Pop singer Michael Jackson has been presented with a humanitarian award in Washington, DC for his efforts in fighting AIDS in Africa. All of the British papers are reporting it--here, we mostly see articles about the grand jury investigation into allegations of child molestation. We prefer the British articles:

Michael Jackson has been honoured in Washington DC for his work fighting Aids in Africa. Apparently unmoved by the Los Angeles grand jury currently hearing evidence in his child molestation case, Jackson watched a children's choir as they performed his hit 'Heal the World' and gathered them on his lap, embracing other children, patting their heads and hugging them.

....During his three days in Washington, Jackson, dressed in a spangled jacket and silver-sequinned boots, toured the halls of the Capitol and met with members of Congress. Though he said little, he attracted hordes of reporters and was trailed by fans, enthusiastic maintenance workers and congressional staffers using their camera phones to take photographs. "It set Capitol Hill on fire", said Leon Buck, chief of staff to US Republican Sheila Jackson Lee, who helped arrange Jackson's visit. One staffer even fainted in the hubbub, Buck said.

The Bush Administration has announced it will be adding 27 countries, some of which are our close allies, to the US-VISIT program that requires foreigners be fingerprinted upon entering the U.S.

The move affects citizens in 27 countries -- including Britain, Japan and Australia -- who had been allowed to travel within the United States without a visa for up to 90 days, according to the Homeland Security Department. Under changes in the US-VISIT program that will take effect by Sept. 30, they will be fingerprinted and photographed when they enter through any of 115 international airports and 14 seaports. There are no changes in unique rules covering visits by Canadians and Mexicans.

This will add 13 million visitors to the program, but the Administration says it won't cause a delay to travelers. What about the privacy intrusion? And the fact that other countries now are apt to demand Americans be fingerprinted when visiting within their borders, as Brazil has done.

The Government says that to date, 5 million visitors to the U.S. have been fingerprinted under the program, only 200 of whom have been stopped. The stops are due to the visitor having a prior criminal record or being suspected of visa violations or crime. This program strikes us as a colossal waste of money and law enforcement resources. It is bound to generate nothing but ill-will.

Update: Here's a resource page on the US-VISIT program.

by TChris

The prosecution of Dennis Kozlowski and Mark Swartz, former executives of Tyco accused of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from the corporation, has ended in a mistrial. TalkLeft's most recent coverage of jury deliberations can be found here.

The infamous juror number four, who may have been the lone holdout for acquittal, reportedly received a "coercive letter" within the last day, prompting the judge to grant the latest in a series of mistrial motions.

The district attorney's office said that it will seek a retrial.

by TChris

Billy Warsoldier, a Native American member of the Cahuilla tribe, doesn't want to cut his hair. Warsoldier's religious beliefs prevent him from getting a haircut until someone in his family dies. But Warsoldier is serving a 19 month sentence for drunk driving, and the California Department of Corrections has a policy that prohibits male inmates from having hair longer than three inches.

Since the policy applies only to men, it is difficult to believe that security needs justify the policy. The ACLU is helping Warsoldier challenge the policy as a violation of his right to freely exercise his religion. In the meantime, prison authorities are denying privileges to Warsoldier, including visits and vocational training, until he submits to a haircut.

by TChris

Homeland Security is vigilantly protecting the country from foreign novelists.

Halted en route to a West Coast lecture tour, Ian McEwan, an acclaimed British novelist who lunched last fall with first lady Laura Bush, was denied entry into the United States for 36 hours this week.

Unfortunately for a country that has been terrorized by foreign novelists, Homeland Security relented -- but not because it wanted to.

During his third session on Wednesday with Homeland Security officials, after word had spread to British and U.S. newspapers about his situation, McEwan said his interrogators told him: "We still don't want to let you in, but this is attracting a lot of unfavorable publicity."

The quality of the agents guarding our borders from dangerous novelists is illustrated by a question that one of the agents posed to McEwan: "What kind of novels do you write: fiction or nonfiction?"

by TChris

The Outlaws in Hartford, Connecticut didn't like the way the police behaved when executing a search warrant at their club's Christmas party. Some members of the motorcycle club are taking the Hartford police to court, claiming a civil rights violation.

Police were looking for a gun that they believed a member of the Outlaws possessed. They obtained a warrant to search the man's house and car, as well as the Outlaws' clubhouse. But the suit alleges that the police did more than search for the gun when they invaded the Christmas party.

According to the suit, state police officers forced people to the floor, handcuffed the revelers, searched for illegal guns, ripped open Christmas presents and photographed everyone before they left.

The Outlaws wonder whether such rude behavior would have occurred if police had executed the warrant at a Knights of Columbus party.

The suit argues that the police exceeded the scope of the warrant. Some of the members who were searched declined to join the lawsuit, saying they were "nervous that the police would seek them out afterward."

Who's that mustachioed, 62 year old man cavorting with models in the new Victoria Secrets lingerie ad on tv? None other than Bob Dylan. (WSJ, subscription only.)

Mr. Dylan once sang of "Advertising signs that con you/Into thinking you're the one/That can do what's never been done/That can win what's never been won/Meantime life outside goes on/All around you" in his 1965 song "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)." Now, some fans are distraught: "I'm going to have to go blow my brains out," says John Baky, curator of a collection of Dylan material housed at Philadelphia's La Salle University.

Dylan's purported purpose: To introduce his music to the 18 year old crowd and "freshen his fan base." Whatever it takes to keep his music alive and on the airwaves is A-okay by us.

Update: The LA Times (free subscription required) begins a weekly series of articles about songwriters. This week it profiles Bob Dylan.

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Writing in the Washington Post, Senator Edward Kennedy rails against the confirmation of William Haynes as Federal Appeals Court Judge:

Haynes has been nominated to the influential 4th Circuit on the basis of his work as general counsel for the Department of Defense. In that capacity he has developed and defended three of the administration's most controversial policies: the refusal to treat any of the hundreds of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay as prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions of 1949; the department's military tribunal plan for trying suspected war criminals; and even the incarceration of U.S. citizens without counsel or judicial review.

An essential part of winning the war on terrorism is protecting the ideals that the United States stands for at home and around the world. The basic checks and balances in the Constitution are indispensable to our democracy and a continuing source of our country's strength, not luxuries or inconveniences to be jettisoned in times of crisis. The mass detentions at Guantanamo have clearly damaged our reputation abroad, caused serious tensions with our allies, and violated fundamental principles of international law that have long protected U.S. soldiers serving abroad and American citizens traveling in other countries.

Here comes Haynes:

The New York Times reports that the investigation into whether White House officials leaked the identity of former CIA operative Valerie Plame has broadened. Prosecutors are now investigating whether White House officials lied to investigators or improperly handled classified information:

The broadened scope is a potentially significant development that represents exactly what allies of the Bush White House feared when Attorney General John Ashcroft removed himself from the case last December and turned it over to Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the United States attorney in Chicago.

....Mr. Fitzgerald is said by lawyers involved in the case and government officials to be examining possible discrepancies between documents he has gathered and statements made by current or former White House officials during a three-month preliminary investigation last fall by the F.B.I. and the Justice Department....The suspicion that someone may have lied to investigators is based on contradictions between statements by various witnesses in F.B.I. interviews, the lawyers and officials said. The conflicts are said to be buttressed by documents, including memos, e-mail messages and phone records turned over by the White House.

Looks like some heads are going to roll over this one -- hopefully, before November.

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This should be big news: Gary Hart says he met with Condolezza Rice on 9/6/01 to talk about the imminent threat of terrorism.

Hart was co-chair (with former Sen. Warren Rudman) of the U.S. Commission on National Security, a bipartisan panel that conducted the most thorough investigation of U.S. security challenges since World War II. After completing the report, which warned that a devastating terrorist attack on America was imminent and called for the immediate creation of a Cabinet-level national security agency, and delivering it to President Bush on January 31, 2001, Hart and Rudman personally briefed Rice, Rumseld and Secretary of State Colin Powell. But, according to Hart, the Bush administration never followed up on the commission's urgent recommendations, even after he repeated them in a private White House meeting with Rice just days before 9/11.

Hart, who is now advising the Kerry campaign on national security issues, spoke with Salon this week about the Bush administration's failures to heed his warnings and why he feels the country is still at grave risk. Even at this late date, says Hart, Bush has failed to sufficiently coordinate federal, state, local and private sector security efforts, leaving open American ports as possible entry points for weapons of mass destruction and exposing such prime targets as petrochemical facilities located near major urban areas. ....The Bush White House, he charges, is locked in a strange and delicate dance with intelligence officials, maneuvering to place blame on the CIA but fearing if it does so too blatantly, the Bush team's own failings will be exposed.

In Hart's own words:

Hollywood is united as never before--they are lining up to beat Bush not just with their pocketbooks, but with their scripts as well.

On the NBC show "Whoopi," the hotelier played by Whoopi Goldberg delivered an anti-Bush screed when the president, played by a lookalike, appeared at her establishment to use the facilities. "I can't believe he's in there doing to my bathroom what he's done to the economy!" she said.

the season finale of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" on HBO arguably best conveyed the growing sentiment. On that episode, the main character, played by the comedian Larry David, backed out of a dalliance sanctioned by his wife after noticing that his prospective paramour had lovingly displayed a picture of Mr. Bush on her dresser.

Isolated cases? Unlikely.

Producers, actors and longtime executives said that the combination of the failure to find unconventional weapons in Iraq, the troubled economy and the president's environmental and social policies had stirred the town's prominent liberals to action. "I have never, ever seen this community more united than right now, never," said Laurie David, Mr. David's wife, who has been active in organizing the creative community against Mr. Bush. "Not a day goes by when I'm not getting a dozen calls from people saying to me, `What can I do?' And it's all with one goal: to change the course of what's going on in this country and get rid of this administration."

John Kerry has broken the Democratic fundraising record. He raised $43 million this quarter--$26 million of which was raised online. There's more good news. The DNC and Democratic congressional candidates also did great:

The Democratic National Committee broke its previous record by raising $27 million, while the House and Senate campaign committees, which both topped $11 million, also set all-time highs last quarter.

Of course, Bush is still way ahead having raised over $170 million to date. So give early, and give often.