The 8th Edition of the Rocky Mountain Blogger Roundup is now available at Freedom Sight. Lots of good entries. And, last reminder, the third annual Rocky Mountain Blogger Bash is Friday night at the Denver Press Club. Details here.

by TChris

A few days ago, TalkLeft argued that it isn't "unpatriotic" (as some on the right have suggested) to dissent from an unjust war. Gen. Anthony Zinni, former commander of the U.S. Central Command, agrees:

"We've lost 799 kids and another 4,500 are injured and seriously maimed. We've spent $200 billion so far. Where are we for all that?"

"Some people are calling me unpatriotic for saying these things," Gen. Zinni concluded. "I think it's unpatriotic not to ask these questions."

Nor is it unpatriotic to recognize that the war has made the world less safe.

Confirming the assessment that the "world is far less safe" as a consequence of the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq last year, the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) stated this week that the occupation "has become a potent global recruitment pretext for al Qaeda, which now has more than 18,000 militants ready to strike western targets."

True patriots care enough about their country to tell the truths that must be told -- even at risk to their careers.

Two profiles in courage stand out in the expose of the Iraqi prison disaster. They are Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba -- who investigated reports of the abuses of the Iraqi prisoners at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison -- and Army Spc. Joseph Darby, the military policeman who alerted Army authorities by turning over a disc of photographs showing the shocking mistreatment of the prisoners.

A new report by the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics finds that 1 of every 75 men in the U.S. are in prison or jail.

The cause: Mandatory minimums, three-strikes, truth in sentencing laws. The effect:

The prison system just grows like a weed in the yard," said Vincent Schiraldi, executive director of the Justice Policy Institute, which pushes for a more lenient system. Without reforms, he said, prison populations will continue to grow "almost as if they are on autopilot, regardless of their high costs and disappointing crime-control impact."

America. Prison nation.

by TChris

It's amazing that a school district couldn't arrive at this conclusion without the help of a panel appointed by the district superintendent.

Security officers in the Kent School District, the target of complaints over the discipline of black students, should no longer handcuff students or carry firearms, batons, tasers or pepper spray, a panel has recommended.

The recommendation came after the Seattle chapter of the NAACP filed several claims against the district alleging that teachers and security guards used excessive force to discipline black students.

The panel found that when security officers were called because a student hadn't followed directions, there was "little justification for physical confrontation" between the officer and the student.

It doesn't appear that the handcuffing will end soon. The superintendent complains that the recommendations included "no suggestions for alternatives to handcuffs." Here's one: don't use them.

by TChris

Iraq's current governing council is rejecting President Bush's offer to replace Abu Ghraib with a new supermax-style prison.

President Bush's offer to demolish Abu Ghraib prison — made in a speech Monday night — found little support among Iraqis, with the head of the Governing Council yesterday calling the idea "a waste of resources."

Instead of destroying useable buildings, the governing council would prefer to change the way the prison is operated.

by TChris

The notion that kids who commit "adult" crimes should be subjected to "adult" punishment has often resulted in kids facing the same abuse that adult prisoners encounter. Maybe the failure of that approach in Louisiana will be a lesson to other states.

The allegations began soon after the prison opened for business: teenage inmates beaten by guards, beating each other, running loose on the rooftops of the barracks-like dorms. Ten years later, Louisiana is shutting down its toughest juvenile prison, a move that child welfare advocates see as an admission of failure.

In 1997, the Justice Department found widespread abuse of inmates by guards had left teens with gashes and broken bones. Federal investigators reported a year later that teens were beating and raping fellow inmates.

Abusing kids doesn't scare them into obedience, it just teaches them to be abusive.

Advocates said the adult-style prison - with individual cells inside cell blocks behind fences and razor wire - created an atmosphere unlikely to rehabilitate the teens. They said the teens were more likely to commit far worse crimes when they got out.

This story also teaches a lesson about the danger of privatizing prisons.

Cleared Oregon lawyer Brandon Mayfield's case provides an excellent example of the danger of the Patriot Act's Sneak and Peek" provisions--an end run around the Fourth Amendment's requirement that authorities notify the residents of a home when they have been inside to search for evidence:

Mayfield said there were obvious signs that someone was repeatedly entering the modest white house when the family was out. The Mayfields would arrive home to find window blinds adjusted much higher than any one could reach. Footprints left in the living room's plush white carpet were larger than any of those belonging to Mayfield, his wife, Mona, and his two sons.

Railing against the USA Patriot Act at a news conference Monday, Mayfield said the secret break-ins are one example of how the antiterror law threatens to rip apart constitutional rights to privacy and security. "This is the state of affairs we find ourselves in today," he said. "We find ourselves living in a climate of fear." ....Mayfield called the whole ordeal, from the home searches to his two weeks behind bars, "humiliating." Sounding weary, he added: "You can't trade your freedom for security. Because if you do, you're going to lose both."

When we last checked in with James Ujaama, the Denver native charged in Seattle with trying to establish an al-Qaeda training camp in Bly, Oregon, he had pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with the Government in exchange for reduced charges and a two year sentence. The charges of trying to set up a terror camp were dropped, and he pleaded to furnishing money, computer equipment and a recruit to the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Thursday, Muslim Cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri, who has one eye and hooks for hands, was arrested in Britain on charges of trying to set up an al-Qaeda training camp in Bly, Oregon. He is also charged in the murder of four tourists in Yemen in a 1998 incident. The U.S. is seeking his extradition and has agreed with Britain not to seek the death penalty against him. Al Masri's London mosque was allegedly attended by Richard Reid, the "shoe-bomber" and Zacarias Moussoui.

Ujaama's sentence should be up about now. From our April 14, 2003 post:

by TChris

It isn't unusual for states to erect barriers that make it difficult or impossible for wrongfully convicted inmates to win their freedom by proving their innocence. Conservative lawmakers seem to believe that "finality" rather than justice should be the ultimate goal of the criminal justice system: get the case done, don't worry so much about whether it was done right, and don't burden the court with these pesky claims about innocence.

Virginia recently repealed a law that barred inmates from seeking a new trial based on newly discovered evidence of innocence unless they presented that evidence to the court within 21 days of sentencing. If the true culprit confessed on day 22, too bad for the innocent man who was sentenced to life. That law would have prevented David Wayne Boyce (featured yesterday in TalkLeft) from presenting DNA evidence showing that someone else probably committed the murder that resulted in his conviction.

But Virginia replaced that law with a requirement that limits an inmate to one and only one chance to prove his innocence. The result: if you aren't successful on the first try and later find compelling evidence of innocence, you're out of luck.

"Some members of the General Assembly are more concerned about finality of convictions than correctness," said Steven D. Benjamin, president of the Virginia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, in Richmond. "There is no moral justification for closing the courts for a person who is able to prove his innocence.

The New York Times has a feature Thursday on bloggers who can't stop blogging. Ezra at Pandagon responds. We're torn: Should we show the world we're not addicted by not blogging for 24 hours? Or should we say, who gives a damn, this is what we do in our spare time because it's fun, it gets our message across and it keeps us aware, connected and on top of world events? Easy answer.....see you all first thing in the morning.

by TChris

The secretary of defense and the national security adviser debate "whether there was any way to stop newspapers and television news programs from showing graphic photographs of the victims."

Pictures of Abu Ghraib? No. Pictures of My Lai, 1969.

A transcript of this 1969 telephone conversation, with its uncanny echoes of the Iraq war and the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, at least in the fact of the photographs, if not in the severity of the wrongdoing, was released on Wednesday by the National Archives as part of 20,000 pages of records of Mr. Kissinger's telephone conversations.

The tapes show a secretary of defense frustrated by his inability to bury the truth.

In their conversation on Nov. 21, 1969, about the My Lai massacre, Mr. Laird told Mr. Kissinger that while he would like "to sweep it under the rug," the photographs prevented it.

We were at the studio today getting ready for our Terry Nichols' segment on MSNBC's Abrams Report when we were told there was big breaking news in the Kobe Bryant case and we were switching to cover Kobe Bryant instead. (Only in America would the case of a basketball star charged with sexual assault arising from an admittedly initially consensual encounter trump the news that a man had been convicted of 161 counts of first degree murder in the second largest case of domestic terrorism in history.) So, here's the big Kobe news:

DNA test results from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation reportedly show that tests taken the night after the incident at the hospital during the "rape exam" show there is a white male's semen not just on the accuser's yellow knit underwear, but inside her body (and possibly on her thigh). If so, the exuse of wearing "dirty underwear" to her rape exam is probably out the window. Plus, it may mean she lied to investigators when she told them the last time she had sex with someone other than Kobe was two or three days before, with her boyfriend, who wore a condom.

The defense has been alleging for months that the accuser may have had sex with someone after having sex with Kobe and before arriving at the hospital for her rape exam. They have said in pleadings several times that the pinpoint lacerations the accuser suffered to her posterior forchette were the result of repeated consensual activity within a short period of time, not sexual assault. They have filed motions alleging that the accuser has had sex with two prosecution witnesses--and they have requested that two specific white males be ordered to submit to DNA testing. If these test results bear that out, we say there's a good chance this case is over.

Kobe's pre-trial hearings continue tomorrow in Eagle. We're scheduled to review the day's events again on the Abrams Report, MSNBC, 6 PM ET. At issue will be whether the defense can call two crime scene experts to testify that the Eagle authorities botched the investigation by failing to collect important evidence that could have established Kobe's consent defense. Our view, from yesterday's show: