With the presidential race so close, the outcome maybe determined by unforseen events beyond either candidate's control. Here's what might help Bush:

• finding Osama
• dropping gas prices
• replacing Dick Cheney as Veep candidate

Incumbants look for an October surprise. But it doesn't always help. Here are some that failed:

• Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon and the faltering economy
• Carter's inability to solve the Iran hostage crisis
• G. Bush Sr.'s failure to assess the impact of the slow economy on the average American which was not reflected in the numbers (whatever that means.)

As to Bush and Kerry:

"The president and the Oval Office have the chance to set the terms of the debate every day. Kerry can be bumped out of the news almost every day. That's always a challenge in running against an incumbent president," said GOP consultant Scott Reed, who managed Republican Bob Dole's losing effort in 1996 against President Clinton. "The downside for the incumbent president is the big unknown in Iraq, and it will continue to be right up to Election Day," Reed said.

So the first story will always be about Bush. What if it's always negative? Won't that help Kerry? Who better to bring out the negative about Bush every day than liberal bloggers? Let's get to work.

If you thought security was onerous at the Democratic convention in Boston, security in New York sounds like it will be a nightmare. Any thoughts we had of blogging the protests live from New York have evaporated. While authorities should be able to prevent a severe attack, the security hassles just aren't worth the aggravation attendant to being there. There likely will be more freedom of movement in Beirut. The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

New York on High Alert for GOP Enclave

"

At the end of August, more than 5,000 New York City police officers, many of them armed with rifles and leading bomb-sniffing dogs, will flood New York's subway system, commuter trains and Penn Station, the nation's busiest train terminal, which lies just below the convention center.

Another 5,000 officers will patrol New York streets, the giant round arena of the Madison Square Garden convention site, city bridges, tunnels, hotels, landmarks and the sites of protests that are scheduled to be staged all over Manhattan....Some of these officers will carry hand-held radiation detectors. Others will be screening cars randomly for explosive devices.....Swaths of major thoroughfares in midtown Manhattan, including Seventh and Eighth avenues, will be closed to traffic for hours at a time....

Madison Square Garden will be surrounded by concrete walls and 6-foot- tall metal mesh barriers. Delivery trucks and some 200 buses that will shuttle delegates and reporters to the site will stop between two metal walls, where video cameras will inspect their undercarriages for bombs. People entering the site will have to go through metal detectors and leave behind even unlikely potential weapons like hairspray, bottled water and umbrellas, which "could be used in an improper manner inside the convention."

"

Besides, we'd rather save our money to go to the October 1 Vote for Change Concert in Philadelphia. If anyone can help us out with tickets, we'd be very, very grateful.

Tell Bush and Cheney to Stop Lying About Iraq-al Qaeda. Go here, read and sign.

Kevin Drum, Whiskey Bar, Juan Cole and Daily Kos on blowing the cover of Pakistan's undercover agent to prove the Administration's terror threat was real.

Eric Alterman's new Think Again column at Center for American Progress on the opportunities missed and flawed coverage by big media at the DNC in Boston.

The response of the legal and medical communities to the Abu Ghraib scandals and the Bush Administration torture memos.

Roger Ailes (No, Not that one) on Alan Keyes.

Left Coaster on whistleblower and FBI translator Sibel Edmonds.

Whiskey Bar again on the slow rate of job growth under Bush. More here.

Norwegianity on religion and genocide--and here on Sgt. Joseph Darby who spilled the beans on his fellow soldiers at Abu Graib.

Political Wire on three of the latest polls showing Kerry ahead of Bush. And, this interesting note:

Meanwhile, while a majority, 54%, believes that the Bush administration would not "use a terrorism alert for political reasons," 38% think that the alerts might be used for political reasons, with 7% undecided.

Sentencing Law and Policy for the latest Blakely rulings.

Say hello to the Electoral Vote Predictor and What It Is Today.

This San Francisco man staged and made a video of his own beheading by al Qaeda--showing how easy it is to fake these videos.

Update: Newswriter tells which tv networks fell for the hoax this morning.

by TChris

A joint report by the American Bar Association and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund concludes that changes in immigration laws "have eroded the due process protection afforded to immigrants."

“This report is a clear call to action,” said ABA President Dennis W. Archer. “The laws as they stand are harming thousands of U.S. families and their immigrant loved ones. We must fulfill our nation's promise as a truly inclusive society by addressing these issues and making changes that provide our nations’ immigrants the fairness and due process protections that are integral to our system of justice.”

The report found that low-level immigration officials make important decisions without the constraint of procedural safeguards or judicial review; that lawful permanent residents are being deported for activities that occurred long ago, before they were deportable offenses; and that people with compelling reasons to stay in the country who would not have been deported in the past (including abused women and abandoned children, people who fled genocide or torture, and the developmentally disabled) are now being deported.

Current policies disrupt the lives of immigrants and citizens alike while costing taxpayers a billion dollars a year. According to Esther Lardent, chair of the ABA Commission on Immigration, which authored the study:

“This report shows that part of our American identity is at risk. It’s time for us to come together and restore our reputation as a beacon of freedom and guardian of due process under the law.”

Here's the background. Just how ill was 74 year old James Barney Hubbard who was executed yesterday in Alabama?

B. Hubbard's failing body kept him lying in bed -- a bunk on Alabama's death row -- most of the last days of his life. Other inmates say they walked his wobbly frame to the showers and listened to him complain about the pain: the cancer in his colon and prostate, the hypertension, the aching back. They combed his hair because he couldn't. They washed him. When spasms of dementia made him forget who he was -- what he was -- they told him: a 74-year-old, small-town Alabama man gone bad, a twice- convicted murderer, the oldest inmate on "the row."

He left them behind, these most unlikely of caretakers, one month ago and was transported south to a drab, gray prison set back in the cotton fields of lower Alabama. As the sun was tipping toward the horizon, Hubbard was put to death there Thursday, becoming the oldest inmate executed in the United States in more than six decades.

Shame on Alabama.

Anybody wonder what they did to this arrestee to make him cooperate and give up his buddies so quickly?

American intelligence agencies have coordinated closely with their counterparts in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, throughout the operations which led to the arrest of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani and Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan....Mr Khan, a 25-year-old al-Qaida computer expert, was encouraged to take part in a sting operation against his former colleagues after his capture, it was confirmed yesterday. While he was in custody he emailed his contacts in the organisation.

"Initially he was trying to dodge the investigators, but after some time started cooperating," said a government official. "He was asked to continue his job by sending email messages to trace the links and codes of al-Qaida operatives abroad and in Pakistan."

Pakistan says both men may be extradited to the U.S.--after Pakistan is finished with them.

Pakistan's interior minister, Faisal Saleh Hayat, said yesterday: "We can not extradite these terrorists until the completion of investigation by our security agencies, as they had plans to carry out terrorist activities in Pakistan.

As if there will be anything left of them to extradite by then.

The U.S. has announced it killed 300 militia fighters in Najaf during the past two days. That seems like a huge number to us. Here's what a U.S. spokesman had to say:

Colonel Anthony Haslam, the chief of operations in Najaf, said: "The poor Iraqi police force do not have a chance. They are attacked and they are outgunned. Without eliminating that threat, this city will never be stable."

The US-appointed governor of Najaf, Adnan al-Zurfi, later put the death toll at 400 and said 1,000 of Mr Sadr's Al Mahdi militia had been captured.

1,000 captured? Where are we putting them?

Here's what the new Iraqi government had to say.

Mr Sadr and his criminal supporters must be removed from the holy shrine at Najaf to restore respect and peace to the area."

Here's what the locals had to say:

Residents who talked to the Guardian by phone said most shops were closed, and a number of dead bodies were lying on the empty streets.

This is the road to peace?

Update: The Independent reports that the new Iraqi government is close to declaring martial law in Iraq.

Update: 5/21/05. Mary Kay and Vili married today.

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Original Post

Mary Kay Letourneau was released from jail this week after serving 7 years in jail for raping her former 12 year old student--with whom she has two children. The children live with his mother. Vili Fualaau is now 21 and petitioned the Court Monday to allow them to reunite. He says he still loves her. She is now registered as a sex offender. The Court today granted his request.

Even the prosecutors couldn't think of a reason to ban the two from meeting--and thus didn't argue against the request.

The order was part of her sentence in 1997. The prosecutor's office said the court took into consideration that the victim is now a legal adult, and determined there was no legal basis to prevent contact between the two of them.

It's the right decision. She did her time. They have two kids together. Let them decide if it's really love and they want to be together, or whether their relationship belongs in the past.

Raw Story has an article with facts it says proves Bush was AWOL. In another article, Raw Story says it appears the Air Force National Guard tried to discharge Bush after finding out he was AWOL.

Ian Williams explains in this new Nation Article why Bush's national guard records have such a short survival rate. [link fixed]

The San Francisco Chronicle has an editorial urging reform of California's notorious three-strikes law. [link fixed]

This November, voters will have an opportunity to reform the "three strikes" law. Proposition 66 will require that indeterminate life sentences only be handed out for violent or serious crimes.

....Thousands of inmates are serving life sentences for nonviolent crimes including shoplifting, writing bad checks and a range of drug-related offenses. That was not the intent of the law. Reform is urgently needed.

California Governor Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Bill Lockyer oppose the measure. The Chronicle responds: