The Aspen Daily News reports,

A commemoration for [Hunter]Thompson's close friends and family has been scheduled on March 5 from 4 to 8 p.m. at the Belly Up nightclub in Aspen, a.k.a. Fat City - the name The Good Doctor initially prescribed to owner Michael Goldberg.

A family spokesman said, "You know who you are" if you should attend.

If that's not you (it's not us either), you will get another chance this summer when "a public celebration of Thompson's life" is planned.

Thanks to those of you who have hit our tip jar this week. I try to send out individual thank yous, but sometimes I get behind. I'll try to do better. The donations really help and are much appreciated.

Raw Story reports that Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) is asking other senators to join him in calling for an investigation into fake news reporter Jeff Gannon.

The letter, issued from Minority Whip Richard Durbin (D-IL), calls on President Bush to “order a full inquiry” into how a “fake” journalist working for a “sham” news organization got access to the president,

America Blog has more details and an Action Alert so you tell your Senators to sign onto Durbin's letter.

Update: House Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is joining in Sen. Durbin's request. Raw Story has the details.

The Supreme Court has ruled in Johnson v. California, that California must discontinue its policy of segregating prisoners by race for 60 days upon arrival unless it can show it passes a strict scrutiny test and there is a compelling reason for it.

State prisons cannot temporarily segregate inmates by race except under the most extraordinary circumstances, the Supreme Court said today, all but ending a long-standing California policy aimed at reducing gang-related violence. As a result, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals must now scrutinize the 25-year-old policy for hard evidence that it is necessary and works — a burden that will be hard to meet.

In order to justify the policy, there has to be a "compelling reason." Many inmates, including some of my clients across the racial spectrum, probably would tell you that staying alive is a pretty compelling reason.

Governor Owens just can't stay quiet about C.U. Professor Ward Churchill. Showing his complete disregard for principles of academic freedom and the spirit of the First Amendment, he sent this letter (pdf) to a Denver citizen last week (we've blocked the name and address to protect his privacy.)

Governor Owens will be out of office in 2006. The recipient of the letter hopes he will be out of politics by then as well.

We've gotten accustomed to legislators introducing bills that increase the number and length of mandatory sentences, eliminate well- established defendants' rights and establish procedures designed to ensure convictions. This year, California takes it one step further with a bill to eliminate conjugal visits.

Here's a letter to the editor that defense attorney Jeff Friedman of Santa Ana, CA wrote that probably won't get published:

This is great, but it might be one of those "only in Aspen" things:

The Pitkin County coroner confirmed yesterday that author and counterculture icon Hunter S. Thompson died from an intentional, self-inflicted gunshot wound. Coroner Steven Ayers said Thompson died instantly. The sheriff's office told The Associated Press the weapon was a .45-caliber handgun.

Ayers has not ordered a toxicology report to reveal whether there were drugs or alcohol in Thompson's body at the time of death. "I'm not ordering a toxicology report in this case because it was incidental to the cause of death. It doesn't matter if there were drugs in his system; it had nothing to do with the manner of his death," Ayers said.

Translation: It was nobody's business but his own.

Why are all criminal defense lawyers depicted on Law & Order shows as being "ethically challenged?" The creators of the new Law & Order spin-off, the one that begins with the late (and great) Jerry Orbach, have announced that this depiction not only will continue, it will be a plot point specifically written into the formula for the show.

But for all that is new - including early guest appearances by Annabella Sciorra, Lorraine Bracco and Peter Coyote, each playing ethically challenged defense lawyers - there will be much that viewers will recognize after Briscoe has passed.

The reason, I suspect, is because that is how the series creator, Dick Wolf, thinks of us. Comments like this tell the story:

Mr. Wolf, speaking by phone last week from California, said that "one of the things both Walon and I hope to accomplish with this is to demolish the shibboleths that have grown up around criminal law, namely that a defense attorney will never ask their client if they did the crime."

"All defense attorneys, if you give them three drinks and a good steak, will say that of course they've had clients who confessed to them and who they know to be guilty."

An emergency stay has been granted pending a hearing tomorrow in the Terry Schiavo "right to die" case. Her feeding tube was scheduled to be removed today.

In somewhat related news, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear challenge to Oregon's assisted suicide law.

We wrote the other day that Hunter Thompson, among other things, was a mensch. It was Hunter that brought these folks to Denver, to fight an injustice to Lisl Auman, serving a life sentence for a murder that occurred after she was in police custody.

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Warren Zevon
enlarge (he opened the rally with "Lawyers, Guns and Money")

Dave at See the Forest writes:

...we are entering a new phase of American history. These are not normal times, the pendulum is not swinging back, and historical trends of American politics no longer apply. American democracy was built on a system of checks and balances, and mechanisms of oversight and accountability. But the checks and balances and oversight and accountability are being removed. There is no Congressional oversight of this administration, the Justice Department does not investigate its crimes, the Federalist Society judges block all attempts to enforce the laws and the new media is no longer functional. The military acts as an arm of The Party and The Party is firmly in control of the State.

The Supreme Court has refused to overturn a lower court ruling upholding Alabama's ban on sex toys. There is no right to consumer privacy in sexually stimulating devices.

A divided three-judge panel of the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed. It said in a ruling last July that siding with the sex toy merchants could open the door to the legalization of undesirable sexual behavior such as prostitution. "If the people of Alabama in time decide that prohibition on sex toys is misguided, or ineffective, or just plain silly, they can repeal the law and be finished with the matter," the court said.

"On the other hand, if we today craft a new fundamental right by which to invalidate the law, we would be bound to give that right full force and effect in all future cases including, for example, those involving adult incest, prostitution, obscenity, and the like."

Doesn't this hurt Alabama businesses who sell the goods? Since it is lawful to possess them, just not to sell them, Alabamans will have to purchase them outside the state.

A related story here.