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.

There's now a split in the circuits. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has held the federal sentencing guidelines constitutional in US vs. Pineiro, no. 03-30437. (pdf.) The panel was unanimous. One of the panel members was Bush recess appointee Charles Pickering. Link via Sentencing Law and Policy which has analysis up already.

Also, check out Blakely Blog. Looks like we're headed back to the Supreme Court on this one.

Update: The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers' (NACDL) letter to Sen. Hatch on Blakely is here.

Update: ABA President Dennis Archer sent Sen. Hatch this letter today in advance of tomorrow's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Some quotes:

14 days to go to the DNC in Boston and we're still excited. Here's an updated list of invited bloggers. We still need your help to get there. A lot of help. If you'd rather get us the tech toys we'd like to enhance our live blogging, that's fine too. All help is appreciated.

• Amazon (anonymous)
• PayPal

We're hoping one of the campaigns or a media outlet or corporation will spring for one of our premium ads --that would pay for the trip and we could stop asking readers for contributions. Should that happen, we'll let you know.

Confusion over state and federal sentencing continues. Today's news includes:

• USA Today
• Seattle Post Intelligencer
• Tampa Tribune

And a second federal judge in the Eastern District of New York has found the Sentencing Guidelines unconstitutional.

TChris's Blakely brief in the 7th Circuit Booker case is now available here.

Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee holds its first hearing on the problems engendered by Blakely.

Lea Fastow, wife of former Enron CFO Andrew Fastow, begins her year-long jail sentence today in the downtown Houston federal detention center. As we explained here, this is no club fed. It's an 11-story jail. She'll be in an 8' by 10' cell, which she will share with a roomate. She will live under florescent lights and rarely get outside. There are no facilities for visiting children.

Mrs. Fastow will get no good time off her sentence. There is no federal parole. She'll have to do every day of the year sentence.

We're still angry at her Judge for refusing to recommend a camp. While a Judge's recommendations aren't binding on the Bureau of Prisons, BOP generally tries to follow them. If a Judge's recommendation is not followed, BOP has to write a letter to the Judge and explain the rejection. (The letter is secret, and not provided to defense counsel, only to the Judge and Probation Department.) The Judge in this case played hardball with Mrs. Fastow all the way through, first rejecting the Government's sentencing recommendation, and then refusing to make her requested designation recommendation.

It was Mrs. Fastow who convinced her husband Andrew to cooperate with the Government and take a ten year hit. But for Andrew Fastow cooperating, there would be no Indictment of Ken Lay. She's cooperated with the investigation as well.

TalkLeft readers will note that we do have a link section to "Best of the Other Side" -- a short list of blogs that have opposing viewpoints from our own. Say hello to another one, Redstate.Org, a Republican community blog:

RedState.org is focused on politics, and seeks the construction of a Republican majority in the United States. We hope to unite serious, innovative, and accomplished voices from government, politics, activism, civil society, and journalism to participate in this work.

Why are we linking to it? For the same reason we link to Tacitus, one of the blog's founders. He's a good writer and every once in a while, we agree with him.

Happy Second Blogiversary to Skippy--one of our oldest and favoritie web buddies--and a big congrats for hitting the 500,000 visitor mark. We read Skippy every day--he always makes us smile. He's also one of the most generous linkers around.

by TChris

Maurice Teague seems to have a fetish for children's socks -- he has more than 500 pairs. And when he can't buy socks from a kid, he steals them.

Teague was arrested for kidnapping and robbery after he grabbed a 9-year-old boy, carried him behind a grocery store, and stole his socks.

Police said the child was on his way home from the grocery around 6:30 p.m. when Teague asked to buy his socks for $5. The boy refused again when Teague offered him $10, and Teague picked him up, ran behind the store and pulled the boy's shoes and socks off his feet.

Teague dropped his ID, which the boy gave to the police, leading to Teague's arrest.

by TChris

Stanislaus County District Attorney James Brazelton is under fire for bringing a weak case against Scott Peterson, but his problems don't end there.

In a six-page report that carries no legal weight, the Stanislaus County civil grand jury found that Brazelton committed nine acts of willful misconduct and violated the county's workplace security and anti-violence policy.

Reporters from the Modesto Bee were in Brazelton's office "reviewing receipts of county-issued credit cards to make sure officials weren't dipping into the till for personal use." The grand jury says that Brazelton pulled a gun from his holster and said, "This is what I would like to give" one of the reporters.

The second time, Brazelton is alleged to have walked into another office where employees were talking and simulated drawing a pistol and firing it at a trash can, repeating something similar to his original comment.

The district attorney is accused of having commented that he missed an opportunity to run down one of the reporters with his car when the journalist was crossing the street.

Brazelton, who denies the accusations, is also alleged to have tried to prevent staff members from cooperating with the investigation.

Just finished watching John Kerry and John Edwards, and their wives, on '60 Minutes.' Despite Leslie Stahl's repeated and annoying attempts to rile them and her exaggerated facial expressions of disbelief, they were great. Their answers made her questions look like cheap, conniving tricks. It's obvious there's a huge honeymoon going on between the Kerrys and the Edwards--and it's just what we need.

The Kerry-Edwards team radiates ability as well as good cheer and optimism. Bush-Cheney is a downer. It's time for a change and it's coming. We feel it in the air. We felt it in the interview.

Do your part. Get excited. Volunteer. Contribute. We need this team. We need this change.

by TChris

Tom Ridge says terrorists may try to disrupt the presidential election -- a claim based on old information, according to Rep. Jane Harman, a member of the House Intelligence Committee -- and now the Bush administration would like the authority to delay the election if it believes such an attack has occurred.

Newsweek cited unnamed sources who told it that the Department of Homeland Security asked the Justice Department last week to review what legal steps would be needed to delay the vote if an attack occurred on the day before or on election day.

Update: The Newsweek article is here.