Is the tide changing? A new poll shows that 2/3 of North Carolinians favor a moratorium on the death penalty.

Nearly two-thirds of adults surveyed in a recent poll said that North Carolina should put a two-year moratorium on executions to study its fairness. The survey, commissioned by the North Carolina Council of Churches, also found majority support in nearly every demographic group examined, including men (64 percent to 30 percent), Republicans (55 percent to 39 percent) and those who said they favored the death penalty (59 percent to 35 percent).

Matt Taibbi at Media Channel.Org examines the impact of MTV's Rock the Vote, and concludes:

More than ever, the efforts of corporate-funded, youth-oriented media are part of the scenery in the televised road show of American presidential politics. But despite the increasing onslaught of advertising and celebrity events, young people are more than ever refusing to participate in the electoral process.

Matt is covering the Kerry Campaign for Rolling Stone. We really urge young people to particpate. Not only is political involvement fun, it offers an opportunity to have your voice heard, to make an impact (if not a difference) and it provides a sense of community spirit. It's also a great way to meet people. Complaining about the system via on-line forums and blogs is fine to a point, but it's no substitute for the real thing--getting your a** out there and doing something about it. As for exercising your right to vote, we have one piece of advice: Use it or lose it.

The first lawsuit against the U.S. military for damages for torture at Abu Ghraib prison has been filed by an Iraqi (who is also a Swedish citizen) in Michigan, where he is now staying with his mother and relatives:

An Iraqi-born Swedish citizen claiming to have been tortured at Abu Ghraib prison is seeking more than $100,000 from the American military. A Michigan lawyer filed a claim with the Army last Wednesday on behalf of the man, identified in the filing only as Mr. Saleh. "Hopefully we'll reach an amicable settlement, and if not we'll seek relief in federal court," said the lawyer, Shereef H. Akeel.

Mr. Saleh was interviewed over the weekend but is no longer speaking with the media. This article says he is the naked hooded prisoner in the photo with Lynndie England pointing at his genitals. Here's his story:

Saleh said he remembers the names of his tormentors and plans to file lawsuits against them. The Army has already charged two of them, Cpl. Charles A. Graner and Staff Sgt. Ivan Frederick II. Besides Graner and Frederick, Saleh recalls others only by partial names or nicknames: a sergeant named Schneider, another named Pearl, and "Nicolai" - one of the intelligence officers who he says directed the torture in Cellblock I/A, where he spent all but one month of his time in Abu Ghraib. "One of them wore glasses and one urinated on me," Saleh said Saturday at the office of an Iraqi human rights organization.

Saleh said he had been tortured at Abu Ghraib before under Saddam, when he refused to serve in the military, and his treatment by Americans was way worse:

The LA Times reports on the sworn testimony of the prison guards at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. More grisly details have emerged.

First, the latest from SPC Lynndie England:

England told investigators that guards forced detainees to crawl on their hands and knees on broken glass, threw a nerf football at handcuffed prisoners and forced male detainees to wear women's "maxi pads."

She also said Graner, with whom she is now pregnant, applied needle and thread to prisoners after beating them. "Cpl. Graner would personally stitch up detainees if the wound weren't too bad," she said. "He would take pictures of his work. One particular incident Cpl. Graner ran a former Iraqi general into a wall and split his lip. Cpl. Graner stitched up his lip."

Next, remember this photo of a dead Iraqi?

Here's what happened to him:

This article appeared in Saturday's Washington Post:

President Bush's uncle, Jonathan J. Bush, is a top executive at Riggs Bank, which this week agreed to pay a record $25 million in civil fines for violations of law intended to thwart money laundering. Jonathan Bush, who is a major fundraiser for his nephew, was appointed in 2000 to run Riggs Investment Management Co. His association with Riggs began when he headed J. Bush & Co., a New Haven, Conn., company he created in 1970 and built to offer advice on money management.

David Sirota, who has his own blog and also writes for American Progress, reports that the Riggs Bank handles a lot of Saudi money:

According to the 5/14/04 New York Times, Federal regulators fined the Riggs National Corporation, the parent company of Riggs Bank, $25 million yesterday for "failing to report suspicious activity, the largest penalty ever assessed against a domestic bank in connection with money laundering. The fine stems from Riggs's failure over at least the last two years to actively monitor suspect financial transfers through Saudi Arabian accounts held by the bank." The 5/14/04 Wall Street Journal reported that of particular concern, Riggs failed to monitor "tens of millions of dollars in cash withdrawals from accounts related to the Saudi Arabian embassy," including "suspicious incidents involving dozens of sequentially numbered cashier's checks and international drafts written by Saudi officials, including Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan." According to the 4/18/04 Washington Post, Saudi Prince Bandar's wife, Princess Haifa al-Faisal, "may have used a Riggs account to donate money to a charity that then gave some of it to the Sept. 11 terrorists."

Via Agonist: Charm school time for U.S. soldiers:

At the Camp War Horse detention centre in Baguba, north of Baghdad, it is a surreal scene: US soldiers handing out cash to freed prisoners along with a note saying "You have not been mistreated."

Happy birthday to Matthew Yglesias who turns 23 tomorrow and describes his eventful year:

It's been a pretty eventful twelve months, from the Spurs heroic victory over the Lakers in the Conference Finals right after I turned 22 to their tragic defeat in the Conference Semis right before I turned 23. Perhaps more importantly, I graduated from college, saw a good swath of Italy, moved to a new city, acquired some new friends, and started a new job. More thoughts later.

Patrick at Electrolite explains why "Senator Inhofe is a disgrace to the Senate, to his party, and to the United States of America."

Kevin Drum at Political Animal wants to know more about Joseph Darby, the soldier who blew the whistle on the abuse at Abu Ghraib.

TomPaine.com has a great quote today:

"I don't care what the international lawyers say, we are going to kick some ass." President George W. Bush, Sept. 11, 2001 (quoted by Richard A. Clarke, Against All Enemies) .

102 inmated died in a prison fire in Honduras yesterday. Authorities say the fire was caused by an electrical short. It's the second Honduran prison fire causing dozens of deaths in a year. Some are claiming foul play:

...family members of the dead were quick to accuse the government of foul play in its increasingly violent crackdown on the country's burgeoning gang culture. The fire broke out in the prison in San Pedro Sula, near the Guatemalan border, in the early hours. According to one survivor, the fire started at around 1.30am, a full two hours before uniformed officers arrived and began opening up cells to allow the inmates to escape the flames and smoke.

Most of the victims died of suffocation in their cells. Rescue workers found 101 corpses. A 102nd victim died on the way to hospital. ...It was the worst prison disaster in Honduran history but far from the only one. Just over a year ago, a riot and fire at El Porvenir prison in La Ceiba, also involving violent gang members, led to 68 deaths. On that occasion, one group of prisoners started a fire deliberately, which in turn provoked the authorities to storm in with guns blazing. An official report blamed most of those deaths on the government.

Via American Progress and Daily Kos:

GONZALES SAYS ADMINISTRATION IS A 'STRONG SUPPORTER OF GENEVA CONVENTIONS: "At the same time, President Bush recognized that our nation will continue to be a strong supporter of the Geneva treaties. The president also reaffirmed our policy in the United States armed forces to treat Al Qaeda and Taliban detainees at Guantánamo Bay humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in keeping with the principles of the Third Geneva Convention."
- Alberto Gonzales, 5/15/04 (NYT Op-Ed)

Versus

GONZALES SAYS GENEVA RESTRICTIONS ARE OBSOLETE: "The nature of the new war places a high premium on other factors, such as the ability to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists and their sponsors in order to avoid further atrocities against American civilians...In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions."
- Alberto Gonzales, 1/25/02 (Memorandum to the President, as reported in Newsweek 5/16/04)

Unless we're thinking about a different memo, the memo from Gonzales was leaked and written about extensively in the mainstream media in early 2002, as was Colin Powell's disagreement with the Administration's intention to withhold Geneva Convention protections from Taliban fighters as well as al Qaeda. There are 59 news articles on Lexis.com discussing the memo between 1/28/02 and 2//8/02.

We're not sure why Newsweek thinks this is a scoop. Originally, Bush was considering withholding the Geneva protections from both the Taliban and al-Qaeda detainees. Gonzales agreed with that approach but wrote Bush a memo in which he advised Bush that Colin Powell disagreed with the policy:

The U.S. is suing Greenpeace over an 1872 law. Trial began today. We've written about the background of the case and criticized the Government for it several times--calling it an example of the Justice Dept.'s "out of control prosecution policy" and warning that:

If successful, will have an extreme chilling effect on the right of all protest groups to aggressively exercise their First Amendment rights.

Never before has our government criminally prosecuted an entire organization for the free speech activities of its supporters.

The basic facts:

Three miles off the Florida coast in April of 2002, two Greenpeace activists clambered from an inflatable rubber speedboat onto a cargo ship. They were detained before they could unfurl a banner, spent the weekend in custody and two months later were sentenced to time served for boarding the ship without permission. It was a routine act of civil disobedience until, 15 months after the incident, federal prosecutors in Miami indicted Greenpeace itself for authorizing the boarding. The group says the indictment represents a turning point in the history of American dissent.

More background here. Today's trial news is here.

A bomb went off near a U.S. convoy in Iraq today that contained nerve gas.

A roadside bomb containing deadly sarin nerve agent exploded near a U.S. military convoy, the U.S. military said Monday. It was believed to be the first confirmed finding of any of the banned weapons upon which the United States based its case for the Iraq war. Two people were treated for ''minor exposure,'' but no serious injuries were reported.

The deadly chemical was inside an artillery shell dating to the Saddam Hussein era that had been rigged as a bomb in Baghdad, said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the chief military spokesman in Iraq....[A spokesman for the Iraq Survey Group] believed that insurgents who rigged the artillery shell as a bomb didn't know it contained the nerve agent, and that the dispersal of the nerve agent from such a rigged device was very limited....It was unclear if the sarin shell was from chemical rounds that the United Nations had tagged and marked for destruction before the U.S. invasion.

Update: Weapons inspectors say it's not a sign that Iraq had stockpiled WMD.

by TChris

Principles come with a price. When Kamala Harris ran for district attorney in San Francisco, she promised she would never seek the death penalty. Now some of her supporters have abandoned her because she intends to keep that promise.

Harris isn't seeking the death penalty for David Hill, a 21-year-old accused of killing a police officer. Some of the police unions that endorsed Harris during her campaign -- apparently not realizing that her campaign pledge applied to all defendants, including those accused of killing cops -- have asked California's attorney general to take over the case and to pursue Hill's execution.

Harris might expect to find some support from other politicians (who should know how important it is to keep campaign promises) but it's rare to find a politician who doesn't want to jump on the death bandwagon in a high pofile case involving a sympathetic victim. Sen. Dianne Feinstein says she might not have endorsed Harris if she knew that Harris' pledge didn't make an exception for cop killers. In Feinstein's mind, it seems, the victim's occupation should determine whether his murderer is executed. Sen. Barbara Boxer has asked federal prosecutors to step in.

Even death-happy John Ashcroft is unlikely to order federal intervention in a case lacking an obvious federal interest. Nor is the California attorney general's office likely to intrude in a local prosecution without being invited by the local prosecutor. The decision belongs to Harris; it's the kind of decision voters elected her to make. Harris will continue to face criticism for standing up for her principles, but her principles got her elected. She shouldn't abandon them -- or the people who voted for her -- to silence the complaints of pro-death forces.

by TChris

Abdel-Zahraa Othman, a/k/a Izzadine Saleem, was killed in a Baghdad car bombing. Othman was serving as president of the Iraqi Governing Council. He is the second member of the Council to be assassinated.