Trial began in New York Tuesday for protester June Brashares, accused of kicking a security guard while being ejected from Bush's speech at the Republican National Convention last September in New York.

June Brashares, 40, of San Francisco, is on trial in Manhattan's Criminal Court charged with misdemeanor assault, attempted assault, disorderly conduct and harassment in connection with the incident on Sept. 2, 2004.

Meanwhile, charges still have not been brought against the Republican kicker -- a young Republican supporter caught on video kicking a female protester inside Madison Square Garden as she was lying on the ground being held by three secret service agents. The protesters were arrested. The young Republican was not...

Human Rights Watch sent this letter out to Senators Monday (I received a copy by e-mail and don't have a link.)

June 20, 2005

Dear Senator:

Critics of the Bush administration's detention policies, including Senator Richard Durbin, have recently stirred controversy by comparing interrogation techniques used in Guantanamo and Iraq to those used in the Soviet penal system known as the "gulag."

Clearly, there are profound and fundamental differences between the global detention system the United States has established in places such as Guantanamo Bay, and the prison camps of Stalin's Soviet Union. .....

Nonetheless, in his floor statement of June 14th, Senator Durbin was absolutely right in two important respects.

If you're a subscriber to the National Journal's Hotline, then you know they do a daily "blogometer" roundup of what's on the blogs. They also do interviews with bloggers a few times a week. Tuesday, they featured an interview with me. If you're not a subscriber, here's a portion of the interview.

BLOGGER SPOTLIGHT: ....Today the Blogometer talks to liberal legal blogger Jeralyn Merritt, founder and chief contributor to the widely-read blog TalkLeft.

Vernon Jordan, over at Huffington Post, has this to say about the Edgar Killen manslaughter conviction today:

...it demonstrates that the South in general and Mississippi in particular are no longer places where racists can get a free pass for their atrocities. What happened today was a kind of justice very different from historic Southern and Mississippi injustice. While it cannot restore Michael Schwerner, James Earl Chaney, and Andrew Goodman to the lives so viciously taken from them in their youth, it has redeemed to an extent the honor of the region, the political courage of its leaders, and the integrity of its justice system. It also proves again what I learned at my mother's knee, that "the Lord moves in mysterious ways his wonders to perform."

While most in the country have urged restraint in response to the Supreme Court's historic sentencing decisions in the Booker and FanFan cases, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales today complained that judges are being too lenient now that the U.S. sentencing guidelines are advisory only. He's urging this change:

Making the bottom range of the guidelines mandatory, but leaving the guidelines' upper limit advisory would resolve the Supreme Court's concern, Gonzales said.

Sentencing Law and Policy provides this link to Gonzales' speech.

Sen. Dick Durbin gave a full apology for his choice of words late this afternoon. Here's what CNN's Congressional correspondent Ed Henry told Lou Dobbs, who was on air at the time about the apology: (available on Lexis.com)

[from Durbin's speech] I made reference to the Nazis, to the Soviets and other repressive regimes. Mr. President, I've come to understand that was a very poor choice of words.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HENRY: This comes after heavy pressure from various Republicans on Sunday. Former prisoner of war and Senator John McCain said in fact that Durbin should go further and actually apologize on the Senate floor. Late last night, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and the rest of the Republican leadership sent a joint letter to the Democratic leader of the Senate, Harry Reid, demanding that Durbin go down to the Senate floor and apologize.

by TChris

Statements like this might cause a casual observer to wonder whether the vice president has lost touch with reality.

The vice president said in a recent interview that [Howard] Dean was not the type of person to lead a political party and mentioned the chairman's mother. "I've never been able to understand his appeal. Maybe his mother loved him, but I've never met anybody who does. He's never won anything, as best I can tell," Cheney said in an interview on Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes."

Never won anything?

Dean was elected governor of Vermont five times between 1992 and 2000.

by TChris

For all the posturing the Bush administration has done with regard to Saddam Hussein, it seems the administration is reluctant to let Hussein have his day in court.

Iraq's justice minister on Tuesday accused the United States of trying to delay Iraqi efforts to interrogate Saddam Hussein, saying "it seems there are lots of secrets they want to hide."

Those secrets, according to Justice Minister Abdel Hussein Shandal, include the money that the U.S. funneled to Hussein to support him during the years mass graves were being filled with bodies. Those graves became the retroactive justification for invading Iraq in the absence of weapons of mass destruction or evidence that Iraq was involved in the attack on the World Trade Center.

"There should be transparency and there should be frankness, but there are secrets that if revealed, won't be in the interest of many countries," [Shandal] said. "Who was helping Saddam all those years?"

by TChris

The 6-6 jury split that TalkLeft described yesterday didn't last long, as the jury returned a guilty verdict today against former KKK member Edgar Ray Killen. The jury convicted Killen of manslaughter for his role in the 1964 deaths of three civil rights workers. It settled on the lesser charge after acquitting him of murder.

Apparently, it doesn't just take a village to dismantle an LA street gang, it takes 900 state and federal agents. LA Police Chief Bill Bratton held a press conference at 5:00 a.m. (PT) today to announce the results of Operation Silent Night, in which 900 law enforcement agents arrested 19 of the 43 members (so far) of the Vineland Boyz gang in Los Angeles and surrounding communities. The gang is believed by police to be responsible for two murders of police officers, one in 1988 and 2003.

LAPD Chief William Bratton called the gang a "modern-day Mafia." The Vineland Boyz gang is a criminal organization, "involved in drug trafficking, murders, attempted murders and extortion," Bratton said.
Bratton said Tuesday's operation was the culmination of an 18-month investigation.

Your turn. Your topics.

Update: About-Face! Frist changes his mind and announces he will push for an up-or-down vote after meeting with Bush today.

What are President Bush's options now that the Dems have again blocked John Bolton's nomination for U.N. Ambassador? He can appoint Bolton as a recess appointment. He can provide the Democrats with the documents they seek. Or he can nominate someone else.

But any of those options could leave the president appearing weak as he confronts sagging poll numbers and fights to stave off a lame-duck label just six months into his final term.