My picks:

Wisconsin -5 over Oregon, Michigan State -7½ over Harvard, Villanova -3½ over Connecticut, Syracuse -7 over Dayton, Louisville -9 over St Louis, Pittsburgh +6½ over Florida, Texas +5 over Michigan San Diego State -3 over North Dakota State.

Go Gators!

Open Thread.

A bit late with this, but Scout's honor, these are my investments today:

Eastern Kentucky +14 over Kansas, Kentucky -6½ over Kansas State, Oklahoma State -3 over Gonzaga, Iowa State -8 over NC Central, Memphis -4 over George Washington, UL Lafayette +14 over Creighton, Wichita State -16 over Cal Poly S.L.O., North Carolina -4 over Providence, Tulsa +8½ over UCLA, Virginia -20½ over Coastal Carolina, Stephen Austin +6½ over Va Commonwealth, Baylor -4 over Nebraska, Mercer +14½ over Duke, Tennessee -5½ over Massachusetts, New Mexico -3 over Stanford, Weber State +20 over Arizona.

Open Thread.

Main draw begins play today.

My picks today: Michigan -16 over Wofford, Cincinnati -3 over Harvard, Connecticut -4½ over St. Joseph's, Michigan State -14 over Delaware, Pittsburgh -6½ over Colorado, BYU +5½* over Oregon, Ohio State -6 over Dayton, Wisconsin -13½ over American, Syracuse -13 over Western Michigan, Albany NY +21 over Florida, Arizona State +2* over Texas, Wisc-Milwaukee +16½ over Villanova, Oklahoma -3 over North Dakota State, Louisville -16½ over Manhattan, San Diego State -7 over New Mexico State, and NCState +3* over St Louis. (Asterisk indicates lower seed outright winners.)

Go Gators!

Open thread.

Here's an open thread, all topics welcome.

The Washington Post reports on yet another NSA surveillance program: Mystic.

The National Security Agency has built a surveillance system capable of recording “100 percent” of a foreign country’s telephone calls, enabling the agency to rewind and review conversations as long as a month after they take place, according to people with direct knowledge of the effort and documents supplied by former contractor Edward Snowden.

In related news, in a court filing, DOJ confirmed warrantless mass e-mail surveillance during the Bush administration.

In a very powerful opinion, U.S. District Court Judge Otis Wright has dismissed the charges against three defendants in an ATF reverse sting case, finding the sting constituted outrageous government conduct.

The opinion is here.

The time has come to remind the Executive Branch that the Constitution charges it with law enforcement—not crime creation. A reverse-sting operation like this one transcends the bounds of due process and makes the Government “the oppressor of its people.” ...In this case, the Constitution will not tolerate subjecting an individual to prosecution for an imaginary crime subject to a very real punishment — a punishment which rests entirely on ATF agents’ whims. Since it is the Court’s sworn duty to uphold the Constitution, the Court GRANTS Dunlap’s Motion to Dismiss the Indictment.

[More...]

There's a big fight going on in Oklahoma over the scarcity of execution drugs and the use of substitute drugs. Oklahoma is running short on two of the three drugs in its death cocktail and the Court just delayed two executions set for April.

Katie Fretland, writing in Colorado's The Independent, has an excellent report on this. She also made a FOIA request for Oklahoma records. Among other things, the records she received show executioners had injected leftover drugs into the corpses of the executed inmates to dispose of the drugs.

Convicts executed in Oklahoma have in some cases died from overdoses of pentobarbital or sodium thiopental, the anesthetic, rather than the second and third injections in the three-drug cocktail, according to documents obtained by The Independent. Records show executioners then injected the remaining two drugs into convicts’ dead bodies for what forms turned over in response to an open-records request refer to as “disposal purposes.”

Jerry Massie, the spokesman for the prison system, defended the practice, saying it follows state protocol.

[More...]

Update: Mick Jagger has released a statement on his website, which now features a photo of L'Wren.

I am still struggling to understand how my lover and best friend could end her life in this tragic way.

We spent many wonderful years together and had made a great life for ourselves.

She had great presence and her talent was much admired, not least by me.

I have been touched by the tributes that people have paid to her, and also the personal messages of support that I have received.

I will never forget her, Mick

****

Fashion designer L'Wren Scott, long time significant other of Mick Jagger, was found dead in an apparent suicide in her New York apartment this morning. [More....]

There hasn't been much news on "El Chapo" Guzman the past week. But on Friday afternoon, his lawyer filed a new request for a writ of amparo to prevent his extradition to the U.S.

This article today says the cases in Mexico are all for organized crime, not drugs. I wonder if that means he won't have a double jeopardy argument against extradition. Apparently, there was one drug case but it was reversed as to a co-defendant because the courts found the witnesses non-credible, so it's unlikely he'll be convicted in that case.

These articles are in Spanish, and Google Translate wasn't a huge help, but that's what I took from it. At least I was able to track down the docket in Mexico for both the new filing and the earlier ones(start here).

Speaking of Spanish, I found a new and free way to learn Spanish online (or one of 60 other languages)-- Mangos Languages --all you need is a library card as hundreds of libraries have partnered with them. [More...].

The Bureau of Prisons has announced renovations will commence on the Thomson maximum security prison in Illinois. The funding was approved in January in the Omnibus Appropriations bill for Fiscal Year 2014.

The "state of the art" unoccupied state prison was built in 2001 and purchased by the U.S. from Illinois as a possible place to house Guantanamo inmates when Gitmo closed. Then Congress killed the transfer of Guantanamo inmates to the U.S.

Check out the gleeful response of Illinois senator Richard Durbin:

This is the news we’ve been waiting for. The funding that the Bureau of Prisons reported to Congress today is a significant investment in the economic future of Northern Illinois,” said Durbin.

[More...]

Republican intransigence over immigration reform may result in President Obama easing Homeland Security's removal (previously called deportation) policies. Two measures are under consideration.

Obama met with various Latino groups yesterday. After the meeting:

Obama announced late on Thursday that he had decided to review deportation practices to seek a more "humane" way to enforce immigration laws.....Immigration law experts have said Obama could use his executive authority to also stop deporting parents of those children to keep families together.

[More....]

Our last open thread is full, here's a new one. All topics welcome.