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.

[comments now closed]

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.

Mark Gisleson has penned his last column for Bush Wars--we're really sorry to see him move on. If you haven't been reading him regularly, go over now before his posts are all gone.

Drug War Rant reports that with just a few days until marijuana is downgraded from class B to class C in England, the attempts to scare people are getting silly.

Venezuela is moving to decriminalize marijuana.

Atrios finds some apparent plagerism in Bush's SOTU.

Matt Yglesias on SOTU:

What's the deal with this anti-drug stuff? I honestly don't have a problem with the idea that Dubya snorted a little coke in his youth, some of the finest people I know did the same, but isn't it a bit hypocritical for him to rag on like that about the evils of drugs? And also this business about abstinence. I can't believe I saw Democrats applauding that garbage. I'm going to go way out on a limb here and say that, personally speaking, I think sex is fun, and I'm guessing most members of congress (both parties!) feel the same way about it. Within or without the bonds of marriage.

Liberal Oasis on The Yawn of the Union.

Cursor has a terrific wrap-up of coverage on SOTU.

MadKane has her first interactive SOTU crossword puzzle.

Katherine of Obsidian Wings has put together a 16 part series on Maher Arar.

Skippy finds ShoptodropBush--commissions from every purchase go to MoveOn.

There's so much more great stuff going on around the bloggerhood this week. The blogrolls on the right side of TalkLeft are a great source of information and inspiration and we recommend them highly.

As for us, we'll be on Kobe duty today, you can catch us on CNN with Paula Zahn (8 pm ET) Thursday night.

Update: The New York Times has this article on googlebombing and "miserable failure", mentioning both The Horse and TalkLeft.

Canadian Maher Arar will file his lawsuit today against Attorney General John Ashcroft. Arar was seized at JFK while changing planes and ordered deported to Syria, where he was imprisoned for a year, during which he says he was tortured.

The suit will be filed in federal court in the Eastern District of New York, where JFK airport is located. The American Centre for Constitutional Rights has said it will oversee the lawsuit.

The Justice Department has previously said it received assurances from Syria that Mr. Arar would not be tortured.

In what the Canadian press is calling tactics resembling a police state, the RCMP, armed with a search warrant, spent 8 hours searching a reporter's home, trying to find the source of leaked information in the Maher Arar case that appeared in one of the reporter's articles on the case:

Police were seeking the source of an alleged information leak stemming from a Nov. 8 story O'Neill wrote on Arar, an Ottawa telecommunications engineer who became entangled in the war against terrorism. Arar, a Canadian citizen who hails from Syria, was deported to the country of his birth by U.S. authorities after being stopped in New York in 2002.

O'Neill's article cited "a security source" and a leaked document offering minute details of what Arar allegedly told Syrian military intelligence officials during his incarceration. Following his release last fall, Arar said he was tortured for months by Syrian authorities who pressed him about any links to the Al Qaeda terrorist network.

O'Neill reported that Arar told the Syrians he attended an Al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan in 1993. Arar later insisted he only made a bogus confession under torture, and denied any involvement in terrorism. He has also called for a full public inquiry into what role Canadian police and intelligence officials might have played in his deportation. The federal government has so far rejected those calls.

The military lawyer appointed to represent Australian David Hicks at Guantanamo slams the tribunal rules and says they don't allow for a fair trial.

Maj. Michael Mori, who in November was assigned to be the military attorney for David Hicks -- an Australian held at the U.S. military prison in Cuba -- said the system set up by the Pentagon for trials of non-U.S. citizens captured during what U.S. officials call the war on terror was unfair.

"The military commissions will not provide a full and fair trial," Mori told a news conference. "The commission process has been created and controlled by those with a vested interest only in convictions.... Using the commission process just creates an unfair system that threatens to convict the innocent and provides the guilty a justifiable complaint as to their convictions."

Among the problems with the tribunal rules are these:

... the Pentagon can monitor communications between prisoners and their lawyers, and there is no independent judicial review process. Appeals go only to a special military review panel named by the Pentagon, to the secretary of defense or the president.

Mori said the most "striking injustice" of the system was that commission members, who take the place of an independent judge, do not have the authority to decide issues that could end up in the dismissal of a charge. ... There is no valid reason to create a new justice system only for non-U.S. citizens," he said.

The limitations on defense counsel contained in the tribunal rules --and the denial of due process, attorney-client confidentiality and privilege -- make it impossible for lawyers to provide adequate or ethical representation. By requiring lawyers to agree to the tribunal rules, the lawyer has to contract away his or her client’s rights, including the right to zealous advocacy.