The grand jury threw the proverbial book at the Runaway Bride today, charging her both with misdemeanor false reporting of a crime and the more serious felony offense of making a false statement to a police officer.

Jennifer Willbanks has been in a residential treatment facility for weeks. What a waste of resources. The county should have filed a civil suit to recoup the search damages and someone should have sued the media for making the rest of us watch a week of 24/7 coverage of the story.

by TChris

Police in Charlotte, North Carolina arrested an 86 year old woman for calling 911 to complain that a pizza restaurant refused to deliver pizza to her apartment. Granted, she called 20 times, but that fact suggests that she suffers from the mental infirmities of aging, not that she intended to harass a 911 dispatcher. Arresting her was a ridiculous waste of public resources.

Update: The 86 year old woman (authorities have been careful not to refer to her as a terrorist) made bond.

The documents keep coming. You can read them here. The documents recently obtained by the ACLU show detainee claims of Koran desecration by Guards at Guantanamo in 2002. Many of the documents are interviews with prisoners and show that officials were aware of the claims.

Via Press Release today, the ACLU reports:

New documents released by the FBI include previously undisclosed interviews in which prisoners at Guantánamo complain that guards have mistreated the Koran, the American Civil Liberties Union said today. In one 2002 summary, an FBI interrogator notes a prisoner’s allegation that guards flushed a Koran down the toilet.

The disclosure comes on the heels of controversy over a Newsweek report saying that government investigators had corroborated an almost identical incident. Newsweek ultimately retracted its story because a confidential government source could not be confirmed.

According to the FBI documents, a detainee interviewed in August 2002 said that guards had flushed the Koran in the toilet. Others reported the Koran being kicked, withheld as punishment, and thrown on the floor, and said they were mocked during prayers.

The 'Second Chance Act' was introduced in Congress recently. Gary Fields of the Wall Street Journal reports on the bill (free online here). The bill would assist prisoners released from jail who need housing, work and even id cards, which can be tough to get.

Who will this help? People like Jacqueline Smith, who for a year has had to commute an hour after work with her daughter to sleep at an ex-offender's shelter because her conviction precludes her from living in public housing.

In the kitchen of an Applebee's restaurant in Queens, N.Y., Jacqueline Smith has been a model hire. In less than two years working as a cook, she got a promotion to supervisor, doubled her salary and won the award for employee of the year.

The Senate Intelligence Committee held a hearing Tuesday on expanding the Patriot Act. The vote will be Thursday, during a secret hearing. The ACLU outlines the provisions of the bill under consideration:

The bill would grant so-called "administrative subpoena" authority to the FBI, letting the bureau write and approve its own search orders for any tangible thing it deems relevant to an intelligence investigation without approval. This power would let agents seize personal records from medical facilities, libraries, hotels, gun dealers, banks and any other business, without having to appear before a judge, and without any evidence that the people whose records are swept in are involved in any criminal activity.

A new Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse trial has begun. It concerns a death by "Palestinian hanging" ruled a homicide. A Navy seal is charged. But it's not passing the smell test to many observers.

A government report obtained by the Associated Press said that [Manadel]Jamadi died an hour after his arrival at Abu Ghraib in early November 2003. The report said he had been beaten while in CIA custody and then hung by his wrists, with his arms crossed across his back -- treatment described as "torture" by international organizations. The prisoner reportedly died before CIA interrogators extracted information from him.

U.S. Army guards at the prison then packed his body in ice and posed with the corpse in mocking photographs.

I'm a "cultural creative." Discourse.Net (where I found the quiz) is an existentialist. Here are my results:

You scored as Cultural Creative. Cultural Creatives are probably the newest group to enter this realm. You are a modern thinker who tends to shy away from organized religion but still feels as if there is something greater than ourselves. You are very spiritual, even if you are not religious. Life has a meaning outside of the rational.

Cultural Creative 69%
Postmodernist 63%
Existentialist 56%
Materialist 38%
Romanticist 31%
Modernist 25%
Idealist 19%
Fundamentalist 0%

Anyway, if you have a moment for fun today, take the test.

What is Your World View? (updated)
created with QuizFarm.com

One day after the awful compromise on filibusters, Republicans already think they can use the same strategy to force a compromise on social security. Lindsay Graham says:

Some who forged the deal expressed hope that the agreement would create momentum for compromise on other knotty issues, such as Social Security and immigration.

"Watch this group when it comes to major problems that the nation faces, like Social Security," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. "I think we have created momentum for the idea that if you constructively engage each other, the political reward is high."

Unfortunately, he's probably right. My trust is gone right now. The Democrats said they would not back down on Priscilla Owen and Janice Rogers Brown and they did. Why should we believe they won't back down on privitization? Why rally the troops only to have the leaders cave in? I think I'll save my energy for Sensenbrenner's new mandatory minimum, "five years for passing a joint", "snitch or go to jail" bill.

But, I forget. It's my social security they're talking about. Social Security I'm already entitled to. Bush can't have it. Guess I'll just take a short breather and then get back in the game. For those of your ready to start now, Bill Scher of Liberal Oasis writes in this Star Tribune op-ed (and Daily Kos agrees):

August J. Pollard of Xoverboard gets my vote for the funniest blog post yet on the filibuster. Here's just two paragraphs, go over and read the whole thing:

So I walk in the door and turn on the TV to check out the "all-nighter" session the Senate declared and to see if Bill Frist was wearing the Spongebob pajamas James Dobson bought him and instead get the most fearsome of images in the form of Joe Lieberman trying to smile. I apparently already missed the speeches from Mike DeWine explaining that his name was Mike DeWine and he was actually a United States Senator, and Robert Byrd telling a story about how he knew Ben Franklin.

This is pretty ridiculous. Someone in Washington State is driving around with the license plate "C9H13N" and the state is upset because it says it's the formula for methamphetamine.

The plate appears to be counter to state regulations that ban vanity plates making reference to alcohol or illegal substances.

Only it's also the formula for amphetamine and amphetamines lawfully are used in medicines. Hundreds of substances have the same chemcial formula. The chemical formula for scopolamine , also known as ( truth serum)is C17H21NO4. The chemical formula for cocaine is the same: C17H21NO4. The two compounds have the same molecular formula but different structural formulas, thereby accounting for the different effects. Would a plate reading "C17H21NO4" be illegal too?

Congress Daily P.M. reports (via Think Progress):

Senate Majority Leader Frist will file for cloture on President Bush’s nomination of William Myers to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals later this week, according to sources on and off Capitol Hill, wasting no time in testing the resolve of 14 Republican and Democratic senators who forced at least a temporary halt to the battle over Democratic filibusters of President Bush’s judicial picks.

Update: The Hill reports:

The number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq is on the rise again - 14 in the past three days, 18 in the last week, 58 in the last month. These are big numbers. Insurgents may now be targeting U.S. troops instead of only Shiite Muslims.

In the northern city of Tal Afar, the insurgents are said to be in control and the police chief says a civil war has erupted. Journalists are not being granted access to the city.

The AP reports the current total military personnel death toll is 1,643 since the March, 2003 invasion of Iraq. The U.S. seized more than 400 more detainees in Baghdad in the past two days. Here's more on the new detainee roundup.

This doesn't sound promising for an exit strategy: