19 U.S. soldiers are among the 24 killed today in the deadliest attack on U.S. forces in Iraq to date. It occurred in a mess tent near Mosul as the soldiers were eating lunch.

An explosion ripped through a mess tent at a military base near Mosul where hundreds of U.S. troops had just sat down to lunch Tuesday, and officials said more than 20 people were killed and at least 57 were wounded.

A military spokesman said 19 of the dead were American soldiers, which would make the attack the deadliest single strike against U.S. troops since the start of the Iraq war.

A radical Muslim group, the Ansar al-Sunnah Army, claimed responsibility. The dead included U.S. military personnel, U.S. contractors, foreign national contractors and Iraqi army, said Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, commander of Task Force Olympia in Mosul.

MSNBC says the soldiers base was Fort Lewis. Bush's comment: They died in a valiant struggle for peace.

"Hey Dude, Where's My Car" actor Erik Aude is coming home.

He's been jailed in Pakistan on a drug charge since February, 2002. He served almost three years of a seven year sentence.

State Department officials said Monday that a Pakistani judge last week ordered a sentence of time already served and upheld a previously imposed fine of 50,000 rupees -- about $860.

Erik Aude had been hired to pick up leather samples from a manufacturer in Islamabad, Pakistan's capital city, his mother said. But after Aude picked up a suitcase containing the samples and got to the Islamabad airport, Pakistani customs officials found eight pounds of opium hidden in the sample suitcase's lining.

Sherry Aude said her son had no knowledge the drugs were there. She worked tirelessly to free her son, appealing to officials in Congress and holding rallies on her son's behalf and at the Pakistani consulate in Los Angeles.

For background, see our earlier post, Midnight Express Redux and Seamus McGraw's extensive article about Erik.

The ACLU reports that new documents it received from its Freedom of Information Act request on Iraqi prisoners contain a shocking revelation:

A document released for the first time today by the American Civil Liberties Union suggests that President Bush issued an Executive Order authorizing the use of inhumane interrogation methods against detainees in Iraq. Also released by the ACLU today are a slew of other records including a December 2003 FBI e-mail that characterizes methods used by the Defense Department as “torture” and a June 2004 “Urgent Report” to the Director of the FBI that raises concerns that abuse of detainees is being covered up.

“These documents raise grave questions about where the blame for widespread detainee abuse ultimately rests,” said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero. “Top government officials can no longer hide from public scrutiny by pointing the finger at a few low-ranking soldiers.”

New York Governor George Pataki granted no clemencies this year to state inmates.

Traditionally, it is during the Christmas season that Mr. Pataki grants clemency, which he has done 31 times. This year, Mr. Pataki looked over several petitioners' cases but decided that none merited clemency.

With all the non-violent prisoners serving draconian sentences under the Rockefeller drug laws, it's hard to believe he couldn't find a few worthy of mercy. The marginal revisions to the law passed last month are no excuse. Only 400 prisoners are expected to be eligible for early release.

According to this 2002 Human Rights Watch Report, children are the hidden casualties of the Rockefeller drug laws:

Three highly decorated U.S. Forest Service workers have been sued by a San Diego businessman under the civil RICO Act (known as the Racketeering Act) for trying to block a luxury condo development and the Justice Department has left them to fend for themselves.

Okovita sued under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, a statute originally passed in 1970 to strengthen the government's arsenal against mobsters and drug lords. As time has passed, the law has been used against a variety of individuals and groups. Legal experts, however, said they believed this was the first time the law had been targeted at Forest Service employees.

The three Forest Service employees and Steers said the charges against them are patently false. The government workers maintain that they were acting in their official capacity as Forest Service employees and have done nothing wrong. Steers said Okovita's suit was brought partly "to intimidate other activists from speaking out. That won't work," she said.

Some conservative Republicans have too much time on their hands. Case in point: Minnesota state representative Marty Seifert, whose latest proposal is to test welfare recipients to see if they are smokers - and reduce the benefits of those that test positive

"If you're going to take the taxpayer's money, we're going to expect good behavior," the Marshall Republican said Friday. "I'm not interested in subsidizing bad habits. It makes no sense to give out health and welfare subsidies if the payments go to smoking and the detriment of people's health and welfare."

[link via email from Soccerdad.]

Move over Monopoly. From across the border in Canada comes "The Grow-Op Game" where you get the chance at running your own "B.C. Bud" marijuana farm, complete with legal pitfalls. In fact, the creators of the game label it an "educational board game" and say it is aimed at teaching kids about the dangers of the pot business:

"You get ratted on by neighbors, hydro cuts you off, you get floods, there are tons of stuff that is negative about it," Vancouver-based creator Ivan Solomon said Saturday.

Solomon said the Monopoly-style game is the brainchild of a young, 20-something reformed pot grower, known only as the "Rabbit," to conceal his identity. Solomon said Rabbit came up with the idea for the game while serving time in jail.

Crooks and Liars has the 1986 videoclip of Frank Zappa on Crossfire, in which he argues against censorship and tells John Lofton of the Washington Times to "kiss my a**":

"The biggest threat to America today is not communism, it's moving
America toward a fascist theocracy. And everything that's happened
during the Reagan administration is steering us right down that pike.

I can only imagine what he would have thought of Bush and Ashcroft. Too bad he never got a chance to debate Jerry Falwell.

President Bush has made "legal reform" a top priority of his second administration. The New York Times reports Monday on the battle that will ensue in Congress over the issue.

"Legal reform" really means protecting big corporations from legal liability through statutory grants of immunity. Check out the Center for Justice and Democracy, whose mission is to protect the right to a jury trial and an independent judiciary, and their first-time awards for the Top Ten Zany Immunity Laws (pdf).

The next time you hear "legal reform," instead of buying into Republican images of towns without ob-gyns to deliver babies because of the price of malpractice insurance, picture instead special interest groups with beaucoup bucks in outstretched hands to Congresspersons, pleading "Shield us."

Finally, the Justice Department and TalkLeft agree on something: That the Second Amendment conveys an individual right to keep and bear arms. This is the conclusion reached in a 93 page report written by DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel that was written last August but only released this past week. From the report itself:

The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides:

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

The report examined the three principal views of the Amendment: The individual view, collective view and an intermediate one:

Defense lawyers among you (and anyone else who wants to chime in)--how many appellate issues can you spot from this very detailed report of the deliberations process in the Scott Peterson case?

And how many of you would keep any of these jurors on your next case?

Amber Frey, represented by her lawyer-agent-manager Gloria Allred has inked a fat book deal with Judith Regan of Regan Books (the publisher of Bernie Kerik's book). The book will be out on Jan. 4. The jurors will be free to sell their stories 90 days from the return of their verdict.

As the trial came to a close, Judge Alfred Delucchi reminded jurors that they must wait 90 days before they can accept any compensation for services related to their participation in the trial.

Prediction: First juror with a book deal will be Rochelle Nice with the oddly colored red hair--she's a mother of four young sons, unemployed outside the home, who says she never spent a night away from her kids before being sequestered for deliberations in the Peterson csse. Why didn't she ask to be excused? Any judge I can think of would have granted a mother of four young children a hardship request in a trial expected to last six months. As a mother, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that being a juror in a high-profile death penalty trial that is scheduled to last six months is going to hinder your parenting time and ability. What was the incentive, if not the pot at the end of the rainbow?

We have always opposed Republican plans to prevent undocumented residents from obtaining driver's licenses by requiring applicants to prove "legal presence." Speaking at the World Policy Institute Friday, Kim Taipale, executive director of the Center for Advanced Studies in Science and Technology Policy, and director of the Program on Law Enforcement and National Security in the Information Age (PLENSIA) provides three sound reasons:

Although this provision is being touted by its supporters as a security measure, its implementation in practice will be to undermine national security because it ignores three widely- recognized principles of counter-terrorism security: the shrinking perimeter of defense; the need to allocate resources to more likely targets; and the economics of fraud.

First, the very fact that 13 million illegal aliens are already within our borders means that a perimeter-based defense is porous. The proposed policy would eliminate another opportunity to screen this large pool of people and to separate 'otherwise law abiding' illegal aliens from terrorists or criminals by confirming identity when licenses are issued or when such licenses are presented or used for identity screening at checkpoints.