Demagogue has an excellent analysis of the rotten Kansas court decision allowing greater punishment for homosexual acts of sodomy than heterosexual acts of sodomy. What a dumb decision. [hat tip to the Beat Bush Blog.]

Via Common Dreams:

Leaders of the MoveOn.org Voter Fund are urging urging the public to support a one-minute boycott of CBS during halftime at Sunday’s Super Bowl game to protest the network’s refusal to air an issue ad that is critical of the Bush Administration 's handling of the federal deficit.

At the same time, the MoveOn.org Voter Fund announced it will air the ad on CNN all day Sunday, including during the Super Bowl, and throughout the next week. It also will air on broadcast and cable stations in Florida, West Virginia, Ohio, Missouri and Nevada, five states that are expected to be central to the coming presidential campaign. The cost of the new ad buy is approximately $1 million.

Viewers are asked to leave the CBS Super Bowl broadcast for a minute between 8:15 and 8:45 p.m. Sunday night and go to CNN to see the ad that CBS would not run. For the exact time of the one-minute boycott and ad broadcast, go to the website www. Bushin30Seconds.org.

Update: Skippy has more.

Our congrats to How Appealing's Howard Bashman who is leaving his law firm today and establishing his own firm.

Effective at the close of business today, I have resigned from the law firm of Buchanan Ingersoll, where for the past three years I have served as chair of the Appellate Group, to open my own law firm focusing on appellate litigation. My new law firm will open for business on the morning of Monday, February 2, 2004. Early Monday morning, I will provide here at "How Appealing" my new office address, phone and fax numbers, and other contact information, and I will also link to a press release that explains the reasons for my move. For now, you have my word that this is a move that makes perfect sense from every conceivable perspective. Regular programming is scheduled to continue here today and into the foreseeable future.

For readers who use CrimeLynx to do their legal research, the site is back up after four days of downtime due to a server meltdown. The newsfeed will return over the weekend or Monday. We are going keep using different hosting companies for CrimeLynx and TalkLeft so they don't both go down at the same time.

Kobe Bryant: The Game of His Life
by Jeffrey Scott Shapiro

It was bound to happen. A former tabloid journalist was bound to write a book claiming inside details of the Kobe Bryant case. The book is by former Globe reporter Jeff Shapiro, who also wrote about the JonBenet Ramsey case.

Shapiro will be giving away his book Monday to journalists at the courthouse in Eagle, the next scheduled hearing date.

The book boasts interviews with the accuser. If she did speak with the Shapiro, we think the defense will have more support for their argument that she waived her privilege of confidentiality in her medical records.

Other purported book revelations:

• Whose DNA was detected in the woman's underwear the day she had her rape exam. Court testimony has revealed it was from someone other than Bryant.

• The story behind the implication by Bryant attorney Pamela Mackey that the accuser had had sex with three men in three days.

• What Bryant, 25, said in his first police interview the night after the alleged rape, when officers spoke with him for 75 minutes but didn't tell him they were tape-recording the conversation. The defense wants Bryant's statements thrown out, but they're said to be crucial to the prosecution's case.

Shapiro is now a law student in Florida. He says that after graduating, "he hopes to establish a foundation to help people fight back when they feel they've been victimized by tabloid tactics."

Need we say more?

The question, according to this article in the Lincoln Journal Star, is "Where do tobacco pipes end and marijuana bongs begin?"

The U.S. attorney for Nebraska, Mike Heavican, announced the indictments Wednesday of four people from two shops on federal drug paraphernalia charges. If convicted, they could face up to three years in prison for each charge and fines of up to $250,000 each.

They also face federal inspection of their business bookkeeping, authorities said, efforts that could lead to the forfeiture of money made selling illicit items.

Compare the state and federal penalties:

Federal drug paraphernalia charges are felonies; Nebraska law treats paraphernalia possession and sales as low-grade misdemeanors.

This is part of Attorney General John Ashcroft's zero tolerance policy. The Government thinks it is attacking the drug policy from the demand side by busting head shops:

Heavican called the effort part of the United States’ push for narcotics “demand reduction.” When U.S. officials ask countries such as Mexico and Colombia to fight drug supplies, he said, officials there ask Americans to fight demand..... Many drug dealers, addicts and users would not seek “the carrot of treatment” without “the stick of prosecution.”

We agree with Eric Sterling, director of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, who says of the busts:

“The goods are out there in the public eye, so it requires absolutely zilch investigation. It’s easy, cheap and headline-grabbing.”

[comments now closed]

In response to the PROTECT Act in which Congress placed more limitations on judicial discretion at sentencing proceedings, one federal judge has begun videotaping sentencing proceedings:

The move comes amid a backlash over a new law intended to make it more difficult for judges to depart from federal sentencing guidelines, and to make it easier for the government to appeal light sentences. Weinstein claimed that the law effectively gives the Second U.S.Circuit Court of Appeals the power to re-sentence defendants when it finds that a so-called "downward departure" was unjustified.

"It would be very hard to do that without seeing the defendant," said Weinstein, adding he would make all tapes available to the appeals court.

Weinstein, who has a reputation as an activist jurist, is among several federal judges who have openly accused Congress of trying to bully them into imposing harsher sentences.

LA Times columnist Steve Lopez writes in a poignant column:

Maria Suarez called me from a jail in San Pedro and said Tuesday she could see harbor boats through the window. After roughly two-thirds of her life in captivity, freedom was close enough to raise her hopes and break her heart at the same time.

Suarez, now 43, legally entered the United States from Mexico at the age of 16, only to be raped and beaten as the teenage sex slave of a man 55 years her elder. She was convicted of killing the monster, despite her claims of innocence, and finally won her parole last month after battling for years.

Now she sits in another prison, awaiting a deportation hearing scheduled for today. Suarez is a permanent legal resident, but not a U.S. citizen, and immigration law says that, with an aggravated felony on her record, she is to be deported.

"Justice," Suarez said, "is so hard to understand."

The Denver Post interviewed people who remember Howard Dean's year as an Aspen ski bum. He washed dishes at the Golden Horn restaurant. His former employer disses him, but most of those interviewed are either mildly favorable or say he didn't stand out.

Dean spent the 1971-1972 ski season in Aspen. That's the year we moved to Denver. Aspen was so, so fun back then. We liked Sheriff Bob Braudis's comments--he is the coolest sheriff we know.

Update: Katha Pollitt bashes the press over their treatment of Judith Dean :

I don't think Dr. Judy is weird at all. She's leading a normal, modern, middle-class-professional life. She has been married forever. She has two children. She likes camping and bike riding and picnics. She volunteers. She has work she loves...I have no idea why Judith Steinberg hasn't slogged through the snow for her husband. Maybe she's busy. ('It's not something I can say, 'Oh, you take over for a month,' she explained to Diane Sawyer. Imagine that, Tina, Diane, Maureen-a job where if you don't show up, it matters!)."

Cheers for Gov. Olene Walker of Utah, who opted out of the federal government's crime database today after being advised by the ACLU that the database is a threat to privacy.

Gov. Olene Walker promised to set up an oversight group after the ACLU on Wednesday said the program poses a more powerful threat to privacy than its organizers acknowledge. Utah's decision leaves six states still in the program.

The U.S. military says it is "sure" it will catch Osama bin Laden this year.

Any bets it will be a month or so before election day?

Seven U.S. soldiers were killed in Afganistan today.

Thursday also was one of the deadliest days for American forces in Afghanistan: Seven soldiers were killed when a weapons cache exploded southwest of the capital. Three other American soldiers were wounded and another was missing after the blast, the U.S. Central Command said.

Update: Hesiod at Counterspin also ties the news to Bush's re-election

Maher Arar was interviewed on WNYC --Randy at Beautiful Horizens has the details.