Political Wire reports:

With Mike Ditka telling Illinois Republicans he will not run for Senate, WMAQ notes the Republican Party "will now focus on two potential candidates: Jim Oberwies, who finished second in the primary for this nomination, and John Cox, who ran a couple of years ago. Both have the distinction of being multimillionaires."

"But another name surfacing is that of rocker, outspoken conservative and gun-rights activist Ted Nugent." Says Cook County Republican Chair Gary Skoien: "He grew up in Arlington Heights. He went to St. Viator High School. He has more connection to Illinois than Hillary Clinton had to New York, and he's been a very articulate spokesperson on constitutional issues. He would be a very interesting candidate."

Oliver Willis doesn't think much of the idea. We think he's too tied to Michigan to win--Hillary moved to New York and began campaigning way longer than four months before the election. He probably would win if he ran for the House from Northern Michigan. Word of cauthion: be careful if you badmouth him, he may file a defamation suit against you.

by TChris

The 2nd World Congress Against the Death Penalty will be held in Montreal on October 6-9 at the Palais des Congrès. Further information is available here.

From an emailed announcement:

A number of meetings during the Congress will include the role of lawyers in the universal abolition of the death penalty. In addition, the World Assembly of Lawyers -- scheduled to take place on Friday, October 8 -- will provide an extraordinary opportunity for lawyers from all over the world to share experiences in defense of death row inmates. The meeting will strengthen the lawyers' commitment and efforts towards the universal abolition of the death penalty.

We think it's outrageous that SlimFast dropped Whoopi for her anti-Bush comments. As she says, she's skewered every President since she's been a comic. We won't be buying any SlimFast products.

If you are as unhappy with their decision as we are, let SlimFast know about it.

Electronically.

By telephone: 561-833-9920

Or in writing:

Slim·Fast Foods Company
P.O. Box 3625
West Palm Beach, FL 33402

(via Holden at Atrios)

The New York Times has an editorial today devoted to subject of bloggers attending the Democratic Convention. It credits bloggers for raising the awareness that led to the ousting of Trent Lott and their fundraising help to candidates.

People who think the mushrooming world of wannabe polemicists and their Web logs, or blogs, is merely a high-tech amusement should talk to Senator Trent Lott, the Mississippi Republican. In Web lore, bloggers are credited with relentlessly drilling Senator Lott after he expressed segregation-tinged nostalgia for the Strom Thurmond presidential campaign, a story that the major news media initially missed. Mr. Lott was subsequently forced to quit as majority leader.

Beyond its power as a source of news and commentary, the Internet has proved itself to be the ultimate fund-raising tool. Bloggers can be crass and biased, but politicians no longer scoff at their rich online realm. Hence the red carpet at the conventions — at least for some of them.

The Times cites earlier articles reporting that 50 bloggers applied and 30 were accepted. The DNCC says 200 applied, 50 were accepted at first, and that number was later reduced to 50.

We're excited to cover the convention with press credentials. Thanks to all of you who have contributed and taken out ads to send us there. As the Times says:

Will bloggers be tamed into centrism? Or, like Mencken, will they gleefully report that the convention's main speechmakers are "plainly on furlough from some home for extinct volcanoes"? Log on to find out.

by TChris

Doctors in Myrtle Beach who received ridiculously harsh sentence for overprescribing pain medication may be resentenced in light of Blakely.

[Dr.] Bordeaux, for example, was specifically charged with writing four prescriptions to two patients but was assigned a share of responsibility for the entire amount of drugs prescribed at the clinic.

Dr. Bordeax was sentenced to eight years and one month in prison. Two co-defendants were sentenced to 24 years, four months and 19 years, seven months.

Not a big surprise, really, as Martha's lawyers have caught a lot of flak in the media for their percieved poor handling of her case. Alan Dershowitz takes the criticism a step further, asking, Was Martha's Dream Team a Nightmare?

Martha Stewart is almost certainly going to prison because of her lawyers. It's really as simple as that. Every act for which she was convicted was committed after she retained some of the fanciest lawyers in New York. These lawyers let her walk into perjury traps and obstruction-of-justice charges by encouraging her to speak to prosecutors rather than insisting that she remain silent.

Now some members of her legal team have apparently been leaking information designed to show that the conviction was her fault, that she was guilty and should have accepted a plea bargain. With defense lawyers like that, who needs a prosecutor?

The reality is that Stewart could easily have avoided prison if she had simply kept her mouth shut — as she had the constitutional right to do — after the investigation began....Her lawyers, who are former prosecutors, probably thought that by taking their client in to speak to the prosecutors she could talk her way out of a jam. Instead, she talked herself into a conviction.

Ouch. Could it be that Alan has already been signed on for the appeal?

We're sorry to report that Classless Warfare (with Jay and Jane) is no more....but the good news is that Jay Caruso will keep blogging. His new blog is Mr. Blond's Garage. Now, we know Jay is a conservative, and he and TL don't agree on much, but we've always enjoyed reading him and will include the new blog on our "Best of the Other Side" blogroll. Jane, who also is a terrific blogger, can now be found at The Fat Guy.

More akin to our politics, we learn that Judd Leglum, who writes professionally for American Progress Report, has started his own blog, The Winning Argument.

And, there are the new kids in town. Go give them a read. Some are quite good.

One more: Now that the Bush twins have jumped into the campaign fray, here's a blog devoted to them. And Chelsea doesn't skate either.

The Judge in the Kobe Bryant case has ruled on the defense motion to suppress his statements and the clothing he turned over to the detectives in his hotel room. Motion denied. Why? In a nutshell, and we just finished reading the very long ruling which is not yet available online because of a court website malfunction, here's why. The Judge found:

1. Kobe was not in custody and a reasonable person in his situation would have felt free to leave.

2. He consented to talking to the police officers and allowing them to accompany him to his room and he voluntarily turned over the clothing they were seeking.

3. There was no need to rule on whether the search warrant was valid or not because the cops said they never executed it. The prosecution relied solely on consent, and the Judge sided with them.

4. As to credibility issues, there were some differences between what Kobe's bodyguards said happened and what the detectives said happened with respect to how the questioning came about, and the Judge sided with the detectives.

by TChris

Another district judge, Stewart Dalzell, weighs in on Blakely's impact on the federal sentencing guidelines:

A federal judge yesterday halved the recommended 30-year prison sentence for a West Philadelphia drug dealer, ruling that the U.S. Supreme Court's decision voiding Washington state's sentencing guidelines had doomed the federal guidelines as well.

Yesterday, following the Supreme Court's theory in Blakely, Dalzell stripped away any sentencing enhancements not based on facts included in the charges to which Leach himself pleaded guilty.

by TChris

If you haven't been convicted of a crime, should the government have the right to take your DNA?

Three states -- Virginia, Louisiana and Texas -- already require the collection of DNA samples from arrestees as part of the booking process, even before suspects go on trial. Critics see a worrying erosion of due process and what they call "DNA privacy" -- the right of citizens to keep genetic information private.

California may join that list if Prop. 69 passes in November.

If approved, DNA collection would go into effect immediately for suspects arrested for murder or rape. They would have their DNA sampled by mouth swabs as part of the booking process. Beginning in 2009, samples would be taken from individuals arrested for a felony crime in California.

DNA profiles of convicted felons are entered into an FBI database, but the Bush administration wants to expand the law "so that the DNA of some arrestees, including juveniles, can also be made available through the database." So much for the presumption of innocence and the right to privacy.

One major fear is law enforcement will begin using genetic evidence to create a 21st century version of racial profiling. Already, police in Charlottesville, Va., had to face accusations that they were casting a "DNA dragnet," aggressively collecting saliva samples from African Americans in a serial rape case.

by TChris

Are detainees being held in secret, depriving them of their right to challenge their detentions?

On Tuesday, Antonella Notari, spokeswoman for the Switzerland-based [International Committee of the Red Cross], said terrorism suspects reported by the FBI as captured have never turned up in detention centers known to the Red Cross, and the United States has failed to reply to Red Cross demands for a list of all detainees.

The Pentagon denies that it's hiding detainees, but won't comment on whether other agencies might be doing so. The CIA won't comment either.

by TChris

The shooting of Paul Childs, a disabled 15-year-old, is probably the most controversial of the five deaths caused by the Denver police this year.

Nine days ago, on a Saturday afternoon, Childs was standing in the living room of his mother's house holding a kitchen knife. His 16-year-old sister called 911 and told the dispatcher, "He's trying to stab my mother with it." (The family has since denied they felt threatened.)

Police responded. According to a family account, four officers pulled their guns. One of them, James Turney, shot and killed the youth after Childs failed to respond to repeated orders to drop the knife. It was the second time Mr. Turney has killed a citizen in the line of duty in the past 18 months.

A 2001 study ranked Denver "among the top 10 in fatal shootings per capita." Do some Denver officers have a tendency to "shoot first and ask questions later," as charged by Mark Silverstein, legal director of the ACLU of Colorado?

"The Denver Police Department historically has a disturbingly high number of these kinds of shootings of people without guns," says US Rep. Diana Degette (D) of Colorado, who is keeping an eye on the case. "It's cause for concern."

Critics of the Denver police are calling for a change in state law, which gives police "considerable discretion in using deadly force when they feel threatened."