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.

by TChris

Update: In a piece entitled "The Uncompromising Mr. Bush," Carl Cannon reminds us of the other filibuster compromise.
.....
Original post:

The "compromise" (capitulation?) over judicial nominations may unravel by the end of the Supreme Court's current term. The filibuster is protected only while the Republican Senators who defied Bill Frist adhere to their agreement. They're being pressured by the likes of James Dobson, who urges his radio listeners to subject Senators DeWine and Graham to a "continuing barrage" of conservative outrage. The right is threatening to challenge DeWine in next year's primary.

The compromising Senators have very different takes on the agreement's meaning. Democrats can filibuster under "extraordinary circumstances," a deliberately vague phrase that leaves room for a wide diversity of interpretation. Members of the extreme right will never believe that "extraordinary circumstances" exist to justify the filibuster of a Bush nominee, and they intend to attack the agreement as soon as Democrats block a judicial confirmation.

The filibuster exists only so long as Republican compromisers continue to block the right wing's goal: burying the filibuster before Chief Justice Rehnquist resigns. Graham is already showing signs of caving in to the pressure.

Update: Raw Story reports that Rep. Conyers has drafted a new letter to Rumsfeld demanding answers.

***************
This is bound to cause a stir, from the Sunday Times OnLine (UK):

THE RAF and US aircraft doubled the rate at which they were dropping bombs on Iraq in 2002 in an attempt to provoke Saddam Hussein into giving the allies an excuse for war, new evidence has shown.

....The new information, obtained by the Liberal Democrats, shows that the allies dropped twice as many bombs on Iraq in the second half of 2002 as they did during the whole of 2001, and that the RAF increased their attacks even more quickly than the Americans did.

The numbers detailed in the report are pretty convincing. The Times says this information was obtained following the leak of the Downing Street Memo, but was contained in the same briefing paper.

If you are concerned about the proliferation of loose nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and materials, you should watch Meet the Press Sunday morning [note: due to the French Open, the program times have changed. Here is the schedule.]

The entire hour will be devoted to the threat and prevention of nuclear terrorism, with Fred Thompson, Sam Nunn, Richard Lugar and Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton of the 9/11 Commission. Also featured is the docudrama,Last Best Chance.

33 years after stealing a $140 black and white television set, Junior Allen has been released on parole. He is now 64 years old. He is not a habitual offender and he didn't rack up a bad prison record. But a North Carolina judge imposed a life sentence.

TalkLeft wrote about Mr. Allen after his 26th parole hearing denial.

More news background here

Prosecutor Mike Beam became Allen's most unlikely ally two years ago, when he worked for the county that put Allen behind bars. "I've never heard anything like this," Beam said. "In my personal opinion, it's time to let him go, turn the key."

Update: In Schapelle Corby news Sunday:

• Grace Under Fire Moves a Nation
• Thanks, Australia, People Power Will Save Me
• Schapelle Likely to Serve Whole Term in Australia
• Schapelle to Appeal, Risk Life Sentence
• Survival Rate Ten Years
• Cellmates Giving Corby Hell [note: this is at odds with People Power article]
• What Comes Next
• Corby Team Rules Out Pardon Request

Earlier:

• I Slept Well, Judge Says
• Easier Life for an Indonesian Smuggler
• Prosecutors to Appeal, Want Life Sentence
• A Life Left Behind

Crooks and Liars has this incredible video of Schapelle and her family's reaction to the verdict and sentence.

Here is an analysis of the verdict by a defense lawyer in Australia that I think is pretty much on the money. [Available on Lexis.com, I haven't seen an online link yet.]

Another case of injustice in the far east. A Phillipine painter has been sentenced to life in prison for selling 0.02 grams of Shabu. Drug War Rant investigates and explains.

Law Professor Rosa Brooks did an admirable job on the O'Reilly factor explaining why we should provide the Guantanamo detainees with lawyers. Crooks and Liars has the video. Newshounds has the full transcript.

How do we know if the detainee is an enemy combatant who according to Bush, Rumsfeld and O'Reilly is not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions, or a taxi driver or unlucky Joe who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and ended up getting kidnapped and sold to U.S. forces by others who lied and said they were fighters?

How do the innocent make their case if they are not allowed a voice with which to do it? Answer, they can't. That is why the Muslim world is justified in its criticism of us for holding prisoners for three years without charges, without lawyers and without a neutral forum - an Article III judge - in which to be heard.

As Amnesty International has said, these are the rights we should afford to every detainee at Guantanamo:

by TChris

Paper ballots that can be counted by an optical scanner are easy to use and they leave a verifiable paper trail that enhances voter confidence in the legitimacy of an election result. Miami-Dade County will become the first venue to replace controversial touch-screen machines with optical scanners if the county's election supervisor gets his way.

Elections supervisor Lester Sola said in a memo Friday that the county should switch to optical scanners that use paper ballots, based on declining voter confidence in the paperless touch-screen machines and quadrupled election day labor costs.

The county paid $24.5 million for the touch-screen machines, and would need to spend another ten or twelve million to replace them. The initial decision to buy the touch-screen machines is regrettable, but nothing is so important in a democracy as a fair election. Miami-Dade, like every other jurisdiction using machines that can't produce paper evidence that each vote was counted correctly, should spend the money to replace the machines. It's an investment in democracy.

Atrios, just back from a month of travel, is adding two new bloggers to Eschaton.

Go away for a month and suddenly everyone's turning their blogs into mini empires. Don't want to be left behind. So, next month Gil Gerard and Erin Grey will join the brain trust here.

Avedon Carol, Attaturk and Echidne did a great job guest-blogging for Atrios this month. Don't forget to read them at their own blogs. And welcome, Gil and Erin. [Update: Pete at Drug War Rant has identified them.]

Quite a few blogs are going this route. For me, the sign that it works is when I find myself reading the post without checking first to see who wrote it - the principal blogger or the guest. Another example of a blog who has successfully made the transition: Skippy, which now includes regular postings by Cookie Jill and R.J. Eskow, both of whom contribute added variety, wit and substance to the unique and funny blog. Who knew that Skippy International would become a reality?

John Cole of Balloon Juice had insomnia last night and blogged his way through it. First up: Do you feel safer knowing that Homeland Security Agents, entrusted with securing our borders, are spending their time investigating and drafting and executing search warrants against sites that offer free downloads of the new Star War movies? John rails against the misuse of resources.

John's second rant is against doctors in the U.K., who want to ban kitchen knives with long blades because they might lead people to spontaneously pick one up and stab someone.

John should get insomnia more often.