by TChris

New York legislators are again considering reform of the state's draconian drug laws. One of the advocates for reform is Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, who wants lawmakers to abolish mandatory state prison sentences for low-level dealers.

The proposed change might make little difference in Manhattan, where only 14 percent of defendants charged with B-level drug offenses in the past 20 months have received prison sentences. Most have been allowed to plea bargain for a package of jail time and treatment. Still, the proposed change would be a welcome measure in other parts of the state, where prosecutors may be more inclined to seek prison for minor drug dealers.

Other Morgenthau proposals are less sanguine, including his suggestion to replace indeterminate sentences with fixed sentences and his request for a "kingpin" statute that would make it "easier" to impose 25-to-life sentences on those identified by the DA's office as "leaders." On the whole, however, reform is desperately needed. Has the time finally come?

Human Rights Watch has released a new report with evidence that the Iranian judiciary employed secret interrogation squads to torture Internet journalists and political activists in an effort to gain "confession letters" from them.

Evidence obtained by Human Rights Watch confirms that secret squads of interrogators—primarily former intelligence officers purged in the late-1990s by President Mohammed Khatami but now employed by the judiciary—forced the detainees to write these “confession letters” under extreme pressure as a condition for their release on bail. In an attempt to cover up the government’s illegal detention and torture of detainees, interrogators have coerced them to write self-incriminatory letters that describe detention conditions as satisfactory and confess that civil society organizations are part of an “evil project” directed by “foreigners and counter-revolutionaries.”

Human Rights Watch has documented an extensive pattern of forced confessions by political detainees who have later retracted their statements, which they have attributed to their interrogators. The Iranian government continues to pursue a project to strangle critics and activists, one that Human Rights Watch documented in the report, “Like the Dead in Their Coffins.”

Democracy dies behind closed doors. Secret detentions, interrogations and squads in Iran. Secret arrests, detentions, interrogations and closed door hearings in the U.S. The Bush/Rumsfeld/Ashcroft Administration may be the most secretive administration ever. With the array of new powers contained in the 9/11 Intelligence Reform Bill, we are sliding backwards. Democrats in Congress should take their blindfolds off.

The ACLU launches its new campaign Tuesday to stop the FBI from spying on political and religious activists. Freedom of Information Act requests will be brought In ten states and the District of Columbia. Colorado is one of the states - background and details are available here.

Ad and technology expert Michael Dissan at Personal Democracy has some good ideas for Blogads and for advertisers wanting to benefit from ad placements on blogs. With the politics no longer driving the ad trade, there's plenty of room. Idea number one:

1. Branch out.

If you visited a blog in October, you couldn’t have missed TBS’s ads promoting reruns of “Sex and the City.” And rumor has it that TBS is planning another large Blogad campaign around their new reality show “Gilligan.” In addition to TBS, Blogads were also purchased by Sharp Electronics and a handful of other non-political advertisers. Blogads should proactively market themselves to online ad agencies as a way to reach influential and engaged consumers. Just don’t let the non-political advertisers buy up all the ad space!

We were pleased to see we made the article under idea number 4:

4. Label blogs based on their ideological slant and physical geographic location

Here’s how you go after incremental dollars. Help those purchasing ads on one blog know about other blogs that also match its particular ideological or geographical slant. When someone checks out, take a cue from Amazon.com’s playbook: “People who purchased ads on DailyKos also purchased ads on TalkLeft. Click here to add TalkLeft to your basket.” While local campaigns are prone to buy placements on well-known blogs, they might consider others if they can easily discern their ideological or geographical slants.

Henry and the Blogads team were the revolutionaries this year in creating a mutually beneficial relationship between the political community and activists. That same vision, with helpful ideas like these from the media and ad gurus, can apply with equal force to other industries, particularly media (television, radio, music) and publishing. How about the travel and arts industry? Banking, stock market, food industries? We'd love to host them all.

[link via Jerome at My DD.]

The ACLU explains its opposition to the Intelligence Reform Bill:

Although pleased that most of Mr. Sensenbrenner's toughest provisions were stripped out of the bill, the American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement Monday that it opposed the overall measure because it "would centralize the intelligence community's surveillance powers, increasing the likelihood for government abuses."

The civil liberties union said it was alarmed by several provisions in the bill, including those that would expand the government's wiretap authority, and by the limited powers given to the independent privacy and civil liberties board created under the legislation. The board, it said, "risks becoming the proverbial fox guarding the hen house - the board would be appointed by the president, serve at his pleasure and have no subpoena power."

Bump and Update: The House says it's ready for a vote and passage is indicated. No bill would be better than a bad bill, and as we've expressed repeatedly, this is a bad bill. Maybe the deal calls for some of the law enforcement and immigration provisions to be stripped from the final version. If not, the American people have been taken for a ride.

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Original Post 12/5/04

Bush and Democrats are pushing Congress to pass the 9/11 intelligence reform bill. It's a turkey. It's filled with huge expanded law enforcement powers that the 9/11 Commission did not recommend. The 9/11 Commission report asked for changes in intelligence and national security. It did not want a new anti-crime bill. It warned against combining the two. The latest version of the bill as agreed to by House and Senate, is available on Thomas. Type in "S. 2845" and click on the version that says 9/11 Recommendations Implementation Act (Engrossed Amendment as Agreed to by House)[S.2845.EAH].

The bill includes hundreds of added crime measures and provisions that intrude on our civil liberties. The full text of each provision is available.

It calls for a counter-narcotics office. More wiretaps. Greater deportation. Expedited removal. Increased alien detention bed space. No bail for suspected terrorists. Drivers' license controls. Greater passenger screening. Implementing of biometric screening. Provisions for combating biased foreign media coverage of the U.S. It's disgusting.

Court TV is live blogging the penalty phase of the Scott Peterson trial. It sounds like the jurors are bored, inattentive and have tuned out. If that's the case, they should be ashamed of themselves. The law and the oath they took as jurors do not allow them to make up their minds--or close their minds--before all of the evidence is in and they have received legal instructions. Some of the comments:

Dick Ebersol and his son Charlie were released from a Grand Junction, Colorado hospital today. They are believed to be still recuperating from the plane crash in Montrose, Colorado a week ago Sunday that tragically took the life of 14 year old Teddy Ebersol, pilot Luis Alberto Polanco and flight attendant Warren Richardson. Co-pilot Erick Wicksell remains in a Denver hospital.

Dozens of people have left good wishes for the Ebersols on TalkLeft, here, here and here. I have forwarded the threads onto the Ebersol family at their NBC email address of ebersolfamily@nbcuni.com. Susan St. James has said she intends to read every one sent to NBC because they bring the family comfort.

by TChris

The Supreme Court today rejected a police officer's claim that his employer violated his right to free speech by terminating his employment after learning that he used the internet to sell "videotapes of himself stripping off his uniform and pretending to write tickets."

The court traditionally has been very protective of speech rights. But justices had no sympathy Monday for a former San Diego officer who uses the Internet name "codestud3," a play on words incorporating the term for an emergency police call.

The Supreme Court ruled against him without even hearing arguments. The justices issued an unsigned opinion that found his speech "was detrimental to the mission and functions of the employer."

The Court has generally applied a balancing test to free speech retaliation claims, weighing an employee's interest in speaking about a public concern against a public employer's interest in operating a government agency without disruption. The balance weighed against the cop who (at least in the Court's view) made a mockery of his employment by making and hawking the video. The threshold issue, however, is whether the speech addresses a matter of public concern. The Court viewed the officer's desire to sell his naughty videotapes as a purely private matter.

A bombing today at the U.S. embassy in Saudi Arabia left 12 dead and several are still inside. No Americans were killed:

In Riyadh, U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Carol Kalin said four of the five employees killed held administrative jobs and one was a private contract guard on the consulate's payroll. Four other embassy workers - all hired locally - were hospitalized, Kalin said. She said all American employees were safe and none had been taken hostage.

Three of the attackers were killed and two have been captured.

They've served their time in the armed forces but they can't get out. The military keeps extending their terms, under what it refers to as a "Stop-Loss Policy." The soldiers say it's a back-door draft and will file suit today with the help of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

these soldiers are already overseas - transporting supplies, working radio communications and handling military contracts, somewhere in the desert.

"You should know I'm not against the war," said David W. Qualls, one of the plaintiffs and a former full-time soldier who signed up in July 2003 for a one-year stint in the Arkansas National Guard but now expects to be in Iraq until next year.

"This just isn't about that. This is a matter of fairness. My job was to go over and perform my duties under the contract I signed. But my year is up and it's been up. Now I believe that they should honor their end of the contract." Some military experts described the soldiers' challenge as both surprising and telling, given the tenor of military life, where soldiers are trained throughout their careers to follow their commanders' orders.

Up to 7,000 troops have been affected by the policy. According to one of the suing soldier's lawyers:

If you missed Bob Dylan's interview on "60 Minutes," you can watch it over at Crooks and Liars.