by TChris

Florida's Department of Children and Families, having been thwarted in its effort to interfere in the Terri Schiavo case, is acting to prevent a 13 year old girl from exercising her constitutional right to have an abortion. The department claims the girl is too immature to decide whether to undergo the procedure, although the department doesn't seem to care whether she's sufficiently mature to give birth.

The girl, who got pregnant in a group home, now lives in foster care. When she learned of her pregnancy, she immediately told her caseworker that she wanted an abortion.

The procedure had been scheduled for last Tuesday, but then the morality police from Tallahassee arrived. That very morning, DCF lawyers filed an emergency motion with Palm Beach Circuit Judge Ronald Alvarez. He signed a temporary order blocking the abortion and ordered a competency examination for [the girl].

Before the girl decided to exercise her constitutional right, nobody had suggested that she was incompetent. Not only is the department interfering with the girl's ability to exercise a constitutional right, the decision to force a young girl to have a baby she doesn't want is bad policy.

In the U.S., Tom Cruise makes headlines because he's found a new girlfriend, a 26 year old actress named Katie Holmes. In Europe, at least in Germany, the headline is that Cruise has brought Scientology onto the movie set of the new Spielberg film, War of the Worlds, and brags about how many drug addicts he's cured with his religion - and, astonishingly, claims that his religion has the only successful drug treatment program in the world.

From a Der Speigel interview with Cruise and Spielberg:

SPIEGEL: Do you see it as your job to recruit new followers for Scientology?

Cruise: I'm a helper. For instance, I myself have helped hundreds of people get off drugs. In Scientology, we have the only successful drug rehabilitation program in the world. It's called Narconon.

SPIEGEL: That's not correct. Yours is never mentioned among the recognized detox programs. Independent experts warn against it because it is rooted in pseudo science.

The presumption of guilt never takes a rest with Nancy Grace. Via Crooks and Liars,on the missing bride-to-be:

That which is Nancy Grace...

4/28 transcripts

GRACE: Well, look, I don`t have a degree in being a police chief. But I can tell you this much: This is not cold feet, all right? This is not cold feet. I know that much.

4/29 Transcripts

GRACE: Another question. Could you tell me, Jonathan, what was the fiance doing at the time she was jogging? Was he there in the home? Does he have an alibi?

by TChris

St. Louis police officer Reginald Williams' career as a "renegade cop" has ended with federal convictions for civil rights violations arising out of a false arrest.

The arrest, during a traffic stop on July 5, 2002, turned frightening when Williams punched [Michael Banks]in the stomach, and later took him into a darkened room and threatened to "lock me up and throw away the key," Banks said.

After Williams pulled Banks over, he reached into Banks' pocket and found cash that Banks had just withdrawn from his credit union. Williams accused Banks of earning the money through drug sales. Williams reported that Banks had cocaine in the car, but the cocaine "mysteriously disappeared." So did Banks' cash, which wasn't mentioned in Williams' report.

by TChris

TalkLeft has long been critical of Ahmad Chalabi and his once cozy relationship with the neocons in the Bush administration. Maureen Dowd has a perceptive take on Chalabi's new role in Iraq.

Ahmad Chalabi - convicted embezzler in Jordan, suspected Iranian spy, double-crosser of America, purveyor of phony war-instigating intelligence - is the new acting Iraqi oil minister. Is that why we went to war, to put the oily in charge of the oil, to set the swindler who pretended to be Spartacus atop the ultimate gusher? Does anybody still think the path to war wasn't greased by oil?

Mr. Bush wanted Iraq to have a democracy like ours. It's on its way, nearing an ethics-free zone where a corrupt official can hold sway and a theocracy can curb women's rights.

by TChris

The New York Times reports that there is "growing evidence that the United States has sent terror suspects to Uzbekistan for detention and interrogation" as part of the government's rendition program (background here). It appears that the United States transported dozens of prisoners to Uzbekistan.

While the Bush administration claims it has no reason to believe that foreign governments participating in the rendition program mistreat prisoners, that claim cannot credibly be made with regard to Uzbekistan. According to a State Department human rights report issued in 2001:

Bump and Update: In case you weren't around yesterday, and wonder what's going on here, you now need to register to comment on TalkLeft. From Friday:

Sometimes, all it takes is one person to ruin a good thing. Due to mass obscene comments by a single person this morning, all of which were directed at me or falsely claimed to be written by me, everyone will now have to register with TypeKey to post comments. Typekey provides answers to privacy concerns here. TalkLeft's webmaster, Mike Ditto, is setting this up now. Just click on the comments to any post to register. You can register with the same posting name you've always used.

Your first comment will require me to approve you. Once you are approved, your comments will automatically appear as before. I personally will be doing the approving, so if I'm offline when you make your first comment, it may not be instantaneous. I'm going to try to remain online through the weekend as much as possible.

You have to give typekey an email address to register, but it will not appear in the comments. Also, you have the choice of not having your email address forwarded to me. So, you can remain anonymous if you'd like. For those of you who allow your e-mail address to be forwarded to me, I will not share it with anyone else.

Update: Only two people have had a problem registering and posting comments. If you have a problem, try registering at Mike Ditto's site, so that we can determine if the problem stems from Typekey or TalkLeft.

**********
Original Post:

There's a nasty troll on board today with multiple IP addresses. Comments are shut down until further notice.

How many stories about the missing bride, whom we now know fabricated her abduction, have you seen in the past three days on cable news?

Where is the coverage of Barbara Dehl, the one-time Bush administration crusader against domestic violence, an Ashcroft appointee to the National Advisory Committee on Violence Against Women, now charged herself with kidnapping and methamphetamine offenses.

Barbara Dehl, 49, conspired with her live-in boyfriend and another man to abduct a young couple after the three found money, jewelry and drugs missing from Dehl's safe, police said in court documents....Dehl was indicted by a grand jury this week on two felony counts of kidnapping and one count of trafficking methamphetamine. The men also were indicted on a variety of charges.

Will she blame it all on an abusive boyfriend?

One step forward, two steps back. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger made progress with his prison reform plan stressing rehabilitation over punishment, only to step in it bigtime by inviting the Minutemen to patrol California's borders.

No wonder his approval rating has dropped from 60% to 47% in the past three months. The ACLU weighs in here. The Mexican Government here.

Perhaps the Governor already sees the error of his ways. He is now tempering his support for the Minutemen.

It was 30 years ago today that Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese, who renamed it Ho Chi Minh City.

An estimated three million Vietnamese and 58,000 Americans were killed during the war....But the legacy of what the Vietnamese call the American War lingers in unexploded ordinance, in wounded veterans and in victims of Agent Orange, a toxic defoliant U.S. troops used to wipe out the jungle foliage that provided cover to their opponents.

....The Vietnamese government blames Agent Orange for the serious health problems of at least one million people. The Vietnam Association of Agent Orange/Dioxin Victims says more than 200,000 Vietnamese live with birth defects, deformities and disease that can be traced to exposure to the chemicals.

Some more stats from the final section of the excellent BBC series, War and Protest: the U.S. in Vietnam, which begins with the period of 1946 to 1964.

Pfc. Lynndie England has reached a plea bargain. Reportedly, she will receive no more than 30 months in jail. Had she been convicted on all 17 counts at trial, she could have received 38 years. Her boyfriend and the chief Abu Ghraib prisoner abuser, Charles Graner, got ten years. And here's a bit of news:

Mr. Graner has since married another of the accused, Megan Ambuhl, who pleaded guilty in exchange for dismissal from the military. Mr. Graner has given statements to investigators in the hope of reducing his sentence and is scheduled to testify on behalf of Private England at her sentencing hearing, Captain Crisp said.

by TChris

Manhattan Judge Jeffrey Atlas thought there was barely enough evidence to justify jury deliberations in a bribery prosecution of two union officials. But when he learned that the jurors weren't following the rules, he set aside their guilty verdict.

Jurors are instructed not to discuss the evidence until it's time to deliberate. They're also told not to read media accounts of the case. Judge Atlas wasn't happy when an alternate juror revealed that jurors disregarded both of those admonitions.

Atlas said he was troubled by numerous episodes of misconduct in the jury room while the trial was under way, including instances of jurors voicing opinions about the credibility of witnesses and sarcastic comments about the defendants. He also was troubled by the presence in the jury room of a Village Voice article about the trial.

The sarcastic comments included comparisons between the defendants and "The Sopranos." Defense attorney Dino Lombardi thinks some of the jurors had an anti-union bias that they failed to disclose during jury selection.

"You have these one-dimensional cartoonish impressions of trade union guys," Lombardi said of the juror bias.