An Australian baggage handler was arrested today as part of a drug smuggling endeavor, possibly bolstering the "innocent and framed" claim of Schapelle Corby:

NSW Police have arrested a baggage handler at Sydney Airport following an investigation into the transportation of illegal drugs between Sydney and Melbourne on a domestic flight. The man was taken to Mascot police station this morning where he is expected to be charged with hindering a police investigation.

It is understood that the arrest followed an operation at the domestic terminal in February when police intercepted a case allegedly containing cocaine with a street value of $60,000....The incident is not related to the investigation into baggage handlers at the international terminal.

However, it lends credence to claims made by Victorian prison informer John Patrick Ford, who gave evidence at Schapelle Corby's trial in Bali about drugs being transported on domestic flights.

by TChris

Scandalous stories about the Bush administration appear with regularity. If a presidential lie about a private moment deserves impeachment, what does this story merit?

The Bush administration's offer in 2002 to overpay a prominent Florida family for oil and gas rights on Everglades land by as much as $80 million was "at best, foolish and, at worst, complicit," the Interior Department's inspector general said today.

Foolish or complicit; incompetent or crooked. Here's the evidence of the latter:

Members of the Collier family contributed more than $121,000 to Republican candidates in the last election cycle, including at least $5,000 to Jeb Bush, according to the Washington-based Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks campaign donations.

The administration touted the deal as proof that it wanted to protect the Everglades. Two weeks later, the president's brother announced his bid for reelection, "leading critics to suggest he was seeking to burnish his environmental credentials through the Collier land transaction."

by TChris

Closing the Gulag detention facility at Guantanamo would put an end to a public relations disaster and begin to repair the image of the United States as a country that cares about human rights. President Carter and Senator Biden are among many who want President Bush (in Carter’s words) "to close down Guantanamo and the two dozen secret detention facilities run by the United States as soon as possible."

"Not gonna happen" was the essence of Donald Rumsfeld's response, as reported in this morning's New York Times. Apparently President Bush didn't get the memo.

President Bush left the door open to an eventual closing of the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay on Wednesday amid mounting complaints and calls for it to be shut down ....

President Bush's pledge to "explore all alternatives" wasn't a ringing endorsement of President Carter's request. Still, his refusal to rule out Guantanamo's closing confirms that President Bush doesn't read the morning papers. By tomorrow, expect Bush and Rumsfeld to be on the same page: everything's just fine, it's all the left wing media, there's no need for change.

Can I give a huge Told You So? What's amazing is not that Janice Rogers Brown was confirmed to a seat on the prestigious D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals today, but that Democrats were so naive as to think she might be defeated in an up or down vote. Like any Republicans were going to vote against her? Once the compromise went in, she, Owen and Pryor were shoo-ins. Spare me the tears.....this is the fault of the 14 oligarchic centrist compromisers....Biggest mistake the Senate has made in years.

Why would Ben Nelson (D-NE) break ranks to vote for Rogers Brown?

by TChris

The Army knew that it couldn't meet its goal of recruiting 8,050 new soldiers per month, so in May it lowered the goal to 6,700 recruits. Despite vigorous efforts to persuade high school seniors to enlist, the Army missed the new goal by 25 percent.

Because of a series of recent incidents in which Army recruiters were found to be breaking or bending rules to meet their monthly quotas, two senior Army officials acknowledged that the shift in May could leave the impression that the Army was playing "a shell game" with its recruiting figures, shifting its goals to make the numbers look better than they are.

The officials claim that impression would be "unjustified." Supporting that impression, however, is this:

The Pentagon has delayed until Friday the public release of May recruiting figures for all the armed services, a decision some military officials say is an effort to minimize what has become a drumbeat of bad news for the Army and the Marine Corps at the beginning of each month.

by TChris

A Michigan judge is facing discipline for an apparent anger management problem. Detroit Deputy Mayor Anthony Adams made the mistake of parking in a spot reserved for judges at the courthouse. Judge David Bradfield "cursed at him and told him to remove his car." Adams says he was authorized to park in the spot.

As Adams got out of his car and entered the courthouse, Bradfield grabbed his shoulder and shouted that the deputy mayor was "street" and from "the hood," according to the complaint. The judge "repeatedly poked his finger into Deputy Mayor Adams' chest while he was shouting at him," the complaint states.

This isn't the first time Judge Bradfield lost his cool in a parking dispute.

by TChris

It is ultimately the job of the judge, not the prosecutor, to define the law for the jury. A prosecutor who describes the law incorrectly during closing arguments risks reversal of any resulting conviction. That was the case in Kentucky, where the court of appeals overturned Crystal Plank's conviction of complicity to second-degree manslaughter.

Crystal's brother broke into a garage. Realizing that he left his toolbox at the scene of the crime, he convinced Crystal to drive him back so he could retrieve it. Crystal's brother shot and killed Byron Pruitt during his return to the crime scene. Crystal was accused of complicity in that death.

However, during closing arguments, Plank's prosecutor "improperly redefined the law for the jury," Judge Wilfrid A. Schroder of Covington wrote. The prosecutor told jurors if they believed Plank took Pollini to retrieve the tool box, they must find her guilty of complicity to murder and burglary.

The court of appeals also overturned Plank's conviction of facilitating the burglary, given the lack of evidence that Plank knew about, or played any part in, her brother's burglary of the garage.

by TChris

Sameeh Hammoudeh, Ghassan Zayed Ballut and Hatem Naji Fariz are accused of working with former University of South Florida Professor Sami al-Arian to raise money for an organization that allegedly participates in terrorism. Their defense attorneys told a jury yesterday that their clients "are victims of selective interpretation of evidence gathered by overzealous government agents."

The defense maintains prosecutors will be able to provide no evidence directly tying the four men to the terrorist group or any criminal activity. And they said there are reasonable explanations for wiretapped phone conversations and other evidence offered by prosecutors to link the defendants to the group.

The defense contends that the men simply wanted to help charitable organizations provide for needy individuals in Palestinian territories. Defense lawyers told the jury that their clients support peace in the mideast, a position contrary to that taken by the organization they are charged with aiding.

Background on the accusations against Sami al-Arian can be found here and here.

An open thread again. I have to lay off typing today, to let the cortisone shot I got in my shoulder yesterday afternoon start working. Who said blogging isn't hazardous to your health? Also, Markos of Daily Kos and Jerome of My DD are in town today, conducting interviews for their book, and I'll be meeting them for lunch, along with the folks from Progress Now.org. Hopefully, I'll be back to blogging tonight, and I've sent out an S.O.S. to TChris, who if not in court, may take over today. In the meantime, here's a space for you.

Update: A big thanks to TChris who posted up a storm today. Lunch with Markos and Jermome was a working lunch - with Colorado Gubernatorial candidate Rutt Bridges, a Democrat, who announced his bid last Thursday. Markos and Jerome interviewed him for their book for over an hour, using an IPod with a recorder on it. No laptops, no notes. Just the four of us and Sarah, one of his staffers. Lunch was brought in from Quiznos, and we ate at his desk. Their book is going to be a best seller, I'm sure. Anyway it was great to see both of them and also nice to meet and hear the thoughts of Mr. Bridges in such a small setting.

In an end run around the Fourth Amendment, and putting our civil liberties under siege, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence met in secret today and approved expansions to the Patriot Act that wil allow the Government to obtain records without a court order or grand jury subpoena - and more.

The ACLU sent out this press release earlier today, objecting to both the secret hearing and the expanded powers.

"Americans have a reasonable expectation that their federal government will not gather records about their health, their wealth and the transactions of their daily life without probable cause of a crime and without a court order," Graves added. "We can give law enforcement the tools they need to protect us without sidestepping our Constitution’s fundamental checks and balances."

The bill would give the FBI "administrative subpoena" authority, permitting the bureau to write and approve its own search orders for any tangible thing held by a third party deemed relevant to an intelligence investigation, without prior judicial approval. This unilateral power would let agents seize personal records from medical facilities, libraries, hotels, gun dealers, banks and any other businesses without any specific facts connecting those records to any criminal activity or a foreign agent. This would drastically undermine the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Verdict Watch, Day 3
Tuesday, June 7, 2005

No verdict. No questions from the jurors.

Who watches Nancy Grace? Some idiot who googled Nancy Grace and thought TalkLeft is her site, emailed this to me earlier:

Nancy,

I love your show. I love the way you voice out your views. I have to say, not once have I disagreed with you. Keep up the good work. You are right Michael Jackson is a sexual freak, and Scott Peterson is a murderer, and I hope his a** is being worked over everynight by some big "ole" Willy..He deserves it actually he deserves to be dead in the bottom of that lake but in America we get to babysit him and spend several thousands of dollars taking care of him to live awhile longer...One of your biggest fans from Metter Ga