by TChris

The threat of being busted in Louisiana for unsightly plumber's butt has ended. Background here and here.

State lawmakers refused to make it a crime to wear low-slung pants in public that expose "undergarments or ... any portion of the pubic hair, cleft of the buttocks or genitals."

No word on whether any state lawmakers want to make it illegal to trade beads for a glimpse of a breast during Mardi Gras.

by TChris

As a general rule, the police can't enter your home without your consent or a warrant. But what about your garage?

In a minor victory for the Fourth Amendment and for the right to privacy (a victory fairly characterized as a "no-brainer"), the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that a police officer had no right to stick his foot under a closing garage door, causing the garage door to raise so that he could talk to the driver who had just driven into the garage. The officer hadn't seen the driver engage in any bad driving (and thus couldn't claim he was in "hot pursuit" of the driver), but wanted to talk to the driver about a report that he'd been seen weaving while driving home. The driver closed the garage door without realizing that the officer was standing at the threshhold.

The decision addressed constitutional issues of appropriate search and seizure and determined that a person's right to privacy extends to his garage "because it is not impliedly open to the public."

Sadly, this isn't going to deter the Farmington Police Department from doing the same thing in the future. Chief Dan Siebenaler says he "respects" the court's decision but he doesn't think the officer did anything wrong and he doesn't intend to change the department's policy. Saying "never mind the courts, we'll do what we wanna do" doesn't seem particularly respectful either of the courts or of the Constitution.

Noah at Defense Tech introduces us to University of Buffalo Professor and biotech artist Steve Kurtz. Waking up and finding his wife dead beside him, Kurtz' troubles had only just begun:

The police arrived and, cranked up on the rhetoric of the "War on Terror," decided Kurtz's art supplies were actually bioterrorism weapons. Thus began an Orwellian stream of events in which FBI agents abducted Kurtz without charges, sealed off his entire block, and confiscated his computers, manuscripts, art supplies... and even his wife's body.

Like the case of Brandon Mayfield, the Muslim lawyer from Portland imprisoned for two weeks on the flimsiest of false evidence, Kurtz's case amply demonstrates the dangers posed by the USA PATRIOT Act coupled with government-nurtured terrorism hysteria.

Noah points out:

Kurtz is a University of Buffalo professor and artist specializing in biotechnology-inspired works: subversive remixes of big pharma corporate materials, kits to see if food is genetically modified. Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art, New York's New Museum, and the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC displayed his art. The New York Times and Washington Post, among others, have looked on it favorably.

Kurtz is facing a mountain of legal fees. Donations to his legal defense can be made here.

by TChris

Not every harm can be or should be remedied by the criminal justice system. This appears to be a case of a misguided prosecution.

A New Jersey man took his mentally disabled son to the beach. His son suffered a severe case of sunburn. The man had applied sunscreen to his son, but didn't apply enough.

The father was plainly careless, but not every act of negligence should be prosecuted as a crime. The man's decision to put sunscreen on his child suggests that he was trying to protect his son from harm. The father might need to be educated about the protective value of sunscreen, and a family court might want to consider whether this father should be allowed to take his son to the beach in the future, but -- unless there's substantially more to the story -- it is a misuse of the criminal justice system to prosecute a man who not only lacked the intent to harm his child but took affirmative steps to prevent that harm.

Now here's a cushy job. Being retained as a lawyer to attend court proceedings with the defendant's parents and explain to them what's going on. Of course, it's not just any case and any parents. It's the case of Michael Jackson and it is his father who has hired a Beverly Hills lawyer to sit in court with him and his wife and then translate the proceedings for them.

Hey, if anyone knows Kobe's parents, we're available.

Bump and Update: Terry Nichols has been convicted of 161 counts of first degree murder, conspiracy and arson. The jury deliberated only four hours. He will now face a death penalty proceeding before the same jury. We'll be talking about it on MSNBC's Abrams Report today (6 pm ET) . (Correction: Big news in Kobe Bryant case, our Nichols segment is cancelled and we'll be talking about Kobe instead. )

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Original Post

Bump and Update: The defense closed today in the Terry Nichols trial. Defense Attorney Barbara Bergman attacked the Government's case:

"This is a case about manipulation, betrayal and overreaching," Bergman said. "People who are still unknown assisted Timothy McVeigh."....Bergman reminded jurors of dozens of witnesses who testified they saw McVeigh with others, including a stocky, dark-haired man depicted in an FBI sketch and known only as John Doe No. 2, in the weeks before the bombing. Witnesses said the others did not resemble Nichols.

"The state has jumped over a lot of holes in the case. The state has to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt and they haven't." Bergman attacked scientific evidence presented by prosecutors during 29 days of testimony. The evidence included the discovery of ammonium nitrate crystals on a piece of plywood that was part of the Ryder truck that delivered the bomb.

If only Al Gore had been this passionate during his campaign--here's the text of his latest prepared speech -- he says Rice, Rumsfeld, Tenet, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and intelligence chief Stephen Cambone should resign. He just trashes President Bush--and says our country is at risk every day that Rumsfeld remains as head of the Defense Department.

He's absolutely eloquent.

Update: You can watch the video at C-Span here.

A Kentucky proseuctor has been suspended following a tape showing him having sex with a defendant in a drug case.

Erica L. French's lawyer, Kenneth Daniels, said they had a camera installed in her bedroom closet last week and taped her having sex with Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Robert W. Stevens.

Daniels said they decided to record her encounter because French, 29, had complained that Stevens had made inappropriate advances toward her during talks involving her cooperation with the prosecution of other defendants. According to Daniels, French said that Stevens told her that if she would have sex with him he would use his influence to withdraw her guilty plea and drop charges prior to her sentencing.

[link via How Appealing]

Trent Lott has another case of foot-in-mouth disease. Via Political Animal and Patridiot Watch, here are Lott's comments:

"Frankly, to save some American troops' lives or a unit that could be in danger, I think you should get really rough with them," Lott said. "Some of those people should probably not be in prisons in the first place."

When asked about the photo showing a prisoner being threatened with a dog, Lott was unmoved. "Nothing wrong with holding a dog up there unless it ate him," Lott said. "(They just) scared him with the dog."

Lott was reminded that at least one prisoner had died at the hands of his captors after a beating. "This is not Sunday school," he said. "This is interrogation. This is rough stuff."

Our eyes rolled when we heard last night about the new terror threats. We immediately wondered if this was a planned response by the Bush team to pick up his falling approval ratings if Monday's speech didn't do the trick. Then we wondered if we were being too cynical. We concluded that Bush is becoming like the little boy who cried wolf too many times. Wouldn't it be a shame if there really was a threat and none of us gave it any credence because his administration has lost so much credibility?

We decided not to report on the terror threat. Very few liberal bloggers have. But, apparently we're not the only one to have this "doubting Thomas" reaction that it's a political ploy. Steve Soto at Left Coaster says:

So let’s take inventory. Bush tanks his major speech on Iraq. Bush sees poll numbers that show new lows in his approval ratings. Bush makes a scapegoat of one of his leading generals in Iraq to cover for Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, and his vice president. So what is the Bush White House Standard Operating Procedure to shore up its gullible base and distract the public? Why, it must be time for another terrorist warning. And as usual, to show how credible and serious this threat is, it is based on no specified evidence or threat. ....the administration has no plans to raise the threat indicator......

We need a President we can trust. Bush doesn't make the cut. He isn't leading the country, he's on permanent damage control. He's sending Mueller and Ashcroft and Ridge out now to convince us. Forget it, we're no longer listening.

Are we a nation of voyeurs, of paranoids, or merely one of citizens with a growing skepticism of what our leaders tell us? Kareem Fahim examines our fascination with the video depicting the killing and decapitation of Nicholas Berg in Paranoid Nation.

By the thousands, the curious still combed the Internet for poor Nicholas Berg last week....some great bulk of surfers simply craved a few seconds of ghastly footage. Others were no doubt moved by Berg's compelling and sadly concluded story, and the very public manner in which his family was forced to bear his death. But another faction was on the lookout for more obscure clues, bits of information to support a story line steeped in intrigue and, frankly, implausibility....

It was a reasonable response to the times. Faced with a war many Americans find implausible, waged by a president who lost credibility following bad intelligence about weapons of mass destruction (provided by advisers with a plan for the world), this second faction blurred the line between healthy skepticism and paranoia. Many of those questioning the White House line on Berg were fringe, yes, but they fed on the doubts of a mainstream no longer sure what to believe. Last week, the U.S. either bombed a safe house for terrorists, or an Iraqi wedding. Ahmad Chalabi is either an asset and one of the fathers of the new Iraq, or a spy. And Donald Rumsfeld either authorized the kind of torture meted out at Abu Ghraib, or knew nothing.

Here's one historian's viewpoint:

As James Ridgeway in the Village Voice writes, this likely made Ashcroft gag.

[FBI translator Sibel] Edmonds claimed to have translated testimony in criminal and counter-intelligence cases involving different FBI field offices, going back into the late 1990s. .... Among the Farsi translators working for the FBI, she said, it was common knowledge that a longtime, highly regarded FBI "asset" placed in Afghanistan told the agency in April 2001 that he had information from his contacts there that bin Laden was planning a major attack, involving the use of planes, in one or another of big American cities—Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York among them. The agents who took down the information from the spy wrote up reports and sent them to their superiors. That was the last the agents heard of the matter.

The Justice Department has gagged her by designating her information classified--two years after the fact and using an arcane law. Here's some background: