Four bombs exploded at a Madrid train station at rush hour this morning killing 170 people. Who's responsible?

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blasts, but Spanish officials said they suspected militant Basque separatists from the group E.T.A., whose initials stand for Basque Homeland and Freedom in Euskara, the Basque language. E.T.A. was placed on the United States's list of terrorist organizations in 2001 because it was determined by the State Department to have committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing, acts of terrorism. "I do not have the least doubt that it is E.T.A.," said the interior minister, Ángel Acebes, in a statement broadcast on the radio.

Not so fast?:

...but the latest attack was on a scale far larger than anything attributed to ETA in the past. For that reason, some commentators have speculated that other terror groups, including al Qaeda, may have been involved. Some fear that Spain's strong support for the United States in the run-up to war with Iraq could make her a target. This was picked up by the leader of the banned Basque separatist party Batasuna, Arnald Otegi. He rejected claims that ETA could have been behind the attacks and instead pointed the finger at "the Arab resistance".

Here's more on reaction in Madrid to the bombing. The death toll is now at 186, and undoubtedly going to climb. UPI reports on the bombing as the possible hallmark of Al Qaeda.

We're back at work today, so here's an open thread to discuss it.

Update: The mystery deepens:

Police probing the Madrid terrorist attacks found a van with detonators and an Arabic-language tape with Koranic verses, and officials said they are not ruling out any line of investigation.

[comments now closed, new thread here]

Say hello to Jeff Smith from Missouri. He's running for Congress and taken out an ad on TalkLeft to raise funds. Please help him. Here's what one of his blogger supporters emailed us:

He is challenging one of the worst candidates I've ever seen in Russ Carnahan. But besides Carnahan there are several pro-life candidates in the race and of the candidates who are viable, Jeff is the only one who is against the death penalty and he has a strong stand on the Patriot Act. If the others win, while they are decent people and I'd vote for them as long as they voted for Pelosi, for a relatively safe district it'd be a shame. Jeff is having good success outside of the district, but the machine has cut off most local funds. He is trying blog ads to see if that can be another source of funds.

As we learn more about other Democratic candidates around the country, including but not limited to those who advertise on TalkLeft, we'll write about them. And don't forget to support the DNC. We can take both the White House and Congress this year if we put our minds, hearts and wallets into the effort.

Sister Helen Prejean (Dead Man Walking) spoke at Salem College in North Carolina this week. Here's a recap of her remarks:

The death penalty is really about 98 percent political," Prejean said during a visit to Salem College. "A moratorium is a graceful way for politicians to get out of the death penalty."....The United States is unique among death-penalty countries in that it justifies the practice by saying it is carried out to honor the victims, Prejean said. If that were true, then most families of victims are being ignored because only a small percentage of murderers end up on death row, she said. "It's a political ploy," said Prejean....

The vast majority of executions in the United States are carried out in states that had long ties to slavery, and often involve poor black defendants and white victims, she told an audience of more than 500 people at Salem College last night.

She said the school's religion department should have a course titled "God Is Sneaky," because so much of what she has learned over the years about social justice, civil rights and death row came to her in experiences she was not looking for and was unprepared to handle....I feel really bad for the victims' families," she said. "But what we have is a culture that tells them the way to honor their family member is by sitting on the front row and watching the execution. It's a culture of vengeance."

Sister Prejean is writing another book, The Death of Innocents, detailing her experiences with two death row inmates.

Rodi Alvarado's fate is now in Ashcroft's hands. We wrote about it today over at American Street.

The Florida Senate Judiciary Committee has passed a bill to mandate videotaping of interrogations:

On Tuesday the Florida Senate's Judiciary Committee endorsed a bill requiring videotaping by a 5-1 vote. But, because of opposition from the Florida Sheriff's Association, the measure faces an uphill climb in order to become law.

Here's why the bill is needed.

Videotaping leads to real improvements in police interrogation practices that protect the rights of suspects. Officers now know that everything they do in the interrogation room could be viewed one day in a courtroom.

Videotaping interrogations and arrests is good for the police too. It protects them against baseless claims of coercing a confession or violating a suspect's constitutional rights. Frivolous claims by suspects will diminish once they know that judges and jurors can see the interview and decide for themselves whether detectives intimidated the suspect.

Police and prosecutors have little to fear from a requirement to videotape all interrogations and traffic stops. It's a win-win situation. Videotaping can protect the innocent, help convict the guilty and uphold the public's faith in our criminal justice system.

The Fort Lauderdale police department implemented videotaping interrogations last year.

''We're looking forward to it and welcome the new procedure,'' said Capt. Bob Lamberti, who heads the Fort Lauderdale Criminal Investigation unit. ``We think it's in everyone's best interest -- attorneys, prosecutors, judges, detectives, the whole criminal justice system.'' "The Fort Lauderdale department studied other police agencies and concluded that ''the advantages of taping far outweighed any perceived disadvantages,'' according to a statement"

NathanNewman analogizes the case of a boy wanting to marry his grandmother to the plight of gay couples who are denied the right to wed:

Why not? If his point is that there are many benefits that family members might be able to assure by marrying each other-- such as shared medical benefits and such-- that's exactly why gay couples want to become family members to one another.

....The basic point is that family arrangements ARE complicated and our present laws are probably too focused on nuclear family relationships. If the gay marriage debate forces us to discuss the need for extending marriage-like benefits to a range of other family relationships, that is no doubt all to the good.

[comments now closed]

Bump and Update: The 14 employees suspended last week have now been fired.

The Department of Juvenile Justice moved Wednesday to dismiss 14 workers for failing to assist Omar Paisley as he died a slow, torturous death from a burst appendix in the Miami-Dade juvenile lockup. The deputy secretary of DJJ, Francisco ''Frank'' Alarcon, also stepped down from the agency on an extended leave -- two weeks after his boss, Secretary W.G. ''Bill'' Bankhead, went on medical leave, expressing regret over the teenager's death. Alarcon is not expected to return.

The moves culminated a remarkable overhaul of the department since Paisley, 17, died last June while pleading for help from a detention center staff that either ignored his agony or told him to ``suck it up.''

***************
Original Post: 3/8/04 6:20 pm

In January, we wrote about two nurses charged with murder in the case of a 17 year old Florida boy who died of a burst appendix at a Florida detention facility. The prosecutor was insistent that the nurses left this poor boy in agony for three days and did nothing. He finally died sitting in a chair.

Today, Florida's Department of Juvenile Justice suspended 14 employees at the prison where the boy died.

A department report said several Miami-Dade Regional Detention Center officers failed to provide emergency care to Omar Paisley in June after he was found balled up in his cell vomiting and suffering from diarrhea. "I am outraged by the across-the-board inaction by so many at the Miami-Dade Regional facility," said interim Secretary C. George Denman. "That no one reached out to save a person in our care is profoundly disturbing."

Paisley had complained he was ill just one day after being jailed for cutting a neighbor with a soda can. The report cites 11 officers, three supervisors and a nurse for rule violations. It also said officers failed to provide CPR even though they were trained to do so, and one officer used other juveniles to clean Paisley's cell because he didn't want to expose guards to what he believed was a dangerous virus.

Jeb Bush's reaction at the time? He "retains confidence in Department of Juvenile Justice secretary Bill Bankhead" but will take the report into account.

Sickening.

Via Oliver Willis, we found the Libertarian Purity Test. We scored a 19. Oliver scored a 17. Both of us are judged to be "soft-core libertarians."

"You are a soft-core libertarian. With effort, you may harden and become pure."

But for the social issues, we probably would have flunked the test.

Check out Reasons to Vote Out Bush. There are 167 reasons right now. You can add your own.

After a day of questioning in Britain, all five Guantanamo detainees returned this week by the U.S. have been freed without charges. They have been reunited with their families.

After around two years in the US camp in Cuba and just over 24 hours at a high-security police station, Tarek Dergoul, 26, from London, was freed at around 10pm. He was soon followed by Shafiq Rasul, also 26, and Rhuhel Ahmed and Asif Iqbal, both 22, all of whom are from Tipton in the West Midlands. They were reunited with their families at secret locations of their choice.

A bidding war is ongoing for their stories. They should make for interesting reading. Who are they?

It has been alleged that Mr Dergoul was captured in the Tora Bora mountains in Afghanistan following the fall of the Taliban. He is believed to have had an arm amputated and had problems walking due to severe frostbite. His family say he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Mr Rasul flew to Pakistan to take a computer course, Mr Iqbal to meet a prospective bride and Mr Ahmed told his family he was going to help with Mr Iqbal's wedding.

Meanwhile, there are four more Britons and three British residents still detained at Guantanamo. Approximately 600 prisoners remain. Where are the charges? Where are the trials? Two years is far too long to be holding these men (and in some cases, children.) If they didn't commit a crime, they shouldn't be doing time.

Air America Radio, the new liberal radio network, is set to hit the airwaves on March 31. Biggest names: Al Franken and Janeanne Garafalo. Also on board: Randi Rhodes. First markets: NY, SF, LA and Chicago. We hope Denver's not far behind.

We've received an e-mail saying TalkLeft was just mentioned on Fox News:

fox just mentioned your site. it was in regards to the martha stewart story. Noted how she made political contributions to hillary clinton and that the money wont be returned. then said martha would lose her voting rights. that the only two states which allow felons to vote are maine and vermont (i think that's incorrect). fox then claimed that you said if felons were allowed to vote 75% (?) would vote democrat.

Our last count shows that 37 states allow felons who have served their sentences to vote. We did see the two state reference in a January 8, National Review column (available on Lexis.com), but it is in reference to states with some form of restrictions:

Forty-eight states currently have some form of restriction on the right of felons to vote. The exceptions are Maine and Vermont, which even permit inmates to vote. Thirty-three states disenfranchise felons who are on parole. Eight states deny felons the right to vote for life.

Felon disenfranchisement is an important issue to us.

Here's our post urging the Dems to go after these votes. As to the 75% figure, we quoted from a July 18, 2003 Los Angeles Times op-ed by Christopher Uggen, an associate professor of sociology at the, University of Minnesota, and Jeff Manza, an associate professor of sociology and political science at Northwestern University, who are co-authors of the forthcoming "Locked Out: Felon Disenfranchisement, and American Democracy" (Oxford University Press). (LA Times article available on Lexis.com):

Low-income voters are also overrepresented in prisons, and they too tend to vote Democratic. This effect is not just on the fringes. Our estimates show that at least seven of every 10 votes cast by these lost felon voters would go to Democratic candidates. In the 2000 presidential election, more than 4.6 million Americans were barred from voting because of felon disenfranchisement laws across the country. Of those, 35% had already served their time. [our emphasis]

Our work suggests that if [Florida's] 613,000 former felons had been permitted to vote — and even if you factor in a far-lower-than-expected turnout rate than the general population — Al Gore would have defeated George W. Bush by about 60,000 votes and would have been elected president. What's more, if all U.S. felons — in and out of prison — had been allowed to vote, Gore might have carried the nation by more than 1 million votes.

Uggen's and Manza's report was also published in the Summer 2003 edition of Contexts, an American Sociological Association magazine.

Bump and Update: Here's a Fox News article dated tomorrow--it calls TalkLeft an "internet group" and makes it sound like it was our study, not Uggen's and Manza's, that comes up with the 70% number. We're told that it was Fox's campaign correspondent, Carl Cameron, who mentioned TalkLeft on Shepherd Smith's Studio B show.