by TChris

All twelve counts accusing recording artist R. Kelly of possessing child pornography in Florida have been dismissed.

The case began when Polk County sheriff's detectives found marijuana in a home Kelly rented for his business associates. The detectives obtained a warrant to search the nearby house where Kelly was staying. During that search, detective Robert Mateo found what he considered to be an "unusual" amount of adult pornography in a cabinet. (It is unclear what constitutes an "unusual" amount of porn -- perhaps more than Mateo kept in his own home?)

Relying on his discovery of adult porn, Mateo requested a second warrant to search for child porn. Why Mateo thought he had probable cause to believe that a consumer of adult porn would also have child porn is again unclear, although the affidavit supporting the warrant apparently made reference to "unspecified information from Chicago authorities." Kelly is also charged with possession of child porn in Chicago, although some of those charges were recently dismissed.

Armed with the second warrant, Mateo returned to Kelly's home and seized a video camera, on which he discovered "several pictures of two women performing sex acts and other photos of Kelly in a sex act." Mateo apparently judged the women in question to be minors -- hence the child porn charges.

Circuit Judge Dennis Maloney suppressed the pictures as evidence after concluding that Mateo did not present sufficient evidence to justify issuance of the second warrant. Judge Maloney ruled that Mateo failed to demonstrate that a possessor of adult porn, marijuana, and video cameras would probably also be in possession of child porn. No pictures, no case, so the prosecution dropped the charges after deciding it had no grounds for appeal.

by TChris

In most of the country, little attention is paid to the Border Patrol. Taxpayers might begin to pay greater attention if they notice that the Border Patrol is now the largest uniformed police force in the country, at a cost of $20 billion over the past decade. The agency will soon spend another $10 million to add 260 agents, unmanned aircraft and more detention space in Arizona.

Is this money well spent? Dramatic increases in Border Patrol resources haven't been effective in the past.

Although the number of agents has more than tripled, thousands of undocumented immigrants cross the border each day and hundreds of them die each year. A decade after the start of [Operation Gatekeeper], arrests have dropped to 900,000 last year from 1.2 million in 1993.

It may take 16,000 agents to fully patrol the border, but a General Accounting Office study concludes that Operation Gatekeeper, started in the 1990's, did not clearly reduce the number of illegal entries along the southwestern border. It did, however, made illegal entry a riskier proposition, leading to an increase in deaths.

As a record number of immigrants tried crossing through Arizona, the Border Patrol increased the number of agents by 666 percent, and the death count rapidly climbed. In 1998, Border Patrol agents in Arizona recorded 28 deaths in the Yuma and Tucson sectors. Last year, the agency counted more than 150, though an independent count by The Arizona Republic came up with 205.

Treating illegal entry as a criminal justice problem that can be solved with more Border Patrol agents and some unmanned aircraft is doomed to failure. In the meantime, taxpayers will continue to pay the rapidly growing cost of enforcement and people seeking a better life in the United States will continue to die in the Arizona desert.

by TChris

The tension between privacy and security continues to grow as the government seeks to implement the Computer-Assisted Passenger Prescreening System (CAPPS II). The system would rank air passengers according to the likelihood that they are terrorists.

Congress last year ordered the General Accounting Office, its investigative arm, to report on whether CAPPS II safeguards passenger privacy. The auditors reported last month that the government hasn't adequately addressed security and privacy concerns.

The Transportation Security Administration intends to order airlines to surrender passenger records so that it can test CAPPS II. The airlines have refused to provide the information voluntarily. The airlines are worried about "government snooping and the possibility that people will be wrongly labeled as terrorists." The Air Transport Association, speaking for the airlines, would like the TSA to adopt guidelines that would protect the privacy of passengers.

The guidelines seek to ensure the TSA collects only personal information pertaining to aviation security, stores it securely and gets rid of it as soon as travel is completed. The airlines also said that passengers must be allowed to access their personal information and correct any errors.

The TSA has hired a privacy officer to assure that it obeys existing privacy laws, and says that it won't retain passengers' records, "except for people who might be terrorists."

CAPPS II would compare passenger information to government databases and assign each passenger a color code. Red means the passenger is a terrorist or violent criminal: no flying allowed. Yellow means questions exist and the passenger would go through extra security screening. Everybody else would be green, meaning they go through routine screening.

In response to the GAO report, some members of Congress believe CAPPS II is so flawed that it will ultimately be cancelled. The TSA is pressing onward, and will order the airlines to submit the requested passenger information within the next couple of months.

A car bomb destroyed a Baghdad hotel Wednesday night, killing 27 (as of now.)

The Bush administration offered prayers for the victims but said such attacks would not change U.S. policy. "Democracy is taking root in Iraq and there is no turning back," said Scott McClellan, White House spokesman. "This is a time of testing, but the terrorists will not prevail."

Here's an open thread to discuss it and all things Iraq war-related.

TalkLeft hit 2 million visitors today. We began in June, 2002, and were lucky to get 100 readers a day. Now, over 6,000 readers daily visit TalkLeft, many more than once. Thanks to all of you for making us a success in the blogosphere.

We're taking the day off....see you tonight.

Colorado Green Beret, Chief Warrant Officer William Howell, killed himself during a confrontation with police who had responded to his home on a domestic disturbance call. He returned from Iraq three weeks ago. He was 36.

The military requires troops returning from combat to be screened for post-traumatic stress disorder and other problems. The policy was enacted after four military wives of special forces soldiers returning from Afghanistan were killed by their husbands at Fort Bragg, N.C., in 2002.

Steve Robinson, executive director of the National Gulf War Resource Center, an advocacy group for veterans of both conflicts, said at least 23 service members committed suicide in Iraq since the war started and six, excluding Howell, killed themselves after returning stateside.

Read Joe Conasen today on the decline of the Western alliance:

Rather than using the events in Spain to retroactively justify the Bush administration’s policy in Iraq, honest analysis must acknowledge that last year’s invasion of Iraq was a serious strategic error. By rejecting multilateralism in pursuit of their "pre-emptive" doctrine, the President and his advisers damaged American credibility, weakened the Western alliance and created the situation now being exploited by Al Qaeda.

...The neoconservative strategy in Iraq has proved wrong in almost every particular. The costs of the war have been far greater than predicted, while the benefits remain in grave doubt. Meanwhile the Western alliance continues to decline, as does the moral reputation of the United States.

This is an official database of the Administration's statements on Iraq set up in the House of Representatives at the request of Rep. Henry Waxman.

Background:

One year after the Iraq invasion, many doubts have been raised regarding the Administration’s assertions about the threat posed by Iraq. Prior to the war in Iraq, the President and his advisors repeatedly claimed that Iraq
possessed weapons of mass destruction that jeopardized the security of the United States. The failure to discover these weapons after the war has led to questions about whether the President and his advisors were candid in describing Iraq’s threat.

The Database:

The Iraq on the Record Report, prepared at the request of Rep. Henry A.Waxman, is a comprehensive examination of the statements made by the five Administration officials most responsible for providing public information and shaping public opinion on Iraq: President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.

This database identifies 237 specific misleading statements about the threat posed by Iraq made by these five officials in 125 public appearances in the time leading up to and after the commencement of hostilities in Iraq. The search options on the left can be used to find statements by any combination of speaker, subject, keyword, or date.

In Racine, WI, a disabled vet and her partner have been denied a loan:

Marilyn Riedel, 61, a disabled Army veteran, has trouble moving, drinking and eating. It's difficult for her to talk because her worsening Parkinson's disease makes her tongue quiver. But she's so lucky. She's lucky because a woman named Connie Guardino, 58, loves her with her whole heart. Whatever the future may offer, this couple will face it together, and they'd like to do it in a cute little two-bedroom home on Illinois Street. If they were married, they could have it. But because they are a same-sex couple, they've been rejected for a loan by the Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs.

Pete Karas at Progressive Racine has more.

by TChris

As we approach the one year anniversary of Bush's Folly (a/k/a The Invasion of Iraq), take time to read this overview of disclosures that have come to light in recent months concerning the runup to the invasion. Of particular interest:

• evidence of the link between the invasion and the administration's thirst for oil;

• the administration's efforts to boot Jose Bustani out of his position as head of the UN’s Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, for fear that he would succeed in his attempt to persuade Iraq to join the Chemical Weapons Convention, which would have thwarted the administration's justification for going to war;

• the stealthy creation of the Office of Special Plans at the Pentagon (the "special plan" being the invasion of Iraq), where Bush's holy warriors overrode the judgment of career specialists in Middle East policy while publicly pretending to support a diplomatic solution; and

• enlisting the British government's assistance in spying on UN officials in New York.

The article also discusses the administration's (largely successful) efforts to delay or control any investigation into its actions, and to avoid responsibility or accountability for its decisions.

by TChris

Now that Martha Stewart's trial is over, can the government claim that its victory sends a message to corporate criminals that the time has come to mend their ways? Lee Drutman reminds us that Stewart acted as an individual investor, not as a corporate CEO. He asks us to compare Stewart's actions to the allegations of accounting fraud at Enron, WorldCom, Global Crossing, and Qwest, or to conspiracies between investment bankers and brokers to steer investors into lousy stocks, or to after-hours trading in the mutual fund industry that favored wealthy investors. Will serious corporate criminals quake in fear because Stewart was convicted of lying about an alleged crime (insider trading) with which she was never charged? In Drutman's words: as if.

Drutman also points out that Stewart is likely going to lose her freedom while ten Wall Street banks recently paid fines for their transgressions.

But the fines were a slap on the wrist, barely a day's revenue for most of the firms and even partly tax-deductible. And the individual players in the scams, the executives who directed it and the employees who carried it out, were not made to feel much financial pain for leading millions of investors astray.

Punishments visited upon the mutual funds that permitted after hours trading have been similarly light.

At worst, funds have been ordered to compensate investors for what the funds stole from them and make changes to their governance structures that they should have had all along. Such prosecution is a typical approach for dealing with corporate crime: just pay back what you stole and don't let it happen again. Imagine if such logic were used on common thieves?

If the government sent a message, it's this: We will prosecute an occasional case against a high profile individual on charges that are relatively simple. Most corporate criminals will be happy to live with that message.

Via Scotus Blog:

There is a new and easy-to-use resource center for No. 03-1027, Rumsfeld v. Padilla, established by Wiggin and Dana, one of the firms acting as Padilla's counsel at the merits stage. It includes all of the appellate decisions and briefs to date (in both the Supreme Court and Second Circuit), as well as a full transcript of oral argument and selected other documents. You can access the center here.