A bill to grant parole to sick inmates has passed the Iowa Senate:

Prison inmates who suffer from debilitating illnesses, even those serving life sentences, could be granted medical parole under a bill that cleared the Iowa Senate Monday. Supporters of the measure, approved on a 49-0 vote, argue that Iowa's Department of Corrections currently must cover the cost of treatment for inmates incapacitated by chronic or even terminal conditions. Placing them on parole would make them eligible for Medicaid and other benefits.

The Iowa Board of Parole would make the final decision on medical parole applications. Prison officials would make recommendations to the board. "Even in justice there's room for compassion," said Sen. David Miller, R-Batavia, the bill's sponsor. If an inmate's medical condition changed, under the bill, the parole board could return them to prison. Passage sends the bill to the House.

What a great line - it bears repeating: "Even in justice there's room for compassion."

The Judicial Conference of the United States is composed of 27 federal judges presided over by Chief Justice William Rehnquist of the Supreme Court. The executive committee of the Judicial Conference is headed by 5th Circuit Appeals Court Judge Carolyn Dineen King. Tuesday, Judge King said:

Federal courts are swamped, partly because of Bush administration get-tough-on-crime policies that lead to more trials....[she] singled out drug and immigration prosecutions along the U.S.-Mexican border and Attorney General John Ashcroft's order last year that federal prosecutors should seek the severest charges and penalties.....Federal spending has not come close to keeping pace with the increase in caseloads prompted by decisions like those.

...Already, the courts are leaving jobs unfilled and will eliminate hundreds of other positions through buyout programs, court administrators said. "We're at the point this year and next year where we are talking about cutting bone," King said.

by TChris

Why did so many media outlets uncritically report the charges that Saddam Hussein "was in league with Osama bin Laden, was developing nuclear weapons and was hiding biological and chemical weapons"? Because they got played by the Iraqi National Congress.

As TalkLeft has noted, the Bush administration continues to pay for intelligence from the INC despite its self-interest and its demonstrated history of providing intelligence that isn't all that accurate. Now a Knight Ridder investigation reveals that the INC didn't just lie to the Bush administration. It lied to the media, as well, and much of the media bought into it.

A June 26, 2002, letter from the Iraqi National Congress to the Senate Appropriations Committee listed 108 articles based on information provided by the Iraqi National Congress's Information Collection Program, a U.S.-funded effort to collect intelligence in Iraq.

The letter said that the INC provided information to Arab and Western news media and to officials in the offices of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.

Feeding the information to the news media, as well as to selected administration officials and members of Congress, helped foster an impression that there were multiple sources of intelligence on Iraq's illicit weapons programs and links to bin Laden. In fact, many of the allegations came from the same half-dozen defectors, were not confirmed by other intelligence and were hotly disputed by intelligence professionals at the CIA, the Defense Department and the State Department.

The strategy paid off. The media reports of IRC propoganda helped sway public opinion in support of the invasion of Iraq.

by TChris

Support for the death penalty has eroded as voters have grown increasingly concerned about the execution of the innocent. Legislators in Michigan, however, are moving toward ending a 158 year old ban on the death penalty in that state.

The House Regulatory Reform Committee voted 6-4 Tuesday to send the House a resolution that would ask voters this fall whether they want to change the state constitution to allow the death penalty to be considered for first-degree murder cases where there is no doubt about a defendant's guilt.

Imposing death when there is "no doubt" about guilt is an interesting standard. If proof beyond a reasonable doubt doesn't prevent the conviction of the innocent, there is little reason to think that requiring proof "beyond any doubt" will assure that the innocent are never put to death. Conversely, if proof beyond a reasonable doubt isn't good enough to justify a death sentence, should it be good enough to justify a lifetime of imprisonment?

This is hilarious--Police Auctions online at StealItBack.Com. It's the Ebay of law enforcement confiscation. Need gardening supplies? Buy them from the cops who took them away from another gardener. Check out this available grow light. Or this sales pitch:

Thinking about growing some exotic plants and flowers? Then you will need this Sunlight Supply grow light ballast. It is a 430 watt ballast and is for use with sodium bulbs.

Actually, some of the electronic deals aren't bad, although if the item doesn't work, it's your tough luck. Then again, imagine what you might find in the back of an old stereo that doesn't work. Consider the lawsuit if you buy something here and then get arrested for possession of stolen property.

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What a giant leap forward! Lexis/Nexis has signed contracts with prisons to make computerized legal research available to prisoners. For these prisoners, it means an end to outdated lawbooks, often with missing pages. Lexis is up to the minute, and for a non-lawyer, much easier to use than a law book. The prisoner can type in a subject to search for rather than leafing through volumes whose organizational framework is a mystery. This also saves prisons a lot of money as books are more expensive.

[comments now closed due to spammer]

Former S.D. Congressman Bill Janklow lost his bid for an appeal bond and must serve his 100 day jail sentence before his appeal is heard. He's in jail now, and his sentence is expected to be up in May.

In an unusual twist, at the request of the U.S. Attorney, the Government is seeking to replace Janklow as the defendant in the civil suit brought by the victim's family--which would make the U.S. --i.e., the taxpayers--and not Janklow responsible for the damages.

The U.S. Attorney says Janklow was on official government business. Apparently, he was giving a political speech at the time. That's official government business? Why would the U.S. want to step up to the plate in this case?

There will be protests around the country March 20 as we mark the one-year anniversary of the Iraq war. Here's what's happening in Taos, NM, where Donald Rumseld has "several area homes."

To mark the one-year anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq war, Action Coalition of Taos and Veterans for Peace will topple a twenty-foot effigy of Taos resident Donald Rumsfeld. This action will take place during a rally at the Taos Plaza calling for the end of the Iraqi occupation, one of hundreds worldwide taking place on Saturday, March 20th with the theme "The World Still Says No to War."

The 20-foot-tall statue, built by area residents, will be pulled down at the climax of the rally, which will begin at 3pm on March 20th at the Taos Plaza in Taos, New Mexico. The event will feature a variety of speakers as well as "The Radical Cheerleaders" who will help entertain the crowd with antiwar and anti-Rummy cheers. The statue will be toppled by the five winning participants of a "Why I want to topple Rumsfeld" contest, who will read their submissions prior to the Rumsfeld’s fall. Rumsfeld, who the activists consider to be a war criminal for his part in promoting the illegal war in Iraq, has been protested in Taos several times before. The largest march was in October of 2002 drawing 3,000 demonstrators who marched on one of his several area homes.

What's happening in your neck of the woods? [link via What Really Happened]

Attorney General John Ashcroft is home from the hospital. But, what would have happened if he didn't have health insurance? It's long, but witty and well worth the read.

So many inmates are executed in Texas -- 320 since 1976 --it's become a rote, mechanized assembly line procedure.

Texas has performed more than one-third of all the executions carried out in the United States in the last 28 years, and the state's execution chamber, a small, brick-walled room painted hospital green, is by far the nation's busiest. Last year, an average of two condemned inmates each month were strapped onto the stainless steel gurney, covered with a white sheet and briskly injected with three lethal drugs. So far this year, the pace is even faster.

They may not agree on much else, but prosecutors and defense attorneys, death penalty supporters and opponents and even the inmates and their guards concur on this: Texas has evolved an exceedingly efficient bureaucracy for putting people to death.

Here's what one guard had to say:

"Yes, it does get automated, because we do it so much," said Jim Willett, the former warden at the 19th Century Walls prison--where the execution chamber is located--who oversaw nearly 90 executions before his retirement in 2001. "But I don't know that I don't feel sorry for the guy working some other place that does three a year. Because if I do one here and I feel really bad about it--something about the guy or his crime, he's young or whatever--it ain't gonna be long till another one comes along. "It's kinda like baseball," Willett concluded. "You have a bad game today, another day or two you're gonna be playing another game."

Texas maintains a comprehensive death row website, which until only recently, included the last meals ordered by the prisoners.

Nathan Newman writes that a feature of the new Iraqi Constitution makes sure the incoming interim government is a complete US puppet regime. President Bush has said that with the new Constitution passed, power will be turned over to Iraqis after June of this year. Nathan says it's a lie:

The new government under the new constitution will be barred from overturning any laws that the US has imposed on the country since the Occupation. Why can't they change them? Because of this provision in the Constitution, Article 26:

A) Except as otherwise provided in this Law, the laws in force in Iraq on 30 June 2004 shall remain in effect unless and until rescinded or amended by the Iraqi Transitional Government in accordance with this Law.

Nathan has a lot to say about what that means.