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:

by TChris

Before President Bush tears down Abu Ghraib to build his promised "modern, maximum-security prison," the Iraqi authorities should visit some U.S. supermax prisons and ask whether that's what they really want.

Prisoners have called them "torture chambers" where they are subjected to flagrant human rights and civil liberties violations and appalling psychological and physical abuses. In a lawsuit filed by Ohio prisoners at the state's supermax prison in Youngstown in 2002, inmate Keith Garner bluntly told a judge that the conditions at the prison were "like being in a tomb."

Reform begins at home. It's one thing to replace an old building with a new one; it's another to treat prisoners humanely. President Bush said that Abu Ghraib doesn't reflect America; but it does reflect America's prisons. The story of Abu Ghraib should lead American reporters back home.

Via Patriot Watch:

SENATOR INTRODUCES BILL TO REMOVE SUNSET PROVISIONS & MAKE PATRIOT ACT PERMANENT!! "S. 2476 was introduced by Senator Jon Kyl (R-AR), and calls for all of the sunset provisions of the Patriot to be lifted, essentially making the entire Act permanent. The bill lacks a companion measure in the House. Sixteen parts of the Patriot Act sunset or expire at the end of 2005, when they will then be subject to Congressional oversight and reauthorization."

The ACLU responds. Get on the horn and call your Senator and tell him or her to oppose this bill. It will not make us safer, only less free.

You can quickly call any of your Senators through the Senate switchboard operator, (202) 224-3121; and any of your Representatives through the House switchboard operator, (202) 225-3121.

by TChris

It's understandable that Sen. Tim Johnson (D-SD) would be upset at "the small but vocal group of national Republicans that attacked [his] patriotism and compared [him] to Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden at the very same time [his] son was defending our nation in Afghanistan." And it's understandable, but not acceptable, that he lashed back in like fashion by referring to "the Taliban wing of the Republican Party."

Name calling has attained the status of an art form in the blogosphere, but it isn't productive in the political arena. It impairs the ability to engage in a rational dialog. It offends gratuitously. Public officials don't serve the public by indulging in it. Nor do they serve their parties by providing ammunition to an opposition trying to arouse its base.

To his credit, Sen. Johnson is capable of admitting error and apologizing, as he did today.

by TChris

Did a Pentagon employee leak sensitive classified information to Chalabi? (Background here.) Bob Dreyfuss examines the available evidence and reasonably concludes:

Certainly, the CIA is a sworn enemy of Chalabi, and it has been for many years. And certainly, Chalabi's enemies would love to use the scandal over Chalabi's Iran connections to tarnish his Pentagon allies. But it seems to me unlikely that they would risk a formal investigation unless they had some concrete evidence to support what otherwise would be a witch hunt.