Lots going on offline here today...here's a place for your thoughts.

Scary story of the day:

The Defense Department began working yesterday with a private marketing firm to create a database of high school students ages 16 to 18 and all college students to help the military identify potential recruits in a time of dwindling enlistment in some branches.

The program is provoking a furor among privacy advocates. The new database will include personal information including birth dates, Social Security numbers, e-mail addresses, grade-point averages, ethnicity and what subjects the students are studying.

[Via Huffington Post.] Arthur at Light of Reason has a lot to say about this.

Karl Rove went over the top at a fundraiser yesterday in Manhattan. His comments:

Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers.....I don't know about you, but moderation and restraint is not what I felt when I watched the twin towers crumble to the ground, a side of the Pentagon destroyed, and almost 3,000 of our fellow citizens perish in flames and rubble."

It gets worse:

Mr. Rove also said American armed forces overseas were in more jeopardy as a result of remarks last week by Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, who compared American mistreatment of detainees to the acts of "Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime - Pol Pot or others."

"Has there ever been a more revealing moment this year?" Mr. Rove asked. "Let me just put this in fairly simple terms: Al Jazeera now broadcasts the words of Senator Durbin to the Mideast, certainly putting our troops in greater danger. No more needs to be said about the motives of liberals."

AmericaBlog is hopping mad. Atrios has some thoughts as well. This will be the story of the day.

A Mississippi Judge today sentenced Edgar Killen to 60 years in prison on the manslaughter convictions for three civil rights workers - 20 years on each count, to be served consecutively. It was the maximum sentence possible. He is 80 years old.

Many bloggers, TalkLeft included, ask for money from time to time. Not Skippy. He's asking for visits, so he can make 1 million visitors by his third blogiversary. Please go help him out.

28 juvenile offenders in Texas are leaving death row. Gov. Rick Perry signed the commutation orders today. He made it clear he was signing the orders only because of the Supreme Court decision 3 months ago banning the death penalty for those who are under 18 at the time of their crime as cruel and unusual punishment.

On a related note, Gov. Perry sure stuck his foot in his mouth when a camera caught him calling a reporter a "motherf**ker" at the end of a interview session. Crooks and Liars has the video. Perry has telephoned the reporter and apologized.

Update: The Houston Chronicle reports (June 22, 2005, available on Lexis.com):

Gov. Rick Perry thought he was off-camera, but a Houston television station caught the governor using an abbreviated version of a 12-letter word best left in the locker room.

Perry called the reporter on Tuesday and apologized for the "inappropriate" word.

The incident occurred Monday as Perry gave a series of interviews in preparation for a special session on public school finance. The governor refused to give details of a property tax cut plan that he was set to unveil on Tuesday.

KTRK (Channel 13) reporter Ted Oberg pressed him for details. "You'll have to wait until tomorrow. I hate to let you guys in on it and no one else," Perry said. After the interview ended, Oberg told Perry, "Try as I may, governor, I guess I can't win this one." About 20 seconds later, Perry repeated what he apparently thought Oberg had said, and then added his own touch.

"Try as I may, governor, I'm not going to wait that long. Adios," Perry said, adding an expression that's an abbreviation for a word - as Oberg said in his report - that "isn't something you want to say to your mother or use in good company."

The ACLU announced today that the lawsuit against Donald Rumsfeld filed by human rights groups on behalf of 8 Iraqi and Afghan detainees who claim they were subjected to torture and abuse while in detention in U.S. facilities will be heard in the D.C. federal court:

A lawsuit that seeks to hold Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and others directly responsible for the abuse and torture of detainees in U.S. military custody will be heard in a federal court in the District of Columbia, a seven-judge panel ruled yesterday. The lawsuit, which was the first to name Secretary Rumsfeld in the ongoing torture scandal in Afghanistan and Iraq, was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights First on behalf of eight Afghan and Iraqi men who were tortured while they were held in U.S. detention facilities.

Update: Jeanne D'Arc at Body and Soul writes to Senator Durbin. Don't miss it and read the comments there too.

*****************
Original Post

People may disagree about whether Sen. Dick Durbin should have apologized. We should stay focused on the real problem: the administration’s torture and indefinite detention policies, which are un-American and make us less safe.

The media has spent the last week focusing on one paragraph of Sen. Durbin’s speech, instead of responding to the right-wing noise machine. The rest of his speech, which the right-wingers didn’t bother to read, gets to the crux of the real issue:

by TChris

Just two weeks after the Supreme Court ruled that federal law enforcement officers need not respect state laws that authorize patients to use marijuana for medical purposes, federal agents today raided three San Francisco medical marijuana dispensaries.

The operation targeted two cannabis clubs on Ocean Avenue and another on Judah Street .... Law enforcement sources said the clubs were not targeted for drug operations but say they were allegedly being used as fronts for money-laundering operations.

Federal agents, in some cases joined by San Francisco police, raided 20 homes and businesses in the city today as part of the operation, sources told The Chronicle.

by TChris

One of the most important rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution is the freedom to criticize the United States government. As the Supreme Court has recognized, that freedom can be exercised symbolically by disrespectful treatment of the country's symbols, including its flag.

Members of Congress who elevate symbols of freedom above actual freedom are again trying to amend the Constitution to restrict the ability to criticize the government by burning or otherwise desecrating the flag.

The House approved the proposal by 286-130, more than the two- thirds necessary to pass constitutional amendments.

The proposal will now pass to the Senate, where the outcome is difficult to predict.

The Senate last voted on a flag desecration amendment in 2000, falling four votes short of the 67 required to pass. Since that vote, 26 new senators have been elected.

Senators would do well to remember the words of Justice Brennan, who wrote for the Court in its reversal of Gregory Johnson's conviction for burning the flag in protest of the Republican National Convention in 1984.

by TChris

Larry Hargrove, a retired Chicago police sergeant, was convicted today on federal charges that included racketeering conspiracy and robbery, as well as drug and gun crimes. This was Hargrove's second trial; the first ended with a hung jury. Two defendants who rolled over on Hargrove are awaiting sentencing.

During Hargrove's trial, they testified that between 1993 and 1999, the group pulled as many as 35 ripoffs of drug dealers in cars, houses and motels, taking money and narcotics.

A fourth defendant "dropped out of sight shortly before his trial and remains a fugitive."

Sean Paul at Agonist is asking for thoughts on the best strategy to defeat the nomination of John Bolton as U.N. Ambassador. [link fixed.] For more, visit StopJohnBolton.

Conservatives made a lot of noise when Lionel Tate, who was sentenced to life in prison for a murder he committed at age 13, and then released, got rearrested. Now, the boy who accused him of the new crime has recanted.

A 13-year-old boy has recanted his statement that Lionel Tate - once the youngest American sentenced to life in prison - robbed a pizza delivery man at gunpoint, Tate's lawyer said Wednesday.

Attorney James Lewis said the boy, Taquincy Tomkins, has now told private investigators that a 16-year-old Tomkins knows only as "Willie" actually committed the May 23 robbery. Tomkins said he blamed Tate under pressure from Broward County sheriff's investigators and because "Willie" threatened to kill him, according to a transcript of the statement provided by Lewis.