Last week we wrote about House of Bush, House of Saud, the new book about the relationship between George Bush and the Saudi Royal Family. Now, Eric Boehlert, writing for Salon, tells us that a British publisher has dropped the book, fearing lawsuits from the Saudis.

From the book's website:

House of Bush, House of Saud begins with a single question: How is it that two days after September 11, 2001, even as American air traffic was tightly restricted, a Saudi billionaire socialized in the White House with President George W. Bush as 140 Saudi citizens, many immediate kin to Osama Bin Laden, were permitted to return to their country? A potential treasure trove of intelligence was allowed to flee the country-- including an alleged al-Qaeda intermediary who was said to have foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks. Why did the FBI facilitate this evacuation, and why didn't the agency question the people on the planes? Why did Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of most of the hijackers, receive exclusive and preferential treatment from the White House even as the World Trade Center continued to burn?

Via CNN tv, at 4:10 am Baghdad time, an explosion that may have been a rocket hit the Baghdad Sheraton, a hotel housing journalists. No casualties.

Kobe Bryant's accuser will testify tomorrow about her sex life--behind closed doors.

The hearing will be held to determine whether details of the woman's sex life can be introduced at Bryant's trial. The defense says the information should be admitted because it could show that the woman's injuries were caused by another sexual partner and that she had a "scheme" to sleep with Bryant, possibly to gain the attention of an ex-boyfriend. The prosecution fought to limit defense questioning, but was rebuffed by the Colorado Supreme Court. The hearing will be the first time the woman has faced Bryant since their encounter last summer.

We'll be talking about it tomorrow on Fox (12:20 ET)- and on MSNBC on the Abrams Report around 6:30 ET.

[Fox cancelled due to coverage of 9/11 hearings....Abrams may do the same. Fox moved to 9:30 ET Thursday--Abrams will also do Thursday]

by TChris

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a movie must be worth a million. No surprise, then, that the defense in Jayson Williams' murder case wanted to show the jury a video that demonstrates how the killing could have occurred accidentally.

Many lawyers believe that jurors have been conditioned by years of television viewing to pay rapt attention to anything they see on a TV screen. To the extent that the belief is true, televised evidence is more likely than live evidence to stick in the minds of jurors. What better way to tell the defendant's story, then, than via computer animation?

Demonstrative evidence is nothing new -- witnesses commonly use models and drawings to help juries understand their testimony -- but current technology makes it possible to create a very precise and detailed view of the evidence from a defense perspective. That's what Williams, the former NBA star charged with manslaughter for killing a chauffeur with a shotgun, wanted to do.

[Williams' lawyer, William] Martin said the video, which he called an animated CD, explained the gun's hammer and firing mechanism and illustrated the opinion of the defense's firearms expert that a stray wood chip had become lodged in the hammer mechanism and caused the gun to misfire while Mr. Williams held it.

by TChris

Twelve out of thirteen potential jurors were dismissed yesterday as jury selection began in the Scott Peterson trial. Most were released because they had made up their minds about Peterson's guilt or because they strongly opposed the death penalty. Faster progress was made today as five potential jurors were selected. The judge and lawyers expect to individually question about a dozen potential jurors each day during this initial phase of voir dire.

Acknowledging the difficulty of selecting a fair jury in such a high profile case, the prosecutor agreed with Mark Geragos, Peterson's attorney, that juror questionairres should not be released to the press. The judge accepted their reasoning, ruling that Peterson's interest in a fair trial outweighed the media's interest in publishing the questionairres. Judge Alfred Delucchi said that releasing information that might permit the media to identify jurors could have a chilling effect upon the willingness of potential jurors to serve.

by TChris

Remember when Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and other right wingers dominated the political best sellers list? Those days are gone. Recently, book buyers have been interested in alternatives to the whacky ideas advanced by the Bush administration and its apologists.

Richard Clarke's new book, Against All Enemies, (discussed in TalkLeft here) was released yesterday. It had an impressive first printing of 300,000 copies, and another 100,000 have already been ordered. And it's not alone among hot sellers that take a critical look at the President.

Against All Enemies was ranked No. 1 on Amazon.com's list of best sellers as of Tuesday afternoon and has raised sales for other works attacking Bush, including Kevin Phillips' American Dynasty and Ron Suskind's The Price of Loyalty, a collaboration with former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill.

Anti-Bush books have been popular since last fall, when liberal pundits Al Franken, Joe Conason and Molly Ivins were among those with best sellers. Now the best sellers are being written by historians such as Phillips and former Bush officials such as Clarke.

Neil Nyren, the publisher and editor-in-chief of Putnam, says that conservative books still sell, but that liberal books now occupy the spots that books by the likes of Coulter held during the Clinton administration.

More books that Bush would rather you not read will appear later this year.

Books unfavorable to Bush will continue coming out, including Worse Than Watergate, by John W. Dean, a former aide to President Nixon, and The Politics of Truth, by former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, who has criticized the White House's uses of intelligence before the Iraq war.

If he finishes writing it, President Clinton's autobiography will also appear this year.

A federal judge in California has allowed defendants to raise medical marijuana use as a defense to cultivation charges:

Monday's ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Nora M. Manella to allow Anna Barrett and her husband, Gary, to make such a case comes in the wake of a December ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The December ruling concluded that a congressional act outlawing the drug may not apply to sick people with a doctor's recommendation in states with medical marijuana laws.

This is a blow to Ashcroft and the Justice Department. And it's only one judge in one jurisdiction. It's why we need to pass the Truth in Trials Act.

Here's what the House Panel investigating the 9/11 attacks finds:

The Clinton and Bush administrations' failure to pursue military action against al-Qaida operatives allowed the Sept. 11 terrorists to elude capture despite warning signs years before the attacks, a federal panel said Tuesday.

The Clinton administration had early indications of terrorist links to Osama bin Laden and future Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as early as 1995, but let years pass as it pursued criminal indictments and diplomatic solutions to subduing them abroad, it found.

Bush officials, meanwhile, failed to act immediately on increasing intelligence chatter and urgent warnings in early 2001 by its counterterrorism adviser, Richard A. Clarke, to take out al-Qaida targets, according to preliminary findings by the commission reviewing the attacks.

It's a big story for today. Here's an open thread to discuss it.

Matt Yglesias, writing for American Prospect, explains why President Bush could have done more to stop al-Qaeda and terrorism but didn't.

Differences aside, it's possible to detect a coherent story here: Bush inherited a set of policies that he knew to be inadequate, and he wanted to do more; unfortunately, there wasn't time to put a "more comprehensive policy" into place, and the country paid the price. It's a coherent story, but it's one that's contradicted by the facts.

The Cincinnati Enquirer has an extensive series on Youth, Mental Illness and Abuse. It consists of 10 articles in two days plus a follow up the 3rd day. Yesterday, we wrote about the paper's investigation into abuse at juvenile treatment facilities. Sunday's article reported on parents who give up their kids as a last resort. The entire series is available here.

The Ohio legislature is paying attention and reform bills are underway. The editorial board of the paper weighs in here.

The State bar of Texas has commenced an investigation of Swisher County DA Terry McEachern who was in charge of the bogus Tulia, Texas drug busts. From an Austin Statesman editorial today:

The bar initiated an investigation of Terry McEachern, the Swisher County district attorney who relentlessly pursued felony convictions of dozens of Tulia residents on trumped-up drug charges in 1999 -- despite a lack of evidence. In investigating McEachern, the bar is sending a message that it won't look the other way when prosecutors hide evidence from defense lawyers or permit key witnesses to make false statements under oath. This isn't the only case in which a prosecutor has bent or violated ethics rules to win cases. Nonetheless, this is a rare and significant occurrence in Texas justice, signaling that prosecutors who conduct themselves unethically will answer to the state bar.

Prosecutors who cheat to win convictions rarely face consequences because their wrongs are uncovered years after the misconduct occurred. That's what happened last month, when the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the death sentence of inmate Delma Banks after finding that Bowie County prosecutors had violated Banks' constitutional rights by withholding evidence for nearly two decades and permitting key witnesses to lie about the 1980 slaying of a Texarkana teenager. It is refreshing to know that the state bar is awake and doing its job in holding cheating prosecutors accountable. Such prosecutors undermine public confidence in the judicial system. Now the bar should look into the Banks case.

Say hello to The Revealer-- a daily blog about religion and the press. It is a project of NYU's Center for Religion and Media and the Pew Charitable Trusts.

The blog's goal is to educate the public about the role of religion in politics and culture and to help journalists do a better job of covering religion. It is edited by Jeff Sharlet, who writes for Harper's, In These Times, The Nation and The Baffler) and published by Jay Rosen, creator of PressThink and the "founder of the public journalism movement."

Jeff writes, "Too much of the press is blind to the role religion plays in politics; we think The Revealer is needed to add some nuance to the discussion."