by TChris

The federalization of crime may help politicians craft a "tough on crime" image, but it makes no sense to burden federal courts by criminalizing behavior that state governments can effectively regulate. Michael Oxley, R-Ohio, is exercised about "dirty old men" who use their cell phone cameras to photograph girls "through peepholes." He wants to make it federal crime. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay thinks the legislation is "common sense to protect families."

Some Democrats support the bill. Rep. Charles A. Gonzalez, D-Tex., says the bill is about decency and privacy. Maybe, but the breadth of the law is troubling.

It would establish fines or penalties of up to a year in prison for digital offenders who knowingly capture "an improper image" of a person's "naked or undergarment-clad genitals, pubic area, buttocks or female breast" when the individual has "a reasonable expectation of privacy."

Whether a person in a particular environment has a "reasonable expectation of privacy" is often ambiguous, and there may be circumstances in which the first amendment right to disseminate non-obscene images outweighs a claim of privacy. Some of these battles are being waged in state courts that have enacted similar laws. Unless and until it becomes clear that a nationwide problem exists (are there really a lot of peepholes around?) and that the states are incapable of fixing it, Congress should resist the temptation to create yet another federal crime.

by TChris

The number of American soldiers who have died in Iraq reached 600 on Sunday. One of the bloodiest gun battles, in Najaf, south of Baghdad, lasted three hours. The battle was part of a "coordinated Shiite militia uprising against the American-led occupation," a significant change from previous attacks "by fighters drawn from Iraq's Sunni Muslim minority rather than majority Shi'ites."

Correction: The number of American service members killed in Iraq is said to be at least 610.

by TChris

John Allen Muhammad has been sentenced to death for his role in one of ten sniper slayings. Nonetheless, a prosecutor in a different Virginia County wants to try Muhammad for the murder of an FBI agent. Why isn't one death sentence enough? Because the prosecutor -- Robert Horan Jr. -- wants an "insurance policy."

The "insurance" comes at a high price. Virginia spent about $3 million for the first trials of Muhammad and Lee Malvo. While Horan maintains that cost shouldn't deter a prosecutor from racking up death sentences, he may be forced to change his thinking. The Virginia legislature has slashed $5.5 million from local prosectors' budgets in the last two years. Horan may not have the resources to prosecute more mundane crimes if he commits his budget to a death penalty trial for a condemned man.

by TChris

Having been frustrated in its efforts to evade the scrutiny of the 9/11 commission, the Bush administration may have found a way to keep its final product from influencing voters: seize control of the report.

Thomas Kean, chairman of the bipartisan commission looking into the attacks, said on NBC's Meet the Press Sunday that the Bush administration would go through the report "line by line to find out if there's anything in there which could harm American interests in the area of intelligence."

If the administration doesn't think it can delay the process until after the election, it may want the report to come out soon after it's finished, giving the buzz time to die down before election day. But how much of the report will we see?

Democracy suffers if we give our leaders the power to censor the results of an investigation into their own conduct.

by TChris

The Bush administration didn't have much of a plan for Iraq after driving Saddam Hussein from power. If the administration has a plan for Iraq after the country regains sovereignty on June 30, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar would like to know about it.

Less than three months before the scheduled handover of sovereignty by the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority, Lugar told ABC's "This Week" that the Bush administration had not advised Congress on its plans for Iraq once CPA administrator Paul Bremer leaves.

Lugar worries that the transfer of power as scheduled could lead to civil war -- a possibility suggested by increasing levels of violence, including these clashes on Sunday that killed seven U.S. soldiers and wounded two dozen more.

More on today's violence here.

We've stayed clear of the controversy surrounding Markos of Daily Kos in the hopes that it would all die down. Yesterday, John Kerry's blog removed Daily Kos from it's blogroll. We hope this is temporary. Some conservatives are now calling contributions from Kos' readers "dirty money." That's absurd. So, we're going to weigh in.

Matt Stoller, writing for Blogging of the President, has a comprehensive chronicle of events along with meaningful commentary on the implications of the controversy for the rights of political free speech.

Markos is a friend of our's. We've spent hours with him - and his wife. He even designed TalkLeft for us, gratis. We've watched him grow from trying to get a few hundred hits a day to getting a thousand hits by noon (another landmark) to where he is now: the largest and most widely read liberal political blogger in the blogosphere. He's earned every visitor to Daily Kos with his hard work, intelligence and uncanny grasp of all things related to politics and the internet. He grew up in war-torn El Salvador and served as an enlisted U.S. soldier in Gulf War I. He has a law degree. He is an incredibly talented pianist. He and his wife just had this beautiful baby. He's our friend.

We will make our position very clear: We wholeheartedly support Markos. He made a comment most people find objectionable and then retracted it and explained why he made it. To us, it should be the end of the story. Any attempt to inflate it or even to keep it alive has little to do with Markos, and everything to do with right-wing conservatives trying to make political hay out of it. This has become a right-wing ploy to debase the left. Don't let it happen. Don't let them win. This is no longer just about Markos or Daily Kos, but about the right wing's attempt to use its muscle to destroy one of the most potent, prominent liberal voices out here--and if they succeed, to then silence all of us.

We believe that this will go away, although as Matt Stoller says, it's bound to happen again on both sides of the political aisle, due to the nature of blogging on the Internet which creates a permanent record of every word we write. As for the "liberal bloggers" who have criticized Markos, we'd point out that most of them are not really liberals but centrist Democrats. Shame on them. We discount their criticism and suggest you do too. What's really at stake here is censorship and the right wing's attempt to make legitimate, mainstream liberal bloggers out to be extremists so that the Democratic candidates will fear being aligned with them and forego advertising on their blogs, causing them to raise less money and thereby reducing their chances of winning back the Presdidency and a majority of seats in Congress.

One more thing. We are not trashing Instapundit or including him as one of the right-wing conservatives we caution against above. Instapundit is more of a libertarian and he can be liberal on criminal justice issues--his bashing of the Rave Act is but one example. We also note his last comment about the controversy was one in which he said he was glad that Kos is continuing to blog. While we disagree with him on military and many political issues, we don't think he set out on a campaign to destroy Markos or Daily Kos, as other right-wing bloggers and some reporters clearly have done in the wake of his original posting about it.

The right wing's attempt to turn one small comment into a political wildfire that spreads through the blogsphere creating division, dissension and damage to the left must be stopped. Forget Markos' original comment and focus on the big picture - removing the extremist right from power, restoring balance to our government and protecting sacred institutions like our independent judiciary. Markos and Daily Kos are tremendous assets for the Democrats. They should embrace him, rather than distance themselves from him.

Update: Atrios makes some changes in blogging policy in response to the Daily Kos controversy.

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by TChris

Telling a lie to a police officer investigating a crime will often result in a charge of obstructing justice. But if the officer lies to a suspect, that's just part of the job. And when an officer uses trickery and deceit to obtain a confession, he may be praised for a job well done.

Suffolk County homicide detective James McCready bragged about the way he tricked 17 year old Martin Tankleff into confessing to the murder of Tankleff's parents. McCready immediately focused on Martin's guilt, finding it suspicious that Martin slept undisturbed while his parents were attacked in a different part of the house. After hours of interrogation, McCready told Martin that his father had come out of a coma and had identified Martin as his assailant. McCready lied: Martin's father died without regaining consciousness. But the lie did its job:

Under duress, suggestive questioning and badgering, he says, he wondered aloud if he was deluded or had a dual personality and could have committed the killings and blocked the memory. Prodded, he said, he imagined how he might have done it.

Martin's description of the possible ways he committed the crime became the only significant evidence against him.

But Mr. Tankleff promptly disavowed the confession, refusing to sign it, and the physical evidence did not implicate him. Yet he was convicted in 1990, based on the statement extracted by Detective McCready and his testimony as the star prosecution witness at the trial.

Martin is serving a sentence of 50 to life after losing appeals in sharply divided courts. He insists he's innocent, and there is strong evidence that he's telling the truth.

by TChris

What questions will Condoleezza Rice face when she testifies before the 9/11 commission?

Some commission members who were enraged when Ms. Rice talked to every television and cable network but not to them, are considering confronting her with segments of her many interviews asserting that the White House was acting forcefully against Al Qaeda - and then asking her to explain how when much of the documentation shows otherwise.

A good starting point: 15 smart questions that have occurred to two experts in national security and terrorism (nine from one and six from the other). Here's a sample:

A search of all your public statements and writings reveals that you apparently mentioned Osama bin Laden only once and never mentioned Al Qaeda at all as a threat to the United States before 9/11. Why?

The San Francisco Chronicle today has a feature on jury consultants, focusing on Howard Varinsky, who assisted the prosecution in choosing the Martha Stewart jury and is doing the same in the Scott Peterson trial, and Jo Ellen Dimitrius, who worked for the defense in the O.J. trial and is now helping Scott Peterson's defense team. Ms. Dimitrius helped the prosecution in the case against David Westerfield, sentenced to death for killing six year old Danielle Van Dam, and has been signed by the prosecution to help pick the Kobe Bryant jury.

What are they looking for in Peterson jurors?

He wants consensus-oriented individuals who, in the end, will decide that circumstantial evidence is all that's needed to bring a verdict of guilt. She's looking for strong-willed people who might view authorities with suspicion and remain open to the idea that Laci Peterson died at the hands of an unknown assailant.

Dimitrius concedes that she has the tougher job in the Peterson case, due to the extensive pre-judgment of guilt in his case. But, we think in almost all cases, this is what really goes on:

No matter how many times prospective jurors are told a defendant is innocent until proved guilty, there are many who will come in with preconceived notions, particularly in a high-profile criminal case. "A lot of people still think this person would not be sitting in that chair if the police and prosecution didn't really think he did it,'' said Beth Bonora, a jury consultant based in San Francisco.

Friday night's "Majority Report," the Air America Radio show hosted by Janeane Garofalo and Sam Seder, will be re-broadcast this afternoon at 3PM ET. You can listen via the internet . Guests are Gov. Dean, Al Franken, Helen Thomas, and Bill Scher from Liberal Oasis.

Update: We hear Richard Clarke will be on Al Franken's show Monday, noon-3pm ET, but it's not on their website so don't hold us to it.

Peter McEntegart, one of the jurors in the Tyco case, is a reporter for Sports Illustrated Magazine. In the new issue of Time Magazine, he criticizes the prosecution for spending too much time focusing on Kozlowski and Swartz's excessive lifestyle:

Juror Peter McEntegart, a reporter for Time Inc.'s Sports Illustrated, said that while the prosecutors provided "vivid accounts and video of the now famous $2 million bash ... and of his over-the-top purchases of items like $6,000 shower curtains," the jury spent little time on the excesses of Kozlowski and former chief financial officer Mark H. Swartz.

"Much of what these two men did might have been unseemly, even unethical _ but illegal beyond a reasonable doubt? Not to us," McEntegart wrote. "Instead, several jury members expressed disgust that the prosecution has wasted our time on all this."

McEntegart also said that Juror no. 4 was coming around to a guilty vote and that the jury was close to a full verdict when the mistrial was declared:

McEntegart said that Ruth Jordan, the juror who received the letter after being publicly identified by The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, "seemed to be at war with herself. Whenever she reached the precipice of a guilty vote on any count, she recoiled as if she had touched a hot stove." But he said Jordan eventually told her fellow jurors she had had a change of heart, and by Thursday afternoon the panel "had reached a strong consensus for guilty verdicts on the final two counts, conspiracy and securities fraud." He said the jury was close to a verdict when the mistrial was declared.

Both the Independent and the Guardian are reporting that President Bush asked Tony Blair to back him in removing Saddam from power just 9 days after 9/11. The Guardian article reports the two had a secret pact.

President George Bush first asked Tony Blair to support the removal of Saddam Hussein from power at a private White House dinner nine days after the terror attacks of 11 September, 2001. According to Sir Christopher Meyer, the former British Ambassador to Washington, who was at the dinner when Blair became the first foreign leader to visit America after 11 September, Blair told Bush he should not get distracted from the war on terror's initial goal - dealing with the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Bush, claims Meyer, replied by saying: 'I agree with you, Tony. We must deal with this first. But when we have dealt with Afghanistan, we must come back to Iraq.' Regime change was already US policy.

Meyer says Blair "said nothing to demur." The genesis of these articles is a 25,000 word piece in the May issue of Vanity Fair.