Asylum-seekers. We treat them like dirt.

In jails and prisons across the United States, thousands of people are detained who have never been accused of crimes. The guards treat them like criminals, and the criminals they bunk with often abuse them. They are held for months, sometimes even years, but unlike the criminals, they do not know when their sentences will end. They receive this treatment because they are foreigners who arrived in the United States saying that they were fleeing persecution at home.

It wasn't always this way.

The United States did not always lock up the huddled masses. Until 1997, when security concerns began to rise, asylum seekers could live like normal people while awaiting their hearings. Today, thousands wait in detention. Some go to immigration centers that greatly resemble prisons, but more than half are sent to actual jails and prisons.

Contrast the U.S. (Ashcroft's) policy towards the Haitians and the Cubans:

An editorial in the New York Times today cheers California's "bold step" in treating drug addiction. First, the problem:

Intravenous-drug users who spread disease by sharing dirty needles and engaging in unprotected sex are responsible for more than a third of all the AIDS cases in the United States and more than half of the new cases of hepatitis C. Addicts will continue to drive these epidemics until the country takes a more enlightened approach to drug treatment. That means discarding the laws that criminalize needle possession because such laws encourage addicts to share needles.

California's response: Proposition 36

Baghdad Year Zero - Pillaging Iraq in pursuit of a neocon utopia--by Naomi Klein in the new Harper's. Go read.

The great historical irony of the catastrophe unfolding in Iraq is that the shock-therapy reforms that were supposed to create an economic boom that would rebuild the country have instead fueled a resistance that ultimately made reconstruction impossible. Bremer’s reforms unleashed forces that the neocons neither predicted nor could hope to control, from armed insurrections inside factories to tens of thousands of unemployed young men arming themselves.

These forces have transformed Year Zero in Iraq into the mirror opposite of what the neocons envisioned: not a corporate utopia but a ghoulish dystopia, where going to a simple business meeting can get you lynched, burned alive, or beheaded. These dangers are so great that in Iraq global capitalism has retreated, at least for now. For the neocons, this must be a shocking development: their ideological belief in greed turns out to be stronger than greed itself.

A great line to remember:

When facts threaten true believers, they simply close their eyes and pray harder.

In the previous post I wrote that conservative bloggers Tom MacGuire and Powerline were right to be skeptical of Drudge and The Washington Times claim by Rep. Peter King of New York that Kerry endorsed preemptive war against Iraq while the two were on a Crossfire show in 1997, as the Washington Times has now issued a correction.

Here's another example of Kerry's consistency on the issue of Iraq over the years: On December 11, 2001, Kerry was interviewed by Bill O'Reilly on The Factor. (Transcript available on Lexis.com) Kerry outlined his position on Iraq as Bill O'Reilly was pressuring him to call in the troops. Kerry's position: Bring in allies, be patient with inspections, use Iraqi insurgency, and only get involved if America's national security depended on it.

Here's the text of the transcript, with a few lines about Kurds and a few unintelligbile, meandering, "ums" and cross-talking lines deleted:

First the Washington Times "Inside the Beltway" columnist John McCaslin reports information he received from Rep. Peter King(R-NY) about an Iraq statement Kerry allegedly made when the two were on a Crossfire show in November, 1997. The gist of King's claim was that Kerry, during the show,endorsed a preemptive strike against Iraq. King claimed he had a videotape to prove Kerry made the statement. The Washington Times said no transcripts were available.

Drudge picked the story up. But even Tom MacGuire and Powerline were skeptical.

Lexis to the rescue. Of course there are Crossfire transcripts from 1997. Transcript obtained. Kerry never said it.

Today's Washington Times contains this retraction by McCaslin:

Anyone know a good defamation lawyer? Bill Burkett wants to go after CBS and Dan Rather for damages. His first lawyer feels conflicted due to having negotiated with CBS and his second lawyer feels the stress of such a case would be too damaging to his medical condition.

Calling Lin Wood. Nope, no relief there.

Lin Wood of Atlanta, who represented former Olympic Games security guard Richard Jewell in a successful defamation suit against several news organizations, said yesterday that he had declined a request from Quintanilla to take the Burkett case. Wood pleaded "time constraints" as well as his "high regard for CBS News."

"It appears highly questionable that he has a legitimate defamation claim" against CBS, said Wood, noting that his opinion was based on news reports about the case rather than privileged information.

Lin Wood successfully represented John and Patsy Ramsey in several libel suits. He is now representing the accuser of Kobe Bryant in her suit against the basketball star. He likes publicity. He doesn't hesitate to represent unpopular clients.

Maybe Burkett should write a book on Rathergate and how he was misrepresented in the media and his impressions of Bush's guard service. He'd probably get an advance and offers of a ghost writer. That is probably more than he'd get in a lawsuit.

On September 23, the House Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security, was scheduled to consider a new bill that would add mandatory minimum sentences to many non-violent drug offenses. Here are two:

Anyone convicted in federal court of the crime of "enticing" someone "who has previously been enrolled in a drug treatment program" to "possess"
marijuana (by passing a joint, for instance) will receive a five-year mandatory minimum sentence.

Chicago is embarking on a pilot project to reform police lineups. Lineups will now use double-blind testing--meaning the officer won't know which of the persons in the lineup is the one suspected of committing the crime. The second big change is that lineups will be conducted sequentially--the witness will only view one person or photo at a time.

Both of these measures have been shown to reduce the error rate in eyewitness identifications. If every jurisidiction would adopt these reforms, and require mandatory taping of interrogations, the wrongful conviction rate would tumble.

Police should be encouraged to seek these changes in their departments. If the wrong man is in prison, the guilty one is still out there roaming, ready to strike again.

This is a fascinating story of two people who, like many others, fell in love and created a daughter. There the similarities end.

Five-year-old Gabriela Green has never hugged her father. She knows his voice only through the telephone of a death row visitors' stall. And one day soon, she may see him, barricaded behind a Plexiglas window, for the last time.

Gabriela's mother, Tameika East-Green was a prison guard who fell in love with Edward Green III, a death row inmate. Mr. Green, now 30, has been on death row for almost 12 years. His execution is scheduled for October 5.

"People always want to know, 'How can you have a 5-year-old-child with a man who has been incarcerated for 12 years?' " said Tameika East-Green, the condemned inmate's wife. "I tell them I used to work at the prison."

Nat Hentoff's new column in the Village Voice addresses indifference to the genocide of Black Afraicans in Darfur in Sudan.

...the World Health Organization, which is striving mightily—with other humanitarian organizations—to save lives in Darfur, says it will run out of money by the end of this month if more funds don't come in from concerned countries. The United States has been the largest donor.

However strongly a future U.N. Security Council resolution may be worded and accepted by Khartoum, Sudan's National Islamic Front government chronically breaks its agreements. The murdering and raping of black Africans in Darfur will continue unless there is massive world pressure that may well have to go beyond the United Nations and indeed create a coalition of nations that will use force to end what the International Crisis Group's John Prendergast accurately calls the "most unspeakable crime in the world."

Hentoff compares Kerry's response to the lack of response from Bush.

Paypal has reinstated TalkLeft's account. So, whose advice did I follow? Those of you who said delete the objectionable post, make sure I get my money, then decide whether to leave Paypal. All of your suggestions are very much appreciated. I thought about them all before deciding.

Update: Bill Quick of The Daily Pundit got a similar missive from Paypal. He's angry and has refused to give in and is taking his paypal links down.

**************
Original Post 9/23/04

Unbelievable. This e-mail from paypal was in TalkLeft's email box today. Shorter version: TalkLeft's paypal account is restricted because of a link to a beheading video.

We appreciate the fact that you chose PayPal to send and receive payments for your transactions.

However, your account has been limited for violating PayPal's Acceptable Use Policy regarding Offensive Material. The Policy prohibits the use of PayPal in the sale of items or in support of organizations that promote hate, violence, or racial intolerance; items which graphically portray violence or victims of violence; or items closely associated with individuals notorious for committing murderous acts within the last 100 years. Further, PayPal prohibits a person convicted of a violent felony, or his relatives or associates, from using PayPal to benefit financially from the convict's criminal notoriety. The complete Acceptable Use Policy
addressing Offensive Material can be found at the following URL:

To appeal the limitation on your account, you will need to:

1. Remove those items from your website that violate PayPal's Acceptable Use Policy. For example, any links to obtain the Eugene Armstrong begeading video; and

2. Submit the online Acceptable Use Policy affidavit.

Joe Conason today:

Serial slanderers like Dennis Hastert say terrorists want John Kerry to win. The facts say George W. Bush is al-Qaida's best recruitment tool.

Kevin Drum weighs in on Bush's press conference yesterday:

And Thursday's press conference was just scary. It's no longer clear if George Bush is merely a cynical, calculating politician — which would be bad enough — or if he actually believes all the happy talk about Iraq that his speechwriters produce for him. Increasingly, though, it seems like the latter: he genuinely doesn't have a clue about what's going on. What's more, his staff is keeping him in a sort of Nixonian bubble, afraid to tell him the truth and afraid to take any positive action for fear that it might affect the election.

So things will just get worse, since no one is willing to admit the truth and no one is willing to propose serious action to keep things from deteriorating further — at least not until after November 2nd. But by then it will be too late. And when the Iraqi elections fail, what happens then? What's Plan E?