by TChris

Accusations of corporate fraud will continue to be tested in lower Manhatten courtrooms after Martha Stewart's trial ends. Starting Monday: the trial of John Rigas, the founder and former CEO of Adelphia Communications, and his two sons on a variety of fraud charges, including allegations that Rigas "improperly used the company's money for his own purposes - buying Adelphia stock, building a $13 million golf course and shuttling family members back and forth from a safari vacation in Africa, among other expenses."

by TChris

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on the Bush administration's Department of Defense.

The Defense Department continues to pay millions for information from the former Iraqi opposition group that produced exaggerated intelligence that President Bush used to argue his case for war.

The Pentagon has set aside between $3 million and $4 million this year for the Information Collection Program of the Iraqi National Congress, led by Ahmed Chalabi, said two senior U.S. officials and a U.S. Defense Department official.

The Defense Department official who anonymously revealed the spending said that it would be "too negative" to call all of the purchased intelligence useless, and contended that it is worth sifting through the rubbish to find an occasional "golden nugget." Still, it seems odd that our government arrests its own citizens every day for providing false information to the government, while it pays known liars in Iraq in the hope that they might occasionally tell the truth.

A "senior administration official" argued that, absent intelligence alternatives, we had little choice before the war but to ignore the self-interest of the Iraqi National Congress. The same official thinks the "evidence now suggests that ... we may have been duped by people who wanted to encourage military action for their own reasons.” The official questioned whether the United States should continue funding the program. Sounds like a good question to ask. Maybe he should ask his boss.

We are headed back to Denver and very grateful to TChris for all his great posts this weekend. We'll be back after the finale of Sex and the City tonight. (Our prediction: Carrie will come back to the U.S. with Big but refuse to marry him.) In other news, Terry Nichols' retrial in Oklahoma is set to begin March 1. It is in McAlester, Oklahoma--home of Oklahoma's death row, munitions factory and prison system. That speaks volumes about the potential jury pool.

Nichols' has offered to plead guilty and take a life sentence, but that's not good enough for those who want him dead. A recent poll of Oklahomans shows that most of them do not want this trial.

A recent Tulsa World poll found that 70 percent of Oklahomans feel the expense of a state trial is unnecessary since Nichols is already serving a life sentence. An earlier poll, for The Oklahoman, found a majority of state residents would prefer a plea bargain to a trial.

Not even the families of the victims are in accord on the issue:

Jim Denny makes an unlikely advocate for Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols. His two children still suffer from injuries received when the explosion ripped through the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.
For his role in the terrorist attack, Mr. Nichols was sentenced to life in prison without parole. But on March 1, he will face a new trial on state murder charges - and nearly nine years after the bombing, many Oklahomans say enough is enough.

"The federal government did a great job trying both McVeigh and Nichols," says Mr. Denny from his home in Oklahoma City. "But this state trial is the biggest waste of money and waste of time. There comes a time when we have to let go." Denny is not alone. In a recent poll sponsored by the Tulsa World, 70 percent of those surveyed opposed a state trial, which has already cost taxpayers $4 million. The resistance isn't just about money, say mental-health experts; it's about progress, and a sign that Oklahoma is healing.

We will be following this trial closely when it begins.

by TChris

In a triumph of ego over the collective good, Ralph Nader announced on Meet the Press that he will run for President. Also on Meet the Press, Arnold Schwarzenegger complained that, as a foreign-born citizen, he can't be elected President.

by TChris

Following on the heels of Wednesday's criticism by leading scientists of the Bush administration's suppression or distortion of scientific evidence to provide a smokescreen for its unscientific approach to the environment, health care, and arms control, the administration admitted that "it improperly altered a report documenting large racial and ethnic disparities in health care."

The theme of the original report was that members of minorities "tend to be in poorer health than other Americans" and that "disparities are pervasive in our health care system," contributing to higher rates of disease and disability.

But that theme doesn't mesh well with the administration's cheery view of an America where racial inequality is a thing of the past, so the administration adopted its usual spin strategy: when the facts are inconvenient, ignore them or change them. And so,

the final report has an upbeat tone, beginning, "The overall health of Americans has improved dramatically over the last century."

The authors of the report by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, led by Dr. Carolyn Clancy, resisted the bureaucratic pressure to doctor the report, but in the end gave in.

The Guardian/Observer has a special report of the five British detainees at Guantanamo who are to be sent back to Great Britain. It's called To Hell and Back.

Lawyers for the detainees are now convinced that the releases were designed to head off growing disquiet in the White House about their cases being heard in the Supreme Court in April. Two of the soon to be released Britons - Shafiq Rasul and Asif Iqbal - were subjects of a petition to the court arguing that Camp Delta, although in Cuba, fell under American jurisdiction and under US law their detention without trial would be illegal. That only leaves an Australian, Mamdouh Habib, as the case's sole remaining active petitioner.

Stephen Watts, a lawyer for the four men, said that he would not be surprised if Habib was either released or put up to a military tribunal before the Supreme Court hearing. 'By doing this the US government can try and show the court there is a proper process going on here or that the case is no longer a live one,' Watts said.

Though it has controlled Guantanamo Bay for years, the US argues that it is sovereign Cuban soil and that it just rents the land under the terms of an agreement reached with the pre-Fidel Castro government in Havana. Castro has always refused to accept the annual US rent payments. As a result of the dispute the US base has fallen into a legal black hole which the prisoners' cases will challenge at the Supreme Court.

'All these releases and other things are designed to preserve what is essentially an American gulag in the Caribbean,' Watts said.

The Red Cross visited Saddam Hussein in Iraq this week. The visit was conducted by an Arabic-speaking delegate and an ICRC doctor in accordance with the ICRC's standard procedures. As of now, Saddam still has POW status. What does that mean? According to the Red Cross:

The ICRC believes that POW status for Mr. Hussein is legally correct as he was commander-in-chief of the Iraqi armed forces. This status does not grant Mr. Hussein immunity from prosecution for crimes allegedly committed before capture, nor does it prevent him from being interrogated. When questioned, however, POWs are not legally obliged to give more than their surname, first names, rank, date of birth and service number (or similar).

If prosecuted by the detaining power, POWs must be tried by the same courts, and according to the same procedure, as for members of the armed forces of the detaining power. Thus, a POW held by US forces must be tried by courts martial operating under the US Uniform Code of Military Justice. In all circumstances the court must offer essential guarantees of independence and impartiality.

POWs may be transferred out of the country where they were captured. No specific provision is made under the 3rd Geneva Convention for family visits, but when the POWs are held in their own country, it seems logical to grant them the same right to family visits as granted to civilians protected by the 4th Geneva Convention.

The Red Cross is not commenting on Saddam's condition, medical or otherwise. Here's why the Red Cross visits prisoners.

A British paper, the Sunday Express, is reporting that Bin Laden is surrounded and trapped like a rat, waiting only for Bush to give the order to take him in:

The report goes on to say bin Laden and his men "sleep in caves or out in the open. The area is swept by fierce snowstorms howling down from the 10,000-feet high mountain peaks. Donkeys are the only transport". The special forces are "absolutely confident" there is no escape for bin Laden. All are waiting for the order to go in and get him.

"The timing of that order will ultimately depend on President Bush. Capturing bin Laden will certainly be a huge help for him as he gets ready for the election. It will be an even bigger bonus than getting Saddam."

Our view: It's one newspaper's report, unsubstantiated, and we don't think anyone takes him out alive.

Democrats aren't the only voters disenchanted with Bush. So are many independents and Republicans, including those that voted for him last time around:

In dozens of random interviews around the country, independents and Republicans who said they voted for Mr. Bush in 2000 say they intend to vote for the Democratic presidential candidate this year. Some polls are beginning to bolster the idea of those kind of stirrings among Republicans and independents.

This one interviewee summed it up pretty good:

In the 2000 presidential election, Bill Flanagan a semiretired newspaper worker, happily voted for George W. Bush. But now, shaking his head, he vows, "Never again. The combination of lies and boys coming home in body bags is just too awful," Mr. Flanagan said, drinking coffee and reading newspapers at the local mall. "I could vote for Kerry. I could vote for any Democrat unless he's a real dummy."

We really enjoy reading about Teresa Heinz Kerry. We always learn something new about her, and it's refreshing to see a candidate's wife with a distinct personality and a persona of her own. The Sunday New York Times has this long profile of Ms. Heinz Kerry. The new item we learned about her today?

But Ms. Heinz Kerry, a physician's daughter who peruses medical journals and toxicology articles and is intrigued by alternative medicine and Eastern philosophy, knew enough to have her husband's blood retested for C-reactive protein, a little-known indicator of potentially cancerous inflammation. Two days before Christmas, his doctor told Mr. Kerry that his wife's fears were well placed; he was in the very early stages of prostate cancer. Ms. Heinz Kerry may well have saved her husband's life.

by TChris

TalkLeft advised Martha Stewart last week not to testify. Others agree that the risks of taking the stand to tell her story outweigh the benefits, given the weakness of the prosecution's case.

The media-savvy Stewart may also think her public expects her to take the stand. Heeding that urge, however, would expose her to prosecutors' questions and the possibility of a public meltdown. And that could be fatal to her case, lawyers said.

"Cross examination is not appearing in front of a board of directors or on an analysts call. . . . The questions are going to be tough. If there's even a flash of arrogance or anger, it will be devastating to her," said Alan Lieberman, a former federal prosecutor.

But only Martha Stewart can choose, and she will have to wait before she can make a fully informed decision.

Stewart's lawyers will also almost certainly urge her to wait to make her decision until Monday when U.S. District Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum says she will decide whether to dismiss the most serious charge in the case -- a securities fraud count that carries up to 10 years in prison.

As Roger and TalkLeft observed in comments to an earlier post, a dismissal of the securities fraud charge would send a message to the jury that the prosecution made a serious mistake bringing this case, leaving little reason for Stewart to accept the risk of testifying.

by TChris

John Kerry and John Edwards have agreed to debate each other, one-on-one. The "showdown" will take place on February 29.