Not to beat a dead horse, but John Nichols over at the Nation explains why the Compromise is a bad deal and shares the view that Democrats buckled under.

This "compromise" may have averted the "nuclear option" for a time. But it will saddle the federal bench with more bad judges. That's a bad deal, especially when there is such overwhelming public sentiment for maintaining the right of senators to block inappropriate judicial nominees. Democrats were right to oppose Brown, Pryor and Owen. They will come to regret cutting the deal to let these unacceptable nominees -- and the others who are now sure to be nominated by the Bush Administration -- to be approved.

In today's update, Nichols calls Owen's confirmation "blackmail" and says,

....Four years of successful efforts by civil rights, women's rights, religious and consumer groups to prevent confirmation of the right-wing extremist were undone Wednesday.

"No More Tulias: The Law Enforcement Evidentiary Standards Improvement Act of 2005," is being introduced by Rep. Shelia Jackson-Lee (D-TX) and cosponsored by John Conyers (D-MI), Charles Rangel (D-NY), Donald Payne (D-NJ), and Ed Towns (D-NY).

The bill is named after the drug task force scandal in Tulia, Tex in 1999 during which 15 percent of the town’s African American population was arrested, prosecuted and sentenced to decades in prison based on the uncorroborated testimony of a federally funded undercover officer with a record of racial impropriety.

by TChris

In a location as large as Orange County, one might expect law enforcement officers to be well-trained professionals. Instead, the Sheriff has been handing out badges and guns to his buddies and political supporters.

Shortly after he took office, Orange County Sheriff Michael S. Carona and one of his top assistants deputized 86 friends, relatives, political contributors and others, giving them badges, powers of arrest and in some cases guns — despite the fact that none had background investigations and some had not been fully trained.

Although the state's Commission on Peace Officers Standards and Training eventually decided not to recognize any of the 86 reserve deputies as legitimate peace officers, 56 still have their badges and ID cards. Some of the 86 were clearly unqualified.

by TChris

Sentencing an 11 year old to hard labor because she didn’t do her homework is an outrageous abuse of power (the student should have told her principal to pound salt), but equally abusive was the principal’s decision to terminate the employment of a teacher who took pity on the poor girl.

As discipline for neglecting homework, a fourth grade student in the East Lynne (Missouri) School District was ordered to pick up rocks from a playground near the road in front of the school. Teacher Christa Price complained to Superintendent Dan Doerhoff that the punishment was both extreme and dangerous. Doerhoff didn’t care about the girl’s safety (or about the image of “school as penitentiary” he was creating), so Price used her free period to help the girl pick up the rocks.

At contract time in March, Doerhoff recommended firing Price, who until then had glowing performance evaluations and was liked by parents and praised by colleagues.

Doerhoff cited the teacher’s “insubordination” as grounds for termination. Even more troubling is Doerhoff’s refusal to sign the certification required for Price to find another teaching job.

To their credit, seven of the ten classroom teachers in the district resigned to protest Doerhoff’s autocratic style. Doerhoff didn’t learn from the protest; he simply filled the positions with other teachers. Nor did he learn from the girl’s perceptive comment that being forced to haul rocks in a five gallon bucket "made me feel like a slave." He does allow, however, that the adverse publicity might make him think twice about assigning hard labor to fourth graders.

There’s been a change of plans. The August 20 public memorial service for gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, at which his ashes were to be blasted out of a cannon, has been canceled. There will be a private memorial service instead.

“It got too tricky to morph symposium and ashes, so instead there is just the private service,” [planner Doug] Brinkley said Tuesday.

It’s too bad because legions of Hunter fans would have trekked to Aspen for the event.

There's a disconnect here and I'd say it's on the part of Scott McClellan.

• Scott McClellan
  "The [Koran flushing]allegations are ridiculous and unsupported by the facts. The United States is leading the way when it comes to protecting human rights and promoting human dignity."

• Amnesty International
  Despite the US administration’s repeated use of the language of justice and freedom there was a huge gap between rhetoric and reality. This was starkly illustrated by the failure to conduct a full and independent investigation into the appalling torture and ill-treatment of detainees by US soldiers in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison and the failure to hold senior individuals to account.

Abu Ghraib. Guantanamo. Bagram. Camp Bucca. And we haven't even gotten to Camp Cropper yet - where Saddam and other high level Iraqis are held:

This is an update to this morning's post about the ACLU's press release on the Government being aware of a detainee's claim in August, 2002 that guards flushed a Koran down the toilet.

Here is one such document, you may have to zoom in to read it. It's stamped August 1, 2002, but the interview referred to took place on July 22 and July 29, 2002. (Or you can find it among dozens on this page (pdf) at the ACLU site - scroll down to page 44 or 45.)

It's an FBI interview of a detainee, conducted with a translator present. It's document number 4136-4137, referred to here as

DETAINEES 4136-4137 Summary of FBI interview of detainee at Guantanamo Bay 07/22/02 Records detainee's responses to questions.

Scroll down to the last paragraph on the page. It says,

Prior to his capture he had no information against the United States. Personally, he had nothing against the United States. The guards at the detention facility do not treat him well. Their behavior is bad. About five months ago, the guards beat the detainees. They flushed a Koran in the toilet.

You can also see just this quote from the page here. So the incident occurred around February, 2002.

by TChris

This is good advice:

If you're going to sell dope, you might not want to do it next to a police car.

An officer taking a coffee (and donut?) break didn't believe the man who told him that drugs were being peddled next to his squad car. Whether he finished his coffee isn't clear, but when the officer returned to his car, he shouted "Police, don't move!"

He says the suspects dropped two baggies of pot right on the front seat of his police car.

by TChris

TalkLeft lamented -- here and here -- the use of pepper spray projectiles as crowd control devices after a woman, cheering on the Boston Red Sox, died when a pellet struck her eye. A panel investigating the death faults the police officer who fired the errant shot, but also places blame on the department's decision to buy the pellet guns for crowd control.

As to the officer:

"Officer Milien failed to take sufficiently into account that he was shooting at a moving target in the midst of a crowd and that a missed shot could easily strike a bystander," the report said.

As to the department:

by TChris

As TalkLeft reported last month, federal prosecutors induced Vincent Ferrara to plead guilty to a murder he didn't commit by failing to disclose that the witness who accused Ferrara tried to recant his story before prosecutors coerced him into sticking to it. Earlier this month, Judge Mark Wolf reduced Ferrara's sentence in light of the Justice Department's "extraordinary misconduct" and ordered Ferrara's release from prison.

Federal prosecutors asked the court of appeals to keep Ferrara locked up despite Judge Wolf's order, but they didn't prevail.

In its one-page ruling, the three-judge panel said its preliminary review of the case found no basis to overturn Wolf's "exercise of discretion." The court also concluded that prosecutors failed to prove Ferrara poses a danger to society after he is released.

Ferrara had already served 16 years of a 22 year sentence.

Praise is due Senator Lincoln Chaffee who was the only Republican Senator today to vote against Priscilla Owen. Here's the vote tally. [hat tip How Appealing]

Two Democrats voted for her: Mary Landrieu and Robert Byrd.

In May, 2004, Slate had this chronology of statements by President Bush as the stories of Abu Ghraib abuse were revealed. [link via What Really Happened which republished the link to it today.]

Funny, I saw the title of the Slate article, "Rape Room" and thought it was going to be about the Senate Chamber in the wake of the compromise on the nuclear option and the news that Priscilla Owen was confirmed today.