by TChris

Congressman John Hostettler (R-IN) had one of those forgetful moments that lead to trouble. As Hostettler passed through a security checkpoint at an airport in Louisville, alert TSA screeners noticed that he had a 9-mm handgun in his carry-on bag.

Others have been arrested (sometimes unnecessarily) for attempting to smuggle banned (albeit less deadly) items onto an airplane, but the Congressman was "briefly detained." He explained that he grabbed the wrong bag and forgot that the bag contained a gun. An honest mistake, no doubt, but one that would cause most people more grief than a brief detention. Moral of the story: It pays to be a Congressman.

Discredited Oklahoma chemist Joyce Gilchrist is back in the news. We last wrote about her here, reporting that 11 people have been executed based on her work.

The news today: the Associated Press has obtained a confidential police memo that shows:

Gilchrist doctored trial evidence and may have destroyed hair samples that could have exonerated a man now on death row....The memo said Gilchrist not only altered her own case notes, but "there is compelling circumstantial evidence" that she "either intentionally lost or destroyed" crime-scene hairs used to convict Curtis Edward McCarty of murder so the evidence could not be retested.The Oklahoma City Police Department memo, written by then-Deputy Chief Bill Citty to then-Chief M.T. Berry, is dated Sept. 21, 2001, and details 14 days of deliberations and testimony heard by a department review board.

You can read more news reports about Gilchrist in the Hall of Shame.

The FEC has fined the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign $90,000. for using a separate, secret bank account which raised $11 million and spent $13 million on the recount - they never disclosed the money to the FEC.

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) has entered into a conciliation agreement with Bush-Cheney 2000, Inc. resulting from the failure to report to the FEC receipts and disbursements associated with its recount activities. Bush – Cheney 2000, Inc. has agreed to pay a $90,000 civil penalty. According to the conciliation agreement, Bush – Cheney 2000 held a bank account designated “Bush-Cheney 2000, Inc. – Media.” After the November 7, 2000 presidential election, the Committee redesignated this bank account “Bush-Cheney 2000, Inc. – Recount Fund” and used the account to raise funds and pay costs associated with the recount. However, the Committee failed to include that activity in disclosure reports filed with the Commission.

Bush- Cheney 2000 admitted that the failure to report the receipts and disbursements associated with its recount activity and to properly itemize them as “other receipts” and “other disbursements” violated the Act. The committee agreed to cease and desist from violating these sections of the Act and agreed to submit a miscellaneous filing to the FEC that discloses and itemizes, where appropriate, its recount receipts and disbursements.

More violence in Baghdad:

Insurgents fired 12 mortars into Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison Tuesday, killing 22 detainees and injuring 92, U.S. military officials said....All of those killed or injured in the mortar attack on the U.S.-run prison were security detainees, said Col. Jill Morgenthaler, meaning they were held for suspected involvement in the anti-U.S. insurgency or remnants of Saddam Hussein's ousted Baathist regime.

The world-class appellate law blog, How Appealing has moved to it's new home. Please update your bookmarks. And congrats to Howard Bashman for getting paid to blog!

Writer Dave Cullen has the article to read today in Slate on the 5th anniversay of Columbine. He has a fascinating portrait of Klebold and Harris, and says, "At last we know why the Columbine killers did it." You can read more over at Dave's blog, Conclusive Evidence. Dave emailed us earlier he had been "talking to the fbi well into the night."

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Bump and Update:

You can listen to the oral arguments here.

The Supreme Court heard arguments in two cases today involving so-called "enemy combatants" held at Guantanamo Bay. The core question:

Can these foreign-born prisoners, held outside U.S. borders, use U.S. courts to try win their freedom?

Georgetown Law Prof and civil liberties expert David Cole, writing in the New York Times, says:

These suggestions that noncitizens have less right to be free than citizens are ill advised. Some provisions of the Constitution do explicitly limit their protections to United States citizens — the right to vote and the right to run for Congress or president, for example. The Bill of Rights, however, does not distinguish between citizens and noncitizens. It extends its protections in universal language, to "persons," "people" or "the accused." The framers considered these rights to be God-given natural rights, and God didn't give them only to persons holding American passports.

When one considers the specific right at issue in the enemy combatant cases — the right not to be locked up without a fair process — there is also no good reason to differentiate between citizens and foreigners. From the prisoner's standpoint, every human being has the same interest in not being locked up erroneously or arbitrarily. And from the government's perspective, the security interest in detaining terrorists is the same whether they are citizens or not.

A hearing is ongoing in Terry Nichols' state trial on murder charges over the defense's Motion to Dismiss for withholding of evidence by the prosecution.

Monday, government witnesses testified that the video tape referred to in Secret Service Logs depicting two persons exiting the Ryder truck at the federal building just before the explosion did not exist.

The Judge is expected to rule late today. Background is here and here.

David Neiwert of Orcinus writes today on the Apocalyptic Asymmetry of April 19.

Update: Michael Fortier testified today in Nichols' trial.

A New York federal judge Monday refused to throw out revised charges against lawyer Lynne Stewart, who will stand trial in May on charges of improperly aiding her former client, blind Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman. The defense had argued the charges were brought vindictively after the Judge had dismissed terrrorism charges against her. Michael Tigar, Stewart's lawyer, remains upbeat:

Stewart's lawyer, Michael Tigar, said he was pleased that the judge in his ruling noted that the government might have a more difficult task proving its case than it did with charges he tossed out last year. Koeltl said prosecutors must prove that Stewart knew about or intended to support a conspiracy to kill or kidnap people in a foreign country. "He laid out the path that the government is going to have to try to take," Tigar said. "Now, we look forward to getting a jury and talking about these things."

Our prior coverage of the case can be accessed here.

by TChris

Freedom of association is great for the Elks or the Knights of Columbus, but when young men want to hang out together in suburban Chicago, they'd better not give themselves a group name like "Satan Disciples."

A DuPage County judge on Monday banned more than a dozen members of a west suburban gang from hanging out with each other in a landmark Illinois decision that law enforcement officials said gives them a powerful weapon to combat gangs.

Telling people they can't associate with each other publicly is indeed a "powerful weapon," but its destructive force does more damage to the Constitution than to undesirable gang behavior.

The latest former politician to blast the Victims' Rights Amendment is none other than former Congressman Bob Barr:

The circus is back in town. Every two years, as we roll around to another grand Olympics of federal, state and local elections, the hopper in Congress begins to fill up with dangerous and unnecessary amendments to our U.S. Constitution.

...In the American political system, the Constitution was meant to operate like people who freeze their credit cards in a block of ice. That is, when faced with supremely important and emotional decisions involving things like the censorship of unpopular ideas or the seizure of firearms, the Constitution makes us walk to the corner and take a time out.

As to the Victims' Rights Amendment, Barr correctly notes:

Should Congress be allowed to overrule Supreme Court decisions it doesn't like? Congressman Ron Lewis (R-KY) has introduced such a bill, "The Congressional Accountability for Judicial Activism Act." Today, the Las Vegas Review Journal calls it a "very bad idea."

Under this law, the Constitution would essentially be interpreted to reflect popular opinion -- a scary thought, given that many Americans confronted with an unlabeled copy of the Bill of Rights would likely consider many of the scribblings dangerous and subversive. Our system is designed to insulate federal judges from the transitory whims of the mob. Rep. Lewis' proposal would obliterate that important safeguard and leave our rights and freedoms at the mercy of public sentiment.

In fact, Congress already has many options when it comes to reining in activist judges. It has the power to impeach federal judges who egregiously overextend their authority. It has the power to pass legislation -- or, along with state legislatures, amend the Constitution -- to addresses the concerns of the judiciary. And finally, Congress can simply refuse to confirm judicial candidates deemed objectionable. Of course, Rep. Lewis' bill is itself inherently unconstitutional -- and would certainly be found so by any federal court.

[link via How Appealing].