Something's rotten in the State of Massachussetts. Accused felons are getting out of jail because the state won't pay lawyers to represent them.

With hourly pay rates for representing indigent alleged criminals the lowest in the country, Massachusetts has been flirting with an indigent-defense disaster for some time. But with lawyers in several counties refusing to take on additional criminal cases, the state's assigned-counsel system is officially in crisis. And although underfunding is always an issue in indigent-defense systems, it is rarely the only problem. The real issue is the kind of indigent-defense system Massachusetts is buying—not how much they pay for it. The focus on pay rates is an unfortunate side effect of leaving the defense of the poor to languish as a low priority. The way the Massachusetts crisis came about, and the narrow terms of the current debate, should be a cautionary tale for policy-makers across the country—many of whom will soon be confronting similar questions.

For indigent criminal defendants, low-paying assigned-counsel systems like that in Massachusetts offer the worst of all possible worlds. They virtually guarantee sub-par representation, since low assigned-counsel rates almost always imply huge caseloads—a nightmare for poor defendants desperately in need of legal attention.

Read more about the crisis here and here. The court-appointed attorneys latest press release is here. The Bristol, Mass. Bar Advocates website is here.

Painting by numbers. A picture worth 1,000 words. Graydon Carter of Vanity Fair gives us Bush by the Numbers.

Gary Farber of Amygdala has more on words not found in Bush's speech.

On MSNBC....It takes something big to knock Hurricane Frances off the cable news. There is confirmed news of a small explosion at LAX. The airport is now closed. It was in the Bradley International terminal. A bag was going through screening process and a flashlight or something similar went off. One screening employee is complaining of ringing in the ears. Another has swollen fingers. There are no reports yet of anyone going to a hospital.

It may be only a flashlight whose batteries exploded. Stay tuned. Here's an early AP report. Please use comments to update.

Hopefully Roger and Steve are still able to live blog from Orlando. Frances has hit the Florida coast with 90 mile per hour winds. It's expected to hit land tomorrow morning at Vero Beach.

Specialist Ryan G. Anderson was sentenced yesterday to life in prison for trying to make a deal to pass military secrets to agents posing as al Qaeda.

Lawyers for Specialist Anderson argued that he suffered from mental disorders, including bipolar disorder and Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism marked by eccentric behavior, as well as from a tendency to create alternate personas in order to make himself feel important, said Jeff Young, spokesman for the Fort Lewis Army base south of here.

How did he get into the National Guard in the first place? Is there no screening process?

Leave it to Kathleen Willey, the young widow (since remarried) who accused Clinton of coming onto her in the White House, to make a tasteless, base comment about President Clinton:

A COUPLE of hours after news broke that former President Clinton had been hospitalized to undergo bypass surgery, Kathleen Willey sent an e-mail to a friend. Willey was the attractive widow who claimed in 1998 that Clinton had tried to force himself on her in the Oval Office five years earlier when she came to him for a job. The subject line of her e-mail said: "Clinton's heart." The text read: "You mean he has one?"

Yes, Ms. Willey, he does. It just didn't beat for you.

Four navy commandos have been charged with abuse and lying in the beating death of Manadel al-Jamadi, an Iraqi prisoner at Abu Ghraib. Those charged include three Navy seals and one sailor assigned to the Seal unit. They are the first Officers to be charged in the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal. More Seals are expected to be charged.

The incident also drew attention because the detainee was being questioned by the Central Intelligence Agency at Abu Ghraib, but was kept off the prison roster. Army officials also said this week that about two dozen soldiers were expected to face abuse-related charges in the deaths of two Afghan prisoners at a American-run detention center in Afghanistan in December 2002. In addition, an Army report released last week recommended disciplinary action against 41 members of the military police, military intelligence soldiers, civilian contractors and Army medics in connection with abuses at Abu Ghraib.

Here's a picture of Army SPC Sabrina Harmon (who is not one of the charged commandos) posing over his corpse:

Background on al-Jamadi's death is here.

Can the Detroit terror case get any more embarassing for the Government? Now that the terrorism convictions have been tossed by the Judge, at the Department's request, the New York Times reports that DOJ investigators seek to polygraph the senior prosecutors on the case to determine whether they leaked the name of an informant.

In a pointed letter sent to the Justice Department last month and obtained this week by The New York Times, Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and regarded as the department's strongest advocate in Congress, questioned whether officials at the agency "are fully cooperating" in an investigation into the leak, "including submitting to polygraphs."

Congressional officials said they were concerned that the department, which after an investigation has placed blame for the collapse of the Detroit case largely on a single prosecutor, Richard G. Convertino, appeared to have resisted the idea of requiring polygraph examinations for a small group of officials who had access to the name of the informant.

This is very cool. Former President Clinton was watching Larry King Live Friday night in his hospital room and called in to discuss his upcoming bypass surgery. Here's the transcript:

KING: How are you feeling?

CLINTON: I feel great. And I've enjoyed this program. And Dr. [Wayne] Isom explained why we are going to delay this surgery for a couple of days. But I feel really blessed, you know, because a lot of people who have a heart attack never get any advance warning, as Dr. [Bill] Frist said, or Senator Frist said.

I've had some difficulty ever since I got out of the White House in getting my distance up in running. And I just had a feeling a couple of days ago I had to have it checked, when I finally got some tightness in my chest. And I hadn't done any exercise. That's the first time that ever happened to me, and we did this angiogram and found out I had blockage that was too significant to open and put a stent in. We had to do the whole surgery. So I'm trying to get my head in the game.

KING: But you look so great. You lost so much weight. Didn't you think that if you had a problem, it was over?

CLINTON: Well, no. I've also been treating the high cholesterol and then I stopped taking that medicine because I got my cholesterol down low. And I had, in the past, had a little blood pressure problem, which I've treated and then I got it down.

Media Matters charges:

Discredited Republican pollster Frank Luntz, CEO and president of Luntz Research Companies, made four appearances during MSNBC's coverage of the Democratic (July 28 and July 29) and Republican (September 1 and September 2) National Conventions, touting flawed focus groups in three of his appearances. Not once during any of these appearances did any MSNBC anchor or commentator mention Luntz's partisan Republican ties or questionable ethical standards.

With the convention over, and the polls focusing on a "Bush Bounce," it's a good time to take stock of the most critical senate races. There are eight critical races, according to the non-partisan Cook Political Report, which we received a complimentary edition of today:

There are 34 senate races this year, 19 of which involve seats currently held by Democrats. Of the 19 seats, 10 are considered safe and another two (Barbara Boxer and Russ Feingold) are considered probably safe. That leaves 7 seats, of which that of Zell Miller in Georgia, is considered a goner. That leaves 6.

Of the 6, there are 5 seats considered highly vulnerable, 4 of which are now held by senators not running for re-election, so the races in those 4 will be open and between newbies. The 5th highly vulnerable seat is that of Tom Daschle. The sixth seat is considered merely vulnerable, and is now held by Patty Murray of Washington.

So, here are the six races Democrats need to work hardest to preserve, and the candidates running for them:

1. Florida - Democrat Betty Castor (vs. Mel Martinez)
2. Lousiana - Democrat still unknown (vs. David Vitter)
3. North Carolina - Democrat Erskine Bowles (vs. Richard Burr)
4. South Carolina - Democrat Inez Tenenbaum (vs. Jim deMint
5. South Dakota- Democrat Tom Daschle (vs. John Thune)

On the Republican side, there are three highly vulnerable seats and one likely switch (Illinois will go to Barak Obama.) There are no merely vulnerable seats. Here are the three critical seats:

Update, 9/5: All comments on this thread have been sent to President Clinton. I received this response:

On behalf of President Clinton, thank you so much for your message. Please know that your words will be conveyed to the former President as soon as possible. We appreciate your taking the time to write to him at www.clintonpresidentialcenter.org and wish you all the best. (The Clinton Presidential Center Web Team)

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(Original Post)

Former President Bill Clinton was hospitalized today with chest pains and will undergo quadruple bypass surgery possibly tomorrow. Send good thoughts his way. Use the comments if you'd like. Here's more:

A family friend close to the former president told FOX News that Clinton experienced chest pains a few days ago while at his home in Chappaqua, N.Y., and was taken to a local hospital.

The sources said that Clinton had angioplasty done in the last day or two, but the results showed the problem was more serious than first anticipated, so he was transferred to Columbia Presbyterian, one of the top heart hospitals in the nation. "When someone is found to have an obstruction ... we usually do an angioplasty," said FOX News health contributor Dr. Isadore Rosenfeld. Rosenfeld said an angioplasty involves a balloon being inserted into the artery to expand it. If that does not appear to be effective, the patients are usually taken into surgery.

Update: Surgery may be today.