Cartoon of the week. [hat tip T. Kindlon]

The Real ID Act is not law yet. Read some more objections, and then contact your representatives in Congress and tell them to vote now. The bill deserves full debate and should be a stand alone measure, not tacked on to the spending bill. The drivers' license provisions are overburdensome and the immigration provisions strip habeas corpus rights.

• Rep. Ron Paul
• Mac Raven
• Rex M

Congress is moving toward requiring states to verify whether applicants are in the U.S. legally before issuing driver's licenses.....The real story here isn't security, or even drivers licenses. It's the Federal government imposing yet another "unfunded mandate" on the states. This is where Congress sets a policy, and then demands that a lower level (state, county, city) government implement and pay for it. It amounts to a hidden Federal tax increase.

[hat tip: AOL Blog Zone]

On a related note, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is launching a big campaign to support immigration reforms, in challenge to President Bush.

We've hogged the discussion the past few days, it's now your turn.

The Arizona Supreme Court has ruled that where racial profiling resulted in criminal charges, the charges can be dismissed.

This would seem like a no-brainer, but the law has been that so long as police could establish that a traffic violation occurred, their reason for making the stop was irrelevant.

Justice Andrew Hurwitz wrote in the unanimous decision that a state can neither write laws that apply only to people of certain races, nor selectively enforce the law according to race, a practice commonly referred to as racial profiling. A state can no more make 'driving while Black' a crime by means of its enforcement than it could by express law," he wrote.

50 years later, there may be justice for Emmett Till. The FBI has agreed to exhume the body of the brutally murdered 14 year old to determine his cause of death.

Emmett, who was raised in Chicago, was kidnapped, beaten, shot to death and dropped in the Tallahatchie River in 1955, reportedly after he whistled at a white woman in Money, Miss., while visiting relatives. Two white men who were acquitted in the case by an all-white jury and later confessed to the crime in a magazine interview. Both are now dead.

Major credit for the FBI decision goes to documentary filmmaker Keith Beauchamp, whose film and life were the subject of a lengthy New York Times article that I quoted here.

Beauchamp grew up in Lousiana and when he was 10 or 11, he found a picture of the mutilated body of Emmett Till. He has been obsessed with the case ever since, spending the last six years filming and tracking down witnesses.

The trial took place in Tallahatchie County which at that time only had all white juries even though the population was two-thirds black.

Why is Congress about to authorize umpteen millions more for Iraq when the Bush administration can't account for $100 million? Is $100 million now considered pocket change?

$96 million is said to be lost from fraud, and another $7 million simply unaccounted for.

U.S. civilian authorities in Iraq cannot properly account for nearly $100 million that was supposed to have been spent on reconstruction projects in south-central Iraq, government investigators said Wednesday.

There are indications of fraud in the use of the $96.6 million, according to a report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. A separate investigation of possible wrongdoing continues. More than $7 million of the total is unaccounted for, the report said. An additional $89.4 million in payments do not have the required supporting documents.

Can you spell corruption?

May 4, 1970. Four students killed by the National Guard during anti-war protests at Kent State University in Ohio. See the Guard lined up to shoot. View the pictures of the four who died. Listen to a clip of the song.

From our archives:

A memorial was held last night and today at Kent State University to honor the four students killed and nine injured at Kent State University in Ohio on May 4, 1970:

Jackson Trial Update
Wednesday May 4, 2005

The prosecution rested today in the Michael Jackson trial. Every reporter I've seen (except one I muted because she's been overly biased since day 1 and isn't really a journalist, she just plays one on tv) has said the prosecution fell way short of what it needs to get a conviction against Michael Jackson.

My view: Terrible job by the prosecution. They didn't fulfill the promises they made in opening and just about every one of their witnesses had enough baggage to sink the Titanic. If there's a "man overboard" here, it's DA Tom Sneddon, not Michael Jackson.

The only thing that could redeem this case from the garbage dump is if Michael Jackson testifies and comes across poorly. Earth to Michael: Stay off the stand.

A few people have remarked that they have to re-log in every time. TalkLeft's webmaster Mike Ditto has provided this suggestion:

In the Firefox preferences under Privacy, make sure that it is set to accept cookies and to keep them until they expire. You can also add talkleft.com and typekey.com to the cookie exception list, setting them to "always allow".

The login cookie will still expire after 20 minutes of inactivity, that's just how Typekey works. But the username and password will always be put in automatically if you have Firefox set to remember passwords.

Other suggestions are welcome.

Crooks and Liars has the link to the video of the "Bright Eyes" performance on the Tonight Show last night. "Bright Eyes" sang a song, "When the President talks to God." It's more than a little surprising NBC allowed it to air. Check out the lyrics at Daily Kos.

In an opinion written by Bush recess appointee William Pryor, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a murder conviction against a defendant notwithstanding findings that prosecutor Nancy Grace "played fast and loose" with the rules.

Monday's decision by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a triple murder conviction won by Grace, explaining that her actions didn't change the result of the trial. It is the third time appellate courts have admonished Grace for her conduct as a prosecutor in Georgia. Grace served as an assistant district attorney in Fulton from 1987 to 1996, leaving that year to join Court TV as a commentator.

The three-judge panel on Monday criticized Grace for not following her obligations to disclose to the defendant's lawyer information about other possible suspects. The 11th Circuit also agreed with a magistrate who found it hard to believe that Grace did not knowingly use a detective's false testimony that there were no other suspects.

What kind of message does this send to prosecutors other than you can break the rules and get away with it?

Bump and Update: The Judge has rejected Pfc. Lynndie England's guilty plea. It's back to square one.

***************
Original Post

The judge has called a three hour halt to Lynndie England's sentencing proceeding, saying she is presenting evidence that contradicts her acceptance of guilt:

A military court deciding the sentence for a key defendant in the Iraq prisoner abuse scandal was interrupted on Wednesday after the judge questioned the validity of the guilty plea.