by TChris

The idea of rounding up a posse to pursue the bad guys is a popular theme in movies about the wild west, but the modern analog can be found in Arizona, where armed volunteers, recruited by a website, intend to patrol the San Pedro Valley in search of "illegal activity." Calling themselves the Minuteman Project, the volunteers plan to rally in Tombstone before starting their month-long endeavor. They say they'll report their observations to the Border Patrol, and the volunteers have been instructed not to shoot anyone, even if they come under fire. The risk, however, is that some volunteers will decide to take the law into their own hands, bringing a return of "vigilante justice" to Arizona.

[L]aw enforcement officials and human rights advocates are worried about the potential for bloodshed. Critics contend the project may attract vigilantes. At least one white supremacist group has mentioned the project on its Web site.

Given the risk that a whacko or two will join the 800 to 1,000 volunteers that the project expects, the Border Patrol doesn't appreciate the "help" that the untrained volunteers are offering. If the volunteers fear that the Border Patrol isn't doing its job, they should seek a political solution. Running around the desert with guns isn't a productive response.

Update: (TL) David Neiwert explains why this has tragedy and disaster written all over it.

by TChris

Fernando Ferrer, the current front-runner in New York City's Democratic mayoral primary, may have been going after the "law and order" vote when he made comments about the Amadou Diallo case that are difficult to justify. (Background on the Diallo case is here.) That strategy appears to have backfired as polls show a four point drop in voter support, including an eleven point drop among African American voters.

Ferrer, a vocal critic of NYPD policies during the Giuliani administration, startled black leaders by telling a police group on March 15 that there was an effort to "over-indict" the cops who shot and killed Diallo and that the shooting wasn't a crime.

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).