May she rest in peace.

by TChris

Another report -- this one by a presidential commission led by Laurence Silberman and Charles Robb -- criticizes the intelligence community for its assessment of Iraq's WMD's prior to the U.S. invasion.

A report made public this morning concludes that American intelligence agencies were "dead wrong" in almost all of their prewar assessments about the state of unconventional weapons in Iraq, and that on issues of this importance "we simply cannot afford failures of this magnitude." It adds, "The harm done to American credibility by our all too public intelligence failures in Iraq will take years to undo."

The failure was in large part the result of analytical shortcomings, the report adds, saying "intelligence analysts were too wedded to their assumptions about Saddam's intentions," referring to the ousted Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein."

While the Bush administration and its apologists point to other countries that arrived at the same conclusions, the report reminds readers that "in the end, it was the United States that put its credibility on the line, making this one of the most public - and most damaging - intelligence failures in recent American history."

Update: Maureen Dowd takes on the administration's claim that the commission "found no evidence that political pressure from the White House or Pentagon contributed to the mistaken intelligence." Her take: "That's hilarious."

The military has announced it will free 38 detainees held at Guantanamo. Seems they weren't terrorists after all. So sorry, never mind.

Is this going to be a pattern? Remember "the kicker" at the Republican National Convention and how no one wanted to give him up? He's still at large.

Now there's the case we wrote about yesterday, of the Denver Three. No one in the Republican camp wants to identify him....as Jim Spencer says in the Denver Post, the Run-out has become the Runaround.

Wilton Dedge spent 22 years, or 8,000 days in prison in Florida for a rape he didn't commit. The state legislature now wants him and others in his position to accept $200,000 for the lost years of his life.

Dedge wants lawmakers to give him $5 million for the nearly 8,000 days he spent in prison, for his lost wages, the money his family spent to defend and visit him and the work done by the lawyers who fought for his exoneration.

The House proposal would simply allow Dedge and others like him to ask the Legislature for the $200,000 or benefits package. It would not prohibit people from seeking a larger amount from the Legislature if they have won a lawsuit. Dedge hasn't filed a lawsuit.

This bill is an insult. The wrongfully convicted should not be forced to parry between the courts and legislature for redress. As the Lakeland Ledger says, "It's time to right the wrong."

Terri Schiavo's parents' legal appeals are now exhausted. The Supreme Court has denied their their latest filing (pdf). Scotus Blog reports the same.

May she die and rest in peace. Time to move on. Robert Friedman's column in the St. Petersburg Times has a persective that I suspect will be echoed frequently in coming days. [link via Atrios.]

by TChris

The remedy for disliked speech is more speech, not a pie in the face.

William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard and former chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle, was splattered by a student during a speech about U.S. foreign policy at Earlham College Tuesday. Members of the audience jeered the student, then applauded as Kristol wiped the pie from his face and said, "Just let me finish this point," the Palladium-Item reported

Earlham suspended the dissenter for his childish behavior.

by TChris

Just days after journalists were allowed to report on the administrative review board hearings provided to detainees at Guantanamo, the "military has temporarily stopped providing the specific allegations against individual" detainees.

Previously, the military readily provided "fact summaries" detailing the accusations against individual detainees and whether they allegedly had links to al-Qaida terror network or the ousted Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

Navy Lt. Terry Green, a spokesman at Guantanamo, declined to explain why the military decided to limit the information it would make public. "Green said he could only provide information about whether hearings had taken place, the detainees' ages and how long they have been at Guantanamo."

by TChris

Should children ever be forgiven for mistakes that result from immature judgment? The trend in recent years has been to treat children as adults when they enter the criminal justice system, subjecting them to adult consequences on the theory that they deserve it for committing "adult crimes." That philosophy is tough on a kid who grows up and wants a fresh start in life. It's particularly tough when the kid may be branded as a sex offender for a good part of his adulthood.

Shawn Murphy was 13 when he forced his 11-year-old cousin to have sex with him. Now that he's turned 18, his name has been posted on Iowa's sex offender registry website.

"It causes a lot of problems and doesn't make much sense," said Gail Ryan of the National Adolescent Perpetrator Network's Kempe Children's Center. "With juveniles, we have pretty strong consensus in the field that we shouldn't be calling kids sex offenders when they're adolescents, when they're still forming their identities."

Juvenile sex offenders -- particularly those who have been through a treatment program -- are unlikely to become recidivists, but being labeled a sex offender may become a self-fulfilling prophesy.

by TChris

The Eleventh Circuit again (presumably for the final time) rejected an invitation to intervene in the Terri Schiavo case.

"Any further action by our court or the district court would be improper," the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote. "While the members of her family and the members of Congress have acted in a way that is both fervent and sincere, the time has come for dispassionate discharge of duty."

Judge Birch, concurring in the unsigned order, made clear his displeasure with the federal government's efforts to interfere with decisions made in the Florida courts.

[In] a scathing attack on politicians who got involved in the case, [Judge Birch] added that the White House and lawmakers "have acted in a manner demonstrably at odds with our Founding Fathers' blueprint for the governance of a free people our Constitution."

The decision is available here (pdf).

President Bush came to Denver last week to push his social security privatization plan. Tickets were available through the office of Rep. Bob Beauprez (R-Colo.) Among those getting tickets were Alex Young, 25, an Internet technology worker from Denver; Leslie Weise, a Denver lawyer; and Karen Bauer, a Denver marketing coordinator.

After passing security and reaching their seats, they were asked to leave and pushed towards the door. Why? The Secret Service, which is now involved in the investigation of the incident, says they arrived at the rally in a car that had a bumper sticker that said "No More Blood for Oil."

The Secret Service say they weren't involved, it was a Republican volunteer staffer. Daily Kos has the full story, including an email he received from the three who were ejected. Markos says,

...the White House uses taxpayer dollars to finance these propaganda events. THEN, in order to keep out anyone who might be critical, they "outsource" ticketing and security. That way they can label the events "private" and kick out anyone they want in violation of the First Amendment. Who in Congress will step up and call for an investigation?

Attytood has more.

25 years to life is too long a sentence to impose on a sex offender who failed to register, a California appeals court ruled yesterday. The court termed the failure a "technical violation."

On Monday, Coleman Blease and Rick Sims overturned a 26-years-to-life sentence for Keith Carmony, calling it a violation of the state and federal prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment. The defendant's failure to register, they held, was "completely harmless and no worse than a breach of an overtime parking ordinance."

"If the constitutional prohibition is to have a meaningful application," Blease wrote, "it must prohibit the imposition of a recidivist penalty based on an offense that is no more than a harmless technical violation of a regulatory law."

Now if they'd only apply that cruel and unusual punishment reasoning to three-strikes sentences, we'd be making progress.