by TChris

The Bush administration is hostile to traditional notions of oversight and accountability. TalkLeft has called attention -- most recently, here, here and here -- to the administration's efforts to persuade the Supreme Court that it should be able to detain both citizens and non-citizens indefinitely, without access to courts or lawyers and without judicial oversight, so long as the President thinks it is in the interest of national security to do so.

On Tuesday, the administration will again appear before the Supreme Court to argue against oversight -- this time, against both Congressional and judicial oversight of its duty to disclose the identities of persons outside the government who advised Dick Cheney's energy task force in 2001. The administration claims the Federal Advisory Committee Act that requires such discloslures doesn't apply to Cheney's task force, but argues that even if the law applies, it unconstitutionally intereferes with the President's ability to formulate proposed legislation.

So much for checks and balances. As those arguing against the administration point out, requiring an administration to disclose its outside advisors promotes open government -- a goal that might interfere with a desire for secrecy, but that doesn't inhibit the President's ability to craft legislative proposals.

Over at Mere Dicta (Boalt School of Law, Berkeley), Michael W. Anderson is discussing Yaser Hamdi and Jose Padilla in the context of the Constitution's Treason Clause. The basic issue:

I've heard little discussion about the relevance of the Treason Clause to the Hamdi and Padilla cases before the Court this week. Yet it seems to me to be very pertinent. The basic position of the Bush Administration and the Department of Justice goes something like this:

Bush & DoJ: "Enemy combatants" like Hamdi and Padilla are engaged in acts of war against the United States. The Executive Branch has the power to detain combatants in a war, and the Bill of Rights do not apply to those detained in the course of a war. This seems to make sense at first glance, since soldiers engaged in combat obviously need to be able to deal with enemy fighters unencumbered by warrants, courts, bail hearings and so on. So if you accept that the War on Terror falls under the rubric of a traditional war (a debatable point for several reasons, but a premise that I'll grant arguendo), this argument holds water from an intuitive standpoint.

But the issue is a very different one when the government is detaining American citizens for an extended period of time. Then, the notion that the Constitution gives no role to the judiciary in adjudicating acts of war runs flat into the text of the Treason Clause, Article III, Section 3, Clause 1:

Anderson's prediction is that Supreme Court may rule that Padilla's detention is illegal, while Hamdi's is not, and he explains why.

by TChris

An often overlooked casualty of our country's misguided war on drugs is prominently reported in today's New York Times: domestic asparagus farmers. Since the early 1990's, the United States has been subsidizing the asparagus industry in Peru, purportedly to encourage Peruvian farmers to grow asparagus instead of cocaine. The result has been disastrous for American asparagus growers, as companies like Del Monte move their asparagus processing plants from the United States to Peru, where they can buy cheaper asparagus and process it with less expensive workers.

Since 1991, this outsourcing of asparagus production has resulted in a 55 percent decline in Washington farmland devoted to asparagus growing, while asparagus imports from Peru have increased from 4 million pounds to 110 million pounds. The value of the asparagus processing industry in the United States has dropped by about 30 percent.

Can a program that hurts American farmers by subsidizing Peruvian farmers be justified by its reduction of cocaine production?

"The irony is that they didn't plow under the coke to plant asparagus in Peru," said John Bakker, executive director of the Michigan Asparagus Advisory Board. "If you look at that industry in Peru and where it's growing, it has nothing to do with coca leaf growers becoming normal farmers. Coca leaf is grown in the highlands. The asparagus is near sea level."

For those of you interested in the religion debate that's sweeping the blogosphere, we'll lay out the sides so everyone can weigh in. Atrios, of the most popular liberal blog, Eschaton, started if off with this post.

Following up with support or explanations of what he said is Tristero, who weighs in with Politics is One Thing, Religion Another and Patriot Boy.

Taking another point of view is Kevin Drum at Political Animal. Kevin also has an addendum with links to other bloggers weighing in on the issue. Also see, Patrick Nielsen Hayden of Electrolite. Jeanne of Body and Soul weighs in via letter to Atrios.

Those critical of Atrios' view include Melanie at Bump in the Beltway , Amy Sullivan , Magpie at Pacific Views , and Chuck Corrie.

We'll wrap up with Atrios's clarification and response here.

Delbert Meeks, 52, had lived on the streets for the past year. He has AIDS. His last felony, for a robbery, was in 1991. In 2000, he failed to register as a sex offender. This week, the California Supreme Court upheld his 27 year to life sentence on the failure to register charge, because it was his third strike.

Dissenting Justice Richard Sims was outraged. "What has become of our society?'' he asked in his dissent. "Why has 'compassion' become a dirty word in the law? I think that some years from now, law professors and law students will read this case and will ask, 'What on earth were they thinking?' "

Meeks' lawyer, Robert Wayne Gehring, said Friday he planned to appeal. "This offense did not involve any violence, damage or theft of property'' and would not have been charged as a third strike in some counties, such as San Francisco and Los Angeles, he said.

California's three-strikes law is the toughest in the nation:

More than half the 7,200 inmates now serving 25 to life under the law were convicted of nonviolent crimes, including burglary, drug offenses and shoplifting, as their third strike. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that a 50-to-life sentence for a Southern California man convicted of two thefts of videotapes, after a long series of nonviolent offenses, did not violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

California voters likely will have a chance to change the law this November. The proposed Amendment would require that the triggering offense for a three-strikes sentence to be a serious or violent felony.

As TChris wrote here:

One quarter of California prisoners are serving life terms under the three-strikes law, at a cost so far of about $8.1 billion. More than half that amount was spent to warehouse offenders whose third strike was not a violent crime. So the law is expensive, it wastes prison resources on people who don't deserve life sentences, and it seems to be implemented in a racially discriminatory manner. California, is that what you intended?

For more on three-strikes abuses, visit FACTS.

We'll start this open thread on The March for Women's Lives with the words of Jeanne D'Arc of Body and Soul:

....I also know that hardcore opposition to abortion (especially when combined with opposition to contraception) and a belief in the "rights" of fetuses kills women. And I'm tired of the word "pro-life" being hijacked by people with women's blood on their hands.

If you can spare some money, we recommend a donation to Planned Parenthood.

Britain is becoming a dangerous place for those concerned about civil liberties. First off, national ID card trials go into effect this week. The proposed penalty for a violation in ten years in jail. Here's more on that.

The Muslim community is concerned about profiling. The Government has agreed to exempt thousands of Muslim women from the photograph requirement.

The cards will cost £35 or between £70 and £80 for one combined with a driving licence or passport. They will contain name, age and date and will be linked to a national database which will contain information on criminal records, health details and social security information.

Civil liberties groups are set to condemn the proposals, which they say will put more power in the hands of the state and are likely to be technically unworkable. 'The public have serious and understandable concerns that the Government will simply not be able to handle the data they will be attempting to collect,' said Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty.

The Earl of Selborne, chairman of the Royal Society's influential science in society committee, said that the public should be aware of the dangers of ID cards. 'There has been a lack of public debate and there is a very real danger that we are sleepwalking into our technological future,' he said. 'But what if the cards also held data about our genetic disposition to specific diseases, or revealed information about our lifestyles that affect health, such as how much we are overweight or how much alcohol we are drinking, updated daily. 'These are technically possible in the future, so we should be discussing whether they are desirable.'

And then, check out these stories.....Britain is institituting a program under which gamblers will face addiction checks. And one town in Britain has decided to interrogate asylum seekers so as to prevent them from settling there.

We'll play this meme:

"Flashlights, in particular, piqued his curiosity, which sometimes landed him in trouble."

--American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing, Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck, Regan Books, 2001.

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.

SK Bubba has a good post up on the unreliability of electronic voting. He adds:

Look, I'm a professional software developer with over 25 years experience. I work with the same technology used in these voting machines. I have seen some of the source code and database design. I have reviewed the Johns Hopkins study of the systems. There are problems. If an aeronautics engineer or experienced pilot told you there were problems with a particular aircraft's design and that they wouldn't fly on it, would you? It's the same thing. And you don't have to be an expert to know that a paper receipt and audit trail are just plain common sense. Anyway, if you vote in a precinct that uses these machines I once again strongly encourage you to request a paper ballot. That's what Mr. Michael Manning did according to the article above. Smart guy.

Skippy has a wrap-up of newspaper editorials praising the publication of the Dover photos.

American citizen Jose Padilla has been held as an "enemy combatant" in a military brig in South Carolina since June, 2002--almost two years. In that time, he has been allowed to write his mother once:

"In the name of God the merciful the mercy giver," Mr. Padilla wrote, "I have been allowed to write you a card and just letting you know I'm doing fine and in good health. Do not believe what is being said about me in the news it is untrue and I pray that we can have a reunion. Love your son Pucho." Pucho was Mr. Padilla's childhood nickname.

That card was the sum and substance of Mr. Padilla's communication with the outside world for about 21 months.

In a ten page (internet length) article, the New York Times examines Padilla's life (Brooklyn born, Chicago raised) and his case, and for the first time, is able to interview his family, friends, ex-wife and second wife:

Say hello to Mullah Bob, aka New York criminal defense lawyer (and our good pal) Bob Fogelnest, who is blogging from Kabul, where he is spending two months,

.. mentoring and supervising a staff of six Afghan criminal defense lawyers and participating in training programs designed to help improve the quality of justice and bring the Rule of Law to this war torn country.

He has two entries up so far. The first is about the murder trial of Fareed, here's the opening snippet: