Yale Law prof Jack Balkin of Balkinization has a great top ten list of Bush's reasons for going to Mars. Here's a few, go on over and read the rest. [link via Poor Man.]

7. Martian officials have repeatedly refused to respond when Bush accused them of possessing weapons of mass destruction.

6. Paul Wolfowitz theorizes that bringing democracy to Mars will have domino effect throughout Solar System!

5. President thinks it would be really cool to dress up in space suit and shout "Mission Accomplished!"

And our personal favorite:

3. Ashcroft suggests Mars is great place to hold enemy combatants.

Excellent article today in the Los Angeles Times questioning Congress' over-federalizaton of common crimes in recent years (free subscription required):

Robbers, pimps, wife-beaters, deadbeat dads and carjackers all have been targeted by Congress. These offenses could be prosecuted locally. The federal government has broadly extended its power in recent decades to fight common crimes, from murder to unpaid child support, and critics say needless federal prosecutions waste money, jeopardize civil rights and divert law enforcement from true national threats.

Such cases "clog the federal courts and utilize very limited federal resources in matters that are being prosecuted very well by local authorities," said former U.S. Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III, who chaired a 1998 study sponsored by the American Bar Assn.

....Many other common crimes once handled by states — including rape, drug trafficking and murder — have also come under federal authority over the years. Congress has created so many national crimes in so many sections of legal code that no one has an exact count. There are about 3,500, according to legal surveys. More than 45% have come onto the books since 1970, around when President Nixon declared the first national war on crime.

An earlier, no-subscription version of the article is available here.

Last week we were quite disturbed by reading about an Ohio man who screamed his innocence and physically struggled with guards as he was dragged to the execution chamber where he was injected with lethal drugs and killed. The execution made an impact on the nation, which is undergoing a shift in its attitudes on capital punishment. The Ohio Mansfield News Journal today has this editiorial on the disturbing nature of the execution, offering possible explanations to these questions:

Why are so many people disturbed that a man who was about to enter the death chamber for execution didn't want to die? Why were people surprised and bothered when Lewis Williams Jr. struggled with prison personnel on the way to the room where he was killed by lethal injection?

The editorial notes:

What is more surprising is that more inmates haven't fought back to prevent their execution. People normally don't want to die and try to stop it....It reminded people of just how ugly it is to execute another person. Even those who favor the death penalty prefer to think of it as a quiet, humane event. Calmness somehow makes us feel better about what we are doing.

Some friends and family members of murder victims may enjoy seeing pain and terror on the face of the condemned killer. But we suspect even a good portion of these folks don't want to know the execution got messy. Another factor that probably makes people uncomfortable with the kind of struggle that took place last week is a nagging doubt about the guilt of the person executed. Was he unable to come to grips with his death because he knew he was innocent?

Williams proclaimed his innocence until the end. That certainly doesn't mean he was innocent. But that proclamation and his struggle have probably made some people wonder who wouldn't have been concerned otherwise....Lethal injection was adopted in Ohio and other states to make execution more humane for those being killed. It certainly also helped people feel better about their involvement in what is still an act of violence.

[comments now closed]

The Iowa race is not only up for grabs, it looks like an upset may be in the works. Did Dean peak too soon?

John Kerry and John Edwards were bunched in the lead with Howard Dean and Dick Gephardt still within striking distance, according to a new copyright Iowa Poll published in The Des Moines Register just one day before Iowa's leadoff precinct caucuses.

Twenty-six percent of the 606 Iowans polled Tuesday through Friday supported Kerry as their first choice for the Democratic presidential nomination. Edwards, who was in single digits in an Iowa Poll taken two months ago, was the first choice among 23% of the respondents, for his highest finish in any media poll so far.

Twenty percent of the respondents named Dean as their first choice, while 18% picked Gephardt.

Kevin at Lean Left predicts Kerry will win. Several Daily Kos contributors are providing continual updates and analysis of the polling numbers. Bush Wars tells us what the Dems should have learned from Iowa.

Via Atrios, here is where you can get the Iowa results in real time

Northwest Airlines has admitted participating in a clandestine goverment program and providing data on more than 10 million passengers.

Northwest Airlines provided information on millions of passengers for a secret U.S. government air-security project soon after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, raising more concerns among some privacy advocates about the airlines' use of confidential customer data.

This is very sad. A 78 year old former FBI agent recently charged in a 20 plus year old murder case died while awaiting a psychological evaluation by the court to see if he was fit to stand trial.

A retired FBI agent accused of helping his former mob informants arrange the murder of a Tulsa businessman died a week after he was extradited to Oklahoma to face charges, a hospital spokeswoman said Saturday.

H. Paul Rico, 78, died late Friday, a few hours after a Tulsa County judge put the murder case on hold pending a psychological evaluation to determine if Rico was competent to stand trial.

His family said he had congestive heart failure and had lost 53 pounds since his arrest Oct. 9 in Florida, where he had been living.

....During his arraignment Wednesday, conducted by video feed from the Tulsa County jail, Rico sat in a wheelchair and occasionally moaned but said nothing. His attorney, Garvin Isaacs, at one point interrupted the judge, saying: "I am telling you this man is sick, extremely sick." He requested an emergency medical furlough, saying his client was ailing and needed help; the judge ordered the psychological evaluation.

Isaacs said during that hearing that Rico, who had a pacemaker, was disoriented after being beaten Dec. 5 by an unknown assailant in the Miami-Dade County Jail, but that he had recovered his mental competency and "wants a jury trial to clear his name."

Prosecutors offered this handy excuse:

Bump and Update: Latest news on the case is here and here. It's even news in Australia [via How Appealing].

Peter Goldberger, the ever modest defense attorney, writes in to say:

At least equal credit for this success should go to the Capital Habeas Unit of the Federal Court Division, Defender Association of Philadelphia, my fabulous co-counsel, led by Michael Wiseman and including Christina Swarns, who recently left Philadelphia for NYC to head the criminal justice programs of the NAACP Legal Defense and Eduction Fund (once headed by Thurgood Marshall).

**************
Original Post 1/17 12:06 am:

At about 12:30 pm Friday, 1/16/04, Nicholas Yarris, age 42, walked out of the State Correctional Institution at Greene County, PA, to the arms of his parents, after 22 years on Pennsylvania's death row. DNA testing in the spring of 2003 confirmed that he was wrongly convicted. Pa murder and rape charges were dropped in September. In December the local DA's office conceded that there was insufficient evidence to support a retrial.

This week, the Orange County, Florida DA's office conceded that the 30 year sentence for robbery he picked up while briefly on escape status in 1985 should be reduced to 7 years, long since served. A Florida judge order the Florida sentence reduced yesterday and agreed that he need not be extradited from Pennsylvania to Florida to effectuate that reduction. After some last minute paperwork frustration due to slow-moving bureaucracy in the Florida Dept of Corrections, he went free at midday Friday.

Once again, kudos to Peter Goldberger of Ardmore, PA, who represented the indigent Mr. Yarris for the past ten years. For more on the case, see our coverage here.

Law Prof. Glenn Reynolds (aka Instapundit) on the recess appointment of Charles Pickering to the 5th Circuit:

...It's unfortunate that things have come to this pass. Recess appointments to the bench are nothing new, but this one is clearly another step in the ongoing breakdown of civility in government. .... I suspect, though, that we're in the midst of a political realignment, and that those "norms of civility" hold mostly during periods of relative stability.... Larry Solum has more here, and David Bernstein opines that this was a bad choice: "Pickering was among the worst of the Bush judicial nominees."

The New York Times criticizes the appointment here.

Calpundit and Atrios note the irony of the appointment occurring on Martin Luther King's birthday weekend. Our reaction is here, and very simple: Boot Bush.

Update: The Horse has some great Pickering stuff up, including this.

Steve Perry and Mark Gisleson have been debating Howard Dean vs. Wesley Clark as well as the Iowa primary over at Bush Wars--go check out the exchanges. Both are Iowa natives, now based in Minnesota.

Jay Caruso at Classless Warfare sticks up for Howard Dean on critics' charges that he had no African-Americans in his cabinet. He makes a good point.

The latest prison guard scandal, this time in Pennsylvania: Four guards have been indicted in a sex-for-drugs scheme:

Four guards have been indicted in a sex-for-drugs scheme that prosecutors described as a serious problem at Allegheny County Jail. The arrests of several guards Friday followed a two-year grand jury investigation that found at least nine female inmates had been sexually assaulted.

The grand jury found cigarettes, drugs, cash and other illegal contraband were used by guards "to reward or to induce female prison inmates to participate in sexual activity."

Most of the women involved were jailed for petty crimes, [Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen] Zappala said....The investigation is ongoing and Zappala suggested more arrests are likely.

VP Dick Cheney went duck hunting last week with Supreme Court Justice Anton Scalia--just weeks after the Supreme Court agreed to consider a case involving Cheney's records. Shouldn't Scalia recuse himself from the case? He doesn't think so.

While Scalia and Cheney are avid hunters and longtime friends, several experts in legal ethics questioned the timing of their trip and said it raised doubts about Scalia's ability to judge the case impartially.....But Scalia rejected that concern Friday, saying, "I do not think my impartiality could reasonably be questioned."

Federal law says "any justice or judge shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might be questioned." For nearly three years, Cheney has been fighting demands that he reveal whether he met with energy industry officials, including Kenneth L. Lay when he was chairman of Enron, while he was formulating the president's energy policy.

Scalia responded in writing to a Los Angeles Times inquiry:

Scalia said: "Cheney was indeed among the party of about nine who hunted from the camp. Social contacts with high-level executive officials (including cabinet officers) have never been thought improper for judges who may have before them cases in which those people are involved in their official capacity, as opposed to their personal capacity. For example, Supreme Court Justices are regularly invited to dine at the White House, whether or not a suit seeking to compel or prevent certain presidential action is pending."

Ethics Law Prof Stephen Gillers says Scalia should have missed this year's hunt:

"A judge may have a friendship with a lawyer, and that's fine. But if the lawyer has a case before the judge, they don't socialize until it's over. That shows a proper respect for maintaining the public's confidence in the integrity of the process," said Gillers, who is an expert on legal ethics. "I think Justice Scalia should have been cognizant of that and avoided contact with the vice president until this was over. And this is not like a dinner with 25 or 30 people. This is a hunting trip where you are together for a few days."