We are being photographed as we write this by the photographer for the New York Times. It's for an article by Jennifer 8. Lee on the convention bloggers. So we don't have time right now to discuss Sandy Berger. But we know you all want to, so jump right in.

by TChris

Anyone concerned (as everyone should be) about the practice of disenfranchising reformed felons can learn more about the topic by visiting this section of a new website devoted to election law. The felon disenfranchisement section of the website is monitored by law professor Douglas Berman, famed for his extremely helpful sentencing blog, Sentencing Law and Policy.

Saudi authorities report they recovered the head of American Paul Johnson from a freezer during a raid on a Saudi al-Qaida chief. Mr. Johnson's body is still missing.

Atrios and Tom Tomorrow will be in Boston for the Democratic Convention and would like to be invited to some "truly excellent parties."

Update: Matt Yglesias wants party invitations too.

The Christian Science Monitor asks whether we have a duty to intervene in Sudan. What's going on there? Here's the latest: Human Rights Watch has released a new report with documents showing that the Sudanese Government has been assisting the Jangaweed.

The documents, which Human Rights Watch said it had obtained from the civilian administration in Darfur and are dated February and March this year, call for "provisions and ammunition" to be delivered to known Janjaweed militia leaders, camps and "loyalist tribes."

One document orders all security units in the area to tolerate the activities of Musa Hilal, the alleged Janjaweed leader in north Darfur. Peter Takirambudde, executive director of Human Rights Watch's Africa division, said: "These documents show that militia activity has not just been condoned, it's been specifically supported by Sudan government officials."

Over at Human Rights Watch's website, Mr. Takirambudde says:

"Sudan has launched a major public-relations campaign aimed at buying more time for diplomatic initiatives to work. But at this point and with our new evidence, Khartoum has zero credibility. To date, the government of Sudan has only used more time to consolidate the ethnic cleansing in Darfur"....“It’s absurd to distinguish between the Sudanese government forces and the militias—they are one.”

David Sirota of American Progress informs us that instead of filling housing budget shortfalls, the administration is proposing to create a website for the homeless...Here is the news release and here is the website.

We agree the Administration should be funding bedspace and housing --as well as websites.

Law Prof Doug Berman of Sentencing Law and Policy reports that in a first Blakely ruling from the federal courts in Florida, United States District Judge Gregory A. Presnell of the Middle District of Florida (Orlando division) finds the federal sentencing guidelines unconstitutional in their entirety. The case is US v. King, No. 6:04-cr-35. Some quotes:

Taking Blakely to its logical conclusion, the determinate scheme set up by the Guidelines violates the Constitution and can no longer be used in any case. The Court notes, however, that despite a return to an indeterminate sentencing scheme, it will continue to rely on the Guidelines as recommendations worthy of serious consideration. Slip op. at p. 12 (emphasis added).

....The suggestion that courts use the Guidelines in some cases but not others is at best schizophrenic and at worst contrary to basic principles of justice, practicality, fairness, due process, and equal protection. Courts simply cannot apply a determinate sentencing code to one defendant whose sentence raises no judicial fact-finding enhancement issues and a separate discretionary scheme to another defendant whose sentence does raise enhancement issues. Such a structure not only seems to violate equal protection principles but would lead to the perverse result that both Government and criminal defense attorneys would plot to finagle their way into the determinate system or indeterminate system depending on the judge and the various factors relevant to the particular defendant’s sentence.

by TChris

Lafonso Rollins was 17 in 1993 when he was arrested during a police investigation of robberies and rapes of the elderly at a Chicago housing complex.

In police custody, Rollins, a special-education student who had completed only 9th grade, signed a confession detailing the attacks, was convicted and sentenced to 75 years in prison, his attorneys said.

Two years ago, Rollins' public defender, Ingrid Gill, asked for DNA from the crime scene to be retested. The results finally came back, indicating that Rollins was not the source of the DNA. After additional tests, prosecutors agreed that Rollins' conviction should be vacated.

Rollins was released from prison this month. He can't replace the things he missed most during his years in prison: time with his mother, father, sister, and grandmother, all of whom died while Rollins was behind bars.

by TChris

Martin Tankleff's case teaches us why police officers should not be viewed as doing their job well when they lie.

Since the 1990 trial, Martin Tankleff has been willing to tell anyone who visits the maximum-security prison that has been his home these past 14 years about how police got him to confess falsely by tricking him with a whopper of a lie: That his father had emerged from a coma and said that his 17-year-old son attacked him in his study.

Tankleff, convicted of murdering his parents in their Long Island home, is trying to prove that he deserves a new trial. That effort will be aided by new evidence of his innocence, discussed at length in the linked article: "that a career criminal with ties to Seymour Tankleff's partner in a chain of bagel stores was recruited or paid to execute the Tankleffs and end a business feud."

With Marty Tankleff in jail and Seymour Tankleff still comatose with an uncertain prognosis, the business partner -- Jerry Steuerman -- shaved his beard and faked his own disappearance by leaving his car's engine running and the doors ajar near an airport. At the time, questions about Steuerman swirled because he was the last of a half-dozen men to leave the Tankleff home after a high-stakes poker game the night of the attacks.

Tankleff contends that the police, having tricked a confession out of him, didn't seriously investigate other suspects, including Steuerman.

by TChris

The Senate today blocked confirmation of William Myers to the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Only 53 Senators voted to cut off debate, fewer than the 60 required. TalkLeft background on Myers is here.

Myers is the first nominee opposed by Senators primarily on environmental grounds, and the first to be formally opposed by Native American groups. As an activist lawyer and lobbyist for the mining and beef industries, and later as the top lawyer at the Interior Department, Myers launched sweeping attacks against fundamental environmental protections such as the Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act.

The next battle: Three Michigan judges nominated to the Sixth Circuit -- Richard Griffin, David McKeague, and Henry Saad -- were approved by the Judiciary Committee on 10-9 party-line votes. Sens. Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow, both of Michigan, may seek a filibuster to prevent their confirmations.

In a written statement, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the committee's highest-ranking Democrat, said it was the first time in 50 years that the committee had ignored the objections of both home-state senators. Leahy added that Democrats are concerned about Griffin and McKeague's decisions in several labor and environmental cases.

Update: The post has been corrected to reflect the actual vote tally, which appears here. Thanks to Howard Bashman for spotting the error.

You thought Operation TIPS was dead? Not in concept, apparently, for Republicans in Minnesota. The party has set up a website requesting that members report their neighbors' political beliefs:

The state Republican Party has developed a Web site that allows its activists to tap into a database of voters whose political allegiances and concerns it would like to know. But it is not just any group of voters -- they are the activists' neighbors.

The project, dubbed WebVoter, gives GOP activists the names and addresses of 25 people who live, in most cases, within a couple of blocks from them. The party has asked 60,000 supporters from across the state to figure out what issues animate their neighbors and where they stand in the political spectrum, and report that information back to the party -- with or, possibly, without their neighbors' permission.

[link via Altercation]

Rocky Mountain News editorial yesterday:

Elena Lappin arrived at Los Angeles airport and was searched and interrogated, jailed in a small barren cell and deported 26 hours later. Why? She’s a British journalist who arrived in the U.S. without a visa. As a visitor from one of 27 visa waiver countries, she expected to be allowed to enter the U.S. for 90 days.

....But Homeland Security has revived a long disused relic of the McCarthy era, a special I-visa for journalists that entails, upon application overseas, being grilled by U.S. consular officials about whom the journalist plans to talk to and what he plans to write. Few other countries require those visas, and those that do tend to be unsavory Third World dictatorships. Sadly, Lappin is not alone. Reporters from Australia, France, Germany and the Netherlands have also been collared on arrival and summarily deported. And these are our friends.

These I-visas need to be abolished for the visa-waiver nations and their journalists welcomed at the airport. We want foreign journalists to cover the presidential campaign. We want them to see that American democracy is robust and thriving and that we have not become the pinched police state that so many foreigners suspect.

[hat tip to Quaker in a Basement]