Update to TChris's post on whether Bush will try to delay the elections in the event it determines a terror emergency exists-- the San Francisco Chronicle says "Don't even think about it."

This nation, which already ceded far too many liberties in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, needs to demonstrate its resolve and fearlessness. America's message to the world should be: We're prepared to vote on Nov. 2, no matter what.

The Justice Department today, amidst much fanfare, released a report on cases in which it has used the Patriot Act. Not surprisngly, the spin is on:

The report says that in the period starting with the Sept. 11 attacks and ending May 5, Justice Department terrorism investigations have resulted in charges against 310 people, with 179 convictions or guilty pleas. The Patriot Act, it says, was instrumental in these cases. "Since the act was passed over two years ago, the Department of Justice has deployed its new authorities urgently in an effort to incapacitate terrorists before they can launch another attack ... the act's successes are already evident," the report says.

Attorney General John Ashcroft appeared at a news conference with some new soundbites. "The Patriot Act is al-Qaeda's worst nightmare." He said a "mountain of evidence" shows that the "Patriot Act continues to save lives."

Question for Mr. Ashcroft: In how many of those 179 guilty pleas were the defendants threatened that their cases would be removed from federal courts and they would be sent to Guantanamo or military prisons, held as enemy combatants and tried, if at all, by tribunal? Some of the defense lawyers for the Lackawanna (Buffalo) Six said this was the reason their clients pleaded guilty. How about the convictions in the Detroit terror trial in which the Judge has a motion under consideration to toss the verdicts because of prosecutorial misconduct? How about the Portland case which DOJ settled so it wouldn't have to litigate the motion to have the FISA searches and wiretaps declared unconstitutional--and where the defendants pleaded to avoid possible life sentences?

The full report is available here at the Wall Street Journal (paid subscription required). If you find a free link to it, please post it in the comments (in html format). And about those library records searches....

Say hello to the New Voters Project, an online campaign, co-sponsored by Rock the Vote to protect the rights of student voters. From their press release:

To address persistent student disenfranchisement, the New Voters Project (NVP), along with Rock the Vote, has launched an online petition campaign that calls on election officials to protect the rights of young people to vote where they go to school. The petition can be found on the New Voters Project’s newly updated website, along with a variety of other tools and resources for young voters.

The rights of college and university students nationwide are often infringed upon in the districts of the schools they attend. Local election officials have been known to harass students about registering to vote with temporary addresses at dorms on campus or provide limited polling places on large campuses.

The Petition for Students’ Voting Rights aims to empower students to take back their right to vote and make politicians wake up and pay attention to this historically marginalized constituency. We call on our Secretaries of State to protect the rights of young voters, including the right to register to vote at school, the right to vote on or near campus, and the right to be free from harassment and intimidation by election officials.

The judge in the case of former Symbionese Liberation Army member Sara Jane Olson has thrown out her 14 year state sentence and ordered a new sentencing hearing within 60 days.

Olson — who had changed her name from Kathleen Soliah, married and was raising a family in St. Paul — pleaded guilty in 2001 to taking part in two attempts to bomb Los Angeles Police Department cars in 1975.

She was initially sentenced to five years and four months. The state Board of Prison Terms scrapped that sentence in October 2002 in exchange for a 14-year sentence, saying Olson's crimes had the potential for great violence and targeted multiple victims. The three-member board also cited Olson's flight and years as a fugitive. Cecil, in a ruling released Monday, said there was "no analysis" of how the state Board of Prison Terms decided 14 years was an appropriate sentence.

John Kerry's campaign sent a letter to Bush-Cheney today asking for various documents, among them (verbatim from the letter):

● Halliburton: All correspondence between the Defense Department and the White House regarding the no-bid contracts that have gone to the Vice-President’s former company. Some material has already been made public. Why not take a campaign issue off the table by making all of these materials public so the voters can see how Halliburton has benefited from Mr. Cheney serving as Vice-President?

● The Cheney Energy Task Force: For an Administration that claims to hate lawsuits, it’s ironic that the Bush White House is taking up the Courts’ time to keep the fact that Ken Lay and Enron wrote its energy policy in secret behind closed doors. Please release the documents so that the country can learn what lobbyists and special interests wrote the White House energy policy.

● Prison Abuse Documents: A few weeks ago, the White House released a selected number of documents regarding the White House’s involvement in laying the legal foundation for the interrogation methods that were used in Iraq. Please release the remaining documents.

We doubt they will comply with any of the requests, but the letter does serve to remind the public of the extent to which the Bush administration operates in secrecy.

The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing this morning on the Supreme Court's Blakely decision. Law Prof Doug Berman of Sentencing Law and Policy has textual summaries and written testimony.

The Blakely blog has the testimony of Alan Vinegrad and Rachel Barkow (pdf).

The Red Cross said today it is fearful that the U.S. is hiding detainees in secret places and not granting access to them.

"We have access to people detained by the United States in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan and Iraq, but in our understanding there are people that are detained outside these places for which we haven't received notification or access," said Antonella Notari, a spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross.

....Notari told The Associated Press that some suspects reported as arrested by the FBI on its Web site, or identified in media reports, are unaccounted for. "Some of these people who have been reported to be arrested never showed up in any of the places of detention run by the U.S. where we visit," Notari said.

One of the places the Red Cross suspects the U.S. is secretly holding prisoners is the British island of Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean.

The Geneva Conventions on the conduct of warfare require the United States to give the Red Cross access to prisoners of war and other detainees.

Update: Check out the June, 2004 Human Rights First Report "Ending Secret Detentions."

It's been a while since we wrote about the LERA bill (short for "The Literacy, Education & Rehabilitation Act".) This is the bill that would increase good time for federal prisoners, shortening their sentences. More info on the bill is here.

The good news is LERA was finally introduced in the House on June 25, 2004. It is now H.R. 4752. Main thanks are due to the Federal Prison Policy Project and Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA.) It is gaining support, but we need to keep the pressure on.

Please go here and sign the online Petition supporting LERA. The goal is 2 million signatures.

A few specifics:

You have to go watch this. It takes just a few minutes and is very creative and well done. When will Bush announce Osama's been captured? How did we get him, how long has he been held and what's the most opportune time to announce it? Go play Osama bin Lotto.

Ron Reagan, the son of the late former President Ronald Reagan, will be speaking at the Democratic National Convention in Boston. His purpose: generating support for stem cell research.

Good for him. Ron Reagan delivered one of the best eulogies to his father--getting in a jab at President Bush in the process.

Dad was also a deeply, unabashedly religious man. But he never made the fatal mistake of so many politicians wearing his faith on his sleeve to gain political advantage. True, after he was shot and nearly killed early in his presidency, he came to believe that God had spared him in order that he might do good. But he accepted that as a responsibility, not a mandate. And there is a profound difference.

He also has been critical of Bush and his Administration on the war in Iraq. Check out this interview with him in the New York Times. And his comments on Larry King Live.

Ron says he won't be critical of the Administration in his DNC speech. We bet he delivers at least one more jab--with charm.

by TChris

Judicial appointments aren't a sexy campaign issue -- they don't raise emotions like war and health care -- but it's important to bring the Bush administration's record to the attention of voters nonetheless.

First, progressives must take the Kerry campaign slogan to heart and realize that restoring balance to the federal judiciary is at the core of “letting America be America again.” It means discarding the paralyzing presumption that court appointments are so much esoterica, or “inside baseball,” as one dismissive Washingtonian said.

It's time to restore balance to the federal courts, and that requires recognition that many of the judges who ascended to the bench during the Reagan/Bush/Bush years have been anything but moderate.

The lesson for progressives in the rehashing of Reagan’s legacy is that at the dawn of the GOP’s 12-year reign, Reagan’s team created a delivery system for moving right-wing ideologues from classrooms, faculty offices, think tanks, and the temples of commerce onto the bench and then up the judicial food chain. For every extremist like Robert Bork who got bounced, several others made it through without meaningful public scrutiny or Senate criticism.

It's time to take back the courts. Only a Kerry victory can do that.

by TChris

A new book by Reuters correspondent Alan Elsner, Gates of Injustice, is reviewed here. The book paints an ugly portrait of America's prison system.

To get a sense of the magnitude of this problem, according to Elsner's calculations, the U.S., with five percent of the world's population, has 25% of the world's prisoners.

As Elsner points out, the cost of running the U.S. prison system is now more than $57 billion per year. This compares with the entire federal Department of Education budget of only $42 billion. ... California, it appears, spends $6000 per year per student attending university, while spending $34,000 per year for every prisoner it holds behind bars.

The "corrections industry" has become a big business, but it's often the kind of business the begs the firing of the CEO.

According to Elsner, "hundreds of thousands of men are raped each year. . . Racist and neo-Nazi gangs run drugs, gambling and prostitution rings from inside their prison cells, buying and selling weak and vulnerable fellow inmates as sex slaves, while authorities turn a blind eye." As a result, individual prisoners once released are often more violent, more addicted, angrier and less able to function in society than they were when they entered the system.