by TChris

The vigilante* group known as the Minuteman Project is declaring victory and calling it quits, at least with regard to its central mission: hanging out in the desert and attempting to spot undocumented entrants who crossed the Mexican border. The mayor of Douglas, Arizona is less sanguine about the group's claim of success.

Ray Borane, the mayor of Douglas, said the effort had been "very superficial and clearly insincere." "It doesn't surprise me that they ended it," he said. "As soon as the media packed up and left, they left as well. All they accomplished was being a hindrance to the Border Patrol and creating international hard feelings. Their biggest accomplishment was getting the media's attention. It was, as the Mexicans say, all song and no opera."

But watch out-- the group's spokesman, Gray Deacon, warns that the Minuteman Project will return, putting "between 10,000 and 21,000 people on the border in all four Southwestern states" if the Bush administration fails to secure the border. The boastful estimate seems a bit puffed, given the "roughly 750 volunteers" presently on patrol.

Your turn to follow the news wherever it takes you.

The filibuster battle likely will hit next week over the nominations of Priscilla Owen and Janice Rogers Brown. TalkLeft opposes both, and urges Senator Reid and the Democrats to stick to their guns and fight tooth and nail to preserve the independence and integrity of our judiciary.

Both nominees were blocked by filibuster and then renominated by Bush this past February. Reasons to oppose Owen are here. . For Rogers Brown, go here.

How sick is this? If you're having trouble making it to the hunting range, don't fret. John Lockhart, who runs Live-Shot.com will arrange for you to kill animals (for real) via remote-control on his website, using a computer and mouse.

You can choose from an assortment of live animals that roam a ranch in Texas.

A rifle, video camera and computer are mounted on a stand at the ranch at a spot where deer, antelope and sheep frequently pass. From thousands of miles away, via computer, a person can control the camera and gun, firing with the click of a mouse.

Isn't it illegal? Apparently, not yet. Lawmakers in California and several other states are trying to shut Lockwood down.

Update: Alterman responds to Cloud.

Nobody really cares about Mr. Cloud personally, or the fact that he found Ms. Coulter so charming and “ironic” sipping her white Bordeaux and throwing her blonde locks back as she downed her Nicorette. The issue that engages those of us who are invested in protecting and defending the honesty and integrity of American journalism is that Mr. Cloud has used the powerful and influential pages of Time magazine to declare Ms. Coulter’s work “mostly accurate” while admitting that neither he, nor Time’s minions, did the necessary work to defend that pronouncement.

*************
Who is John Cloud? He's the Time Magazine reporter who wrote the puff cover piece on the she-pundit with long blond hair. He also is today's most ridiculed reporter in the blogosphere.

First, Cloud's Infraction

• John Cloud's Time Magazine Article

Initial Response to Infraction

• Xoverboard
• Alterman
• Billmon
• Media Matters
• Daily Howler
• James Wolcott
• Daily Kos
• Digby
• Blaghdaddy

Cloud's response to his critics

Can you imagine having your house searched and the cop who walks in with the Kevlar vest using the two-way radio is a monkey?

[A] police SWAT team in Mesa, Ariz., has applied for $100,000. from the federal government to buy a capuchin monkey and train it to perform law enforcement duties. Until now, monkeys have only been on the other side of the law, but officers say a police monkey could search buildings, find bodies, and gather information with a video camera and two-way radio. The officer who wrote the application says the monkey itself would cost $15,000, with the rest of the grant going toward equipment and upkeep.

The monkey would be trained in special-ops intelligence.

Senator Ted Kennedy has launched a new website for his re-election bid in 2006. There's something special about it. He's using it to gather netroots support against one of Bush's worst judicial picks. Good for him.

Check out this petition drive on his site to defeat William G. Myers III for a U.S. Court of Appeals judgeship.

Myers has spent his career trying to dismantle the protections our courts exist to preserve. He was a former lobbyist for the mining, grazing and cattle industries and a Bush Administration bureaucrat. His only experience has been manipulating laws and regulations for corporate gain, against the public interest. He’s unqualified to sit on the largest federal appellate court in the country.

Myers was among the 20 judges whose names Bush resubmitted to Congress after being rejected by the last Senate. More information about him is available here. In July, 2004, the Senate blocked a vote on his confirmation, and the Republicans were unable to muster the 60 votes necessary to force it.

As PFAW said in December when Bush renominated the rejected appointees:

The Judge presiding over the case of accused 9/11 co-conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui has scheduled a change of plea hearing for Friday, following yesterday's closed door hearing. The last time Moussaoui tried to plead guilty it was a disaster. Will Moussaoui do better this time? Last time, Moussaoui did not confess to any of the charges against him that pertain to the September 11 attacks. He said he was a member of Al Qaeda and he knew who planned the attacks. What will he admit to Friday?

If the plea is accepted, Moussaoui will face a death penalty proceeding.

Update: Dahlia Lathwick at Slate has a good column on Moussaoui today.

Canada has approved the use of Sativex, a liquid form of marijuana that is sprayed inside the mouth. It has been found to be an effective pain reliever for those suffering from multiple sclerosis.

The action marks the first time a natural marijuana product has been approved for prescription sale anywhere in the Western Hemisphere since marijuana prohibition was instituted in the last century.

Rob Kampia of Marijuana Policy Project adds,

Sativex is, for all practical purposes, marijuana in liquid form. Made from marijuana plants bred for specific levels of various active components, called cannabinoids, Sativex resembles marijuana extracts and tinctures that were legally available in the United States -- manufactured by major drug companies and sold through pharmacies -- until the federal government banned marijuana in 1937.

In clinical trials, Sativex relieved MS-related pain and sleep disturbance that were not helped by standard drugs, with remarkably few side effects.

The ACLU has teamed with other organizations to file the first lawsuit against the U.S. over detention of Muslim-Americans crossing the border. In this case, a group of American citizens of the Islamic faith were returning to the U.S. from a religious conference in Toronto.

The New York Civil Liberties Union, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Council on American-Islamic Relations in simultaneous news conferences in Buffalo and Brooklyn today announced a lawsuit charging that the Department of Homeland Security singled out and violated the rights of American citizens who were returning from a religious conference in Toronto. The lawsuit was filed to challenge the DHS’s policy of detaining, interrogating, fingerprinting and photographing American citizens who are Muslim, solely because they attended an Islamic conference.

“None of the citizens who were detained had done anything unlawful, nor were they charged with any unlawful act,” said Donna Lieberman, Executive Director of the NYCLU. “It is very troubling that citizens who were exercising their First Amendment rights were singled out because of their faith and attending the conference.”

Complaints by Air Force cadets of religious intolerance are getting media attention today. Among the current crop of complaints:

• The Air Force is investigating a complaint from an atheist cadet who says the school is "systematically biased against any cadet that does not overtly espouse Christianity."

• The official academy newspaper runs a Christmas ad every year praising Jesus and declaring him the only savior. Some 200 academy staff members, including some department heads, signed it. Whittington noted the ad was not published last December.

• The academy commandant, Brig. Gen. Johnny Weida, a born-again Christian, said in a statement to cadets in June 2003 that their first responsibility is to their God. He also strongly endorsed National Prayer Day that year. School spokesman Johnny Whitaker said Weida now runs his messages by several other commanders.

• Some officer commission ceremonies were held at off-campus churches. In a letter dated April 6, Weida said the ceremonies would be held on campus from now on.

Here's some background, where we include more incidents, like the school's use of a "Team Jesus" banner and a dust-up over cadet support for Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ.

It was Pope Benedict XVI, formerly known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who inserted the Catholic church into the 2004 election by ordering bishops to deny communion to abortion rights supporters, including candidate John Kerry.

In a June 2004 letter to US bishops enunciating principles of worthiness for communion recipients, Ratzinger specified that strong and open supporters of abortion should be denied the Catholic sacrament, for being guilty of a "grave sin."

He specifically mentioned "the case of a Catholic politician consistently campaigning and voting for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws," a reference widely understood to mean Democratic candidate Kerry, a Catholic who has defended abortion rights. The letter said a priest confronted with such a person seeking communion "must refuse to distribute it."

I linked to the June, 2004 letter in my earlier post on the Pope here, and quoted other language. Here is the language about the Catholic politician: