Lawyer Lynne Stewart took the stand yesterday in her terrorism-related trial.

Her testimony, on the first day of the defense presentation of its case, brought new electricity to a long trial that is examining the limits of what lawyers can do to represent terrorists, in one of the most ambitious terror cases brought by the Justice Department of Attorney General John Ashcroft.

On the stand, Ms. Stewart, 65, looked much like the public school librarian she once was, wearing her gray hair in a proper bowl cut and dressed in a conservative black and brown dress and orthopedic lace-up shoes. But, in a presentation full of contrasts, she described an approach to the law that had led her to the no-holds-barred defense of unpopular, unsavory and dangerously violent clients.

Stewart represents the militant and blind Islamic cleric Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, convicted of conspiracy in connection with the 1993 World Trade Center attacks. She is charged with helping him communicate with the Egyptian-based Islamic Group from prison. The evidence against her is her jailhouse and telephone conversations with her client, secretly recorded by the Government. You can read the details of her case here.

She is being represented by legendary lawyer and American University Law School dean Michael Tigar, who defended Terry Nichols in the Oklahoma City Bombing trial.

The Bush Administration is busy re-writing policy on rights to be accorded prisoners apprehended in Iraq:

A new legal opinion by the Bush administration has concluded for the first time that some non-Iraqi prisoners captured by American forces in Iraq are not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions, administration officials said Monday.

The opinion, reached in recent months, establishes an important exception to public assertions by the Bush administration since March 2003 that the Geneva Conventions applied comprehensively to prisoners taken in the conflict in Iraq, the officials said.

They said the opinion would essentially allow the military and the C.I.A. to treat at least a small number of non-Iraqi prisoners captured in Iraq in the same way as members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban captured in Afghanistan, Pakistan or elsewhere, for whom the United States has maintained that the Geneva Conventions do not apply.

The new rule was crafted after this weekend's revelation that the U.S., at the behest of the C.I.A., secretly transported prisoners out Iraq and hid them from the Red Cross, notwithstanding a provision in the Geneva Conventions prohibiting protected civilians from being deported from occupied territories.

Update: The New York Times says Bush is making things worse:

"The disastrous theft was revealed in a recent letter to an international agency in Vienna. It was signed by the general director of Iraq's Planning and Following Up Directorate. It's too bad the Bush administration doesn't have one of those."

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Original Post

Here go the wingers again, claiming an NBC story shows that the weapons at al Qa Qa were gone 18 months before we invaded Iraq, ergo, it's not Bush's fault. The Washington Post reports:

The Bush campaign pushed reporters to look into an NBC News report that the network had been embedded with troops who searched the site three weeks into the war but never found the powerful explosives that are now missing, suggesting they were already gone.

Don't buy a word. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) saw the weapons in January, 2003:

IAEA inspectors last saw the explosives in January 2003 when they took an inventory and placed fresh seals on the bunkers, Fleming said. Inspectors visited the site again in March 2003, but didn't view the explosives because the seals were not broken, she said.

It's Karl Rove who's trying to manipulate the facts:

Eminem's powerful new anti-war, anti-Bush video is out. It probably won't air on MTV, but here are direct links where you can view it:

• Windows Media Player
• Real Player
• Quicktime
• Another Quicktime site.

Here are some lyrics. Note the line, ""This is Bin Laden, look at his head nodding":

For the first time in 80 years, the New Yorker has endorsed a presidential candidate. In one of the longest and strongest editorial endorsements we've seen, the New Yorker editors blast Bush and comes on strong for Kerry. It trounces Bush on virtually every front...from the war in Iraq to Ashcroft and the excesses of the Patriot Act, to its secrecy in the war on terror, to the economy and more. And it blows off claims that its endorsement is Anti-Bush rather than pro-Kerry:

The damage visited upon America, and upon America’s standing in the world, by the Bush Administration’s reckless mishandling of the public trust will not easily be undone. And for many voters the desire to see the damage arrested is reason enough to vote for John Kerry. But the challenger has more to offer than the fact that he is not George W. Bush. In every crucial area of concern to Americans (the economy, health care, the environment, Social Security, the judiciary, national security, foreign policy, the war in Iraq, the fight against terrorism), Kerry offers a clear, corrective alternative to Bush’s curious blend of smugness, radicalism, and demagoguery. Pollsters like to ask voters which candidate they’d most like to have a beer with, and on that metric Bush always wins. We prefer to ask which candidate is better suited to the governance of our nation.

Read it all, then read it again and e-mail it someone you know who is still undecided. Or who thinks their vote won't matter. If you don't have time and need a cheat sheet, here's the short version.

While Bush is touting the new FBI report showing violent crime (except for murder) is down, he neglects to mention some other important statistics. According to NORML, which has studied the report:

Police arrested an estimated 755,187 persons for marijuana violations in 2003.... The total is the highest ever recorded by the FBI, and comprised 45 percent of all drug arrests in the United States....at current rates, a marijuana smoker is arrested every 42 seconds in America.

The cost of these marijuana arrests is $7.6 billion. Isn't it peculiar that Bush doesn't realize that this $7.6 million could be far better spent finding and stopping terrorists?

If you're thinking the numbers may reflect a lot of big dealer sales, forget it.

Of those charged with marijuana violations, 88 percent - some 662,886 Americans - were charged with possession only. The remaining 92,301 individuals were charged with "sale/manufacture," a category that includes all cultivation offenses - even those where the marijuana was being grown for personal or medical use.

Marijuana arrests last year were up 8%. What does that mean?

The total number of marijuana arrests for 2003 far exceeded the total number of arrests for all violent crimes combined, including murder, manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault.

Today was "Feel a Draft?" day over at the Freeway Blogger. People from all over sent in pictures of the signs they made about Bush and the Draft and posted on busy thoroughfares. You can view them here.

On a related anti-Bush note, we received these funny pictures by e-mail today.

More here. And here.

If you don't think these pictures are funny, you probably would be happier reading a different blog.

by TChris

Leave it to the Bush administration to explain to state voters what their own ballot initiatives mean.

Oregon voters approved a medical marijuana law in 1998. Now a new ballot initiative seeks to give the law some teeth by legalizing marijuana dispensaries throughout the state and by allowing patients to possess more pot. Jackie Lamont, general manager of the Compassion Center in Eugene, says the initiative is designed "to make the existing law work better."

But John Horton, associate deputy director for state and local affairs of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, said there is "absolutely no question" that the measure is an attempt to legalize marijuana in Oregon.

Right. Because people who actually live in Oregon couldn't possibly know what their ballot initiatives mean. They need Big Brother Bush and his Washington minions to tell them the "truth" about their own proposed laws.

The "truth" that Horton is peddling: marijuana has no medicinal value. He'll likely have a rough time persuading the nearly 9,000 patients in Oregon who depend on marijuana for relief from pain, nausea, muscle spasms, glaucoma, and other infirmities.

by TChris

The Georgia Supreme Court declared the state's hate crimes law unconstitutional today on the ground of vagueness. The court ruled that the law's broad language "fails to comport with the ascertainable standards required by the due process rights guaranteed by our state and federal constitutions."

The hate crime law enhances a criminal sentence when it is determined beyond a reasonable doubt that a defendant intentionally selected a victim or the victim's property as the object of an offense "because of bias or prejudice." "We recognize that persons of ordinary intelligence may understand the dictionary definition of the words 'bias' and 'prejudice,'" the ruling said. "However, because of the broad signification of these words and the absence of any specific context in which a person's bias or prejudice may apply in order to narrow the construction of these concepts, we find that [the hate crime law] fails to provide fair warning of the conduct it prohibits."

The court apparently declined to give the law a limiting construction by attaching the word "racial" to the word "bias." The state senator who sponsored the law intends to introduce a clearer version in the next legislative session.

Looking good, sounding better...former President Clinton "rises from his sick bed" to campaign with John Kerry in Philadelphia today.

Check out the size of this crowd. Estimates are 100,000 and higher.

And where was Bush? In Greeley, Colorado, stumping for Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave, chief sponsor of the Gay Marriage Ban Amendment. Musgrave's seat is critical, and it's no lock. Stan Matsunaka has been catching up --he needs more money for the final week of ads--please, throw him some change.

by TChris

Bunnatine H. Greenhouse is the top civilian employee of the Army Corps of Engineers with oversight authority over contracting. She's raising questions about the Bush administration's cozy relationship with Halliburton, including its repeated decisions not to seek competitive bids for contracts awarded to the Vice President's former employer.

Greenhouse said that in at least one case she witnessed, Army officials inappropriately allowed representatives of Halliburton to sit in as they discussed the terms of a contract the company was set to receive.

The administration would prefer that she follow the course of "don't ask, don't tell." But that's not her job -- and because she's doing her job, her job may be on the line.

In an Oct. 21 letter to the acting Army secretary, Ms. Greenhouse said that after her repeated questions about the Halliburton contracts, she was excluded from major decisions to award money and that her job status was threatened.

Greenhouse is seeking a high level investigation of threats to the "integrity of the federal contracting program." After her concerns were made public, the Army Corps of Engineers was wisely directed "to suspend any adverse personnel actions" against her.

by TChris

Chief Justice Rehnquist was admitted to Bethesda Naval Hospital on Friday, where he underwent surgery on his trachea after being diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Our best wishes to the Chief Justice for a strong recovery.

The Chief Justice's ill health underscores the importance of next week's presidential election. Only Justice Thomas is younger than 65. The next President might make multiple appointments to the Court. President Bush's nominees to the lower courts have often been out of the mainstream. John Kerry, if elected, is more likely to exert a balancing influence on the federal courts generally, and on the Supreme Court in particular.

Update: Here are the facts on thyroid cancer, from the National Cancer Institute.