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.

by TChris

Donald Rumsfeld's insensitive decision to use a machine to sign the condolence letters he sends to families of soldiers who die in the war provides another reason (and we really didn't need another, did we?) to call for the Defense Secretary's resignation. While the President refuses to criticize Rumsfeld, others are not so circumspect.

[Nebraska Senator Chuck] Hagel, speaking on the CBS News program "Face the Nation," joined Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, in declaring his loss of confidence in the defense secretary, and said problems in Iraq were "all of the accumulation of bad judgment."

Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, a Democrat who serves on the Armed Services Committee, said Mr. Rumsfeld should go. He complained that the defense secretary's "management style is more corrosive than constructive," and said Mr. Rumsfeld's remarks to the guardsman were emblematic of his "disdainful, dismissive" style.

Some Democrats say they see "no need to remove the defense secretary if the president's policies remained the same." Unfortunately, changing the president's policies likely requires changing the president. And while there is little reason to hope that Rumsfeld's successor would be any more capable of "winning the peace" with this President in office, it cannot be good for the military to retain a Defense Secretary who has repeatedly demonstrated how little he cares about the men and women whose lives depend upon his judgment.

As the Denver Post used to proclaim on its masthead every morning, "'Tis a privilege to live in Colorado." 300 days of sunshine a year. Here are some views from my new abode, taken today --southwest and west. The larger ones give you a much better picture.

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by TChris

In a detailed report, The New York Times explains why military investigators and prosecutors came to accuse Capt. James Yee and Airman Ahmad Al Halabi of aiding detainees and spying while performing their duties at Guantanamo. The "prosecute first and ask questions later" approach was fueled in part by animosity toward American Muslims.

Officials familiar with the inquiries said they also fed on petty personal conflicts: antipathy between some Muslim and non-Muslim troops at Guantánamo, rivalries between Christian and Muslim translators, even the complaint of an old boss who saw Airman Al Halabi as a shirker.

TalkLeft coverage of Yee's case is collected here. Halabi coverage is here.

A new poll by the AARP (American Association of Retired Persons) shows that 72% of citizens over age 45 support the use of marijuana for medical purposes. Curiously, though, 74% believed marijuana is addictive. Geography was a factor:

Over all, 72 percent of respondents agreed "adults should be allowed to legally use marijuana for medical purposes if a physician recommends it." Those in the Northeast (79 percent) and West (82 percent) were more receptive to the idea than in the Midwest (67 percent) and Southwest (65 percent). In Southern states, 70 percent agreed with the statement.

It will be 8 years next week that JonBenet Ramsey was murdered and the crime remains unsolved. But, there is new evidence pointing to an intruder, and evidence that the killer may have tried to strike again in Boulder less than a year later, but was interrupted. The victim,, who was sexually assualted but not killed (her mother came in the room and the intruder fled) attended the same dance class as JonBenet. More egg on the face of the Boulder police, who never connected the dots.

Catch the story tonight on CBS' "48 hours." More details by me here, as well as this observation:

The International Bible Society has paid the Colorado Springs Gazette $36,000 to include the New Testament as an insert in its Sunday paper.

...for the International Bible Society, it's a winner. It gets new souls to save. And the Gazette? Well, the newspaper will make $36,000 for distributing the New Testament, as well as proceeds from a full-page ad that will appear that day thanking 130 local Christian churches and ministries (including Focus on the Family and New Life Church) who shelled out the money to pay for the insert.

This is only the first of several such planned inserts:

Colorado Springs is merely the first city where the International Bible Society plans to distribute the New Testament inside daily newspapers. Jackson said the group is currently in discussions with the Denver Post to distribute a Denver version; Seattle, Nashville and Santa Rosa, Calif. are also high priorities.

The local Synagogue is less than pleased. But it has decided to try and make a positive statement by distributing unwanted bibles to churches and homeless shelters. One other reason it disapproves of the inserts--they show a disrespect for that which is holy:

by TChris

The Bush administration has deprived you of your ability to watch Al-Manar, "the television station of Lebanon's Hezbollah militants that has glorified suicide bombers." Declaring the television station a "terror organization," the administation pulled the plug on its satellite feed to the United States.

[Hassan Fadlallah, Al-Manar's news director,] told The Associated Press, "This is a blatant attack on press freedoms and an exercise in intellectual terrorism against the voices that are opposed to U.S. and Israeli policies."

The State Department contends that Al-Manar should not be allowed to spread hatred (a job the administration apparently intends to reserve for the extreme right). While Al-Manar's message is often deplorable, our country is founded on the belief that we, as individuals, are best able to decide whether offensive opinions deserve our audience. Our government's decision to censor the flow of information dishonors the values embodied in the First Amendment.

by TChris

Sheriff Tim Hutchison of Knox County, Tennessee, has been involved in a series of lawsuits regarding his use of "taxpayer money to maintain things like helicopters and horses and construct buildings without [county] commission approval." A county commissioner asked the Sheriff to produce public records pertaining to one of the lawsuits. Hutchinson responded with 22 pages, then advised the court that those were all the documents he had. It turns out that he had another 15 boxes.

The court held the Sheriff in contempt, and the state supreme court upheld that finding. Hutchinson complains that the contempt finding isn't fair because he was only doing what he was told to do by the County Law Director. He claims that he objected at the time -- but the fact remains that he made a false statement, knowing it to be false.

"He told me to do it" isn't much of a defense under those circumstances, but Hutchinson is sticking to his guns -- presumably because his appeal, at least to this point, has been paid by county taxpayers. The contempt order required Hutchinson to pay $300. So far, Knox County taxpayers have paid more than $93,000 to Hutchinson's lawyers for their unsuccessful efforts to overturn the order.

by TChris

An interesting (albeit brief and incomplete) review of diverse religious positions on the death penalty is compiled in this article, which focuses on the jury's remarkable decision to put Scott Peterson to death.