Kos over at Daily Kos tracks the latest Iowa poll numbers, and tries to make sense of them. It's a little difficult to figure out who's really on top --to us that means it's an open race and up for grabs. The LA Times says its the state's closest presidential race in memory.

The cliff-hanging finish has energized the candidates and their supporters and pleased Iowa's civic leaders, who always seem a bit self-conscious with all those eyes of the world watching. They forecast a record turnout Monday night, possibly topping 125,000 participants, or more than double the number who took part in the Democratic caucuses four year ago.

Update: John Edwards predicts an upset.

An anguished Folsom Prison guard committed suicide, and in the note he left behind, said his job killed him. We wrote about it today over at The American Street.

Update: Here's the latest from the Sunday (1/18) Los Angeles Times. (free subscription required.)

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Update: Was it a lynching or justice?

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original post

Marcus Dixon is a black high school honor student serving a ten year sentence in a Georgia prison for consensual sex with his nearly-16-year-old white girlfriend.

Although a jury acquitted Marcus of rape and three other counts of violent acts, the prosecutor also charged him with "aggravated child molestation." Consensual sex with a virgin fits into the technical reading of this Georgia statute. The statute has never been applied to consensual sex between two teenagers with less than three years age difference, until now.

Supporters of Marcus Dixon are invited to join Southern Christian Leadership Conference President Emeritus Dr. Joseph Lowery, Rep. Tyrone Brooks, Sen. Vincent Fort and people from throughout the state and the country who will attend a special church service and candlelight vigil to the steps of the Georgia Supreme Court on Jan. 20, 2004 at 6 p.m. The event will be held at Central Presbyterian Church, located at 201 Washington Street across from the Georgia capitol (Atlanta).

The service will also include an opportunity for people to donate to the Dixon relief fund aimed at funding Marcus’s college tuition whenever he gets out of prison, providing for him after college, and reducing the debt his family has encumbered. For those who can not attend the event but would like to send a donation, please make checks payable to “Marcus Dixon Trust” and mail to: Marcus Dixon Trust, P.O. Box 102812, Atlanta GA 30368-2812.

For media coverage of Marcus's case, check out:

Fox World News is airing a piece "The Big Story" at 9:30 EST Saturday 17th;
CBS Evening News two part segment Monday 19th and Tuesday 20th;ABC Nightline on Wednesday 21st

Marcus' appeal is pending in the Georgia Supreme Court. It will likely be heard on January 21, 2004 with a decision rendered some months later. Lis at Riba Rambles adds her thoughts, having seen a post by Skippy at American Street.

Please sign the petition opposing the wrongful conviction and sentencing of Marcus Dixon.

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We've written several times about Mexico's challenge to the imposition of U.S. death sentences to 52 Mexcian nationals in the International Court of Justice in the Hague, see here, here, here and here. Essentially, the dispute is this (from our prior post):

Mexico filed suit against the US in the International Court of Justice in the Hague over the U.S.’s failure to comply with the Vienna Convention’s guarantee of allowing foreign nationals access to consular officials prior to interrogation. Mexico is also seeking provisional measures, essentially a temporary restraining order, against all capital prosecutions in the US against Mexican nationals until the case is resolved.

Adam Liptak of the New York Times brings us up to date:

There is little dispute that the United States violated the treaty in most or all of the 52 cases before the court in The Hague. The core issue during several days of arguments before the court last month was what should follow from that.

In March, the [State] department's top lawyer acknowledged in a speech to state attorneys general that the pending executions were a matter of concern. "We have had a number of conversations with government lawyers in both states about these cases," the lawyer, William Howard Taft IV, said. In November, Mr. Torres asked the United States Supreme Court to honor the international court's interim order staying his execution. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case. Justices John Paul Stevens and Stephen Breyer indicated that they would be inclined to consider it once the international court rendered its final judgment.

"The answer to Lord Ellenborough's famous rhetorical question, `Can the Island of Tobago pass a law to bind the whole world?,' may well be yes," Justice Breyer mused, "where the world has conferred such binding authority through treaty."

While the 52 inmates sit on death row, awaiting a ruling from the 15 judges in the Netherlands, the parties positions are clear:

Checkout the Washington Post story on the call by Public Citizen and other public interest groups for a special counsel to investigate Ashcroft's 2000 Senate campaign. It gets more complicated -- Bush-Cheney's deputy finance director is implicated in the scandal.

Another aspect of the case is the role of Jack Oliver, now deputy finance chairman of the Bush-Cheney '04 reelection committee. Oliver, who was executive director of Ashcroft's PAC, was deposed by FEC investigators last February because his signature appears with Ashcroft's on a controversial work product agreement under which ownership of the mailing list was transferred to the then-senator, according to documents released in December by the FEC.

Michael Jackson went all out. It was some party at Neverland today.

Details of the almost two hour court proceeding are here.

Update: We'll be discussing the Michael Jackson case Saturday night on Fox News with John Kasich (From the Heartland) at 8:30 pm. ET

The Supreme Court today agreed to hear a case involving the detention of immigrants:

The Supreme Court will decide whether to extend the reach of a 2001 ruling that limited the detention of some immigrants to a "reasonable period," generally six months. The 2001 ruling covered the detention period, while the United States attempts to find a country to take them, for permanent resident immigrants convicted of a crime and ordered deported.

The new case will determine whether the same six-month time limit also extended to immigrants apprehended at the border while attempting to enter illegally and then ordered removed from the United States.

The case involves Daniel Benitez, a Cuban refugee , who came to the U.S. in 1980 and was later jailed for armed robbery, burglary, battery and other crimes. His sentence was up in 2001 but he has remained in immigration custody under a 1996 law.

His lawyer, John Mills of Jacksonville, Fla., said Benitez and the others "face the very real possibility of spending the rest of their lives incarcerated, not because of any crimes they may have committed, but because their countries will not take them back."

....Records show that 2,269 immigrants awaiting deportation are in prison, and more than half have been detained more than six months, including 920 Mariel Cubans. Lower courts have split on what to do with them since the 2001 Supreme Court ruling that immigrant detentions longer than six months would probably be unconstitutional. The government has been told by some courts to release 63 detainees.

NORML provides this letter for you to send to CBS to protest their decision to air anti-marijuana ads during the Superbowl, while refusing to air MoveOn's anti-Bush Ad.

As a CBS viewer, I am writing to voice my concern over your network's decision not to accept an ad for the upcoming Super Bowl from MoveOn.org. I understand this decision was based upon the network's policy of not running ads promoting "controversial issues of public importance." While I do not take issue with this policy in general, I assume that CBS will also refuse to run controversial anti-marijuana ads from the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

If your network is to be consistent, then you must also adhere to this policy when it comes to anti-marijuana propaganda ads. Marijuana decriminalization currently enjoys 72% support among the American public, according to the latest CNN/Time polling data. Clearly this is a "controversial issue of public importance" that divides American public opinion, and any public service announcement on the subject that promotes only one side of this issue must be considered an issue ad.

As a viewer of your network, I hope you will reconsider your decision to ban some issue oriented ads while allowing others. A free society relies on the honest debate of controversial issues. For CBS to allow certain points of views to be expressed on it's network while denying others strikes at the heart of democracy and the free flow of ideas. I hope you will either reconsider this network policy or reject the ONDCP's propaganda ads in accordance with CBS policy.

Where to send it?

CBS Television Network
51 W. 52nd St.
New York, NY 10019
Main Number: 212-975-4321

or send it via internet, go here, scroll down and click on "feedback."

Unbelievable. President Bush installed one of his most objectionable federal judicial nominees, Charles Pickering, on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals while Congress is in recess. Pickering will serve until January, 2005--or for life, if the Senate confirms him next year.

In an election-year slap at filibustering Democrats, President Bush sidestepped Congress on Friday and installed Mississippi judge Charles Pickering to the federal appeals court after a two-year battle filled with racial, religious and regional argument.

Bush elevated Pickering by recess appointment, simply putting him in office while Congress was out of session. Such appointments, bypassing confirmation, are valid until the next Congress takes office, in this case in January 2005.

People for the American Way had this to say about Bush's action:

This President is dedicated to packing the courts with right-wing judges who will turn back the clock on equal rights, privacy and reproductive freedom, environmental protection and much of the social justice progress we've made in the past half-century. He has demonstrated arrogant disregard for the constitutional checks and balances that ensure independent and fair courts.

"Announcing this appointment as Americans prepare to celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King is an insult to his memory, and to all Americans who are committed to equal justice under the law."

We have this to say: Boot Bush.

CBS is out of line. It told MoveOn they would not accept an anti-Bush ad for the Super Bowl because they don't allow advocacy advertising--but they are going to air those insidious White House anti-drug ads. How can they say the White House ads aren't advocacy? Media Channel has the details:

The nearly 100 million viewers who tune in next month to the Super Bowl on CBS will be served up ads that include everything from beer and bikinis to credit cards and erectile dysfunction. They will also see two spots from the White House. Are these advocacy ads? And if so, why did CBS opt to include the White House spots while cutting MoveOn.org's "Child's Pay" from the program?

Journalist, author and blogger David Neiwert (Orcinus) writes over at the new group blog American Street that the Florida Bar has sold its mailing list of member's names to a neo-nazi hate group, the National Alliance.

The letter with an eight-page brochure was sent to Florida criminal defense lawyers by the National Alliance, an offshoot of the American Nazi Party, which law enforcement and watchdog groups characterize as a violent, neo-Nazi organization.

The mailing contains anti-Semitic cartoons and an article titled “Building a New White World,” along with a letter calling on attorneys to join their organization. "We need legal talent to augment our technical, musical and writing talent," stated the letter, signed by Tampa unit coordinator Todd Weingart. "That’s why we’re writing to you today."

Attorneys who received the letter last week were doubly shocked to learn that the Bar sold the organization its mailing list and prepared labels for the group for a fee.

Naturally, lawyers are upset. But, it's clear that the Bar can't refuse to sell its list to any group based on ideology. As one esteemed Florida lawyer said in an e-mail earlier today,

The Bar should not take a position that stills the voice of anyone in the absence of the "clear and present danger" which has been adequately defined by the Supreme Court. In the balance, there is a greater threat to us all in pre-publication censorship than in the swill spread by hate mongers.

If the list is publicly available, then there should not be any discrimination practised, even if restraint of our emotions is painful.

We agree.

California's notorious prison guards' union is hammered in a new federal report. California has the largest prison system in the country, with 161,000 inmates doing time in 32 prisons:

California's $5.3-billion penal system is plagued by a pervasive "code of silence" that protects rogue guards, corrupts recruits and is condoned by leaders who "neither understand nor care about the need for fair investigations," a federal report charged Thursday.

At the very top of California's vast Department of Corrections, officials face unrelenting pressure from the powerful prison guards union and are unwilling to discipline officers who attack inmates or engage in other misconduct, says Special Master John Hagar, a prison expert appointed by a federal judge.