Sad news, music legend Ray Charles has died at 73.

Over at Tapped, Charles Pierce has the wittiest piece on former President Ronald Reagan.

Herewith Inspired By The Wellstone Elegy: November 2, 2002, by Peggy Noonan, Journalist, Author and Aquatic Mammal Divine.)

We're in Washington, for reasons unrelated to Mr. Reagan. A big thanks to TChris for filling in for us today. We're at an executive officers' retreat for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. We'll be posting mostly mornings and evenings until we return to Denver Sunday.

by TChris

Remember Sean Baker, the soldier at Guantanamo who was brutally beaten while playing the role of a detainee during a training exercise? The Army had been claiming that his medical discharge was unrelated to the traumatic brain injury he sustained while the trainees were learning how to abuse prisoners. Now the Army admits that the discharge was "partly" related to that injury.

Is there any part of the executive branch of government that ever tells the truth the first time?

by TChris

In a resounding rejection of the government's ambitious use of the Patriot Act against a computer science student who helped maintain websites that the government claimed were used to recruit terrorists, a jury has acquitted Sami Omar Al-Hussayen of charges that he provided expert assistance to terrorists.

Al-Hussayen ... was acquitted on all three terrorism counts, as well as one count of making a false statement and two counts of visa fraud. Jurors could not reach verdicts on three more false statement counts and five additional visa fraud counts, and a mistrial was declared on those charges.

TalkLeft's background on this misguided prosecution is collected here. Kudos to Hussayen's attorneys for protecting not only their client, but liberty and freedom of speech, as well.

by TChris

Officer Bryan Conroy has been charged with manslaughter for shooting an unarmed African immigrant, Ousmane Zongo, to death. Conroy was guarding a locker full of counterfeit compact discs inside the Chelsea Mini-Storage when he saw Zongo.

Zongo, who did not speak English, had no criminal record and was not involved with the counterfeit ring, got scared and tried to flee, police said. Conroy pursued him and in a scuffle fired four shots at close range.

Conroy, who was in plain clothes, says he pulled his gun on an unarmed man to identify himself as a police officer. Pulling out a badge would have been more effective and less threatening. According to Conroy, Zongo thought Conroy was trying to rob him, so Zongo lunged for the gun. Conroy says he had no choice but to shoot Conroy. Four times.

Patrick Lynch, head of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, predictably complained that the grand jury made a "mistake." If it made a mistake, it was in indicting Conroy for the less serious offense of manslaughter rather than second degree murder, the charge reportedly pursued by the district attorney's office.

As TalkLeft reported yesterday, a 12-year-old who lacks the maturity to exercise sound judgment is facing a life sentence for murder. In this case, a police officer whose failure to exercise sound judgment resulted in a needless death might get probation. Does this make sense to anyone?

by TChris

People who reserve their cell phones for calls from the office and family, and who prefer that clients and sales reps call the business line, may be unhappy if their cell phone numbers are published in a directory. Think you have the choice to opt out of publication? Read your contract.

[S]ome cell phone companies have wording in their lengthy service contracts stating that you agree to release your number for any eventual directory. ... A spokeswoman for Verizon, for instance, the nation's largest carrier, said the company opposes the directory because of privacy concerns and is altering contracts to reflect that.

The Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association is coordinating the electronic directory with cellular service providers. It claims your number will remain private if you want it to be, but that might not be what your contract says. It may be time to pull out your reading glasses and check the fine print.

by TChris

It's time to change three-strikes laws, and voters know it.

According to a new poll released Thursday, 76 percent of likely voters said they were inclined to support a November ballot initiative that would soften the three-strikes law that Californians overwhelmingly passed a decade ago. Just 14 percent of respondents were opposed, the Field Poll reported.

The initiative would require that the third strike be a violent felony, so that petty theft or drug possession wouldn't trigger a 25 year minimum sentence. It's a good start -- incremental improvement is better than none at all -- but true justice requires that judges tailor sentences to the offender in light of the facts of the case. Any three-strikes law, as any other law that requires a mandatory minimum sentence, prevents a judge from showing mercy and compassion when it is due. A better reform would be abolition of three-strikes sentencing altogether.

David Finley on the Torture Memo.

The March 6, 2003 "torture memo" is such a shoddy piece of work that anybody with minimal English skills, a copy of the Constitution, and access to Supreme Court decisions can trivially refute any of the bogus arguments that the committee of leading GOP legal lights put together.

by TChris

As Republicans attempt to cast George Bush as a clone of their great departed hero, Ronald Reagan, it is worth noting that they share one thing in common: bad judgment about foreign policy.

U.S. support extended to guerrillas to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan has blown back in the form of al Qaeda and extreme instability in Central Asia. U.S. help to Saddam Hussein in Iraq also boomeranged. Iran-contra was not as great an aberration at the Reagan White House as it is often painted today.

by TChris

For those who have the time and hard drive space to keep track of all the Bush administration's misleading statements, add this one to the list:

Two months ago, the Bush administration released its annual report card on counterterrorism and gave itself an A. The number of terrorist attacks around the globe, according to the State Department report called "Patterns of Global Terrorism," was at the lowest ebb in the past 34 years.

Not long afterward, however, the report was pilloried by academics, a lawmaker and others. They said its math defied the reality of a steady growth in the number and significance of terrorist attacks in 2003, as well as the worst type of attacks spreading from just a few countries to at least 10.

Yesterday came the State Department's response to its critics: "Oops. Busted. Our bad." Translated from its bureaucratic equivalent: "We anticipate that a correction to the 'Patterns of Global Terrorism' will be publicly issued as soon as possible."

[O]ne senior official, speaking on the condition that he not be cited by name, said the corrections could fill eight pages, including a revised chronology of events, "a list of some things that should have been put in or left out," and various explanatory notes.

Officials have not yet determined whether those statistics, chronologies, and explanatory notes will include, for instance, the truth.

Larry C. Johnson, a former CIA analyst and former deputy director of State's counterterrorism office ... said that even using the report's own data, as presented in its statistical tables, the total number of terrorist incidents in 2003 rose, not fell, compared with 2002.

Will the administration still find a way to give itself an A when the report is revised?

Army Maj. Gen. Paul D. Eaton has spent the past year training 200,000 Iraqis to be army, police and civil defense troops. He's leaving next week, and says the mission has been a flop:

Misguided U.S. training of Iraqi police contributed to the country's instability and has delayed getting enough qualified Iraqis on the streets to ease the burden on American forces, the head of armed forces training said Wednesday.
"It hasn't gone well. We've had almost one year of no progress," said Army Maj. Gen. Paul D. Eaton, who departs Iraq next week after spending a year assembling and training the country's 200,000 army, police and civil defense troops.

This will be a problem with our hand-over of power to Iraq:

A credible, well-equipped national security force is crucial to America's plans to pull its 138,000 troops out of Iraq, along with the 24,000 soldiers from Britain and other coalition countries. As U.S. occupation leaders prepare to hand power to an Iraqi government in less than three weeks, Iraq's own security forces won't be ready to take a large role in protecting the country. A U.N. Security Council resolution approved Tuesday acknowledges Iraq's lack of a developed security force and provides a continued multinational troop presence until 2006.

Here's an example of a test that failed:

Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL) has introduced a bill to Reaffirm US Commitment to Uphold Prohibitions on Torture in International Law:. It needs your support:. We received this by e-mail:

Senator Richard Durbin (IL) has introduced an amendment to the Defense Authorization bill to reaffirm US commitment to the Geneva Conventions, the Convention Against Torture, and the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights, and to affirm unequivocally the prohibition against torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. The notorious photos taken at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq demonstrate that U.S. personnel have been responsible for acts of torture and other forms of abuse, in violation of the US commitments under domestic and international law. It is imperative that the Durbin Torture Amendment receives strong, bipartisan support to send a message around the world that the U.S. opposes such abuse and will uphold international standards for human rights.

Please call or fax your Senator immediately to urge him/her to support the Durbin Torture Amendment to the Defense Authorization bill. If you do not know the number for your Senators’ offices, call the Capitol switchboard: 202-224-3121. We urge you to call your two Senators, given that the Defense Authorization bill is currently under consideration in the Senate.

Here's a sample letter you can send your Senators. Here's the text of the bill. Here's why we need this bill. The main points are: