I've never been crazy about Prince Charles, but Camilla Parker-Bowles has stuck by him through thick and thin.

And she looked glorious today. Congratulations to both of them. The wedding went off without a hitch - they earned this.

by TChris

In 1996, Washington Supreme Court Justice Richard Sanders attended and spoke at a right-to-life rally. The State's Judicial Conduct Commission investigated, but Justice Sanders wasn't sanctioned.

Justice Sanders was sanctioned, however, after he "took an educational tour of the treatment facility for violent sexual predators at the McNeil Island Special Commitment Center." The Commission suggested that Justice Sanders called into question his ability to be impartial by speaking to inmates who had cases pending before the court. It's unclear, however, whether those conversations had anything to do with the pending cases.

Why was discipline imposed in the latter case but not the former?

Sanders immediately branded Friday's decision "bizarre." The 59-year-old Libertarian-leaning justice, who often is a lightning rod for criticism from prosecutors on his individual rights rulings, said the case resulted from people who have been gunning for him politically.

In our continuing "America. Prison Nation" series: A 30 year old spammer named Jeremy Jaynes from North Carolina has been sentenced to nine years by a Virginia jury.

Nine years? As Xoverboard points out, what is he, the most dangerous man in America? You don't get that much time for manslaughter or child molestation in a lot of places.

At least the judge has allowed him to remain on bond pending the appeal, citing serious constitutional issues with the law, not the least of which is that is seeks to regulate activity outside of Virginia:

[Loudoun County Circuit Judge Thomas Horne] said he might also reconsider the sentence if Jaynes loses the appeal. "I do not believe a person should go to prison for a law that is invalid," he said. "There are substantial legal issues that need to be brought before the appellate court."

No one likes spammers, but this is excessive.

If you're in Chicago during the next month and looking for something different, check out "Dead Wrong", which came about when death row inmate Darby Tillis, who was released after it was proven he was framed for a double murder at a hot dog stand, went knocking on theater doors asking to put on a one-night show about his experience. [The Chicago Tribune reviews the show here.]

Tillis has the distinction of being one of the first exonerated Death Row inmates. He was sentenced to death in 1979 for a double murder at a hot dog stand in the Uptown neighborhood. Fingered by the real killer's girlfriend, who set him up to protect her boyfriend, Tillis went through five trials before he was freed in 1987 with the help of new evidence and petitions brought by Northwestern University's Center on Wrongful Convictions and the MacArthur Justice Center.

The theater company found his experience so compelling, they made the show part of its regular season. It opened last night and will run through May 15.

In Baltimore, a court has thrown out the conviction of a defrocked priest in a sex abuse trial:

Less than two months after he was convicted of molesting a boy who later shot him, defrocked priest Maurice Blackwell was granted a new trial by a judge who said testimony about other alleged victims was inappropriate.

In a case where "credibility is a critical issue," Circuit Judge Stuart R. Berger wrote, the witnesses "improperly attempted to enhance the credibility of the state's critical witness by injecting references to other victims."

Too bad Michael Jackson isn't being tried in Maryland. California's Rule 1108 does nothing but inject unfairness into the proceedings. More on Jackson and the prior accusers here, here and here.

Prominent Republican consultant Arthur Finklestein has married his male partner in a civil ceremony in Massachussetts.

Arthur J. Finkelstein, a prominent Republican consultant who has directed a series of hard-edged political campaigns to elect conservatives in the United States and Israel over the last 25 years, said Friday that he had married his male partner in a civil ceremony at his home in Massachusetts.

Mr. Finkelstein, 59, who has made a practice of defeating Democrats by trying to demonize them as liberal, said in a brief interview that he had married his partner of 40 years to ensure that the couple had the same benefits available to married heterosexual couples.

"I believe that visitation rights, health care benefits and other human relationship contracts that are taken for granted by all married people should be available to partners," he said.

He's right. But what about the hypocrisy? And what will James Dobson and Jerry Falwell say?

A TalkLeft reader writes in:

Conservative blogger Michelle Malkin criticizes my enthusiasm for Meet Vernon, the first blog by a death row inmate.

Probably, she would not appreciate that I sometimes speak to students as young as those in middle school about the humanity of death row inmates, showing them blown-up images of several of those included in the 2000 Benneton campaign, "We on Death Row" and reading parts of their interviews. Nor would Ms. Malkin appreciate the "thank you" letters I've received from the teachers and students who've listened to my talk and were moved by the experience of viewing the actual faces of those of death row and hearing their words.

Ms. Malkin quips that she doesn't want to hear the condemned talk about their IPods or their razors or cameras. Of course, that's not what they talk about. They talk about their hopes, their fears, their lost dreams, their remorse, their nightmares. They talk about what it's like to know with certainty that the state is going to kill you, how they've messed up their lives, the things they miss, the people they've loved, their religion, their mothers, their children...and more.

Sears Roebuck didn't appreciate the Benneton campaign at the time and pulled the clothing line from their stores. My response to Sears was to call for a boycott of their stores. Crime victims didn't like that Benneton bought billboard space to display the campaign and ultimately, Benneton took them down. The Attorney General of Missouri sued. When the campaign began, all 96 pages of it was on the Internet. Now, you can't find the campaign online anywhere. It is as if it's been censored out of existence. I still have several copies, and this site still carries the press release to the campaign. Here's a portion:

by TChris

Who thinks the Patriot Act should be reformed (if not jettisoned)? Just today:

• Beth Wilson, executive director of the ACLU of Kentucky, writing in the Kentucky Post.

• The Minneapolis Star Tribune

• Peyton Knight,executive director of the American Policy Center

• The South Florida Sun-Sentinel Editorial Board

The parade of disgruntled Neverland employees continues. Yesterday was the former guard. Today it's the former cook, Phillip LeMarque, who claims to have been shocked, yes shocked, that one night, 14 years ago, he delivered french fries to Michael Jackson and saw Jackson with his hand inside Macaulay Culkin's pants. This was no surprise visit, Jackson had called down for the fries.

Under cross-examination from defense attorney Thomas Mesereau, LeMarque acknowledged that his employment with Jackson ended with him suing the star for overtime owed him and that the case was settled out of court.

During a break in testimony, Judge Rodney Melville barred the defense from raising the issue of LeMarque's later work as the operator of a p0rnographic Web site.

Operator of a p0rn0graphic web site. Shocked. Not enough to report it, just enough to remember it 14 years later.

by TChris

A police officer assigned to a South Jersey high school has been arrested for having several sexual encounters with a 17 year old student. Officer Eric Allen, who (like all arrestees) is presumed innocent, had been assigned to the Absegami High School as a resource officer.

An officer in Lacey, Washington was reinstated after the Police Guild grieved his termination. Keith Mercer's superiors complained about his poor work habits, alleging that he allowed two sexual assault investigations to "slip through the cracks." After Mercer jokingly put a gun to his head in front of an officer who asked him how he was handling the stress of the investigation, Mercer was fired. An arbitrator decided that the incident involved "horseplay" rather than "misconduct," warranting only a three day suspension. Horseplay with a gun isn't misconduct?

by TChris

Did Police Chief Edward Whitlock of Ridgeville, S.C. check Timothy Graves' references before hiring him as a police officer?

Last month, James Williams and two other town councilmen tried to fire Graves after The (Charleston) Post and Courier published articles about how officers who had committed crimes or were involved in misconduct have been hired at other law agencies. ... Graves was fired by North Charleston after an investigation found he accepted money for off-duty work while on duty for the city.

Whitlock defended the hiring, arguing that he has to overlook a few "blemishes" on an officer's record because the town doesn't pay well enough to attract law-abiding officers. He pointed out that Graves was the best of the three applicants. One had unspecified "financial problems" while the third was indicted for reckless homicide. But there's reason to believe that Whitlock isn't the world's best judge of character.

by TChris

CNN reports that Eric Rudolph will plead guilty to all charges alleging his involvement in bombings (including the 1996 Olympics bombing and a 1998 clinic bombing in Atlanta) in exchange for a life sentence. As TalkLeft reported here, Rudolph's jury selection began this week.