The Wall St. Journal Friday (free link) has an editorial on federal sentencing, warning of the return of mandatory minimums:

Judges have never liked the guidelines, which from their perspective amount to 1,800 pages of Congressional micromanagement. But somehow we think they're going to like what's coming even less. Congress is not about to sit still and accept what it sees as a power grab by the judiciary.

Hearings on the guidelines are already being discussed, and legislation could follow apace. One quick fix would be for Congress to expand the number of mandatory minimum sentences, a solution that would have the ironic effect of giving judges less flexibility in sentencing than they had before Wednesday's ruling.

We warned of this back in September:

If you're by a television tonight, (or the internet, you can watch here ) the big celebrity fundraiser for Tsunami victims will air on NBC, MSNBC and other affiliated stations at 8 pm. Funds raised will go to the Red Cross. You can download the live performances afterwards at Sony Connect, where proceeds also go to the Red Cross.

The jury has sentenced Charles Graner to ten years in prison. He leaves court, in shackles, still smiling.

Parole and clemency are available to Graner, to be determined by the Army Clemency and Parole Board. Regulations as of 1998 are available here (pdf.) For sentences betweeen 10 and 20 years, the prisoner comes up for parole after two years and is reviewed every year thereafter. Guidelines seem to suggest he would not be paroled before serving 1/3 of his sentence. The criteria or salient factors for parole are in section 3-2.

by TChris

Americans have long opposed the concept of a national identity card. Privacy advocates are concerned that new federal standards for drivers licenses will create a de facto national ID card, "centralizing information that can be misused - by letting the government track the whereabouts of innocent people, for instance."

The biggest danger is that, as the nation becomes more security-minded, and relies more on driver's licenses as ID, our society changes, [Marv] Johnson said. "You just wind up being a nation where you have to show your papers to go anyplace. That's something the American people have never put up with."

States and the federal government will be wrestling with the content and design of the license for at least a year-and-a-half before the requirements take effect. States can opt out of the federal requirements, but the state issued licenses would then be useless as identification for any federal purpose, including boarding an airplane.

The FBI retires Carnivore , its controversial internet surveillance system.

Before the cheers go up, you should know this just means that the FBI is now using commerical products to conduct internet surveillance. [link via Raw Story]

This is a follow-up post to one we wrote last night on Hugh Hewitt's appearance on O'Reilly's Fox News in which they say that no one knew Markos and Jerome were working for Howard Dean. (Background here.)Here's a quote from the Fox transcript of the show (available on lexis.com):

HUGH HEWITT, "BLOG" AUTHOR: Bloggers on the take are very bad for the business of blogging. Blogging are real journalists and people like Powerline and like InstaPundit, like myself, we don't like it when Daily Kos shows up on the take of the Howard Dean campaign. Now Dailey Kos says -- this is one of the bloggers from the left -- he disclosed it, but not to the satisfaction of anyone who was watching. I didn't know.
O'REILLY: Oh, this is bunk. This is bull. Nobody knew about this.
HEWITT: That's right.

O'Reilly and Hewitt should read the news. Not only did Markos keep a disclaimer on his site, it was widely reported in the media. Here are some examples:

Atrios has the response of Laura Gross , spokeswoman for Dean for America, to the Wall Street Journal article (free link) based on inaccurate information provided by former Dean staffer Zephyr Teachout claiming Markos of Daily Kos and Jerome of MyDD were paid to blog nice things about Dean (background here).

I got a call Thursday from the Jeanne Cummings, The Wall Street Journal reporter who covered the Dean campaign.....Next thing I know there appears in the WSJ an article so sloppy and so inaccurate that I spent the morning trying to track Jeanne down to find out what happened....

Jeanne's colleagues committed a journalistic no-no: they took her background conversation with me and made up a quote from "a Dean spokeswoman". Their fake quote had this spokeswoman apparently admitting that the bloggers were paid for promoting the campaign. They completely mischaracterized our conversation -- and Jeanne was rightly upset about it. I was, and am, too.

The WSJ should get to the bottom of this.

by TChris

In the brave new world of federal sentencing post-Booker, a judge's discretion to impose the sentence the judge deems "just" has expanded. While years may pass as courts struggle to define the limits of that expansion, individual defendants may benefit or suffer as a result of the broadened authority that judges will wield.

Judges who want to sentence more harshly than the guidelines would permit may now have that power. Judges sometimes comment at sentencing that they would exceed the guidelines if they could: now they may have that chance. Judges are constrained by an appellate court's review of the "reasonableness" of the sentence, but the degree of deference owed to judges who exceed the guidelines is likely to be hotly contested, and may provoke disagreement among the circuits.

On the other hand, judges who oppose the unjustly harsh sentences that the guidelines often mandate seem to have a new opportunity to tailor sentences to the unique circumstances of each case. The limits of discretion are again unclear, and the Justice Department complains that this discretion will lead to varying sentences for similar crimes. We can hope that judges will agree with this editorial:

A foolish uniformity isn't fair. Yet that is what the guidelines had been producing. And that is why a federal judge in New York resigned in protest in 2003, calling the guidelines "unnecessarily cruel and rigid."

And we can join this editorial in urging Congress not react to Booker with its usual "tough-on-crime chest-thumping" by enacting more mandatory minimums. (Other editorials striking the same note: here and here and here.)

by TChris

Entrepreneurs searching for a way to assure the world that they didn't vote for Bush are marketing similar products to those who share their sentiments: blue bracelets.

Rothchild, 35, is selling blue bracelets that say "COUNT ME BLUE," while Laura Adams, of Fairway, Kan., offers blue bracelets that say "HOPE." The McKnight family, of Moscow, Idaho, is even more direct; their black bracelets proclaim: "I DID NOT VOTE 4 BUSH."

Some of the profits from each venture will be contributed to a worthy organization.

TalkLeft needs a lot more votes to make it to the finals in the Koufax awards. A few other blogs have received blocks of votes from their readers. So if you haven't already voted and you think we are the best single issue or expert blog, please go on over and vote or vote by email. A recap from an earlier post:

TalkLeft is nominated in two categories, "best expert blog" and "best single issues blog." We won the award for "best single issues" blog in 2002 and 2003.

The Koufax Awards are named for Sandy Koufax, one of the greatest left handed pitchers of all time. They are intended to honor the best of the left of blogtopia (ysitp). At its core, the Koufax Awards are meant to be an opportunity to say nice things about your favorite bloggers and to provide a bit of recognition for the folks who provide us with information, insight, and entertainment usually for little or no renumeration.

You can vote here for best expert blog and here for best single issues blog. Just scroll down and leave your vote in a comment. You can vote once in both categories. If you'd rather email your vote, you can do that here: Email Mary Beth or Email Dwight.

Thelma White, who starred in the 1936 film "Reefer Madness" has died at age 94.

"Reefer Madness" was a low-budget propaganda film written by a religious group to broadcast the dangers of marijuana. It was relegated to the cinema waste heap for more than three decades until 1972, when Keith Stroup, founder of the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws, discovered it in the Library of Congress archives and paid $297 for a print. He then screened it in New York as a benefit for the organization, launching it on the road to cult-film history.

The military jury began hearing sentencing arguments Friday night in Charles Graner's prisoner abuse trial. First up were his parents:

"I bear no malice for you," Graner's father said. "When he came home, we were going to go fishing. He was going tell me about the war. Now, that fishing is going to be postponed. For how long, it's going to be up to you. "I'd get down on my knees and beg to you, but my son wouldn't let me do it."

Graner's mother, Irma, said she will always consider her son a hero. "He's kind, gentle, will do anything for anybody," she said. "He's not the one that he's being made out to be."

The hearing resumes Saturday morning, and Graner will testify.