A new study shows

A study of thousands of federal court cases has found that judges appointed by President Bush are the most conservative on record in the areas of civil rights and civil liberties. The study's authors say the re-election of Bush would give U.S. courts a strong rightward tilt that could last for years.

Here's the details:

Don't miss the news with Dan Rather tonight. CBS has issued this press release on the Bush National Guard document flap.

Later today, CBS News will address on the air and in detail the issues surrounding the documents broadcast in the 60 MINUTES report on President Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard. At this time, however, CBS News states with absolute certainty that the ability to produce the "th" superscript mentioned in reports about the documents did exist on typewriters as early as 1968, and in fact is in President Bush's official military records released by the White House. This and other issues surrounding the authenticity of the documents and more on this developing story will be reported on tonight on THE CBS EVENING NEWS WITH DAN RATHER.

CBS and Dan Rather are sticking to their guns:

Dave Thomas is a Democrat running for Congress in Colorado. He is currently the elected District Attorney for Jefferson County, which is one of the toughest jurisdictions on crime in the state. In the early 80's, when I first met him, he was a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's office going after major drug traffickers, including the ones I represented.

So why am I, a defense lawyer, asking that readers contribute to his campaign? Because he's honest and fair, and except on crime issues, a progressive Democrat. He's always willing to listen. He picks up the phone when you call. He's a public servant in the truest sense of the term.

The Columbine school shootings occurred in his district. He was a steady leader throughout, notwithstanding the many groups he had to please, from victims' families to the Sheriff and police and the media.

I just received a telephone call from Dave, asking for my support. Not from a staffer, or a recorded message, but from him. My resources are far too limited to be of any significance, so I thought I'd put the call out to you readers.

Dave's website is here. Please go over and make a contribution. Polls show him neck and neck with Republican opponent Bob Beauprez, who is a first term Congressman who won by a hair last time--122 votes. The 7th District is a new District, the 2002 election was the first. Beauprez is vulnerable. We can take back the House, one seat at a time.

If you make a contribution in an amount ending in "$.13," Dave will know its from a TalkLeft reader.

Bump and Update: Just got an email from a reader who thought we missed the forgery story. We didn't, we just wrote a lot of stuff afterwards. So here's a bump to our post written at 5:17 pm yesterday so you all can keep discussing it.

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There is quite a debate going on in the blogosphere about the Killiam Memos revealed last night on 60 Minutes regarding Bush's National Guard Service. Powerlinereports on those claiming they are a forgery while Kevin Drum of Washington Monthly reports CBS is confident they are authentic.

The argument concerns typefaces available in 1971....

Update: Here's proof from IBM that proportional spacing came out in 1954 on it's IBM Executive model. (via Jefe at Atrios.) That does look like the memos.

Update: Electric typewriters began replacing manual typewriters in the mid-1960's. The IBM Selectric came around 1970. Manual typewriters began to disappear during the mid 1960's due to the increased popularity of electric typewriters. The Selectric was to electric typewriters what the Underwood was to manuals. (Atlantic Monthly, Nov. 1997, available on Lexis.com in which the author also describes viewing Selectrics "circa 1970" in a shop)

Attorney General John Ashcroft is not having a good month. First, the Detroit terror convictions come undone. Then, the First Circuit rules that the Bureau of Prisons cannot make federal inmates do 90% of their time in a jail before being allowed to go to a half-way house. Now, a federal judge in Pennyslvania has thrown out a state law requiring internet service providers to block child porn sites.

Enacted in 2002, the law gave Pennsylvania's attorney general the power to require that companies like America Online Inc. block customers from viewing Web sites that had been identified by the state as containing illegal content.... Over two years, the groups said, ISPs trying to obey blocking orders were forced to cut access to at least 1.5 million legal Web sites that had nothing to do with child pornography, but were part of the same Internet cluster as the offending sites.

In finding the law unconstitutional, the Judge ruled:

.... [the] current state of technology meant the law "cannot be implemented without excessive blocking of innocent speech in violation of the First Amendment."

The text of the decision is available here (pdf.) The suit was brought by the Center for Democracy and Technology.

At the RNC, there was a young republican kicking a protester as she lay on the ground being held by 3 Secret Service Agents. Despite massive internet coverage, including the man's photo and several leads posted on websites, no one in law enforcement or the media appears interested in identifying and charging him with assault or battery.

Now there's this:

A member of the audience pulls a demonstrator's hair as he forces her out of an auditorium where President Bush was addressing a crowd of supporters at Byers Choice in Colmar, Pa. [Source: Associated Press article with large photo.]

[link via Drudge.]

Update: Photo link fixed.

Here's another atrocity arising in a Texas jail:

A mentally ill Dallas County jail inmate was cut off from drinking water for nearly two weeks and denied psychiatric medication for almost two months, according to an internal investigation. He nearly died.

Roderick Johnson, whom we've written about a few times, won a big round in the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. The court upheld his right to sue seven prison officials for the rapes he says he was subjected to on a daily basis while in prison.

a unanimous federal appeals court has ruled that seven ranking Texas prison officials can be sued for damages due to discrimination based on sexual orientation. The ruling by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals was in response to a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of a gay man who was repeatedly raped by prison gangs and whose pleas for help were ignored by officials.

The Court ruled:

"We conclude that Johnson's grievances were sufficient to give prison officials fair notice that there might have been a sexual orientation-related aspect to Johnson's problem," the judges wrote in the ruling. Judges, citing a 1994 Supreme Court decision that officials have a duty to protect inmates from violent prisoners, also ruled that the case can proceed under the Eighth Amendment's protection against cruel and unusual punishment.

Conservatives in Colorado, insistent on implementing a policy restricting the free speech of professors in hopes of minimizing liberal thoughts and ideas, have adversely affected the rights of both students and teachers, according to testimony provided at a legislative hearing yesterday.

A university president and a Democratic state lawmaker said rules put in place this year to protect conservative views on Colorado campuses have led to death threats against professors and a harmful effect on free speech.....A handful of college officials and students went before the Legislature's Joint Education Committee on Thursday to report on efforts to enforce the Academic Bill of Rights. All state-funded colleges adopted the policy this year under pressure from Republican lawmakers.

Colleges agreed to implement a stripped-down version of the policy after lawmakers killed a measure that would have required them to allow students to file grievances against professors if they felt they were being harassed for their political or religious beliefs.

Among the off-limit topics: stem cell research which some Republicans claim amounts to abortion.

A study in Great Britain finds that smoking marijuana has both short and long term benefits for MS sufferers.

"In the short term-study there was some evidence of cannabinoids alleviating symptoms of multiple sclerosis; in the longer term there is a suggestion of a more useful beneficial effect, which was not clear at the initial stage," he said.

This is pathetic. First, the Innocence Protection Act, which TalkLeft and others lobbied mightily for, was gutted to a shadow of its former self and renamed the Advancing Justice Through DNA Technology Act. It passed the House 357 to 67 last November.

The bill got stalled in the Senate yesterday by Republicans objecting to the Innocence Protection Act provisions contained in the Act--despite the fact that victims, as well as innocence advocates, have been pushing hard for passage. The innocence provisions would allow inmates to obtain DNA testing to challenge their convictions and grant compensation to those inmates who prove they were factually innocent and wrongfully convicted. Currently, 151 inmates have been exonerated of the crimes of which they were convicted through DNA testing.

The bill in its current form provides far more benefits to crime victims than to wrongfully convicted inmates. Here's the disparity: $755 million is going to DNA testing of old rape kits in hopes of finding the perpetrator through a DNA databank, while only $25 million is allotted for the DNA testing of inmates with colorable factual innocence claims.

And yet, there are still objections to the bill. Shameful. As Senator Patrick Leahy said yesterday:

"Every day that the bill is stalled is another day that rape kits go untested for lack of funds; another day that inmates with colorable claims of innocence are denied access to the DNA evidence that could set them free and put the real criminals behind bars."

How tough is it to understand that DNA protects the innocent and identifies the guilty. if the wrong person is in jail, the real perpetrator is still out there, quite capable of striking again.

Two Army Generals said in depositions and interviews Thursday that the number of prisoners held in Iraq who were hidden from the Red Cross far exceeded a few dozen and may have numbered up to 100.

Army jailers in Iraq, acting at the Central Intelligence Agency's request, kept dozens of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison and other detention facilities off official rosters to hide them from Red Cross inspectors, two senior Army generals said Thursday. The total is far more than had been previously reported.