include Colum Lynch from the Washington Post and Warren Hoge from the New York Times, both of whom cover the U.N. for their respective papers. If you thought the Bush administration’s cowardice about having to face anyone who is not completely on board with them was confined to Crawford and the campaign trail, think again.

by TChris

Up against (and a bit beyond) another extended deadline, the Iraqi National Assembly is unlikely to vote on a draft constitution. The newly improvised plan: skip the vote and send the draft to the people in a referendum.

The decision by the Shiite leadership to bypass the Sunni Arabs provoked threats from the Sunnis that they would call on their people to reject the constitution when it goes before the voters in October.

This isn't the plan the Bush administration has been hawking.

Barring some last-minute deal, the decision by the Shiites to move ahead without the Sunni Arabs would mark a huge blow to efforts by the Bush administration to bring the leaders of the Sunni community into the negotiations over the Iraqi constitution.

What happened to the "do-over" plan?

Via Sentencing Law and Policy, I see that USA Today has a new article on sex offender statistics that dispels some of the myths created by recent high-profile cases. Among them:

Sex crimes against children have dropped dramatically in the last decade. An online national sex-offender registry was launched in July. And recent research shows doctors can better predict which offenders may strike again....

Dramatic drop in cases. Government figures show the rate of sexual assaults against adolescents ages 12 to 17 plunged 79% from 1993 through 2003, and the number of substantiated sex-abuse cases involving kids of all ages fell 39% in the same time period. [One expert], who has analyzed the data, sees multiple reasons for the decline: Greater incarceration of offenders, more therapy and use of psychiatric drugs, economic improvement in the 1990s and heightened public concern. ...

Treatment helps. Group therapy dropped the recidivism rate from 17% to 10%, according to a 2002 study that [anther expert] co-wrote. He studied 9,454 sex offenders in 43 states.

I wrote about the release of Colorado's first "sexually violent predator" earlier today over at 5280. He was a 20 year old convicted of raping a 17 year old inebriated female he met at a party. He did six years in prison for the crime. The police chief of Fort Collins held a town hall meeting in a packed church to warn the community about the offender's release. What point does this ostracism make?

Here are some more myths and facts about sex offenders from the Department of Justice Center for Sex Offender Management.

European reporters have submitted a petition calling for the release of jailed New York Times reporter Judith Miller.

Twenty-seven prominent Europeans including Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar, German Nobel literature laureate Gunter Grass, French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy and British TV journalist Kate Adie have responded to an appeal from Reporters Without Borders and signed a petition urging the US courts to release New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who will have been in prison for 50 days tomorrow.