Netlaw Tools, an internet service providing tools and tips for lawyers, has named TalkLeft as the MVP site of the month for May. A big thanks to Netlaw Tools blogger Jerry Lawson for selecting it.

TalkLeft is the Netlawtools MVP Site for May. Developed by Denver-based criminal defense attorney Jeralyn Merritt, TalkLeft is intended for the public, journalists covering crime-based news and politics, policy makers and the criminal defense community. It is an exceptional example of how one person can use the Internet to make a difference. Other features of the site are the unique newsfeed, updated several times a day with crime-related news and commentary, and the comprehensive list of links to major progressive political and media sites. The Netlawtools site has an archive of previous MVP picks.

We're very honored.

This week's news has been filled with articles attacking the reliability of fingerprint testing as an exact identification science. TChris outlined the issue here, including pointing out Law Professor Jennifer Mnooking's articles here and here.

Here's a few more, out today:

• Can Prints Lie? Yes, Man Finds to His Dismay, by Benjamin Weiser, NYTimes

• The Wrong Man, Newsweek. Freed and cleared Oregon lawyer Brandon Mayfield speaks out

Say hello to MoveLeft Media, a new blog by Eric Jaffa. We especially like the photos and other graphics. The articles are good too, check out this one reporting that the simulated acts at Abu Ghraib weren't just simulated, some were real and forced.

Also say hello to War and Piece, by journalist Laura Rozen who reports on national security and foreign policy issues.

by TChris

Archibald Cox died yesterday at the age of 92. His tenacious pursuit of Richard Nixon's political crimes resulted in the infamous "Saturday Night Massacre," a mass firing widely credited as the turning point in the public's willingness to tolerate Nixon's presidency.

Mr. Cox, a highly respected authority on constitutional and labor law who had taught at Harvard and Boston universities, also served President Kennedy as US solicitor general. To a generation of Americans, however, Mr. Cox, with his crew-cut hair, bushy eyebrows, and a lanky swinging gait became a symbol of the rule of law versus the personality of the presidency.

John Moe evaluates Kerry's top 20 potential veep picks with pros and cons and a lot of humor tossed in. [link via Hit and Run.]

Don't miss Jane Mayer's article, The Manipulator, in the New Yorker. By chronicling Chalabi and his supporters throughout the years, Mayer demonstrates how Ahmed Chalabi manipulated the Bush Administration.

Between 1992 and the raid on Chalabi’s home, the U.S. government funnelled more than a hundred million dollars to the Iraqi National Congress. The current Bush Administration gave Chalabi’s group at least thirty-nine million dollars. Exactly what the I.N.C. provided in exchange for these sums has yet to be fully explained..... Vincent Cannistraro, a former C.I.A. counter-terrorism specialist who now consults for the government, told me, “With Chalabi, we paid to fool ourselves. It’s horrible. In other times, it might be funny. But a lot of people are dead as a result of this. It’s reprehensible.”

Mayer delves into the role of Francis Brooke, Chalabi's "unofficial lobbyist in Washington" and the Rendon Group:

Brooke, who is a devout Christian, has brought an evangelical ardor to the cause of defeating Saddam. “I do have a religious motivation for doing what I do,” Brooke said. “I see Iraq as our neighbor. And the Bible says, When your neighbor is in a ditch, God means for you to help him.”

Legendary lawyer, law professor and civil rights advocate Sam Dash has died. He was 79.

Samuel Dash, 79, the chief counsel of the Senate Watergate Committee whose televised interrogation into the secret audiotaping system at the White House ultimately led to President Richard M. Nixon's resignation, died of multiple organ failure May 29 at Washington Hospital Center.

....Mr. Dash's 53-year legal career touched some of the most important moments in American, and sometimes world, politics. He dramatically resigned in 1998 after four years as the ethics counselor to independent prosecutor Kenneth W. Starr, charging that Starr became an "aggressive advocate" of impeaching President Clinton. He said Starr exceeded the independent counsel's mandate, which was part of a statute that he helped draft.

Who's running John Kerry's internet campaign? None other than 34 year old Zack Exley, who back in 1999, started the anti-Bush website, GWBush.com. The LA Times profiles him today.

Exley's unlikely rise from union organizer and small-time software programmer to top campaign operative mirrors the rapidly expanding role of the Internet in politics. More valuable than decades of slogging in the trenches of the major parties is a few years' experience out in the free-form world of the Web — a realm where the tools of the trade evolve every week and a joke can grab more attention than a thousand position papers.

by TChris

The Transportation Security Agency's screening of luggage may or may not make our lives safer, but letting the agency's workers snoop through luggage in private makes our property less safe.

Since last March, federal screeners have been arrested for theft from passengers' property at John F. Kennedy International Airport, as well as Miami International, Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County and Denver International airports.

Although TSA spokesperson Ann Davis characterizes the problem as "quite small," theft and property damage claims have been piling up at TSA, and airlines are starting to worry that they must contend with yet another customer service issue. The TSA's response to the "quite small" problem: a request that Congress limit its liability for damaging or stealing passengers' property to no more than $3 million a year.

Tuesday, the Supreme Court will begin issuing its final month of opinions for the term. Some are critical, including three on Bush's anti-terror policies:

The court will hand down more than two dozen decisions in June, including whether the words "under God" should remain in the Pledge of Allegiance, whether the Internet should remain free of criminal restrictions and whether pedestrians must identify themselves when a police officer asks them to.

But most legal scholars were focused on the series of cases that test the president's powers to hold terrorism suspects. In three cases, the justices will decide whether the military can hold "enemy combatants" — both foreign and domestic — without filing charges or giving them a hearing.

Predictions, anyone?

Whoops. An auditor for the DEA has lost his laptop with data concerning over 100 informants, including over 4,000 pages of sensitive case-file information that if delivered into the wrong hands could allow traffickers to identify the informants. The loss story sounds fishy, because first the auditor told the DEA the laptop was stolen from his car trunk while he was inside a coffeehouse, but later,

...when investigators confronted the auditor last week and questioned his account, the auditor changed his story, saying he had accidentally damaged the computer—then destroyed it and threw it away in a Dumpster to avoid embarrassment.

The DEA is reportedly "livid." Aside from the obvious reason, here's another one:

Only two years ago, the [Inspector General] IG issued a blistering report criticizing Justice agencies, including the DEA and the FBI, for failure to maintain adequate controls on sensitive items—including their laptop computers.

by TChris

It's tough to run for judge in Alabama, where former Chief Justice Roy Moore lost his job on the state's highest court after defying a federal court order to remove a monument to the Ten Commandments from the courthouse rotunda. Christian conservatives have made him a folk hero, and other judges have to contend with his popularity among voters who believe it's evil to respect the establishment clause of the First Amendment.

Justice Jean Brown (described by her campaign manager as a "conservative Baptist Sunday school teacher"), facing reelection, is defending her vote to remove the monument by touting its replacement: a courthouse exhibit that displays the Ten Commandments with other documents, including the Magna Carta. Her TV ads say she's "proud" that the Ten Commandments are back in the courthouse. But that doesn't satisfy her opponent, Tom Parker (Moore's "former legal adviser"):

"Who can Alabama conservatives trust?" one of his commercials asks, showing a picture of Justice Brown. "She removed the Ten Commandments, and insulted us with her politically correct, A.C.L.U.-approved display."

It would be more honest to say: "Vote for me and I promise to defy the law just like Ray Moore." Just as it would be more honest for Justice Brown to stop hiding behind the Ten Commandments and explain that a state has no business endorsing a religion, even if it's the religion preferred by voters.