by TChris

Florida is the place to be if you want your politicians to interfere with personal decisions about life and death, or to prevent citizens with ancient felonies from voting, or to hinder the right to have an abortion. It's not such a good place to be if you need mental health care that you can't afford, and it's a terrible place to be if you're wrongly convicted of a crime. Just ask Wilton Dedge. (TalkLeft background here).

DNA evidence showed that Wilton Dedge spent 22 years in prison for a rape he didn't commit. Even the people who prosecuted him had apologized and said Dedge deserved to be compensated for those lost years. But when the state Legislature ended its session May 6, Dedge walked away with nothing.

Dedge's lawyer, a former president of Florida State University who is acting pro bono, plans to file a lawsuit for Dedge. He shouldn't have to go that far. Florida took Dedge's freedom for 22 years. An apology doesn't correct that injustice. Florida owes it to Dedge to give him fair compensation for his loss.

by TChris

The same Senate Republicans who decry "judicial activism" want to end the ability to filibuster judicial nominations. Writing in Mother Jones, Bradford Plumer makes the interesting point that the filibuster saves courts from judicial activists.

The strongest argument for the judicial filibuster is that it forces presidents to pick moderate judges. Recall that Bill Clinton, faced with a hostile Republican Congress that had already scuttled many of his judicial picks, decided to play it safe with his Supreme Court picks and went with Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer. ... According to a study by former Solicitor General Seth Waxman, if one defines "judicial activism" as a willingness to strike down state and federal laws, then Ginsburg and Breyer are in fact the two most restrained justices on the court. If you don't like activist judges, the case for the judicial filibuster seems strong.

In fact, Republicans favor judicial activism. They want judges who will actively disregard the Bill of Rights and civil rights laws in favor of the religious right's agenda. Indeed, one of the judicial nominees whose consideration may trigger the nuclear option is an unabashed judicial activist.

Keith Olbermann writes about Scott McClellan's representation yeterday that Newsweek and its unconfirmed report of desecration of the Koran by personnel at Guantanamo was responsible for the recent riots and deaths in Afghanistan.

It was just last Thursday, at a military briefing, that General Richard Myers said the protests and deaths had more to do with the continuing political and reconciliation process in Afganistan than it did to Newsweek's article about the desecration of the Koran.

Q: Do either one of you have anything about the demonstrations in Afghanistan, which were apparently sparked by reports that there was a lack of respect by some interrogators at Guantanamo for the Koran. Do either one of you have anything to say about that?

GEN. MYERS: It's the -- it's a judgment of our commander in Afghanistan, General Eikenberry, that in fact the violence that we saw in Jalalabad was not necessarily the result of the allegations about disrespect for the Koran -- and I'll get to that in just a minute -- but more tied up in the political process and the reconciliation process that President Karzai and his Cabinet is conducting in Afghanistan. So that's -- that was his judgment today in an after- action of that violence. He didn't -- he thought it was not at all tied to the article in the magazine.

Yesterday, McClellan said:

The New York Times has announced it will begin charging online readers to access its opinion writers and other columnists in September.

The paper will charge $49.95 per year for TimesSelect, a service that gives readers online access to the work of a few select writers -- columnists on the Op-Ed page as well as in other sections of the paper, including Business, Sports, and Metro. TimesSelect subscribers will also receive unlimited access to the Times' archives (most of the articles fall into the archives after one week online) and to the paper's NewsTracker service.

TalkLeft joins Daily Kos in response:

Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, the proprietor of the popular left-wing blog Daily Kos, said that come September, he'll stop linking to the Times Op-Ed pages. "I think this is the best way they can become irrelevant," said Moulitsas. "If my readers can't read it, why would I link to it? The key to blogging is that readers can look at the source material and make up their own minds." Moulitsas is a fan of Krugman's columns, but he said that he would not personally pay for the subscription service. "I don't think it's worth $50," he said. "There's way too much content out there for me to pay for any of it."

This is an issue on which all sides of the blogosphere seem to agree:

Remember the fiasco of the Republican National Convention when hundreds were rounded up and kept in cages on the West Side for days without seeing a Judge? This happens every day in New York, particularly to the poor and people of color.

On May 24, a sorely needed bill will be introduced in New York. It will require police to bring an arrested person before a judge within 24 hours or release the individual. It's called the "Charge or Release" bill and a rally will be held Next Tuesday, May 24, to support it in New York.

During the Republican National Convention, hundreds of demonstrators were detained for 30, 40, or even 50 hours without seeing a judge. Each day in New York City, hundreds of New Yorkers, primarily from communities of color, lose wages or even jobs because they’re held by the police for longer than the 24 hours permitted by law. On May 25, Council Member Bill Perkins will introduce the Charge or Release bill to fix the problem of prolonged detentions by the police.

Democratic Minority Leader Sen. Harry Reid said talks have broken down with Republicans over the nuclear option.

Reid said Bill Frist made it clear it was all or nothing with the Republcians. I hope Sen. Reid told Frist "No to Priscilla Owen. No to Janice Rogers Brown."

The Democrats have the public's support. Check this out. The Hip Hop Caucus will be holding a rally in the Captitol to save the filibuster.

You know the filibuster fight has reached the public consciousness when the Hip Hop Caucus gets involved. The group, dedicated to "a comprehensive agenda for the Hip-Hop community," will hold a "Save the Filibuster" event this morning in the Capitol -- one small piece of a mass mobilization by both sides in the Senate's squabble over President Bush's judicial nominees.

Couldn't resist this one, found on Craig's List in the "men seeking women" category and sent in by the Freeway Blogger, who has moved up to the Bay Area -- "If you're boyfriend is a Republican, I want you now."

Richard Convertino, the prosecutor blamed for the failed Detroit terror prosecution, has resigned. He says he is going to become a defense lawyer.

In court filings and interviews, department officials have blamed Mr. Convertino in large part for the dismissal of criminal charges against three Moroccan men suspected of operating a Qaeda terrorist cell in Detroit. The case was dismissed after an internal review found that prosecutors had failed to divulge material casting doubt on the suspects' links to terrorism.

As TChris reported here, Convertino has been under investigation for alleged misconduct in earlier drug cases. He sued Ashcroft and the Justice Department claiming to be a whistleblower, notwithstanding that his lawyer acknowledged that he intentionally withheld evidence from the defense. More dirty details here.

My view: The defense bar is no place for Mr. Convertino.

The DEA has been conducting a war on doctors who prescribe pain medication. Last month, Libertarian Blogger and Cato Policy Analyst Radley Balko wrote a column about it, Bush Should Feel Doctors' Pain. It got picked up by several newspapers, including a small one in York, PA>

DEA Administrator Karen Tandy took the time to write the York, PA paper criticizing Radley's column.

Radley now fisks Tandy's letter, point by point, finding it rife with errors and misrepresentations.

The gloves are off. Over at the Huffington Post Blog, Rep. John Conyers lambasts journalist Bryon York for his column last week referring to Conyers and Rep. Louise Slaughter as "Crazy Aunt Louise and Uncle John ".

Rep. Conyers post is clever. He uses links (although a few don't work quite right.) But most of all, the post shows that Rep. Conyers (or at least someone on his staff) is on top of what's happening in the blogosphere, from Jeff Gannon to the Downing Street Memo.

My email box has been overflowing with German spam for a few days. Crooks and Liars tracked it down:

Direland has the scoop The racist spam that has flooded inboxes from Australia to Anaheim with hundreds of thousands of e-mails is designed to boost the NPD's score in elections this coming Sunday in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany's most populated state. The Sober.Q virus, Der Spiegel says, is "the newest version of the Sober virus, a worm that infects address books and sends a copy of itself to all the entries. Various security firms have released warnings that they received hundreds of thousands of Sober.Q emails within the first 24 hours of the virus' outbreak."

Update: The news is now reporting on the growing problem.

The media once again is falling prey to the demands of the White House. The issue is not whether Newsweek should issue a retraction. It is that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should appoint a special counsel to investigate detainee claims of torture and religious persecution. The Government cannot continue to investigate itself and proclaim its innocence.

The documents obtained by the ACLU through its Freedom of Information Act request, the lawsuits filed by detainees, the dozens of interviews and two years worth of mainstream media reports all make a compelling case that this kind of abuse occurred.

We must assure the Arab world that an independent and thorough investigation will occur, that the abuse, if confirmed, will stop and that those responsible will be held accountable.

The Arab world could care less about a retraction from Newsweek. It wants action by the U.S. Government. It deserves no less.

I expressed these views this morning -- as a blogger, not a defense lawyer-- on MSNBC's Connected Coast to Coast .