In need of a little pick-me-up? Head on down to Peru and hit the grocery stores, where you'll find a new kind of iced tea drink--KDrink--with a formula made from coca leaves, the prime ingredient in cocaine.

Each bottle of Kdrink contains a trace 0.6 milligrams of the outlawed stimulant.

Before you get too excited, you should know that 0.6 mg "of natural, unprocessed cocaine" is less powerful than a cup of joe. So what's the big deal? Kdrink's manufacturer wants to bring it to the U.S.

In the latest group of foreign hostage-takings, seven Chinese citizens have been kidnapped in Iraq.

Seven Chinese citizens have become the latest foreigners to be kidnapped in Iraq, the Chinese government said, and pledged no efforts would be spared to rescue them. The seven workers entered Iraq from Jordan early Sunday and were abducted in the flashpoint city of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, the foreign ministry and a Chinese diplomat in the Iraqi capital said.

....The kidnappings came a day before US Vice President Dick Cheney was due to arrive in Beijing Tuesday straight from a visit to Tokyo overshadowed by the kidnapping of three Japanese civilians in Iraq.

China opposed the war in Iraq and did not send any troops there. It also was friendly to Saddam Hussein's regime.

There are reportedly now 30 foreigners who have been taken hostage in Iraq this week. The three Japanese citizens and American Thomas Hamill have not yet been released. 8 other hostages, including one from Britain, have been released. Two Germans are missing and their Government has said they are presumed dead.

Update: China reports they have now been released.

[comments now closed]

Howard Dean is stepping up to the plate for John Kerry. In Monday's New York Times, he writes in an op-ed:

Many Democrats also admire Ralph Nader's achievements, as I do. But if they truly want George Bush out of the White House, they won't vote for Ralph Nader in November.

Say hello to new liberal blogger My Left Brain . Instapundit got a bloglift (y.w.c.t.p.) -- it looks really good.

Why is the recidivism rate among felons so high? Because society punishes ex-convicts for life. Devah Pager and Jeff Manza explain:

Take the Higher Education Act of 1998, which bars ex-felons from eligibility for Pell Grants, the largest type of federal student loans. How can ex-offenders build better lives for themselves if they are not allowed to compete for the same kinds of educational opportunities as everyone else?

Many of the legal barriers that extend beyond the completion of a prison sentence were adopted by Congress or state governments as part of the "war" on crime and drugs. These include restrictions on occupational licensing that prevent work in many types of jobs; access to public housing and other types of social programs aimed at the poorest Americans, and a variety of political rights (such as the right to vote, to serve on juries and to hold public office). The unintended consequence of these policies can be to promote the very circumstances that led to crime in the first place....Crime policy in recent decades has emphasized harsh punishment over rehabilitation, and the problems of prisoner re-entry have become increasingly difficult to ignore.

Stanley (Tookie) Williams was the leader of the Crips in south central LA. He's been on death row for 23 years. While in jail, he became an anti-gang activist, wrote children's books and was nominated by a member of the Swiss Parliament for the Nobel Prize. In 1999, he was visited by Winnie Mandela.

Williams is hoping for a reprieve. Watch the movie about him tonight, Redemption, on FX, starring Jamie Foxx. FX, Sunday at 8 p.m., Eastern and Pacific times; 7, Central time.

[Comments now closed, thanks to all for your thoughts.]

Rahul Mahajan is blogging from Fallujah at Empire Notes. He says the major newspapers are not telling the true story.

Among the more laughable assertions of the Bush administration is that the mujaheddin are a small group of isolated "extremists" repudiated by the majority of Fallujah's population. Nothing could be further from the truth. Of course, the mujaheddin don't include women or very young children (we saw an 11-year-old boy with a Kalashnikov), old men, and are not necessarily even a majority of fighting-age men. But they are of the community and fully supported by it. ....

Nothing could have been easier than gaining the good-will of the people of Fallujah had the Americans not been so brutal in their dealings. Now, a tipping-point has been reached. Fallujah cannot be "saved" from its mujaheddin unless it is destroyed.

There's lots more in this daily account of Baghdad and Fallujah, but no permalinks, so just start reading at the top.

The new Newsweek examines how Vietnam compares with Iraq. "In Iraq, the scale is smaller, but there are echoes. How it compares with Vietnam—and doesn't."

....to most Americans, Vietnam is the recurring nightmare. To anyone over the age of about 50, last week felt a little like the end of February 1968, when the Tet offensive was raging through the cities of South Vietnam and Americans were starting to wonder if the war would ever end. A year after Iraqi civilians (with the help of U.S. Marines) toppled Saddam's statue, America suffered through its worst week of combat since the supposed end of the war, with more than 40 soldiers dead and hundreds more wounded. During Tet, a Viet Cong suicide squad penetrated the American Embassy in Saigon before being gunned down. Nothing quite that dramatic happened in Baghdad. Yet Paul Bremer, the American proconsul, had to cancel an appointment on the edge of the so-called Green Zone, where the Americans are headquartered, when security forces found an unexploded bomb possibly waiting for his arrival.

....One significant difference between now and then—no draft—has kept down dissent in the heartland. Even so, it is possible to lay Iraq and Vietnam side by side and see disturbing parallels, as well as critical differences—both of which shed light on what must be done going forward.

The new issue of Newsweek says this week's 9/11 commission hearings at which Attorney General John Ashcroft, Janet Reno and FBI director Robert Mueller will testify, may get very heated. The issue: Was Ashcroft "asleep at the wheel"?:

....at the top, the FBI leadership was more concerned with squabbling with its supposed bosses in the Justice Department. Or so it may seem this week when top officials from the bureau and Justice testify before the 9/11 commission. ...

To the G-men, Ashcroft seemed at once overbearing and naive. Informed of the FBI investigation into Al Qaeda after taking office in March, Ashcroft asked, "Why don't we go out and arrest these guys?" Not enough evidence, was the answer. Then Ashcroft seemed to lose interest in the terrorism issue, some bureau officials say. His predecessor, Janet Reno, demanded to be regularly briefed on the status of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act cases on terror suspects. Ashcroft told Justice lawyers he did not need to hear daily reports. "It's like a soap opera," Ashcroft said at one meeting, according to a former Justice official. "You can tune in once a week and catch up with what's been going on." (An Ashcroft aide denies that the A.G. made such a comment.)

Walter at Idols of the Marketplace has some harsh words for President Bush and The Alamo.

Drug War Rant has this response to our post on Vietnam's execution of a female drug courier: "You want to deter criminal drug dealers? Eliminate their profits by ending the drug war."

Max of Maxspeak connects the dots in the pre-9/11 memo released yesterday. And Neal Pollack rips the timing of the release:

The White House has a tradition, if it wants to inform the citizenry about something really important, of releasing key documents on the Saturday night before Easter Sunday, when most Americans are absolutely glued to the news. That was certainly the case this Saturday past, which will forever be known as Declassification Of The August 6, 2001, Presidential Daily Briefing Day.

Atrios waxes eloquent on why there is no dishonor in criticizing the war:

Pointing out that it was a mistake to send these people to their deaths does not dishonor them - it rightly dishonors the civilian leaders who sent them there. These people served their country when asked, even if their civilian leaders can be faulted.

Road to Surfdom has the latest rumor on who will be the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq after June 30: Current U.N. Ambassador John Negroponte.

by TChris

In time of war, the President might expect to count military families in his base of support. As the war in Iraq continues to produce senseless deaths, with rumblings that more troops are needed and with no clear plan to withdraw, President Bush's support among military families is starting to erode. Families are questioning why the President is placing their spouses and children in harm's way.

[I]t was clear at Fort Campbell, based on more than three dozen interviews here this week, that the Republican Party will have to work harder this year to keep the votes of military families, a group who at other times could be counted as Republican stalwarts.

Polls of the military are few and tend to be unreliable since pollsters have only limited access to military bases, and many military personnel are scattered overseas. A recent Washington Post/CBS Poll found that military personnel were still 2-to-1 Republican, but a CBS News survey found that 40 to 48 percent of people from "military families" would vote for Senator John Kerry, said Peter Feaver, a professor of political science at Duke University who studies military-civilian relations.

As military families become less convinced that the President's war policy serves the nation's interests, "the large number of military personnel in swing states like West Virginia, Florida and New Mexico means that small shifts in military voting could prove decisive in the national election."

by TChris

We depend on the media to uncover hidden wrongdoing in government. To what extent should the media seek to uncover the mysterious workings of jury deliberations?

The question arises after reporters visited the Manhattan apartment building of Juror No. 4 in the Tyco trial. (Background on the trial, which ended in a mistrial after twelve days of jury deliberations, and the role played by Juror No. 4 can be found in TalkLeft posts here and here.)
Based on interviews, the NY Times reported that Juror No. 4 was a "standoffish" resident who only spoke to staff when she was giving them orders but never bothered to tip them at Christmas. The Times later confessed that, "contrary to previous reports," the juror does tip her doorman.

The Times' internal critic characterizes the coverage as accusing the juror of being "remote, cheap and stubborn." He's also disturbed "that The Times is willing to publish negative comments, made by unidentified individuals, about someone who does not have the opportunity to reply."

Taking similar shots at public officials might seem unfair, but those elected or appointed to a government office know what they're getting into and have a forum from which to fight back. Jurors are pressed into service, often unwillingly, as a public duty. They don't deserve to have their private lives made public. Interviews like those published by The Times can only dissuade citizens from serving on juries, impeding the ability of courts to give people a fair trial with a truly representative jury.