Denver is getting a new bi-weekly called Bias. Targeted to a young audience, Westword reports that the promotional materials indicate that sex and homicide are the themes.

Among the first items in a sample issue of Bias magazine that's been shown to potential clients in recent months is "Drink to the Lost," a feature urging readers to "Find your luck in living with this fun murder map!" An accompanying street guide of downtown Denver spotlights locales where prominent slayings took place, along with toasts to the victims. Guzzlers are encouraged to laud assassinated talk-show host Alan Berg with this remark: "If we're all to be mowed down for the shit we talk, then the devil's got a full clip for each of us."

Here's a promise from the promo material:

[Bias] "will help you carve up your market like Jeff Dahmer at a Rohypnol party."

It's a bit of a surprise who's funding the publication:

The LA Times has an update on the Bush Administration's attempt to block frozen Iraqi assets from being used to pay a judgment for $1 billion as damages to POW's in the 1991 Gulf War.

The case is now being appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The last hope for the POWs rests with the Supreme Court. Their lawyers petitioned the high court last month to hear the case. Significantly, it has been renamed Acree vs. Iraq and the United States. The POWs say the justices should decide the "important and recurring question [of] whether U.S. citizens who are victims of state-sponsored terrorism [may] seek redress against terrorist states in federal court."

This week, Justice Department lawyers are expected to file a brief urging the court to turn away the appeal.

Our background on the case from 2003 is here.

Michael Jackson made the headlines this morning when he was taken to the emergency room instead of to court. It's only the flu, but he has been admitted to the hospital. Jury selection will resume Feb. 22.

The jury verdict is in --guilty--in the case of Christopher Pittman, a teenager on trial for murder who used Zoloft as a defense has been found guilty.

Christopher was 15 when he killed his grandparents. He was charged as an adult and will be sentenced this afternoon to between 30 years and life.

Update: Christopher was sentenced to 30 years.

I've often pointed out that if the radical right were less hypocritical about the "right to life", it would support ending the death penalty.

This op-ed on the death penalty has that perspective - it comes from the Monitor, which refers to itself as Uganda's "only independent voice." It's well worth the read, here are some snippets:

Bump and Update: Show Chris some heart and tell the Academy how you feel.

Here's a chance to see how much power conservatives have over MSM. It's just begun in the last couple of days so follow along and see how it plays out.

It begins with Drudge bashing Chris Rock as a choice to host the Oscars due to some quotes from his routines that are sure to enrage conservatives, particularly the radical right and evangelicals.

Drudge expands his reach by taking it to Hannity and Colmes Monday night, where he is granted not one, but two segments-- alone --with no guest taking the other side. Crooks and Liars has the video....

Despite Drudge's ambiguous denials of an agenda to get Rock de-invited to host the Oscars, I'm not buying it. He repeated the same lines by Rock over and over, hoping to cause a firestorm and create a groundswell of support for Rock's ouster.

Variety reports that the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences is firm in having Rock host the Oscars. It also says it hasn't heard any opposition from members. Not only that, the Academy released a firm statement of support today for Rock.

Does former Texas Panhandle District Attorney Rick Roach deserve compassion now? The New York Times has a long article on the meth-addicted but zealous prosecutor who's headed to jail.

Even as he was hounding drug offenders into jail, it turned out, Mr. Roach was sinking into his own hell of drug addiction, by his own account stealing methamphetamine and other drugs from police seizures to cope with depression and sexual impotence. Equally astonishing was that his taste for drugs was hardly a secret: it had come to light in two election campaigns.

We wrote up his story here and here.

In an interview reported in the Times article,

by TChris

Conservative commentator Alan Keyes is teaching a lesson in family values.

Maya Keyes -- liberal, lesbian and a little lost -- finds herself out on her own. She says her parents -- conservative commentator and perennial candidate Alan Keyes and his wife, Jocelyn -- threw her out of their house, refused to pay her college tuition and stopped speaking to her. Maya, 19, says her parents cut her off because of who she is -- "a liberal queer."

The preznit thinks he's on a roll today. Not only did he send his judicial wish list in, he's asking Congress to renew the Patriot Act.

The ACLU says " not so fast."

While 10 percent of that act is set to sunset at the end of this year, we should be mindful that Congress specifically designed those controversial provisions to expire so that cooler heads could examine, review, and-- if warranted-- amend and renew them.

I leave the computer for 12 hours and what happens, Bush re-nominates 12 ultra-conservative judges. Who are they and how bad? Here's the offical White House list. It includes:

• Janice Rogers Brown, of California, to be United States Circuit Judge for the District of Columbia Circuit,

• Priscilla Richman Owen, of Texas, to be United States Circuit Judge for the Fifth Circuit.

• William H. Pryor, Jr., of Alabama, to be United States Circuit Judge for the Eleventh Circuit

• William J. Haynes, II for the 4th Circuit

Here are all the 12 who previously failed to be confirmed:

by TChris

Here's your Valentine's Day proof that love conquers all -- even the criminal law.

Mary Kay Letourneau and her former sixth-grade pupil, Vili Fualaau, with whom she had two children, have set the date for their wedding, according to an online bridal registry. Letourneau, 43, and Fualaau, 22, plan to wed April 16, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported Monday. Letourneau served 7½ years on a 1997 conviction for raping Fualaau.

In the words of a family friend: "That they lasted this long proves how strong their love is."

Yesterday marked the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Dresden, Germany by allied and U.S. forces in World War II. Look who showed up and grabbed the attention:

Waving black flags and banners, thousands of neo-Nazis marched through the heart of Dresden yesterday on the 60th anniversary of the city's destruction by British and American bombers.

In the largest neo-Nazi demonstration in Germany's postwar history, about 5,000 people took part in a "funeral march" to mourn the civilians killed by the allied attack. The protest upstaged the official commemoration of the anniversary, during which the British ambassador laid a wreath at a cemetery where victims were buried.

They played the music of Wagner and Bach from their loudspeakers. There were "anti-fascists" who turned out to oppose them.