The judge in the Martha Stewart case has granted her request to begin serving her jail sentence now. She will report on October 8. The Judge also is recommending to the Bureau of Prisons that she be designated to either the prison camp at Danbury, Conn., or Coleman, Fla.

Moving Ideas has a new article in their voter protection series, Disenfranchised in America, highlighting segments of our society that regularly are denied the right to vote: students, DC citizens, felons, and non-citizens.

There are 4.7 million adults in the U.S. who are denied the right to vote because of a felony conviction. Forty-eight states and the District of Columbia deny felons the right to vote at some point, while 7 states permanently disenfranchise felons and 7 more permanently disenfranchise certain felons. Only Maine and Vermont allow felons to vote even while they are in prison. The “war on drugs” has led to a large population of African Americans being convicted of felony drug crimes resulting in 1.4 million, or 1 in 13, African Americans who are disenfranchised due to felony convictions. Even in those states where rights are restored to felons who have paid their debt to society, election officials and parole officers often misinform felons about their rights. There are a total of 9 million ex-felons, many whom do not know they have the right to vote.

Right to Vote is a campaign to restore the right to vote to felons. Their mission:

Say hello to the Election Toolbar:

Vote121 is an innovative new browser toolbar that brings all the latest campaign news and opinion straight to your browser. Without interrupting your normal browsing routine, you can learn more about the presidential candidates, get an active countdown to the election and an up-to-the-minute display of the projected election results – and it’s all free! Go here to install the The Vote121 Toolbar

What will you get?

The authorities may not be interested in charging the young man at the Republican convention who kicked a protester as she lay on the floor restrained by Secret Service Agents, but the protester is contemplating legal action against her kicker.

Clare Martin, 26, of Berkeley, Calif., said yesterday that she has not ruled out any options against the young man who kicked her while she was being detained by Secret Service and security detail at Madison Square Garden on the morning of Sept. 1. "We're considering our options," Martin said. "Pressing charges is definitely one of
them."

Campaign Extra!, the blog of the Philly News, has more on Scott Robinson, who some have identified as the kicker. The blog has a picture of a Protest Warrior rally in D.C., and asks whether the protester on the right doesn't strongly resemble Scott Robinson.

In an e-mail to TalkLeft, and in a telephone conversation with Julian Sanchez of Reason Magazine, Mr. Robinson denied being the kicker. To date, there has been no definitive identification of the kicker.

Huda Alazawi was one of the few females imprisoned at Abu Ghraib in Iraq. She was a wealthy businesswoman, blackmailed by a lowlife informant who falsely dropped a dime on her and her brothers, claiming they were supporters of the Iraqi resistance after she refused to meet his demand for money. Recently released after several months at Abu Ghraib, she recounted her ordeal to The Guardian.

Alazawi was imprisoned with two of her brothers and a sister. One brother was brutally sexually assaulted --hours later he was thrown at her and her sister's feet, bleeding from his head, knees and between his legs. He was dead.

The torture, abuse and degradation of Alazawi and other prisoners went on for months. She was able to document some of the abuse in a Koran. Other aspects of her report match those of other prisoners.

A few bad apples? No way. If even just half of Alazawi's account is true, common sense dictates that the abuse and torture were not merely condoned, but organized, planned and authorized. Almost equally disgusting is this U.S. miltary spokesman's indifferent response to her allegations:

She and her sister, which [sic] were the last two females we detained at Abu Ghraib, were separated from the male detainees in keeping with the cultural sensitivities." He added, "The fact that abuses occurred isn't really news any more. We know they did and those who are accused are being prosecuted for it."

How about the prosecution of those who authorized it?

John Kerry spoke at NYU Monday. Here's the text of his speech. Here's a snippet:

Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator who deserves his own special place in hell. But that was not, in itself, a reason to go to war. The satisfaction we take in his downfall does not hide this fact: we have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure.

The President has said that he “miscalculated” in Iraq and that it was a “catastrophic success.” In fact, the President has made a series of catastrophic decisions … from the beginning … in Iraq. At every fork in the road, he has taken the wrong turn and led us in the wrong direction.

As Kerry says, this election is about choices. You have one. Please exercise it on November 2. Register now. Get an absentee ballot. And tell a friend.

The Rocky Mountain News reports:

Fifty-three percent of the 500 registered Colorado voters surveyed picked Salazar as their preferred Senate candidate against 42 percent who said Coors. Only 4 percent of the voters said they were undecided. The poll showed Salazar winning the Hispanic and rural vote -- critical voters blocs in the upcoming election.

Colorado Luis reports on how critical Colorado Springs will be fore the presidential election --and how Colorado Springs for Kerry could make a difference.

They're looking for volunteers to help spread the word in that part of the state, which perhaps more than anywhere else could use a good dose of the message that Bush is not guaranteed victory in Colorado this November. You could end up helping to swing one of the most important battlegrounds in the country to Kerry.

Some more good news...Colorado's Democratic congressional candidates have raised twice as much money as their Republican opponents. It's due to a new kind of campaign financing called "small donor committees." Republicans are not amused.

Dan Rather flew to Texas over the weekend to meet with Bill Burkett, and I assume, to convince him to allow CBS to name him as its source. On CBS Evening News tonight, Rather will air his interview of Burkett. The show doesn't air in Denver for another 45 minutes, so East Coasters, let us know what you thought. The rest of us will chime in later.

Update: Burkett said he did not forge or fake the documents. He only misled CBS about the source after he felt pressured. He said he thought CBS was going to authenticate them. Rather acknowledged that this is what CBS should have done but didn't. He also said that initially, it was CBS who contacted Burkett, and not the other way around.

Immediate reaction: Burkett was not particularly credible. He's got to realize he's a sitting duck for a lawsuit from Killian's family....and perhaps a criminal charge if he admits forging the documents. It should be also noted that no one at CBS, or Burkett, has said the documents were faked or forged. Only that they cannot be authenticated.

The Bush and Kerry campaigns have now signed a formal agreement as to the three Presidential debates and one Vice-Presidential debate.

The commission scheduled the first 90-minute debate on Sept. 30 in Coral Gables, Florida, with a second one set for Oct. 8 in St. Louis and a third on Oct. 13 in Tempe, Arizona. A vice presidential debate between incumbent Dick Cheney and Kerry's running mate, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, was set for Oct. 5 in Cleveland.

The agreement is a concession from Bush, who only wanted to engage in two debates. The bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates wanted three, which Kerry agreed to right away.

A few weeks ago, I applied for press credentials for TalkLeft to cover the final debate in Tempe. No word yet. There's a strange twist to the application however....it asks for the race of the applicant. A response is not required to submit the application, but still, what's that all about?

Is Dan Rather really what you all want to talk about when this just came across the wires?

A Web site posting Monday claimed that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's group has beheaded one of the American hostages in Iraq and that others would soon be killed. The claim could not be verified. The short statement was posted by a Web site contributor using the pseudonym Abu Maysara al-Iraqi, who has put up past statements signed in the name of the Tawhid and Jihad group. The posting promised video proof "soon."

al-Zarqawi "has beheaded the first American. The group will next behead the others," the statement said. The reliability and authenticity of such statements, videos and pictures, which appear frequently on Internet sites known for their Islamic content, cannot be known for certain.

Update: Reuters reports that the website has posted the video., and that the American beheaded is U.S. Contractor Eugene Armstrong.

The Daily Pennsylvanian, while acknowledging Scott Robinson denies being the young Republican who kicked a protester while she was being restrained on the ground by Secret Service agents, runs with the story.

As mentioned here, Mr. Robinson responded to my e-mail and denied being the kicker. [link via Atrios.]

Following up on our most recent post on Rathergate and CBS's planned statement, here are the details:

CBS News Anchor Dan Rather, the reporter of the original story, apologized. In a statement, CBS said former Texas Guard official Bill Burkett "has acknowledged that he provided the now-disputed documents" and "admits that he deliberately misled the CBS News producer working on the report, giving her a false account of the documents' origins to protect a promise of confidentiality to the actual source." The network did not say the memoranda — purportedly written by one of Mr. Bush's National Guard commanders — were forgeries. But the network did say it could not authenticate the documents and that it should not have reported them.

"Based on what we now know, CBS News cannot prove that the documents are authentic, which is the only acceptable journalistic standard to justify using them in the report," said the statement by CBS News President Andrew Heyward. "We should not have used them. That was a mistake, which we deeply regret."

Update: Mary at Left Coaster thinks Karl Rove is behind the leaked Killian memos. [link via Skippy.]