Via Cursor:

"The Republican Party spin machine was bouncing around the like an overloaded washing machine on Sunday," writes Juan Cole, "attempting to obscure from the American public that they had by their actions managed to install a Shiite religious ruling class in Iraq."

Plus: Cole vs. Jonah Goldberg, rounds one and two.

by TChris

LAPD Chief William Bratton is having trouble explaining why the department he heads hasn't changed its policy regarding shooting at moving vehicles, despite his recognition a year ago that the policy requires revision. Had the process moved more swiftly, a 13-year-old might be alive today.

Officer Steven Garcia, a 9-year veteran, fired 10 shots early Sunday at 13-year-old Devin Brown, who was driving a stolen 1990 Toyota Camry. Garcia, standing outside his police car, opened fire when Devin allegedly backed the Toyota toward the patrol unit.

Garcia is less than a model cop, having been disciplined for threatening an ex-girlfried so she wouldn't cooperate with an unrelated investigation of his conduct. Still, the larger issue is the department's failure to address the risks that inhere in shooting at a moving target.

The last high-profile incident in which an LAPD officer shot and killed a motorist occurred nearly a year ago in Santa Monica, where police killed a man who backed his car toward officers at the end of a televised 90-minute pursuit. At the time, Bratton announced that he wanted to place new, more stringent restrictions on officers firing at moving vehicles.

Bratton said the department is considering policies from four agencies — the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, San Francisco Police Department, Boston Police Department and Miami Police Department — that would "potentially prohibit shooting from a moving vehicle or at a moving vehicle unless the officer is threatened by deadly force other than the moving vehicle."

It's time to stop "considering" solutions; it's time to solve the problem.

E.J. Dionne writes today of how Bush and Republicans have played the race card both with respect to Alberto Gonzales and social security privatization. They want it both ways: No affirmative action, but every minority Republican nominee should get confirmed because otherwise it would be an insult to minorities everywhere.

Whenever a liberal raises concerns over whether a conservative initiative might damage the rights or interests of, say, African Americans or Latinos, that liberal is accused of being "politically correct" and playing the race card -- usually, just to make the sin sound really awful, off "the bottom of the deck." But increasingly, it is conservatives who are using political correctness to sidestep hard issues.

Recent example: Utah's Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch told Senators that "Every Hispanic in America is watching." Example two: Bush on social security:

by TChris

Question: If reasonable Americans get so fed up with the Bush administration that they move to Canada, who will be left to vote the rascals out?

Visits to the Canadian government's immigration website increased substantially after Bush's reelection.

Yet immigration lawyers say that Americans are not just making inquiries and that more are pursuing a move above the 49th parallel, fed up with a country they see drifting persistently to the right and abandoning the principles of tolerance, compassion and peaceful idealism they felt once defined the nation.

America is in no danger of emptying out. But even a small loss of residents, many of whom cite a deep sense of political despair, is a significant event in the life of a nation that thinks of itself as a place to escape to.

Things are heating up at the WorldCom trial of Bernard Ebbers. Former CFO and co-defendant Scott Sullivan, now cooperating with the Government in exchange for a lesser sentence, testified against Ebbers today and in no uncertain terms linked Ebbers to the accounting fraud Sullivan put into motion.

Sullivan has some baggage, though:

He also confessed to a drunk driving conviction and using marijuana and cocaine, as federal prosecutors sought to head off damaging evidence that defense lawyers might bring out. In what seemed to be preemptive strikes, Sullivan was asked about his $10 million retention bonus, his $15 million Florida home, and his ambivalent feelings about his former boss.

Sullivan is considered "the linch pin" in the trial against Ebbers:

The Internet and show business are about to forge a new connection. Ultimately, it will mean original programming coming to your computer.

The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company signed a huge lease last month to take over most of the former headquarters of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. in Santa Monica, which will soon be known as Yahoo Center. Lloyd Braun, a veteran TV executive, will run the new division, Yahoo Media Group, that will be based there. He plans to move some employees from Silicon Valley and aims to poach Hollywood talent to build a media powerhouse.

Due to death threats to students and to Ward Churchill, his talk in Boulder tomorrow has been canceled. The right-wing fringe wins again.

[comments now closed, you can comment at the new thread which reports his speech has been reinstated.]

Ohio Supreme Court Justice Alice Robie Resnick pleaded guilty today to charges of driving under the influence. She was fined $500, must attend alcohol classes and lost her license for 6 months. Background here.

Her lawyer said she has been fighting alcoholism all of her adult life. She will be back on the bench next week.

MADD members who attended the hearing were surprisingly rational:

"She accepted she was drinking and driving and knows she did wrong. The sentencing went according to what usually happens with the first offense" said Debbie Holmes of MADD.

by TChris

Could it be that sound public policy (and a bit of press) can convince a politician to rethink a state's approach to sentencing? Is it finally safe for public servants to acknowledge that lengthy prison sentences often waste the public's money without making the public safer?

TalkLeft called attention to a Wisconsin newspaper's critical reporting of the state's harsh sentencing laws and swollen prison population, as well as a recent editorial that chided state politicians for ignoring repeated cries for reform. Gov. Jim Doyle, never known to be soft-on-crime during his years as Wisconsin's Attorney General, has apparently seen the light.

Hoping to slow, if not reverse, the escalation of the state's prison population, Gov. Jim Doyle will propose in his next two-year budget to dramatically expand drug and alcohol treatment for criminal offenders and provide more services - and alternative punishments - for offenders outside of prison.

The state's Republican legislature may want to perpetuate the expensive status quo (the many small communities that depend upon prisons for jobs tend to send Republicans to Madison), but some members may start to feel heat from budget-minded constituents who think the Governor's modest proposal for sentencing alternatives is worth a try. Has the public grown so weary of tough-on-crime rhetoric that real changes can be made in a government's approach to crime and punishment?

Tommy Chong is out of jail and interviewed by NPR. Chong is currently on tour appearing in the Marijuna-Logues. He also will be back on tv.

He currently has a recurring role on FOX TV's That '70s Show. The role comes after Chong spent nine months in prison; he pleaded guilty to conspiring to sell drug paraphernalia. ... Chong's arrest was part of the U.S. Justice Department's Operation Pipe Dreams investigation of Internet distribution of drug paraphernalia like bongs and marijuana pipes.

Chong reveals he pleaded guilty to protect his son whose company was targeted. We reported that here.

Here's some background on Operation Pipe Dreams. All of our coverage of Chong's case is accessible here.

A Senate committee approved Michael Chertoff today as Homeland Security Chief. The ACLU says:

The Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee today approved, by voice vote, the nomination of Michael Chertoff -- the force behind the detention of hundreds of Arab, South Asian and Muslim men after 9/11 -- to serve as the secretary of Homeland Security. The full Senate is expected to vote on his nomination later this week.

"Chertoff's record does not match his rhetoric," said Christopher E. Anders, an ACLU Legislative Counsel. "Saying you're committed to upholding the Bill of Rights is one thing. Actually doing it is another. His actions show that in his zealousness to provide security, fundamental freedoms too often became an obstacle to overcome rather than a guidepost to follow."

Here are the numbers from Bush's proposed Justice Department Budget:

Spending: $20.3 billion.
Percentage change from 2005: 1 percent.
Mandatory Outlays: $2.2 billion
Total Spending: $22.5 billion

Some Highlights:

• The FBI budget would increase by 11 percent, to $5.7 billion, including an increase of $294 million for counterterrorism and counterintelligence activities and $117 million for the intelligence program. Much of the proposed spending increase reflects the agency's top two priorities of combatting terrorism and foreign espionage.