by TChris

Colbert King wants to know what should happen "when the criminal justice system renders an injustice itself -- one so egregious that it results in a tragic death and an irrevocable shattering of lives of family and friends?"

Washington D.C. Superior Court Judge Judith Retchin sentenced Jonathan Magbie, a quadriplegic, to 10 days in jail for simple possession of marijuana. She did so even though the prosecution didn't ask for jail and even though she knew that the jail couldn't accommodate Magbie's disability.

Magbie died in the custody of the D.C. Department of Corrections.

Why she decided to incarcerate Magbie, totally dependent, unable to breathe reliably on his own -- and a first-time offender -- remains an unanswered question that court officials would just as soon see go away. It won't. It can't.

TalkLeft's background coverage of this case appears here and here.

by TChris

To show his support for free expression, Ray Morris spent a week living on the roof of an adult bookstore in Salina, Kansas.

"I can't stress enough that I am not promoting porn," Morris said. "I'm promoting the idea of choice. Everyone has a right to choose whether they want to enter these stores."

Morality activists are circulating petitions calling for a grand jury to investige whether the store is selling obscene materials. A similar petition drive resulted in indictments against a bookstore near Abilene.

Morris considered his week-long protest to be a positive experience. Ironically, a few people disagreed with his position on obscenity by making obscene gestures.

by TChris

Judges are often asked to decide whether a juvenile who has been accused of a serious crime should be prosecuted as an adult. Because that decision is usually discretionary, hinging upon the judge's evaluation of several factors, parents sometimes question why other kids are treated as kids while their own child is exposed to the harsh consequences of an adult conviction.

Lisa Cervantes wonders whether the decision to waive her son into adult court was fair.

His mother not only is confident of his innocence but also is angry that he was ordered to stand trial as an adult -- while a judge ruled last week that another Salinas teen will be tried as a juvenile for murder. That teen, a 17-year-old Salinas girl, is accused of driving drunk and killing two people near Lake San Antonio. "She's white and she goes to Notre Dame (High School)," Cervantes said Friday. "I'm Latina and I'm from the east side. She can be rehabilitated and my son can't. What's up with that?"

Human rights groups are calling for an investigation into the death of 81 year old minister Rev. Joseph Dantica, who died in federal custody while seeking asylum.

The Baptist minister fled Haiti to escape from danger and explained that he needed protection when he arrived at Miami International Airport on October 29, 2004. Instead of finding refuge, 81-year-old Dantica was put in an immigration jail by Department of Homeland Security officers. On November 3, 2004, the reverend died while in custody.

.....Eleanor Acer, Director of Human Rights First’s Asylum Program said, “The decision to detain this 81-year-old man was simply inhumane and his treatment should be investigated immediately.” Acer added, “The Department of Homeland Security – just like the INS before it – is totally mishandling the detention of asylum seekers. They have failed to make necessary reforms – and keep jailing ministers and other victims of persecution, instead of making fair decisions about the need for detention in each individual case.”

Homeland Security said the Reverend had a "pre-existing and fatal medical condition" and that the cause of death was pancreatitis. Dantico had traveled to Miami with his son Maxo after Rev. Dantico's church was burned down. When they arrived in Miami, officials separated them and refused to allow Dantico to keep his medicine. They wouldn't allow family members to visit him. Immigration officials may waive detention on humanitarian grounds. Why didn't they do so here?

Baghdad is a mess today as violence explodes throughout the city:

Insurgents attacked a U.S. patrol and a police station, assassinated four government employees and detonated several bombs. One American soldier was killed and nine were wounded during clashes that also left three Iraqi troops and a police officer dead.

Some of the heaviest violence came in Azamiyah, a largely Sunni Arab district of Baghdad where a day earlier U.S. troops raided the capital's main Sunni mosque. Shops were in flames, and a U.S. Humvee burned, with the body of what appeared to be its driver inside.

In other news, Germany and the U.S. have agreed to forgive 80% of Iraq's foreign debt. Does this oil rich country really need such a big reduction?

by TChris

The House ethics committee, perhaps desiring to appear even-handed, found that Chris Bell's ethics complaint against Tom DeLay contained "excessive" and "inflammatory" language. But that seems to be what it took to prod the moribund committee to do its job.

DeLay is crowing that the committee's finding "vindicates" him, and other Republicans are engaging in the same kind of "excessive" and "inflammatory" rhetoric for which Bell was admonished.

Rep. Henry Bonilla (R-Tex.) absurdly termed the Bell complaint "one of the greatest abuses of the ethics process that the House of Representatives has ever seen" -- as if the ethics committee had not found grounds to admonish Mr. DeLay. Mr. DeLay himself insisted that he had simply been given a routine "mild warning" from the ethics committee. This transparent effort to rewrite history doesn't withstand scrutiny.

As the Washington Post points out, the committee's action against Bell can only have a chilling effect upon the willingness of other House members to complain of ethics violations -- and that may be exactly what the committee intended.

Meantime, the rules for the 109th Congress may be rewritten to make it even harder or riskier to bring ethics complaints. The last thing the House ethics process needs is less vigor.

Administration officials say they most likely will increase U.S. troops in Iraq by several thousand before the Iraqi elections in January.

Where are they going to come from? The plan now is to extend the extend the currently troops service by two months. Steve Gilliard notes:

What troops? Where are they going to come from? The brigades which can go have gone. I would be shocked if the draft doesn't get put on the table by March. Because this is reaching the bottom of the barrel. The Iranians are not worried about any invasion.

Update: It's a done deal . While education and environmental programs take a hit:

[The bill would increase education by less than 2 percent and environmental programs by 2.5 percent over last year, while nearly halving Bush's foreign aid request for countries that embrace democratic change. Such figures made the package a vivid illustration of how the politics of surging deficits has crimped domestic programs.]

... The Defense and Homeland Security departments received 7.4 percent boosts in earlier bills, not counting the tens of billions the Pentagon got for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

*************
They are flexing their muscle already. Conservative House Republicans today tacked on an anti-abortion provision to the spending bill.

The abortion language would bar federal, state and local agencies from withholding taxpayer money from health care providers that refuse to provide or pay for abortions or refuse to offer abortion counseling or referrals. Current federal law, aimed at protecting Roman Catholic doctors, provides such "conscience protection'' to doctors who do not want to undergo abortion training. The new language would expand that protection to all health care providers, including hospitals, doctors, clinics and insurers.

Sen. Barbara Boxer says she won't back down:

Good for Clinton. Check out this exchange between Bill Clinton and Peter Jennings last night on ABC...Paula Zahn has played it twice tonight already:

Clinton added that he doesn't care about what his detractors think about him. Jennings then said it seemed to him that Clinton did care.

The former president responded, "You don't want to go here, Peter. You don't want to go here. Not after what you people did and the way you, your network, what you did with Kenneth Starr. The way your people repeated every, little sleazy thing he leaked. No one has any idea what that's like."

"You never had to live in a time when people you knew and cared about were being indicted, carted off to jail, bankrupted, ruined, because they were Democrats and because they would not lie," he said. "So, I think we showed a lot of moral fiber to stand up to that. To stand up to these constant investigations, to this constant bodyguard of lies, this avalanche that was thrown at all of us. And, yes, I failed once. And I sure paid for it. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry for the American people. And I'm sorry for the embarrassment they performed."

This is not good news. The House and Senate negotiators are getting closer to inking a deal over a compromise version of the 9/11 Intelligence Reform bill. The House version stinks. And the House negotiators apparently are still insisting on keeping the worst provisions in their bill:

But the negotiations continued into the evening, with lawmakers and their staffs suggesting that the talks might still collapse over a small number of issues, including the insistence of House Republicans that a final bill contain law enforcement and immigration provisions that were not directly related to the commission's recommendations and that have been criticized by civil liberties organizations.

It makes us nervous that Joe Lieberman is taking a leading role. Senator Durbin, where are you? Here's the list of negotiators. If you live in the district of one of the Democratic Senate negotiators, call tomorrow. Tell them not to compromise unless the House law enforcement provisions are put out to pasture.

Skippy is in an apologetic mood. Very classy. Very Skippy.

Mad Kane has an ode to Alberto Gonzales.

Avedon Carol's Sideshow is offline, we're getting a message when clicking there that she's exceeded her bandwidth and been removed. When she comes back on, if she has a tip jar, send her a few bucks so it doesn't happen again.

Roger Ailes has news on former Tom Delay staffer, Tom Scanlon, and how he is now the subject of a Texas grand jury investigation.

Gov. Arnold is homeless in Sacramento. He's been staying at the Presidential suite at the Hyatt for $6,000 a month, paid for by campaign funds. No more. The law limits him using such funds to a year after election, and that's now over. So where does he go? What does he envision in a Governor's home?

"This is California, and we should have a really fantastic place where we can entertain world leaders," Mr. Schwarzenegger said in a recent interview, describing imaginary grounds with a fountain, a circular driveway and hedgerows.

"It should have a room for dining and dancing and a place for after dinner,'' he said. "We could invite world leaders like the chancellor of Germany or the prime minister of South Africa."

To be fair, the people of California probably wouldn't foot the bill, private donations take care of it. Still, with his state in such a fiscal crisis, perhaps he should keep these dreams to himself.