A big thanks to Crooks and Liars for locating and uploading the video of Peter Jenning's announcement last night of his lung cancer. ABC News, if you can believe it, is charging for the video.

The video is sad. Jenning's voice is scratchy, and he tries to put a brave face and display a stoic outlook on his condition. One of the things that has made Jennings (and Brokaw) superior anchors is that they never made the news about them. Their personalities really didn't come through in their newscasts. It was always about the story. Even in this announcement, Jennings half sounds like he's reporting on his condition. He extends compassion to others who are battling cancer and tells us that one is a survivor from the moment of diagnosis. He doesn't allow himself even a moment of self-pity on the air--although his last line has a touch of self-effacing humor to it.

Some doctors are speculating that his cancer must be advanced because he is going right into chemotherapy without first having surgery. I suspect only Jenning's doctors know for sure how advanced his conditon is. Lung cancer is serious, but there are survivors.

5,000 mourners attended Johnnie Cochran's funeral today at a South LA baptist church West Angeles Cathedral in South Los Angeles. The LA Times has coverage here, including this video of Al Sharpton's eulogy. Here's the entire list of speakers.

Rap mogul Sean "P. Diddy" Combs, civil rights activists Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rev. Al Sharpton, actor Sidney Poitier, singer Stevie Wonder, record producer Quincy Jones and Motown Records founder Berry Gordy were also on the guest list.

The speaker's list included one of Cochran's most notable clients -- former Black Panther Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt, who spent 27 years in prison for a murder he did not commit.

Also in attendance: Michael Jackson, whose trial was recessed today, and O.J. Simpson.

More pictures here.

by TChris

Another Republican doesn't want to follow the rules ... and so he won't. Senate rules prohibit Senators from earning outside income, but Sen. Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma obstetrician, has been delivering babies anyway when he's home on breaks from his day job as a politician. The Senate Ethics Committee told Coburn in December to stop. Coburn agreed not to take new patients, but has continued to give exams and deliver babies.

"No, I am not going to close my medical practice," Coburn, R-Okla., said Tuesday.

Coburn has threatened to cause "all sorts of mischief" if the Senate actually makes him work at his elected job "five solid days a week."

by TChris

A New Jersey school tried to teach Ryan Dwyer the wrong lesson: if you criticize your principal or teachers, even in your own home, writing on your own website, you will be punished. A federal judge taught the school the correct lesson: kids, like adults, are protected by the First Amendment.

On his Web site in the spring of 2003, Ryan noted that the Maple Place School didn't live up to its vaunted reputation and that he really hated it. He also discussed the disciplinary methods of the principal. He took note of some teachers he didn't like. And, it must be noted, he lauded some teachers he looked up to.

Offended by Dwyer's ideas and language, school district administrators ordered Dwyer to shut down his website. Then it suspended him, kicked him off the baseball team, and refused to let him take a class trip. Dwyer responded appropriately: he sued the school for violating his right to freedom of expression. Judge Stanley Chesler ruled in Dwyer's favor, vindicating Dwyer's right to be free from governmental retaliation for engaging in private speech, even if it offends school administrators. That's a lesson the school needed to learn.

by TChris

With armed vigilantes making headlines, it may not be surprising that right-wing politicians find it understandable that judges who disagree with their extreme views might become targets of violence. Not surprising, but still shocking.

Earlier this week, TalkLeft called attention to Senator Cornyn's distressing claim that courthouse violence is caused by frustration with activist judges.

The frustration "builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in" violence, said Mr. Cornyn, a former member of the Texas Supreme Court who is on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which supposedly protects the Constitution and its guarantee of an independent judiciary.

As the New York Times editorially opines today, "when a second important Republican stands up and excuses murderous violence against judges as an understandable reaction to their decisions, then it is time to get really scared."

by TChris

Tom DeLay's hope that he could distract voters with Terri Schiavo was fleeting. Only the most extreme shared his desire to see the federal courts interfere with an intensely personal struggle that had already played out in state courts.

Now it's back to reality for DeLay. Despite offering "a vigorous public defense in recent weeks to a flurry of ethics accusations," DeLay and his PAC, Americans for a Republican Majority, face new scrutiny.

The wife and daughter of Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, have been paid more than $500,000 since 2001 by Mr. DeLay's political action and campaign committees, according to a detailed review of disclosure statements filed with the Federal Election Commission and separate fund-raising records in Mr. DeLay's home state, Texas.

David Lane, lawyer for embattled Professor Ward Churchill, wrote a letter Monday to University of Colorado acting chancellor Philip DiStefano, concerning the faculty committee investigation into Churchill's Indian heritage:

[Lane] wants officials to clarify how they intend to prove he is an American Indian, asking if they plan to use "the Nazi standard for racial purity."

"Do you wish to employ the Nazi standard for racial purity? Do you wish to employ the standard adopted by the United States government for determining Japanese ancestry in order to qualify for internment?"

Four of five pages of the letter were an attack on CU's investigation:

Hunter Thompson's widow, Anita Thompson, made the news official today: Hunter's ashes will be blasted from a cannon in August, as he wanted:

Hunter S. Thompson's ashes will be blasted from a cannon mounted inside a 53-foot-high sculpture of the journalist's "gonzo fist" emblem, his wife said Tuesday. The cannon shot, planned sometime in August on the grounds of his Aspen-area home, will fulfill the writer's long-cherished wish.

"It's expensive, but worth every penny," Anita Thompson said. "I'd like to have several explosions. He loved explosions."

Jury selection begins tomorrow in the murder trial of Eric Rudolph, charged with setting a bomb outside of an Alabama abortion clinic in 1998 which killed a police officer. 500 jurors have been summoned to a ballroom where they will fill out questionniares. Individual questioning of jurors is expected to begin in May.

The defense team is led by the great Judy Clarke. Judy also represented the Unabomber Ted Kaczinski, and got a life sentence, beating the death penalty, for Susan Smith, who drowned her two sons and then invented a black male to blame the deaths on. She also served on the Zacarias Moussaoui team for a while, until Rudolph was arrested. Judy is a federal defender and death penalty expert from Spokane and a past President of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL)

Issues that will be raised during trial:

In a move that likely will have a large, negative effect on tourism, the Bush Administration announced new rules today that will require Americans to have a passport if they want to re-enter the U.S. from Canada, Mexico, or the Carribean. The new program is the "Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative."

[I]t will require U.S. citizens to show a passport to re-enter the U.S. from Canada, Mexico, Bermuda, and Panama. Canadian citizens will also have to show their passport to enter the U.S.

According to the State Department, a passport or other accepted travel document will be required starting December 31, 2005 for air and sea travel to or from the Caribbean, Bermuda, Central and South America. The documents will be required for all air and sea travel to or from Mexico and Canada starting December 31, 2006. Starting December 31, 2007, the documents will be required for all air, sea, and land border crossings.

Passports now cost $97 for people over 16 and take six to eight weeks to arrive. The State Deparment is contemplating additional "papers" that will be acceptable in the future:

The Red Cross is demanding an investigation into last week's prison riot at Camp Bucca in Southern Iraq.

The US military announced early today that 12 Iraqi prisoners and four US prison guards were wounded when inmates rioted at Camp Bucca last week, torching tents and hurling rocks in Iraq's largest US-run detention centre. The riot at the desert camp in southern Iraq, where more than 6000 prisoners are held, was first reported by radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr's movement, and was confirmed by the ICRC.

The U.S. first claimed to have no knowledge of the riot, until the Red Cross released details. Then the U.S. provided this version of events:

Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) has come up with another doozy of a crime bill: Instead of fining those who make indecent comments on television, let's throw them in jail.

Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner III, R-Wis., told cable industry executives attending the National Cable & Telecommunications Assn. conference here on Monday that criminal prosecution would be a more efficient way to enforce the indecency regulations. "I'd prefer using the criminal process rather than the regulatory process," Sensenbrenner told the executives.

People who are in flagrant disregard should face a criminal process rather than a regulator process," Sensenbrenner said. "That is the way to go. Aim the cannon specifically at the people committing the offenses, rather than the blunderbuss approach that gets the good actors.

Sensenbrenner is a one-man disaster for justice. He's been the driving force behind the Real ID Act and bills to strip judges of their discretion in sentencing and subpoena judges' records. In 2004, he wanted to add mandatory minimum penalties to non-violent drug offenses (one example: a five year mandatory minimum sentence for passing a joint to someone who had been in a treatment center.)