Via Raw Story we learn of another FBI terror sting in Houston that sounds similar to the one involving the Boca Raton doctor announced today.

Ron Grecula did not try to hide his disdain for the "wicked" American government when he sat in a Houston hotel room two weeks ago with two men claiming to be terrorist operatives linked to Al Qaeda.

"I have no loyalty to America whatsoever," Mr. Grecula, 68, a destitute inventor from Pennsylvania, said in a conversation monitored by the authorities. He blamed the F.B.I. for imprisoning him in the abduction of his two children, he said, and he blamed the government for a foreign policy of world domination.

The New York Times reports that flights are filling up to Guantanamo....with American volunteer lawyers offering to defend the detainees. The Supreme Court ruled a year ago the detainees have the right to challenge their detention in federal court, so the Bush Administration can no longer keep them out.

The detainees are not entitled to lawyers at government expense, but in increasing numbers, private firms are offering up their lawyers pro bono. One of the reasons: changing views about the detentions, particularly the idea of holding people for three years, without charges or access to counsel. So far, 300 lawyers have signed up.

Seattle Weekly reports that Ralph Reed's $20,000. a month retainer with Microsoft has come to an end.

When it was recently revealed that Microsoft had employed religious conservative Ralph Reed as a political consultant, it was logical to wonder if his $20,000 monthly retainer was somehow related to the company's temporary refusal to support a gay-rights bill in Olympia, which failed.

The reason for the divorce does not appear to be related to the gay rights legislation.

One source notes that Reed was on a Microsoft retainer while helping run the George W. Bush presidential campaigns of 2000 and 2004, raising ethical questions. But Reed now has gone a step further and filed to run for public office himself—lieutenant governor of Georgia, thought to be a step toward an eventual White House run. Having a political candidate on the payroll would be a clear ethical conflict for Microsoft.

But, the Weekly notes, the plot thickens:

The White House is busy researching potential Supreme Court replacements, in anticipation of a June retirement of Chief Justice Rehnquist who suffers from thyroid cancer. Some speculate he's already made his choice. Here is the list of those believed to be in the running.

I predict it's down to three choices:

• Former Solicitor General Ted Olson
• Former Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson
• 10th Circuit Judge Michael McConnell

Of the three, I hope he picks Larry Thompson, whom I know and trust, an opinion shared by many defense lawyers.

But I think Bush will pick Ted Olson, the arch conservative and his lawyer in the Supreme Court in the Bush v. Gore case. Olsen has very strong ties to Richard Mellon Scaife, and is a staunch member of the New Theocracy.

This Herald Sun article describes the conditions at the prison where Schapelle Corby is housed:

AIDS is rife in the jail as corrupt officials allow drug abuse to run virtually unchecked. Human rights activists estimate that life expectancy in the badly overcrowded jail compound would be between 10 and 15 years.

The toilets in the jail's squalid cells sit directly beside the benches where food is prepared. The jail was built in 1976 for 366 prisoners, but it holds 525.

Corby shares her 5m-wide cell with seven other women. She is forced to wash with only a small bucket and ladle. The untreated water is fetched from a dilapidated well in the prison compound.

Corby's family says the jail food is inedible. It comes around on a big cart -- a bucket of rice which her family says regularly contains stones, dirt and sticks, and a pot of some kind of stew. The pot is encrusted with drying and rotting food.

by TChris

Make your own joke.

A chicken that got a ticket for crossing the road has clawed his way out of it. The $54 citation for impeding traffic was dismissed Friday after Linc and Helena Moore's attorney argued that the fowl was domesticated and could not be charged as livestock.

An excellent defense, it turns out.

The chicken was ticketed March 26 for impeding traffic after it wandered onto a road in Johannesburg, a rural mining community southeast of Ridgecrest.

by TChris

Reasonable parents differ in their approach to sex education. Anette Pharris, a Nashville mother, thought her 16 year old son was old enough to enjoy a parentally supervised striptease. Many may disagree with her decision to hire a stripper for her son's birthday party, but there should be much broader disapproval of the government's decision to charge Anette with contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

"I tried to do something special for my son. It didn't harm him," Pharris told The Tennessean newspaper Friday.

As the boy's mother, Anette thinks it should be her job -- not the government's -- to decide whether her son is sufficiently mature to enjoy adult entertainment. She's right.

Great find by Crooks and Liars....the May issue of Harper's with this long expose on Colorado Springs as a mecca for the radical right. Go read, Soldiers of Christ.

The L.A. Times continues it drug theme today with a very long report on Afghanistan's poppy production.

Western officials warn of a nascent narco state as drug traffickers act with impunity, some allegedly with the support of top officials

Should we be getting ready for the introduction of the Victory Act....which, make no mistake, will not be limited to overseas violators or terrorism.

More on the Victory Act here:

Do we really need to read the stories of multiple persons whose lives were ruined by cocaine? Spare me the Cocaine Chronicles, featured in the LA Times today. The history of the drug, particularly with respect to smuggling it into the U.S. in the 70's, I still find interesting. If you are going to read a book on cocaine, make it Robert Sabbag's Snowblind.

Note: Title of Post taken from The Eagles, Life in the Fast Lane:

"They knew all the right people, they took all the right pills
They threw outrageous parties, they paid heavenly bills
There were lines on the mirror, lines on her face
She pretended not to notice, she was caught up in the race"

The U.S. has rejected Venezuela's request for an arrest warrant to commence extradition proceedings against anti-Castro militant Luis Posadas Carriles.

Venezuela's embassy in Washington said Friday the United States had rejected a "preventive detention request with the goal of the extradition of Luis Posada Carriles." The rejection does not affect Caracas' extradition request, the embassy said in a statement.

"We have sent a diplomatic note to the Venezuelan embassy today (Friday), saying that the request lacked sufficient basis from a legal point of view," a US official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

There were large protests over the decision this week. Check out this protest poster. So who is Posada and why is the U.S. refusing to turn him over?

by TChris

This attitude toward individual liberty has become typical in the Bush administration.

"We wanted more information," said the former official, who sat in on discussions of Mr. Arar's fate in 2002. "The one way we wouldn't get it is if we let him go."

The official is talking about Maher Arar, who was kidnapped by the United States government and whisked away to Syria for interrogation. (Talkleft background collected here.) The administration claims it had evidence that the Canadian was a member of Al Qaeda, but Arar was released when ten months of imprisonment and torture produced no evidence to support the claim.

Even a casual reader of the Constitution might think that a deprivation of liberty requires something more than an unspecified level of suspicion held by unnamed bureaucrats in the Justice Department on the basis of secret evidence. One might expect proof to be presented to a neutral magistrate before the government removes someone from American soil and tosses him into a foreign prison to be tortured. “We wanted more information and we couldn’t get it if we let him go” is a poor substitute for due process.