What Digby says about the ridiculous "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth:"

"What these people are saying is that the US Navy awarded some of its highest medals for bravery to a coward. The many officers who signed those glowing fitness reports and awarded those citations are either liars or they are incompetent. The word of his shipmates, even the man whose life he saved, are worth nothing. You can't believe military documentary evidence. It was all bulls**t, every last piece of it.

And because of this it can now be said that all medals awarded for bravery are suspect. A superior military record is no longer a recommendation. Who can ever believe the government on this issue, now? If they were willing to reward the undeserving Kerry, for reasons about which we can only speculate, then obviously the entire system for awarding valor in combat is corrupt."

ERiposte has a full rebuttal to the smear. Go read both.

I'm watching the author, John O'Neil on tv right now , and I see a partisan, politically motivated hack. For whom? How about the biggest Republican campaign donor in Texas who sponsored the ad?

Mistress Amber Frey has taken the stand in the Scott Peterson murder trial. Here's what she had to say so far about the first few dates:

Frey said Peterson did not wear a wedding ring when they met on Nov. 20, 2002. He poured champagne in his hotel room, putting a strawberry in her glass, and they had sex later that night. The next morning, he left her with his cell phone number, not his home number. On their second date, he carried her 22-month-old daughter as they went hiking. Later that day, he gave the girl a children's book. Then, he cooked seafood lasagna with wine before they had sex again. "He made the comment that there would be many more corks ... many more bottles to share," Frey testified.

The next day, Dec. 3, she gave Peterson a car seat and the key to her house, and asked him to pick up her daughter at day care. (empahsis supplied)

"He said he would be honored," recalled Frey, who returned home to find him warming up the previous night's dinner. Then all three went out to buy a Christmas tree. While trimming the tree, she Peterson he denied that he was ever "close to having children" with anyone else.

They didn't see each other from December 3, to December 9--at which time, having been confronted by her friend on December 6 with the knowledge that he was married, he cried and told her he had lost his wife and this was his first holiday without her. She assumed he meant his wife was dead.

Prosecutors say he began hatching the scheme to kill his wife and unborn child on December 7-8--after being outed on his marriage and before telling Amber he had lost his wife.

First off: What female single parent goes on a blind date, and after the second date a week later, gives the guy a key to her house and asks him to pick up her 22 month old kid at daycare? Either a very reckless person or one with extremely poor judgment and parenting skills. Is this a person to whom you would give much credence in deciding a matter of utmost importance to yourself or members of your family--one of the indicators of reasonable doubt?

Scott Peterson sounds like a guy trying to keep a piece of action on the side while his wife is going through the final months of pregnancy. It sounds like she thought she was in love because he told her he was a "successful businessman" --as in "rich businessman" and she recklessly glued herself to him because he was the answer to her prayers. As for Scott, it sounds like he knew a gullible gold-digger when he found one and played it for all it was worth.

Amber as a motive for murdering his unborn child--whose nursery he had recently finished decorating with a ship's motif? Not so far....stay tuned, the Amber sideshow will go on a while.

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DNA has freed another inmate on death row--this time in Louisiana. Ryan Matthews was sentenced to death as a teenager. After seven years, his claims of innocence have been confirmed:

A man sentenced to death as a teenager was freed Monday by DNA evidence, and said he had been certain from the beginning that he would be vindicated. For more than seven years, Ryan Matthews has said he had nothing to do with the 1997 robbery and murder of a grocer. He said he knew that someday he would be freed.

Jurors were told that no physical evidence linked Matthews to the holdup and murder of Tommy Vanhoose. But two witnesses identified him as the gunman, and a co-defendant, Travis Hayes, told police that he drove the getaway car after Matthews, then 17, shot Vanhoose. Ultimately, DNA found in a ski mask that was tossed from the getaway car was found to match that of Rondell Love, who is serving time for an unrelated killing. In addition, Matthews' lawyers said, other inmates have told investigators that Love bragged about killing Vanhoose.

While the DA has a year to revisit the case, he says the DNA evidence precludes a jury from finding guilt against Matthews beyond a reasonable doubt.

Update: The NCADP reports Matthews is the 115th prisoner freed from death row after being found innocent. From their press release received by email:

Congress voted last year to authorize $1 billion for immigrant health care. So far so good. Here's the catch:

...to get the money, hospitals would have to ask patients about their immigration status, a prospect that alarms hospitals and advocates for immigrants. When Congress decided to provide the money last year, state officials and hospital executives saw it as a breakthrough. For years, they had argued that the federal government was responsible for immigration policy and should cover the costs of medical care for illegal immigrants because it had created the problem.

But federal health officials, under guidelines developed in the last couple of weeks, said hospitals had to ask questions about immigration status to make sure the money would be used as Congress intended, for "emergency health services furnished to undocumented aliens."

Hospital executives and immigrant rights groups said the questioning would deter undocumented immigrants from seeking hospital care when they need it, and some hospitals said compliance might cost them more than they would receive in federal aid. Marcela G. Urrutia, an analyst at the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic civil rights group, said: "We are extremely concerned about this requirement. It will deter Latino communities from seeking emergency care. That could lead to serious public health problems, including the spread of communicable diseases.''

Health care should be universal. Everyone in this country should receive it - citizen, resident alien and undocumented worker. Hospitals should be in the business of providing health care to needy patients--not spying on them for the Government or Republicans in Congress who want them gone.

Bush campaigned today in Virginia and touted his tax cuts. Here's what he said:

Bush criticized Kerry's plan to eliminate the tax cuts for those making more than $200,000 a year, saying that the "the rich in America happen to be the small business owners" who put people to work. Bush also said high taxes on the rich are a failed strategy because "the really rich people figure out how to dodge taxes anyway." [our emphasis]

Asked about that comment, Jonathan Beeton, spokesman for Kerry's campaign in Virginia, said "George Bush can speak with authority about really rich people. ... That's his base, so I'm sure he knows what he's talking about. But that doesn't make it right."

Scary stuff. Wired News reports on the emerging "surveillance-industrial complex" and says a new ACLU report shows that our Government is increasingly hiring big companies in the private sector to play the role of big brother.

The government is increasingly using corporations to do its surveillance work, allowing it to get around restrictions that protect the privacy and civil liberties of Americans, according to a report released Monday by the American Civil Liberties Union, an organization that works to protect civil liberties. Data aggregators -- companies that aggregate information from numerous private and public databases -- and private companies that collect information about their customers are increasingly giving or selling data to the government to augment its surveillance capabilities and help it track the activities of people.

Because laws that restrict government data collection don't apply to private industry, the government is able to bypass restrictions on domestic surveillance. Congress needs to close such loopholes, the ACLU said, before the exchange of information gets out of hand.

If it's not too late already. Hasn't this been going on for years?

The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed a suit by Florida's death row inmates today that alleged the temperatures on the row were so hot as to amount to cruel and unusual punishment:

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the Constitution "does not mandate comfortable prisons," rejecting a class-action lawsuit that claimed the heat on death row forced inmates at Union Correctional Institution in Raiford to stand in toilets, drape themselves in wet towels and sleep naked on concrete floors.

The lawsuit was filed four years ago by the Florida Justice Institute in Miami. The agency's attorney, Peter Siegel, said the organization has not decided whether to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

I hope the inmates decide to appeal. Here's the position the Court should have taken:

Hannah Floyd, director of the Florida Death Row Advocacy Group, criticized the ruling as inhumane, saying "people in this nation have to realize that prisoners, including the ones on death row, are humans and should be treated as such."

A Time Magazine reporter has been held in contempt for refusing to testify before the grand jury investigating the leak of former CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity. NBC's Tim Russert avoided a similar fate:

In an order issued July 20 but not made public until Monday, U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan ruled that Time's Matthew Cooper and "Meet the Press" host Tim Russert were required to testify "regarding alleged conversations they had with a specified executive branch official."

NBC News issued a statement saying that Russert already had been interviewed under oath by prosecutors on Saturday under an agreement to avoid a protracted court fight. The interview concerned a July 2003 phone conversation he had with Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby....Neal Shapiro, president of NBC News, said the network agreed that forcing reporters to testify about their sources is "contrary to the First Amendment's guarantee of a free press." Shapiro said Russert answered "only limited questions" about the conversation with Libby "without revealing any information he learned in confidence."

Background for those who haven't been following the case:

Mark Hacking, accused of murdering his wife Lori Hacking, who reportedly was five weeks pregnant at the time she was killed, will not face the death penalty.

The prosecutor charged only first degree murder, punishable by five years to life--rather than aggravated murder. Without Lori's body, the state can't prove she was pregnant. She told friends she was pregnant and had taken a home pregnancy test, but never visited a doctor.

Hacking's defense lawyer and the prosecutor have been in continual contact. Hopefully, if Hacking's confessions to his brothers that he shot her in the head while she was sleeping are true, there will be a quick plea and resolution to this case. It sounds like this is in the works.

Kobe Bryant's accuser wants the gag order lifted on her lawyers. The lawyers argue the gag order prevents them from criticizing the court for mistakenly releasing her name and a transcript in which a defense expert testified she believed the accuser had sex in the 13 hour period between her encounter with Kobe and her rape exam.

The lawyers really want to tell her story--not just criticize the court. With the trial being so close, the gag order is appropriate. The accuser is the complaining witness. Her story should be told in the courtroom, not on television. If Kobe's lawyers can abide by the gag order, and they have, scrupulously so, the accuser should be held to the same standard. The Prosecution speaks for the accuser in their pleadings. How many mouthpieces does she need?

By statute, the accuser has the right to be treated with fairness. But Kobe's constitutional right to a fair trial is paramount. Her lawyers' motion is replete with references to Kobe as the "rapist" and the accuser as the "victim." She's an alleged victim. He's a defendant, not a rapist, and he's presumed innocent. Her lawyers are grandstanding to prejudice the jury pool. Their request should be denied.

In other Kobe news today, the Judge has rejected a request by the accuser's lawyers that the Court cease posting documents online at the court's web site. Another correct ruling.

The American Bar Association, a group with 400,000 lawyers, is having its annual meeting in Atlanta. A resolution was passed today condemning President Bush's detentions of foreign detainees:

Over the objections of the Bush administration, the nation's largest lawyers group is moving to condemn the government's handling of foreign detainees. A resolution debated Monday by the American Bar Association criticizes what it calls "a widespread pattern of abusive detention methods." Those abuses, it says, "feed terrorism by painting the United States as an arrogant nation above the law."

The ABA was responding to abuse of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad and concerns about the treatment of about 600 terrorism suspects being held in Cuba.

A member of the conservative Federalist Society argued against the measure. Thankfully, to no avail:

David Rivkin Jr., a Washington attorney, said the ABA is taking a cheap shot at the administration. "It doesn't take much civic courage to condemn torture," he said during a debate Sunday sponsored by the Federalist Society, a conservative lawyers' group. But Chicago attorney William Hannay III, who helped draft the ABA proposal, called it "the very heart of what the ABA should be doing." Memos by Bush administration lawyers encouraged interrogation methods "not worthy of our country or us as lawyers," he said.

Among the recommendations:

Fascinating. Taiwan is opening its prisons to the public. And, planning on ending the death penalty.

On May 2, 2001, Minister of Justice Chen Ding-nan (陳定南) vowed to replace the death penalty with life sentences during a press conference. Since his promise was made, the total number of death row inmates has fallen....The latest statistics show there have been no new death row inmates since this January, a new record.

Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng endorsed Chen's proposal, but said that the death penalty should continue until a well-organized amendment to the law is established and passed. "We are moving to abolish executions and I agree it is the right thing to do," Wang said. "But at this moment, we should be more sensitive and careful; it does not mean we can give [the death penalty] up immediately."

Taiwan wants the public to see the state of its prisons:

Huang said that most people think prisons are dark and dirty places where inmates are not treated as human beings. "This is incorrect. Come visit us and you will realize that what you see in the movies should remain in the movies," Huang said.

Death Row will not be open. But the article details the statistics and provides a graphic portrayal of the procedures: