Update: Iran endorsed Bush for President today. [Via Oliver Willis.

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This is so outrageous, I'm reprinting it in full. I haven't been able to find a working link to an online action site, but I'm sure one will appear soon. A news article confirming the details below is here.

The fundamentalism regime of Iran is planning to stone a 13-year-old girl, Jila [also spelled Zhila], in the city of Marivan in coming days. Jila was raped and impregnated by her brother and Iran’s clerical judge has sentenced her to death by stoning. According to the Iranian regime's penal code, stoning is the punishment for those who commit adultery. Jila did not commit adultery; rather she is a victim of rape.

Stoning in Iran is carried out as "the condemned are wrapped head to foot in white shrouds and buried up to their waists. “ The misogynous regime of Tehran even details the difference between the stoning of men vs. women. “The female condemned are buried up to their neck to prevent their escape.” Furthermore, "the stones are specifically chosen so they are large enough to cause pain, but not so large as to kill the condemned immediately. They are guaranteed a slow, torturous death. Sometimes their children are forced to watch.” No other government in the world practices stoning as the Iranian regime.

TomPaine.com reports on voter suppression in Philly...and Michigan.

Nevada has some funny busines going on as well.

District Judge Valerie Adair on Friday denied the Democratic Party's request to reopen voter registration to voters whose forms might have been destroyed by a Republican-backed organiza- tion.

In denying the Democratic Party's petition, Adair said extending registration could "open the floodgates" to allow people not affected by the purported fraud to register. Such a move would be inviting "additional fraud and manipulation," she said.

Update: Colorado Luis, and the Rocky Mountain Progressive Network outline suppression attempts in Colorado. Also see Krugman today.

Here's a new endorsement for John Kerry by the Daily Texan. After criticizing Bush on a number of domestic and foreign issues, it says:

The Bush-Cheney campaign itself offers the best endorsement for John Kerry: He changes his mind. When it became increasingly obvious that the war in Iraq was based on faulty intelligence and downright ignorance, Kerry was willing to call out the administration. As law enforcement officers began using anti-terrorism powers to create an unsettling culture of surveillance in America, Kerry attacked the way the Patriot act is used.

Far from being a mindless flip-flopper, Kerry has proven that he is willing to listen to public input. Kerry's brand of flip-flopping would be a welcome change from an administration that simply refuses to admit mistakes or accept any responsibility for the disaster zone it has created in the Middle East. It's about time that someone in the White House has an open mind.

John Kerry, a fresh start and an open mind. Sounds pretty good to me. And in case you missed it a few weeks ago, here is the endorsement of Kerry by the Crawford Iconoclast, the hometown paper where Bush's ranch is located.

Dick Cheney is once again trying to instill fear in the heart of every American in an attempt to snag votes:

Vice President Dick Cheney on Tuesday evoked the possibility of terrorists bombing U.S. cities with nuclear weapons and questioned whether Sen. John Kerry could combat such a threat, which the vice president called a concept "you've got to get your mind around."

"The biggest threat we face now as a nation is the possibility of terrorists ending up in the middle of one of our cities with deadlier weapons than have ever before been used against us - biological agents or a nuclear weapon or a chemical weapon of some kind to be able to threaten the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans," Cheney said. "That's the ultimate threat. For us to have a strategy that's capable of defeating that threat, you've got to get your mind around that concept," Cheney said.

Bush-Cheney have no strategy to counter a catastrophic attack. Take the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act that Bush signed into law yesterday. Bush insisted that funds for first responders be reduced.

A new poll shows that John Kerry has wider support among black voters than Bush:

Blacks prefer Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry over President Bush by a nearly 4-to-1 margin, though their support for the Democrat is down slightly from the backing Al Gore received in 2000, according to a poll released Tuesday.

Bush didn't get good marks for his handling of the war in Iraq or for his overall job performance, according to the poll of black Americans from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. The center is a Washington-based research group that focuses on issues concerning blacks.

Not suprisingly, support for Bush was strongest among Christian conservatives and those over 50.

Atrios has begun the October Surprise Watch. We all know Rove and Bush will try to pull a rabbit out of hat before the election. The question is, what will it be? I'm sticking with my earler prediction, Osama bin Laden turns up dead.

If he turns up dead, it will be as if Bush killed the Wicked Witch of the West in the Wizard of Oz...people will be chanting, "Ding, Dong, the witch is dead" as if all our battles with terrorists will be over.

Bush needs Osama gone, not captured. Now here's the question: If he turns up dead, will an independent pathologist or medical examiner be allowed to examine his remains to determine how long he's been dead? Wouldn't you want to know if he died a few days ago or has been in storage for six months or more, in preparation for an October unveiling?

What say you?

A Judge in Troy, New York has been permanently removed from the bench after 11 years as a sitting judge. His offense:

[The Commission on Judicial Conduct ] charged Bauer with setting excessive bail and not affording defendants the right to counsel in order to coerce guilty pleas, among other judicial infractions. The Court of Appeals agreed that his conduct was too egregious for him to stay on the bench.

HaikuEsq has more and some context.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger today endorsed a state ballot measure supporting stem cell research.

Proposition 71 would spend $3 billion of California state money funded through bonds on stem-cell research and use another $3 billion to finance the interest payments over 30 years...."I am, of course, a supporter of stem cell research. Research that we do now holds the promise of cures for tomorrow," Schwarzenegger said in a statement. "We are the world's bio-tech leader and Prop. 71 will help ensure that we maintain that position while saving lives in the process."

Polls show the measure is favored among California voters.

The AP reports that Democrats have registered more new voters than Republicans in these swing states:Arizona, Iowa, New Mexico, Nevada and New Hampshire. In Florida, they are tied.

There are no numbers for Ohio and Pennsylvania. No mention is made of Colorado.

Al Gore blasted President Bush in a rousing speech today at Georgetown University. Some choice quotes:

I'm convinced that most of the president's frequent departures from fact-based analysis have much more to do with right-wing political and economic ideology than with the Bible."

"It is love of power for its own sake that is the original sin of this presidency," he said. He painted the Bush administration and its "right-wing" supporters as pursuing policies for the wealthy and powerful at the expense of the rest of the country.

"The essential cruelty of Bush's game is that he takes an astonishingly selfish and greedy collection of economic and political proposals and then cloaks them with a phony moral authority, thus misleading many Americans ... who have a deep and genuine desire to do good in the world," Gore said.

"And in the process, he convinces them to lend unquestioning support for proposals that actually hurt their families and their communities," he said.

"Truly, President Bush has stolen the symbolism and body language of religion and used it to disguise the most radical effort in American history to take what rightfully belongs to the American people and give as much of it as possible to the already wealthy and privileged," he said.

Lots more, if you find a link to the entire speech, please leave it in the comments.

This is for advertisers....nine days for the price of seven--The TalkLeft premium spot on the left, under the logo, opens up tomorrow. Beginning Oct. 28, it is taken for a month. It's limited to one ad at a time, so the first person to take it for a week will have their ad run until the 28th.

Here's the ad signup page.

by TChris

The Supreme Court will decide whether a criminal defendant's right to a fair death penalty hearing is violated by forcing him to appear before a jury in shackles. Carmen Deck was convicted of two murders. During the six hour death penalty phase of his trial, Deck was handcuffed to a belly chain and he was kept in leg irons.

Deck's public defender, Rosemary Percival, has it right:

"Shackles and other restraints tacitly communicate to the jury that the court believes the defendant is still so dangerous that he must be restrained even in the confines of the courtroom," she said.

The shackling of a defendant during a trial has long been understood to be unfair. It is no less prejudicial to force a man to fight for his life while binding him in chains.