Ed Cone writes about a speech Sy Hersh recently gave to the ACLU.

Seymour Hersh says the US government has videotapes of boys being sodomized at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. "The worst is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking," the reporter told an ACLU convention last week. Hersh says there was "a massive amount of criminal wrongdoing that was covered up at the highest command out there, and higher."

He called the prison scene "a series of massive crimes, criminal activity by the president and the vice president, by this administration anyway…war crimes." The outrages have cost us the support of moderate Arabs, says Hersh. "They see us as a sexually perverse society."

Hersh describes a Pentagon in crisis. The defense department budget is “in incredible chaos,” he says, with large sums of cash missing, including something like $1 billion that was supposed to be in Iraq. ....Hersh described the folks in charge of US policy as "neoconservative cultists" who have taken the government over, and show "how fragile our democracy is."

Cone links to Hersh's speech which is streamedhere.

by TChris

The latest version of Homeland Security's attempt to use computers to assess the security risk of airline passengers (CAPPS II) is dead. CAPPS III might still be on the way.

A department spokeswoman Thursday said she couldn't elaborate on technology issues that hindered CAPPS II, but she did say that the project would be redirected to take into account data privacy concerns. "Homeland Security is still highly committed to replacing the antiquated passenger pre-screening program already in place [known as CAPPS], which Transportation Security Administration inherited," she said. There is no yet timetable for the new project.

The original CAPPS was administered by the airlines. CAPPS II raised concerns about privacy and due process. TalkLeft's coverage of the issue is collected here.

CAPPS II set a dangerous precedent by promising to give the government the power to fight terrorism by sifting Americans into trustworthy and not so trustworthy designations, says Jay Stanley, communications director of the ACLU Technology and Liberty Project. "The way to stop terrorism is through good physical security and reliable intelligence," he says. "It's not effective to sort through hundreds of millions of Americans using computer algorithms."

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.