by TChris

Hector Viera (not his real name) was born in Venezuela, but his life there was tragic.

At age 9, Mr. Viera was raped by a family member. His relatives later shunned him when it became apparent he was homosexual. In 1994, he fled Caracas for Miami after police arrested him in a gay bar and turned him over to the Venezuelan army, where soldiers forced him to wear a pink dress and routinely abused him.

In the U.S., Viera discovered that he's HIV positive. Even though he was sick and homeless, he had no desire to return to an even more miserable existence in Venezuela. But Viera overstayed his tourist visa and didn't apply for asylum within a year as the law requires, so Homeland Security wanted to boot him out of the country.

Acting pro bono, two lawyers from Shearman & Sterling came to the rescue.

The foot-high stack of research papers they brought to U.S. Immigration Court in Manhattan certainly helped. They documented the story of a client who was certifiably "tired, poor and yearning to breathe free" — just as it is written in a verse by Emma Lazarus affixed to the base of the Statue of Liberty.

Their presentation convinced a judge to say the words Viera longed to hear: "Welcome to America." And the firm helped Viera find housing and counseling. Props to the Shearman lawyers and staff for the excellent work they did on behalf of their client.

One intelligence soldier at Abu Ghraib is talking...and not only describing the abuse of prisoners, but naming another intelligence soldier involved in the abuse:

U.S. Army Spc. Israel Rivera had just returned to duty at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq last October after minor surgery to remove shrapnel from his face. He was checking his e-mail, he recalls, when another military intelligence soldier approached. "Hey Izzy, did you hear about those detainees that raped that one kid?" asked the other soldier, Spc. Armin J. Cruz.

Izzy hadn't, so Cruz took him over to the cell block:

In a telephone interview with The Times, Rivera described his involvement in the case for the first time, saying that he visited the cellblock largely out of curiosity and that he was stunned by what he saw: detainees being stripped naked, made to crawl on their stomachs and chained into a ball of limbs and flesh on the prison floor. Rivera, 20, is the first military intelligence soldier to come forward publicly and say that he witnessed a fellow intelligence soldier, Cruz, taking part in the abuse of prisoners in the isolation cellblock at Abu Ghraib. Cruz has also been cited in testimony by Sgt. Samuel J. Provance III, another intelligence officer, who said Cruz "was known to bang on the table, yell, scream, and maybe assaulted detainees during interrogations in the booth."

First, the prosecution gives an overly long, passionless opening practically conceding that their case is woefully short on direct evidence linking Scott Peterson to the murder of his pregnant wife Laci. As one former prosecutor said:

Legal analyst and attorney Dean Johnson is following the Peterson case, and told NBC 4 Tuesday, "My assessment of the opening statements thus far is that Rick Distaso, who is leading the prosecution team, is really losing this jury. Thus far, he has had a long, rambling statement … he hasn't covered the key points that the prosecution needs to cover to convince this jury about their case."

Thursday, the first full day of testimony, didn't go much better for the prosecution:

Prosecutors trying Scott Peterson's murder case got off to a rocky start Thursday, with some of their first witnesses seeming to do more harm to prosecutors than good....The prosecution "is helping the defense," said Michael Cardoza, a former Alameda County, Calif., prosecutor following the case. "They started on the starting line and are 10 yards behind already. They're running the wrong way."..."How is this a prosecution case?" asked Jim Hammer, a former San Francisco district attorney. "These are more like defense witnesses."

No murder weapon. No cause of death. No eyewitnesses to Laci's killing. Exceedingly well-prepared defense lawyers. Reasonable doubt galore. That's the wrap-up for week one of this trial that is supposed to last six months.

Update: Check out ScottIsInnocent.com put together by a Sunnyvale grandmother. Among the features:

In the Christian Science Monitor today, more about Rock Against Bush:

Protest song is back - with a vengeance. And this time the lyrics are not just antiwar. From hip-hop to punk to rock, artists are wailing against President Bush.

Some of the new songs, unsurprisingly, address the war on Iraq. But whereas protest songs during the Vietnam era were broadly antiwar in their message, the new batch of political tunes aren't narrowly focused on the recent war. It's more personal than that. Most of the music is targeted at the actions and policies of one man: George W. Bush.

Organizing the project is the leader of NOFX, Fat Mike, who also started the website punkvoter.com, now getting 500,000 unique visitors and 14 million hits a month:

"Punk rockers have been against government policy from the start, but it's never been specific," asserts Mike. "This is the first time we've been focused on one thing - getting Bush out of office."

As to the music:

Volume II of the Rock Against Bush compilation will come out Aug. 10 and includes such mainstream pop acts as No Doubt, The Foo Fighters, Green Day, and Yellowcard.

Here's a sample of Volume I which came out April 20. You can buy it here.

Update: The anti-Bush movement is spreading to designer clothing stores in New York.

A judge in California has struck down a federal law prohibiting public transit carriers from displaying ads advocating the legalization of drugs:

A federal law cutting off funds to any public transit agency that runs ads calling for legalization or medical use of an illegal drug was declared unconstitutional Wednesday by a federal judge. U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman of Washington, D.C., said the amendment attached to a $3.1 billion transportation measure, signed in January by President Bush, violated freedom of speech by banning messages based on their viewpoint.

The government has articulated no legitimate state interest in the suppression of this particular speech other than the fact that it disapproves of the message, an illegitimate and constitutionally impermissible reason,'' Friedman said. He prohibited the government from enforcing the funding restriction.

Totally right decision. If the Office of National Drug Control Policy can publish their anti-drug ads, the pro-legalization groups have to have the same right to publish their's.

Two marines have pleaded guilty to torturing an Iraqi prisoner with electroshock.

Pfc. Andrew J. Sting and Pfc. Jeremiah J. Trefney entered their pleas at a May 14 court-martial in Iraq, according to a statement by the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in Iraq. Lt. Nathan Braden, a Marine spokesman at Camp Pendleton, Calif., released the statement Thursday.

According to the military statement, the pair and two other Marines wanted to discipline the detainee for throwing trash outside his cell and speaking loudly at the Al Mahmudiya prison, a temporary holding facility south of Baghdad. The Marines attached wires to a power convertor, which delivered 110 volts of electricity to the detainee as he returned from the bathroom, the statement said.

Sting pleaded guilty to charges of assault, cruelty and maltreatment, dereliction of duty, and conspiracy to assault. He was sentenced to a year in prison, a reduction of rank, forfeiture of pay and a bad-conduct discharge. Trefney pleaded guilty to cruelty and maltreatment, dereliction of duty, false official statement, violating a lawful order, and conspiracy to commit assault. He was sentenced to eight months in prison, reduction of rank and forfeiture of all pay, and he will also receive a bad-conduct discharge.

CNBC has hired Al Sharpton, former Democratic presidential candidate, to provide commentary during the Democratic and Republican National Conventions.

We're still waiting to hear from the DNCC on our application for blogger press credentials so we can attend the convention and blog live from Boston. We've offered our blogging services to a few media organizations as well. At this point, hotel rooms are so scarce it may be that sponsorship by a network or publication that has a block of rooms will be a necessity.

Update: Fox will be generating their own blogging material for the conventions rather than using outside bloggers. We got a very polite thank you from them for our offer. And a big thanks to Roger Ailes (no, not that one!) for his vote of confidence.

by TChris

If you're speeding through Pennsylvania, don't count on CB enthusiasts to alert you to the squad car that's parked behind a billboard over the next hill. Invest in a good radar detector instead (or, if all else fails, slow down).

State police are dressing in camouflage and hiding in the woods with their radar guns.

In one five-hour blitz in Indiana County last week, troopers issued 25 citations to motorists zooming along at least 15 miles faster than the posted 55 mph limit - including one leadfoot cited for going 90 mph.

While the National Motorists Association complains that "studies show police are effective when they're visible" -- effective at reducing traffic speed, not so much at writing tickets -- dressing in camouflage and sitting in the woods is tons more fun than sitting in a car. Don't expect tactics to change soon -- at least, not before winter.

Ahmed Chalabi has accused George Tenet of being responsible for the charge that Chalabi passed intelligence information to Iran:

Chalabi told reporters that Tenet "was behind the charges against me that claimed that I gave intelligence information to Iran. I denied these charges and I will deny them again."

....Chalabi also accused Tenet of providing "erroneous information about weapons of mass destruction to President Bush, which caused the government much embarrassment at the United Nations and his own country."

How does this factor into Tenet's abrupt resignation for "personal reasons."? Did Tenet fall on his sword for the Administration? Or, is there a link between George Tenet and Bush's seeking legal advice over the leak of Valerie Plame's identity?

by TChris

York, an indispensable member of the Lewis and Clark expedition, has been freed from slavery. This will have no practical impact on the long-dead York, who may in any event have been freed by his owner while he was still alive.

Upon the expedition's arrival at the Pacific Ocean in November 1805, York was given the right to vote on the location of the crew's winter quarters. Arriving back in St. Louis in September 1806, York asked Clark to grant his freedom. Though some historians believed Clark eventually freed York, no documents ever have been recovered describing that act.

It's never too late to correct even a potential injustice, so Missouri Gov. Bob Holden "signed documents delivering York from bondage."

by TChris

Trent Lott's knack for saying in public what other right-wingers in power only mutter behind closed doors cost him his position as Senate majority leader. Now it should cost him his job.

In an interview, Lott defended the torture of prisoners.

"Hey, nothing wrong with holding a dog up there, unless the dog ate him, scared him with a dog," Lott said. When WAPT news anchorman Brad McMullan noted that a prisoner died at Abu Ghraib, apparently after a beating, Lott responded, "This is not Sunday school; this is interrogation; this is rough stuff."

No Trent, beating a man to death is not interrogation; it's murder. But Trent doesn't mind murdering prisoners, because in his view, they deserve to die anyway.

Some of the prisoners "should not have been prisoners in the first place, probably should have been killed," he added.

The Trent Lott defense to murder: "He had it coming."

by TChris

It's common for cases to be tried in the court of public opinion, but the trial that matters takes place in a courtroom. The government wants the court of public opinion to find Jose Padilla guilty, but doesn't want to present its evidence in a real court.

Deputy Attorney General James Comey on Tuesday ... presented his indictment of Padilla -- complete with vivid descriptions of terror plots Padilla failed to execute -- as part of a public relations blitz to justify holding Padilla and other American citizens as "enemy combatants" in the war on terrorism. Comey said intelligence during interrogations of Padilla and other suspected terrorists justifies the decision not to criminally charge Padilla, and proceed with a normal prosecution, after he was arrested two years ago at the Chicago airport.

Comey brags that the government's strategy succeeded in getting Padilla to talk, while a defendant who was charged and given a lawyer might have exercised his right to remain silent. It's a sad day when a prosecutor thinks justice is served by violating the Constitution.