Congress passed the Unborn Victims of Violence Bill. Tena at Atrios gets it right:

It takes another huge bite out of the right to choose, and is a set-up for the Supreme Court to overrule Roe v. Wade. They never rest.

The bill was pushed to passage after the death of Laci Peterson and her unborn child. It's even referred to as the "Laci and Connor law." Legislation should never be passed in response to a singular event, no matter how horrific. Act in haste, repent at leisure. It's a bad law, and now we have to live with it.

Update: The LA Times calls the law "a ploy in the abortion war."

DeWine's bill cynically capitalizes on Laci Peterson's murder to push his definition of personhood into federal law.

Here's how the bill defines a "child in utero":

Introduced by Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio), the proposed Unborn Victims of Violence Act defines "a child … in utero" as "a member of the species Homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb." In other words, the child exists from the moment of conception. The House passed similar legislation last month. As with nearly every aspect of the abortion debate, Americans are deeply divided on when human life begins. However, courts and most states generally accord more rights to a fetus considered viable outside the womb.

Parents of Arkansas schoolchildren have filed suit in federal court to stop random drug testing of their kids . The testing had been implemented after a vote by the local school board.

[Parent Mr.] Plopper, a journalism professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, said the administrators and school personnel "who support and maintain suspicionless drug testing are like schoolyard bullies who torment students just because they can. "In this case, however, these people are worse than such bullies because they are educated and should know better than to turn the civil liberties of equal protection and privacy into empty promises."

The complaint alleges that the policy violates the rights of the student plaintiffs under section 29 of the Constitution of Arkansas, as well as the 14th amendment of the United States Constitution.

We hope Mr. Plopper and the other plaintiffs win the suit. Scientific studies show random drug testing is ineffective:

A University of Michigan study of 76,000 students nationwide between 1998 and 2001 concluded that testing appeared futile as a deterrent. For instance, 37% of high school seniors had tried marijuana in schools with drug testing; in schools without drug testing, 36% had tried marijuana. "Randomly testing kids is incredibly ineffective," said Ethan Nadelmann, director of the Drug Policy Alliance.

This is not just about a small school district in Arkansas. Last week, Bush proposed spending $25 million on student drug testing. At the risk of repeating ourselves, students should not have to shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse door.

Plans to reinstate the death penalty in Minnesota were hit with a potentially fatal blow yesterday when the senate rejected a bill to allow voters to decide.

Death penalty supporters, including the Senate sponsor, Mady Reiter, R-Shoreview, and Gov. Tim Pawlenty, said there is little chance of passage this year though a death penalty bill remains alive in the House. The measure was defeated 8-2 in the Senate Crime Prevention and Public Safety Committee with all the Democrats and two of the four Republican members voting against it. The bill would place the issue before voters in November in the form of a constitutional amendment.

In other death penalty news, hundreds of Carribean death row inmates may get a reprieve:

Hundreds of death row prisoners in Trinidad, Barbados and Jamaica could win a reprieve if an unprecedented privy council hearing beginning in London today rules that the mandatory death penalty for murder is unconstitutional....
The appeal is the culmination of a strategy deployed over the last six years by English lawyers working free of charge on behalf of Caribbean death row inmates....If they succeed, up to 300 prisoners on death row in the three countries will have to have their sentences reviewed. The death penalty will not be abolished but will be limited to the most serious cases, and will no longer be the automatic penalty for murder.

In an article reminiscent of Midnight Express, ABC Radio in Australia reports that two Australian women imprisoned in Thailand since 1997 for smuggling 115 grams (about 4 ounces) of heroin flew home to Sydney today under a prisoner tranfer program:

Two Australian women sentenced to 50-years jail in Thailand for drug trafficking will arrive in Sydney today after being released under a prisoner-exchange program. They will serve another five years of their original sentence in Australia before being eligible for parole. 38-year-old Jane McKenzie, and 36-year-old Deborah Spinner were sentenced in 1997, after being caught trying to smuggle 115-grams of heroin to Australia from Bangkok. Convicted with them was Sydney man Lyle Doniger who was freed two years ago, following a pardon from the king of Thailand.

The women were denied a similar pardon, because their paperwork wasn't filed correctly. McKenzie and Spinner had faced the death penalty for heroin trafficking, but their sentences were commuted to 50 years' jail after they pleaded guilty.

The women will have served 13 years in prison when they finally are released. It sounds like they were the mules. We wonder how the man, a fellow Australian, got a pardon. Did he really just fill out the paperwork correctly, or was he able to come up with another more valuable kind of paper, like currency?

This would never happens here, right? Wrong. As TChris wrote last week,

The Dreyfuss Report quotes the Washington Post describing President Bush's appearance at last night's Radio-TV Correspondents Association dinner in Washington where he made fun of the fact that we didnt' find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq:

He [Bush] put up dorky looking pictures of himself. A recurring joke involved photos of the president in awkward positions-bent over as if he's looking under a table, leaning to look out a window-accompanied by remarks such as "Those weapons of mass destruction must be somewhere!" and "Nope, no weapons over there!" and "Maybe under here?"

We're with Dreyfuss who says,

That's funny? I wish the tape of the president cackling about his lies over Iraq could be broadcast on Iraqi TV. And maybe shown to the families of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq.

Update: Skippy says "wdiv tv in detroit has an online poll asking if bush's wmd jokes at the media dinner last night were appropriate or not. please get as many people as possible to go register their disgust by voting!"

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by TChris

The Senate is considering a bill today that would make it a federal crime to cause the death of, or injury to, a fetus during the commission of other federal crimes. A similar bill has passed the House, and the legislation is supported by the President.

Update: The bill passed the Senate by a vote of 61-38. It will be now be sent to the President for his promised signature.

Prison nation. The U.S. Sentencing Commission has voted to increase sentences for bribery crimes . The proposed changes will be submitted to Congress on May 1 and unless rejected, go into effect on November 1:

The U.S. Sentencing Commission, which has described public-corruption offenses as crimes of "internal terrorism," has adopted new federal guidelines to increase prison terms for those convicted of federal bribery charges — some by more than 50 percent. It also voted to more than triple to 10 years — the maximum allowed under the law — the prison term for persons convicted of possessing destructive devices, such as shoulder-fired missiles, rockets and launchers.

Spokesman Michael Courlander said the amended guidelines provide harsher penalties based on whether a defendant is an elected public official, a public official or a nonpublic official, adding that the average sentence for a public official who takes a bribe will increase more than 50 percent, "with the prospect of a much greater increase."

...Mr. Courlander said the commission also voted to allow the courts to depart above the guidelines for possession of destructive devices that create a risk to the public; increased by 50 percent the sentences for felons who use body armor in a crime of violence or drug trafficking; and increased the penalties for other crimes, including second-degree murder, attempted murder, voluntary manslaughter and involuntary manslaughter involving reckless operation of a vehicle.

This is a classic case of what we call purchased testimony. Testimony bought with promises of leniency. Here's the story:

A federal judge in New York has overturned a murder conviction in a Brooklyn gang case because prosecutors relied on "blatant, critical perjury by all of the key witnesses."

The judge, John Gleeson, stopped short of saying the federal prosecutors in Brooklyn knew that their witnesses were lying at a jury trial in April. But in an extraordinary 60-page decision, the judge was clearly distressed by the actions of the prosecutors from the office of the United States attorney, Roslynn R. Mauskopf. Judge Gleeson said he feared that an innocent man had been convicted on "patently incredible testimony" and had a "concern that perjury was deliberately elicited'' by the prosecutors.

The decision was a raw judicial exploration of familiar claims by defense lawyers that prosecutors rely excessively on witnesses who get lenient plea deals and lie.

After the judge's ruling, prosecutors made a deal with Angel M. DeAngelo, the once-convicted killer: They dropped the murder in aid of racketeering charge and allowed him to plead guilty to making a false statement --denying he had been present at the murder. He's already been released:

"How many other people did they do this to?'' Mr. DeAngelo asked yesterday in a telephone interview from Latham, N.Y., near where he now lives. "They believe anything these people say. It's all about a collar; it has nothing to do with justice.''

The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals joins a growing number of circuits in holding that the Second Amendment does not confer an individual right to bear arms (pdf). For those who haven't read it lately, the Second Amendment says:

“A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

The court reaffirms prior decisions holding that:

...to prevail on a Second Amendment challenge, a party must show that possession of a firearm is in connection with participation in a “well-regulated” “state” “militia.”.... The Second Amendment does not guarantee an individual the right to keep and transport a firearm where there is no evidence that possession of that firearm was related to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia.

The Court notes that the 5th Circuit (which includes Texas) is the only circuit to hold the Second Amendment conveys an individual rather than collective right to bear arms. In the Emerson case in the 5th Circuit,

The Second Amendment “protects the right of individuals, including those not then actually a member of any militia or engaged in active military service or training, to privately possess and bear their own firearms.”

Here's where the other circuits stand:

by TChris

The Supreme Court heard arguments yesterday in a case that could have a profound impact on the future of the federal sentencing guidelines. In an attempt to persuade his wife not to divorce him, Ralph Blakely forced her to travel from their home in Washington to family property in Montana. It's easy to understand why Blakely's wife wanted a divorce: during much of the trip, Blakely made her ride in a coffin in the back of his pickup truck with her wrists bound and head wrapped in duct tape. He also threated to shoot their son, who managed to escape on the way to Montana. Blakely was arrested and returned to Washington, where he eventually agreed to plead guilty to two reduced charges while maintaining his innocence.

The maximum sentence was 10 years, but Washington's sentencing guidelines called for a sentence of 53 months. Deciding that deliberate cruelty and violence were aggravating factors that justified a longer sentence, the judge imposed 90 months. Blakely argues that the longer sentence violates Apprendi v. New Jersey because the aggravating factors that increased his sentence were not submitted to a jury or proved beyond a reasonable doubt. The Washington courts disagreed, holding that Apprendi only requires a jury to determine a fact if the existence of the fact would increase the statutory maximum sentence.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was a guest on Fox's Neil Cavuto show today. Before today, she had not stated her position on gay marriage. Cavuto pressed her, and she said she supports same-sex marriage and endorsed San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom's granting of same-sex marriage licenses.

"Can same sex couples marry?" Cavuto asked.
"Yes," Pelosi responded.
"So what the mayor of San Francisco is doing, you would approve of it?" Cavuto asked.
"Yes," Pelosi said.

We caught some but not all of the hearings today. We've read hundreds of comments posted here and elsewhere about them. Kevin Drum, formerly Calpundit, now writing for Washington Monthly's Political Animal, says:

Terrorists hijacked a bunch of planes and killed 3000 people on 9/11. In retrospect, of course we didn't do enough before then to stop al-Qaeda, and it's hardly shameful to say so. But none of these guys have the self-respect to admit it. I'm all for point scoring, but I just don't think all this blather about whether we took al-Qaeda seriously before 9/11 is meaningful.... It's what happened after 9/11 that should be getting more attention.

Kevin also notes that so far, the only one to apologize for the pre-9/11 failures has been Richard Clarke. Good points. But we remain troubled by the allegations that Bush was told of an Al-Qaeda threat and didn't deal with it, preferring instead to concentrate on Iraq. A President who disregards the advice of his top counterterrorism official is not a wise leader in our book.

We saw an old friend on the panel today, former Watergate special prosecutor Richard Ben-Veniste. We hadn't realized he was on the Commission, and now that we do know, we have a lot more faith in it. We liked that he and Bob Kerrey both knocked the Administration for not allowing Condolezza Rice to testify.

Our last open thread on the topic is getting too long, feel free to continue it here.

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