I've been offline today. Here's an open thread while I get caught up with the news. All topics welcome.

A new Pew Report shows support for the death penalty for convicted murderers has dropped to 55%, the lowest level since the 1970's. Among the reasons:

...a steep drop in the incidence of violent crime, and greater attention to wrongful convictions, which has led to more than 1,300 convicts being exonerated through DNA evidence, revelations of faulty forensic work, or other means. (Recent reports of prolonged executions and the difficulties many states have had in procuring drugs for lethal injections also may be factors in shifting public opinion.)

Since 1973, the U.S. has executed 1,373 people. According to the National Registry of Exonerations, 1,339 people have been exonerated since 1989, 106 of whom were sentenced to death. Only 1/3 of the exonerations involved DNA evidence.

All but two of the executions were at the state level. The highest number of executions: Texas, with 512. After that: Virginia and Oklahoma (110 each), and then Florida, Missouri and Alabama.

The House Intelligence Committee's 6,300 page report remains classified, but the Washington Post has details.

1. The CIA lied to Congress
2. More "enhanced interrogation techniques" were used than previously disclosed
3. The torture techniques did not result in valuable information

Via NY Magazine:

One previously undisclosed technique involved the the CIA dunking detainees in tubs of ice water in a method similar to waterboarding. Khalid Sheik Mohammed's nephew, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali [aka Ammar al-Baluchi] was subjected to it at a CIA black site near Kabul in 2003. According to the Post, "CIA interrogators forcibly kept his head under the water while he struggled to breathe and beat him repeatedly, hitting him with a truncheon-like object and smashing his head against a wall, officials said." He is still in Guantanamo Bay.

[More...]

A busy day. Here's an open thread, all topics welcome.

My picks: Connecticut +6½ over Michigan State, Kentucky -2 over Michigan.

Open Thread.

My picks: Dayton +10 over Florida, Arizona -2½ over Wisconsin.

Go Gators!

Open Thread.

Defense lawyers for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev filed a 23 page motion for discovery Friday. You can read it here.

The motion, which seeks a lot of information about Tamerlan and the family's history, is an attempt to get the Government to turn over documents that could be used as mitigation evidence in the death penalty phase to show Dzhokhar fell under the spell of his over-powering brother. The defense says it is asking for:

...any evidence tending to show that Tamerlan (Tsarnaev) supplied the motivation, planning, and ideology behind the Boston Marathon attack, and that his young brother acted under his domination and control … .”

The motion doesn't claim the FBI tried to get Tamerlan to be an informant. It says it has information from its interviews of family members that the FBI met with Tamerlan before his trip to Russia on more than one occasion and that the family said the FBI tried to get Tamerlan to be an informant. It's trying to find out if the the Government is in possession of information that supports the family's statements. [More...]

My picks: Connecticut +2 over Iowa State, Louisville -4 over Kentucky, Michigan -3 over Tennessee, Michigan State -2 over Virginia.

Open Thread.

My picks: UCLA +5 over Florida, Arizona -7½ over San Diego State, Dayton +3 over Stanford, Baylor +3½ over Wisconsin.

Go Gators!

Open thread, sort of.

I'm scared to death:

UCLA is on fire right now. The Bruins have beaten five NCAA tournament teams in their last five games, two of which are in the Sweet 16 (Arizona and Stanford). Florida has been great all season and the Gators have also recently beaten two Sweet 16 teams (Kentucky and Tennessee). But anybody who saw the three-game stretch of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Albany knows the Gators are far from the dominant force you’d expect a no. 1 overall seed to be.

Florida’s bread-and-butter is its defense, but UCLA’s offense has the weapons to defeat it. Anderson is a real problem, and Florida will be forced to work hard to neutralize him. Anderson alone might not be enough to top the Gators, but when you add Adams’s 17.4 points per game, Powell’s 11.5 points per game, and the versatility of the Wear twins, the Gators will have their hands full. If the Bruins can find success against Florida’s defense, they’ll force a Gator team that is susceptible to scoring droughts to keep up with them, and there’s no telling how that might turn out.Maybe UCLA doesn’t pull out the win, but the signs point to this being a great game, and the Bruins could be a bounce or two away from ending Florida’s 28-game winning streak[.]

That seems a fair assessment. Open Thread.

I'm really nervous about the Gators tomorrow. UCLA has a great offense.

Open Thread.

In the 1997 case Boerne v. Flores, where the Supreme Court decided that the Religious Restoration and Freedom Act exceeded the Congres' Section 5 enforcement power as applied to the states, Justice John Paul Stevens issued a little remarked concurrence in the result. Justice Stevens wrote:

In my opinion, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA) is a “law respecting an establishment of religion” that violates the First Amendment to the Constitution.

If the historic landmark on the hill in Boerne happened to be a museum or an art gallery owned by an atheist, it would not be eligible for an exemption from the city ordinances that forbid an enlargement of the structure. Because the landmark is owned by the Catholic Church, it is claimed that RFRA gives its owner a federal statutory entitlement to an exemption from a generally applicable, neutral civil law. Whether the Church would actually prevail under the statute or not, the statute has provided the Church with a legal weapon that no atheist or agnostic can obtain. This governmental preference for religion, as opposed to irreligion, is forbidden by the First Amendment. Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38, 52—55 (1985).