The detective was so cute the Court ruled it was entrapment.

Fort Lauderdale Detective Mike Nahum's handsome appearance lost him a criminal case, but there is a consolation prize. He may be the only guy in the world with a court order declaring he is a "very attractive man."

Nahum is so cute that a Broward Circuit Court judge threw out a criminal charge against a West Palm Beach man charged with selling drugs to Nahum during an undercover sting at a gay nightclub in Fort Lauderdale. Judge Susan Lebow ruled the defendant, Julio Blanco, was lured by the police officer into committing a crime in hopes he would be rewarded with sex.

On Wednesday, an appeals court backed the trial judge's decision and ruled the police officer's actions were so "outrageous" that it was entrapment. Blanco had never been arrested before and was not under any suspicion of criminal activity until he was talked into it by law enforcement, the Fourth District Court of Appeal ruled.

No pictures are available since Det. Nahum is still working undercover. Beware good looking men bearing money in exchange for illicit substances.

[link via Libby at Last One Speaks]

The Rocky Mountain Progressive Network says Karl Rove was on NPR this morning, talking about Colorado:

Karl Rove's laughable mendacity on NPR this morning, citing Colorado as an example of a state with a healthy economy and budget, have generated more spontaneous outburst to RMPN than we've had in a long time....

Here are the real stats.

Why did the U.S. deport Mahar Arar to Syria? Accoring to a new report, it was because he told the FBI he knew two other men under investigation:

The only stated reason the United States deported Maher Arar to Syria is that he admitted he knew two Ontario men who were also under RCMP investigation and later jailed as terrorism suspects in Syria.

According to U.S. documents obtained by The Globe and Mail, an Immigration and Naturalization Service's regional director concluded that Mr. Arar was a member of al-Qaeda because the 33-year-old Ottawa computer engineer admitted to the FBI after his arrest in 2002 that he was acquainted with two men suspected of being terrorists at the time. "I have determined that Arar is a member of the designated foreign terrorist organization known as al-Qaeda," INS Eastern region director J. Scott Blackman wrote in his October, 2002, decision.

Mr. Arar sued the U.S. Government Thursday as planned, alleging it knew he would be tortured if returned to Syria.

For more, see our posts yesterday, here and here.

Los Angeles is the latest city--and the largest one--to reject the Patriot Act:

"This is a huge victory for civil liberties," said Ramona Ripston, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. "Los Angeles is the largest city to pass a resolution in support of civil liberties and critical of the USA-PATRIOT Act. Angelenos should be proud that their City Council stands on the side of those who believe we can be both safe and free. Today’s resolution sends a clear message to those who assume that Americans will tolerate the erosion of our basic Constitutional rights."

The council voted 9 to 2 to adopt the resolution which seeks to “affirm the rights of all people… living within the City.” The resolution was spearheaded by Councilmember Jan Perry (D-District 9) and Assistant President Pro Tempore Eric Garcetti (D- District 13). The Civil Liberties Defense Coalition, a group of more than 50 local and national organizations, including the ACLU, the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and the National Council of LaRaza, had endorsed the resolution.

We think that L.A. choosing the day after Bush called for extending the Patriot Act to oppose it is a good omen. So far, more than 235 US communities representing over 30 million people have resolved to seek Patriot Act reform.

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Three police informants who set up fake drug busts in Texas were sentenced to between 33 and 41 months in federal prison Thursday. As a result of their actions, dozens of immigrants were falsely charged with crimes.

You would think the informants would have zero credibility after admitting they faked the drug busts. You'd be wrong. All three got lighter sentences for agreeing to testify against others in the scandal. The three testified against the cop they were working for. The cop went to trial and was acquitted. Yet the informants still got a sentence break in their cases for their "truthful" testimony in the cop's case.

In 2001, the men fooled police into paying them more than $275,000 for helping nab drug dealers. They arranged drug deals but kept the "buy" money supplied by police. More than two dozen people, mostly Hispanics, were jailed after the men planted gypsum powder and passed it off as cocaine during the busts.

In the federal criminal trial of Dallas Police Senior Cpl. Mark De La Paz, the trio testified that they duped the officer into believing the drugs were real when he made many of the arrests. De La Paz was acquitted in November of six federal charges in the fake-drug case.

One of the informants was paid $225,000 by the cops for setting up the fake busts. So he got a sentence break and $225k. Who said crime doesn't pay?

Sunday night on national radio--Hear Atrios in person. And Andrew Sullivan. We've been asked to participate as well. Here are the details.

Sunday January 25 from 9-11 pm EST, from Minnesota Public Radio and airing on public radio stations nationwide...Christopher Lydon will be hosting the first sustained blog conversation on network radio and you’re all invited to join in. The purpose is to air out the internet effects that the political campaign has suddenly made obvious. We want to encompass the new voices and communities, the critique of institutional journalism, the expressive possibilities beyond politics, the doubts, the hype, and the truth.

Time Magazine reports that a federal grand jury has begun hearing testimony in the investigation into the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity:

Prosecutors are believed to be starting with third-party witnesses, people who were not directly involved in the leak of Plame's identity. Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, claims that the leak was an act of retaliation against him for undercutting Bush's weapons-of-mass-destruction rationale for going to war in Iraq. Soon enough, witnesses with more direct knowledge will be called to testify, and a decision to subpoena journalists for their testimony will also be made.

[link via Atrios.]

Congress is considering launching it's own probe into the leak:

Members of Congress and 10 ex-CIA officials are seeking a broader inquiry into the leak of an undercover officer's name, aiming to determine if U.S. national security was compromised and to discourage future leaks.

In addition, a leading Democratic critic of the Justice Department investigation into the matter says the Bush administration should release details of the probe to show the public whether officials are cooperating as President Bush promised.

What did you think? Will this be the ticket?

We caught the last hour of the Democratic debate. No one shined, no one made a huge faux pas. Edwards was very good. We liked all of them--except Lieberman with his "Iraq was a just war" and "Saddam was a clear and present danger" rhetoric.

Some news reports: ABC News has Dems Debate in N.H., Seek to Temper Flaws and the New York Times has Speculations and Calculations Focus on Dean.

The Washington Post says electability is the key issue in New Hampshire (as it reportedly was in Iowa) and many independents are still on the fence (as they reportedly were in Iowa.)

The full transcript is here.

Calpundit and Pandagon blogged live throughout the debate. Dave Cullen of Conclusive Evidence rants on the press going after Howard Dean for his Iowa speech in The Big Lie of the Anger Connection.

In case you missed Howard Dean on Letterman last night, Political Wire has the top ten list Dean read on tonight's show on how he can turn things around.

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Former South Dakota Congressman Bill Janklow was given a suspended prison sentence and 100 days of county jail time for killing a motorcyclist in a car accident. He was convicted of manslaughter. Here's how the sentence works:

....after 30 days, he can leave jail for up to 10 hours a day to perform community service and then return to his cell. Janklow will be on probation for three years and during that time will not be allowed to drive.

We thought he'd be acquitted on the manslaughter charge, but we were wrong. The admission of "prior bad acts" probably did him in. All of our coverage of the case is accessible here

Fair? We think so, but we have a feeling a lot of you will think he got off too easy.

Ashcroft Sings--hysterical, you gotta watch and listen:

U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft ended a speech at a Charlotte, North Carolina seminary with a rousing rendition of a song he wrote called 'Let The Eagles Soar'

Who knew there was a Las Vegas lounge singer lurking inside him?

[link via Last One Speaks]

Our sympathies to Art Garfunkel, busted for pot during a traffic stop of his limo. He was the only passenger, the limo was stopped for speeding and the cop says the car smelled like burning pot. To add insult to injury, the cop didn't recognize him.

Did you know about Matrix, the federally funded crime database that is already in seven states that has a "potent repository of personal information?" It looks a lot like the scrapped Pentagon datamining program.

But newly emerging facts about the program, including documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union, indicate it could also be made to sift through vast stores of Americans' personal data some 20 billion records and proactively finger crime and terrorism suspects.

Combining state records with databases owned by Seisint Inc., Matrix details among other things the property, boats and Internet domains people own, their address history, utility connections, bankruptcies, liens and business filings, according to an August report by the Georgia state Office of Homeland Security.