by TChris

Will Howard Stern deliver the presidency to John Kerry? He says he will.

Some might dismiss this as bluster, but Stern's words should send a shiver up Karl Rove's spine. Stern has a record of successful election-year activism; political observers in New York and New Jersey remember how his on-air endorsements delivered key votes to George Pataki and Christine Todd Whitman in past gubernatorial races.

What's more, although Stern's approximately 8.5 million listeners are often dismissed as overgrown frat boys, they might more accurately be called swing voters. They are overwhelmingly white and male, many are well educated and well off, and they vote. And millions of them listen to Stern's show in battleground states -- Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, Missouri, Tennessee, Florida -- where the election will be decided.

Whether it's the Bush administration's FCC attacking Stern, or Stern attacking the President, the publicity has been good to Stern. He's number 1 in LA among 25 to 54 year old listeners, a position he hasn't occupied since 1995. If he can influence all those new listeners (and the old ones) to go to the polls to cast a vote for Kerry, more power to him!

Via The Agonist: Here is the link to the text of the Taguba Report:

The report was prepared by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba on alleged abuse of prisoners by members of the 800th Military Police Brigade at the Abu Ghraib Prison in Baghdad. It was ordered by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of Joint Task Force-7, the senior U.S. military official in Iraq, following persistent allegations of human rights abuses at the prison.

Our prior description of it is here.

Comment spamming by those promoting websites selling controlled substances and anatomical enhancements is getting out of control here at TalkLeft. We spend hours manually deleting them. The more time we spend deleting spam, the less time we have to blog. We have downloaded various scripts and read the instructions for closing comments on Movable Type blogs on posts older than 21 days and for installing MT Blacklist and we might as well be reading Greek. We've e-mailed a few web designers seeking to pay them to install both on TalkLeft, and gotten no response. So, we're putting out a call. We'll pay you through paypal. Just tell us how much and what info you need.

by TChris

Americans horrified by our treatment of prisoners in Iraq shouldn't forget the abuses that prisoners endure at home.

A guard involved in the alleged sexual assault of a Vermont inmate in his cell at a Kentucky prison has been fired, said an official for the privately operated prison.

Vermont Corrections Commissioner Stephen Gold said Monday that the inmate was inside a segregated detention unit at the Marion facility in St. Mary, Ky., when a video surveillance camera recorded a guard entering the man's cell and leaving 10 minutes later. ... Gold confirmed he was told the inmate might have been handcuffed at the time the sexual assault took place.

by TChris

Don't expect to see Al Gore anchoring the news; he isn't hip enough for the demographic he hopes to reach with the cable news channel that he and a group of investors just purchased.

Mr. Gore said the programming would not carry a heavy political message but would be influenced by what younger viewers wanted to watch. He said the intent was to provide an alternative to networks owned by large corporations.

Who would have thought that military defense lawyers would be compared to William Kuntsler? In the case of those defending the Guantanamo detainees, the praise is well-justified:

The Pentagon wants the military commissions, the first for the United States since the end of World War II, to be seen as fair at home and abroad. But the military lawyers, in playing the kind of attack-the-system role that William Kunstler was known for, have become widely quoted around the world and acclaimed by some as heroes after appearances in London and Australia in which they denounced the tribunals.

Last month, an audience at Oxford University in England was stunned, witnesses said, when two of the lawyers, Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift of the Navy and Maj. Mark Bridges of the Army, said the tribunals were not capable of producing a fair and just result....Murray Wesson, a Rhodes Scholar from South Africa who attended, wrote on his Web log: "What I was unprepared for, given that these were, after all, military lawyers, was how critical of the process they were. Indeed, they went so far as to describe the tribunals as `fundamentally flawed' and insinuated that they would not amount to fair trials."

The lawyers are right and we're proud of them. Now we just need the American media to pay as much attention to them as has the international press.

Via Wonkette, who found it on Craigslist:

Recently Passed the Bar or Awaiting Results? Major TV Network Seeks. . . Charismatic young lawyers for a new reality-based LEGAL show. Compete in mock trials/courtroom showdowns on prime-time TV. The last lawyer standing wins a lucrative job at a law firm. . .

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It's like "The Apprentice," but featuring contestants who even more craven and obnoxious!

The announcement has since been deleted from Craig's List.

Dave Neiwert of Orcinus has a compelling piece on the Oklahoma City Bombing, the Terry Nichols trial and how quickly America forgets. Lots of stuff on John Doe 2 and the missing leg. Were there others? We don't know, but we question why the Government never seemed to care.

More Neiwart on the conspiracist theory. More from us. Some curious photos.

Joe Conason, writing in Salon, says:

The "swift boat" veterans attacking John Kerry's war record are led by veteran right-wing operatives using the same vicious techniques they used against John McCain four years ago....Behind the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are veteran corporate media consultant and Texas Republican activist Merrie Spaeth, who is listed as the group's media contact; eternal Kerry antagonist and Dallas attorney John E. O'Neill, law partner of Spaeth's late husband, Tex Lezar; and retired Rear Adm. Roy Hoffman, a cigar-chomping former Vietnam commander once described as "the classic body-count guy" who "wanted hooches destroyed and people killed."

Conason will be a fixture on Al Franken's Air America radio show on Friday afternoons at 2pm ET.

From a press release of the National Network for Immigrants and Refugees Rights (NIRR)

Representatives Luis Gutierrez (IL-D), Bob Menendez (NJ-D) and Senator Kennedy (MA-D) today introduced the Democrats’ immigration reform proposal, “Safe, Orderly, Legal Visas and Enforcment Act of 2004” or “SOLVE.” Unlike the immigration proposal outlined by President Bush in January, this proposal came in the form of a substantive legislative bill that addresses legalization, family reunification and an immigrant worker program with access to permanent residency.

The new bill proposes access to legal status through “earned” legalization for undocumented immigrant workers currently in the U.S. It also specifies immigration law changes to address the backlog of potential immigrants seeking visas and would remove the barriers to visa applications, such as the “3 and 10 year re-entry bars” that have been added during the last decade.

Here are more specifics:

A memorial was held last night and today at Kent State University to honor the four students killed and nine injured at Kent State University in Ohio on May 4, 1970:

Thirty-four years ago, four students were shot and killed by the National Guard at the KSU campus. They were protesting the Vietnam war. The memorial started Monday night to honor the four students killed and nine others injured May 4, 1970. The May 4th Task Force, students who are putting the memorial together, said this year's theme is the Patriot Act.

The kick off to this year's remembrance began last night. At 11 p.m., students marched with candles to the site where the students were shot. At noon, students will detail what led up to the shooting along with ringing the victory bell at 12:24 p.m. 15 times in honor of those who lost their lives in Kent State and Jackson State that year. WEWS reported many students believe this year's memorial is extra special because of the war on terror and the loss of troops in Iraq.

Here's a first hand account of the day at Kent State, from a former student, and the roomate of the student who took the Pulitzer prize-winning picture above.

I remember where I was that day....I had just returned home from college in Ann Arbor to begin my summer job at the local record store. The news spread like wildfire, even without internet, email and cable tv. We all wore black armbands at work the entire next week and the music we played in the store reflected our anger. Four years later (30 years ago today) May 4, 1974, I was sworn in as a lawyer to the Colorado bar and began my career as a defender of constitutional rights and the accused. Without a doubt, the draft lottery, the Vietnam war, LBJ, Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon were factors in my choice, and I'm proud to say I've never once looked back to question it.

In 1970, Neil Young wrote "Four Dead in Ohio."

Tin soldiers and Nixon's comin'.
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drummin'.
Four dead in Ohio.

Gotta get down to it.
Soldiers are gunning us down.
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her and
Found her dead on the ground?
How can you run when you know?

Here's an excellent reminder of why we shouldn't forget Kent State, written on May 4, 2000, 30 years later--with a prescient message:

by TChris

More fallout from the abuse of Iraqi prisoners:

Iraq's U.S.-appointed human rights minister said Tuesday he had resigned to protest abuses of Iraqi detainees by American guards, and the interior minister demanded that Iraqi officials be allowed to participate in the running of prisons.

The human rights minister, Abdul-Basat al-Turki, said that he told Paul Bremer about human rights violations last December, but says he never imagined that the abuses were as bad as those depicted in pictures taken at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison.

In response to complaints about abusive treatment, the military has discontinued the practice of placing hoods over the heads of Iraqis who are being arrested or detained.