Jeff Jarvis smells a New York Times editor with a grudge against blogs. The paper ran an article on tsunami blogs and trashed them today. [Via Instapundit.]

Meanwhile, Dan Gillmor reports that a new Pew study shows that while blogs are increasing, their readership is increasing at an even greater rate. Dan has just begun a new weblog on grassroots journalism...about the future of journalism, "by the people and for the people."

Racial profiling is alive and well in Denton, Texas, according to the Dallas Morning News which conducted an independent study. Its key finding:

The lieutenant over Denton County's traffic enforcement unit wrote 86 percent of his tickets to people with Hispanic surnames during the last two years, an analysis by The Dallas Morning News has found.....Overall, the members of the traffic unit have issued citations to people with Hispanic names about 50 percent of the time, records show.

Grits for Breakfast has additional details and analysis, including this observation:

Part of the problem appears to be that the traffic unit is targeting Mexican truckers, either suspecting them of drug trafficking, out of racial profiling, or for some other reason.

Atrios has the details of the proposed ethical rule changes the Republicans intend to introduce tomorrow. His synopsis:

So, the House Republicans support a rule change which will let them:

• Take bribes!

• Fix parking tickets!

• Have sex with House pages!

AmericaBlog has more. [hat tip Daou Report]

The ACLU has issued a report on Attorney General nominee Alberto Gonzales. We encourage all Senate staffers to read it. In a press release today, the civil liberties group urges Senators to conduct probing and firm questioning of Gonzales.

The ACLU lists the primary areas of concern about Gonzales, and includes the Texas Clemency Memos:

The now infamous Texas "clemency memos" drafted by Gonzales for then-Governor Bush, which almost uniformly fail to mention key factors in each case, including evidence of innocence, that supported granting clemency to death row inmates.

An additional area not mentioned by too many other groups:

Whether the White House Counsel's office supported the Musgrave-Allard version of the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would have banned not only same-sex marriage rights, but civil union status as well.

The ACLU does not take a position on political appointees--only Supreme Court justices. It does, however, analyze their civil liberties records. As to Gonzales, the organization notes:

This is the smartest move yet by Bush in trying to recover from the negative perception of his early non-action to the Tsunami crisis - he has selected his father (former President Bush) and former President Bill Clinton to spearhead the funds drive for the Tsunami relief effort. Clinton had already been acting on his own with Hillary to raise funds. Thus, by officially selecting him to work for the Administration on this, Bush gets the credit and removes the comparison that would otherwise have resulted.

The Bush Adminstration still needs to get its messages straight, however. While Bush makes an announcement in the U.S. that cash is most needed, as opposed to goods or services, Colin Powell announces in Thailand that the U.S. doesn't need to give more money beause enough has already been received.

Secretary of State Colin Powell said Monday the relief effort for countries devastated by the tsunami was going "exceptionally well" and he sees no immediate need for more U.S. governmental money.

Right hand, meet left hand.

The New York Times today reports on Thursday's confirmation hearing for Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General. It confirms what we've been saying at TalkLeft since his nomination: The questioning will be tough, but he will be confirmed, and a record will start being made to block his ascension to the Supreme Court after his term as AG.

The article does break some new ground reporting on the witnesses who will testify against his confirmation. One witness will be retired Rear Adm. John D. Hutson:

The Washington Post takes President Bush to task today on his judicial nominations in an editorial today:

Since taking office, though, Mr. Bush has behaved in a way that makes it harder for Democratic senators to act responsibly. He has largely failed to acknowledge their legitimate grievances about how a Republican-controlled Senate treated President Bill Clinton's nominees for six years. Instead, he bullheadedly sought to fill appeals court judgeships left vacant because of the recalcitrance of his own party, and he did so with scant consultation. What's more, he sometimes rubbed salt in the wound by nominating people to those seats who have staked out highly controversial and provocative ground, thereby apparently rewarding the misbehavior of his own party.

Bush the manipulator. Maybe it's Rove the manipulator, but same difference. The President rules only one branch. Checks and balances have never been more important. Because his appointees will serve for life, it's critical that the Senate remains vigilant. It will, if you do your part and email or telephone your Senator whenever a critcal judicial nominee is up for hearing. We'll keep you posted. Then you need to do your part.

The Bush Administration gave $1.7 billion to groups it considers "faith-based" in 2003. Some of the groups say they are not religious, but others are groups to whom prayer and spirituality are central to their existence.

Other grant recipients are religious, offering social service programs that the government may have deemed too religious to receive money before President Bush took office.

Visitors to TMM Family Services in Tucson, Ariz., which received $25,000 for housing counseling, are greeted by a photo of Jesus and quotes from the Bible.

"We believe that people being connected to the faith of their choice is important to them having a productive life," said Don Strauch, an ordained minister and executive director of the group, which offers a variety of social services. "Just because we take government money doesn't mean we back down on that philosophy."

....Elected with strong support of religious conservatives, Bush came to office promising to open government's checkbook to religious groups that provide social services. Often, Bush says, religious groups do a better job serving the poor.

Civll liberties groups criticize the donations, saying that the U.S. should not be funding prayer as it endangers the constitutionally required separation of church and state. We agree.

An editorial in today's Washington Post is titled The Year in Death, examining national trends on the use of the death penalty. After noting the decline in the number of executions America in recent years, it gives Texas a well-deserved kick in the butt:

Texas as usual has the dubious honor of leading the nation in death -- by a country mile. The Lone Star State killed 23 people, more than three times the seven executions that second-place Ohio carried out.

It concludes:

Capital punishment in this country is not going to be abolished overnight. And it is surely premature to venture the prediction that the past five years are the beginning of its final decay. It is not, however, too soon to venture that hope.

This being the New Year, I'd like to once again thank Rev. Mr. George W. Brooks, JD, Director of Advocacy, Kolbe House, Chicago. Every morning, there are at least five and usually more news articles on the death panalty sitting in my email box when I turn on the computer. Many of them are regional articles I would not have seen but for Rev. Brooks. He does an incredible job of scouring the news for these articles, and he makes the task of bringing them to TalkLeft readers much easier.

Lots of bloggers are back at their keyboards. A few, like Avedon Carol at Sideshow, never left. In addition to her own insights on a wide variety of topics (today she rails against those who said we would make the women of Afganistan Iraq more free when in many ways the opposite has occurred), she is an excellent chronicler of what others are writing about.

Jerome at MyDD writes about the upcoming Iraqi elections. So does Steve Gilliard, who also covers Fallujans trying to return home.

Patridiot Watch writes about U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan.

Matt Yglesias names some underappreciated blogs on national security and foreign policy.

TBogg has another installment of America's Worst Mother.

Markos of Daily Kos hits the Republicans trying to ease ethical guidelines. Digby writes of his fear of tidal waves, which leads to....

For more of what the blogosphere is writing about today, check out the Daou Report and Memeorandum.

Last week we noted that few Americans ever see the inside of a prison. A new art exhibition by Fiona Tan at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago brings viewers one step closer.

The brochure that goes along with the exhibition says, "Tan is interested not in making political proclamations or judgments with this work but in making visible a distinct segment of society that becomes invisible." But Tan's visual confrontation does exactly what good political art should do: it holds the viewer accountable to his or her own humanity. There's no shame in that.

These moving portraits seem to ask, "Why have you forgotten me? Do I look too much like your neighbor? Do I look like you? And what if I do look like you? Does that mean there's something criminal about you too?" What makes these images particularly riveting at this moment in history is that they come from a world we're not supposed to see. The question they pose is: What might we see that makes us afraid to look?

Here's a description of the exhibit, which Tan made at two men's prisons and two women's facilities in Illinois and California. She filmed about 300 inmates and guards, all of whom volunteered to be in the project.

The Sunday New York Times Magazine has an article, Sentencing by the Numbers, discussing the junk science of predicting future criminality, and how some states, like Virginia, now are using crime statistics for the same purpose in deciding the length of sentences:

In 2002, the Commonwealth of Virginia began putting such data to use: the state encourages its judges to sentence nonviolent offenders the way insurance agents write policies, based on a short list of factors with a proven relationship to future risk. If a young, jobless man is convicted of shoplifting, the state is more likely to recommend prison time than when a middle-aged, employed woman commits the same crime.

....It's not a foregone conclusion that Virginia's method of sentencing is permissible under the Constitution, though no young male offender has brought a court challenge so far. Age and sex are what the law calls ''immutable characteristics,'' and it's a fundamental principle of antidiscrimination law that the government has to tread carefully when it treats people differently because of qualities that are beyond their control. (Being married or holding a job are different, but not entirely so, since these statuses reflect people's opportunities as well as their preferences.)

Grits for Breakfast has more criticism of the policy, warning it could violate equal protection guarantees.