A land mine was found in an army sergeant's luggage during a routine check of an American Airlines flight on which he was a passenger.

DENVER (AP) - A 24-year-old Army sergeant was removed from an American Airlines flight after an inert land mine was found in his checked baggage, the Transportation Safety Administration said.

TSA screeners noticed the land mine Friday, pulled the bag from the luggage system at Denver International Airport and confiscated the mine, TSA spokesman Mike Fierberg said. No flights were delayed. The soldier, whose name was not released, could face civil penalties for trying to put a prohibited item aboard a flight, Fierberg said. No criminal charges would be filed, he said. The man was released by police, but the airline refused to allow him aboard his flight to Dallas, Fierberg said.

Why would a soldier in the U.S. have a land mine in his possession? As a souvenir?

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Hesiod at Counterspin has the details of the new book by former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill in which he lambasts Bush--at one point saying that being in a cabinet meeting with Bush at the helm was like being with a blind man in a room full of deaf people.

Update: O'Neil is saying Bush planned the invasion of Iraq shortly after taking office in 2001--well before 9/11.

This needs publicity. Please pass it on. Osceola Circuit Judge Margaret Waller had a Public Defender arrested in court because she couldn't proceed on a case in which the prosecution had failed to turn over the documents.

A rookie assistant public defender who exchanged words with a judge was held in contempt, handcuffed and ordered to sit with her criminal client, who consoled her.

Kemie King, 27, was handcuffed in the courtroom and then ordered to sit beside jail-inmate clients in the courtroom's jury box as Circuit Judge Margaret Waller continued hearing other cases. King was not formally charged and was not booked into jail.

....District Public Defender Bob Wesley called the incident "humiliating." The Public Defender's Office is considering filing a complaint against Waller with the Judicial Qualifications Committee, the state body that handles complaints against judges, the Orlando Sentinel reported. "It's just a bully act," Wesley said Wednesday.

....Waller complained King arrived unprepared. King replied that it was not her fault, and she did not have the proper documents to proceed. "Oh please, do not argue with me. Do not argue with me, or I'm going to put you in jail," Waller told King. King pressed her case that the prosecution failed to provide her with paperwork needed to move the case forward. There was more give and take, with the judge and King talking over each other until the judge finally aid, "Contempt."

....While cuffed, King had received consolation from Mercado, the man she was supposed to defend. "He said, 'I'm really sorry,'" King said. "I told him it really wasn't his fault."

This Judge was out of line. Judicial temperment is an important part of being a judge. If a judge no longer has it, he or she should consider private practice and move on.

Wow. Enron wife Lea Fastow turned down the plea deal and will go to trial on Feb. 10.

All we can say is she has one of the best criminal defense lawyers in the country--Mike DeGeurin--and if he's supporting her decision, it's very likely the Government's case is weak. The rejection very well may be a statement by the defense that avoiding the risk of losing at trial was worth a five month sentence and not a day more. Even though she faces years in prison if she's convicted.

Lea Fastow is charged with six counts, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering, aiding and abetting and filing false tax returns. Her Indictment is here (pdf).

If she's convicted, she will be sentenced in accordance with the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. The guidelines initially will be calculated according to the dollar amount of any fraud or loss to the victims, the dollar amount of any laundered money and the dollar amount of the tax evasion. Plus, she would be held accountable for all relevant conduct.

She could even be sentenced for conduct she was acquitted of, in the event a jury returned a verdict of guilty on less than all counts. U.S. Sentencing Guidelines Manual § 1B1.3(a)(2) requires a court to consider all such conduct done in connection with any larger course of criminal conduct of which the offense of conviction was a part. Courts can consider conduct of which a defendant was acquitted for sentencing purposes, so long as the conduct is proven by a preponderance of the evidence. United States v. Watts, 519 U.S. 148 (1997). In other words, the reasonable doubt standard applies only at trials, not at sentencings.

Three good news stories from LA Weekly:

LAPD wants to ban ski masks from demonstrators’ wardrobes reports that the Los Angeles Police Department is seeking the fast track for new laws to ban face coverings, gas masks or even goggles at public demonstrations.

Second and Long about the retrial set to begin Monday for the Inglewood California cop who was videotaped slamming a teenagrer's head into a car. The last jury deadlocked when the prosecution's witness went south on them.

Exiled by Love about how the immigration laws discriminate against gay partners.

We'll be adding to this thread with posts from bloggers and other alternative news sources as the weekend progresses. Feel free to add your favorites in the comments, just use the html formatting instructions provided. Long urls not in html code skew the site and aren't hot linked.

The Bush Administration suffered another setback today in its persistent legal fiction that it can hold American citizens indefinitely, without criminal charges and without access to a lawyer by unilaterally declaring them to be "enemy combatants": The Supreme Court today agreed to hear the case of Yaser Hamdi--over the objections of the Administration:

Over the administration's objections, the court said it will consider the treatment of Yaser Esam Hamdi, a suspected Taliban foot soldier held at a U.S. naval brig in South Carolina. The government calls Hamdi an "enemy combatant" and says he is ineligible for ordinary legal protections.

Hamdi's case (and that of Jose Padilla, whose case may also be taken up) "raise basic legal and constitutional questions about the breadth of executive power and the rights of terror suspects to defend themselves in court."

....The Bush administration has maintained that it alone has the power to designate someone an enemy combatant - and that the label means a detainee can be held in open-ended military custody without access to courts, lawyers and sometimes family or other outsiders.

...."The court has really drawn a line in the sand," said Deborah Pearlstein, a lawyer and national security specialist at the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, which has been a frequent Bush administration critic. "It is recognizing that, yes, the executive has some wartime powers, but they are not unlimited."

Victory for the ACLU in the case of the Colorado student whose computer was seized by the cops because of a newsletter critical of a prominent professor. The Colorado federal judge hearing the case, U.S. Chief Judge Lewis Babcock huffed and puffed and then granted the ACLU a temporary restraining order and more:

Denver U.S. District Judge Lewis Babcock said the right to publish satire is protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Greeley authorities also volunteered Friday to return Mink's computer today. Police seized it from his home in December.

The ACLU was granted its temporary restraining order in the case of the UNC student whose internet site ticked off a UNC professor, and the student's (and his mother's) computer will be returned tomorrow.

More background here.

This is pretty big news. Pentagon lawyers say that Saddam has been a prisoner of war since his capture. Colin Powell sounds like he isn't happy about it. He's just in denial.

Whether or not Saddam is a prisoner of war could be key to how he is treated in captivity and eventually put on trial. The Geneva Conventions on treatment of prisoners of war forbid any kind of coercion in POW interrogations, for example.

....The general counsel office in the Pentagon - the Defense Department's top civilian lawyers - has determined that Saddam is a prisoner of war because of his status as former commander in chief of Iraq's military, spokesman Maj. Michael Shavers said Friday. The lawyers determined that no formal declaration of Saddam's status was needed, he said.

More on the differences:

... the Geneva Conventions say POWs can be tried only for crimes against humanity by an international tribunal or the occupying power - which in this case is the United States....POW status also would entitle Saddam to meet with representatives from the International Committee of the Red Cross. No such meeting has happened. Some human rights groups have complained that other top former Iraqi officials in U.S. custody haven't been given access to Red Cross representatives.

Here is the full text of the Convention (III) relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War. Geneva, 12 August 1949. For an explanation, go here.

The rules governing the treatment of prisoners of war are spelled out in the third Geneva Convention of 1949. The Convention requires that POW’s “must at all times be treated humanely,” and goes on to list a number of specific requirements: they must not be killed, seriously endangered, mutilated or subject to medical or scientific experiments. Furthermore, they must be protected against acts of violence or intimidation, and against “insults and public curiosity” (Article 13).

Atrios has the transcript of a Paula Zahn-Joe Trippi interview on Howard Dean in which Ms. Zahn (incorrectly) asserts that Dean said Bush had prior knowledge of 9/11. Trippi makes her read from her transcript of Dean's statement to show he mentioned that a rumor to that effect had been floating around, and he disagreed with it. From the Zahn-Trippi transcript (no way to judge the tones without having seen it,) we say advantage Trippi.

Update: In other Dean news, Tom Harkin (Iowa) will endorse Dean . We like Harkin. He and Wellstone were true Senate liberals. And the latest New Hampshire poll numbers are here. Kerry is falling big, Clark is gaining, Dean still has a solid lead. [links via Political Wire.]

The ACLU has filed a lawsuit against a prominent professor on behalf of a student at the University of Northern Colorado. The suit alleges that the prof sent the cops to seize his computer and shut down his online newsletter because of the student's dissenting political views.

A Weld County man is suing Greeley police for seizing the computer on which he publishes an online newsletter called The Howling Pig, which takes satirical barbs at a vocal university professor.

Thomas Mink, of Ault, a 24-year-old English major at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, said police have warned that he likely will be charged with criminal libel because The Howling Pig makes fun of Junius "Jay" Peake, a Monfort Distinguished Professor at UNC and a specialist in financial markets.

Rocky Mountain Progressive Network is following the case and says it's all the more worrisome because of the conservatives' hunt for liberal Colorado professors and their clandestine effort to enact an Academic Bill of Rights for Conservatives and impose a quota to make for more conservative professors in the states' colleges and universities.

The Rocky Mountain Progressive Network, a non-profit, provides a " 'fair and balanced' response to the radical right-wing interests that dominate our region's politics and media." We have been in communication with them for several months and like them a lot. They have just taken an ad on TalkLeft--so, please, visit them often so they see a lot of response to the ad. In addition to to the satisfaction you will receive from reading their assaults on conservatives and exposure of inequities, a lot of hits on their website from here may cause them to extend the time they advertise on TalkLeft, which is money for us. A win-win all around.

Nightline is devoting its program this evening to an examination of 9/11 legal issues, including the Padilla, Hamdi and Zacarias Moussaoui cases. The show is called Legal Limbo.

The Supreme Court has announced it will hear an appeal from Yaser Hamdi; he was born in the U.S., captured in Afghanistan, and has been held without charges as an "enemy combatant." Meanwhile "20th hijacker" Zacharias Moussoui is being tried in the American judicial system, and Jose Padilla continues to be held as an "enemy combatant."

Is the country strong enough to use the judicial measures already in place or do the events of 9/11 require a fundamental shift in the judicial process? .... This is an issue that every American has a stake in....

What we're reading today:

Agonist:

UK Government to scale back emergency laws under pressure from civil liberties groups. The United Kingdom's plans to give the police and the Army sweeping emergency powers to ban street demonstrations and seize property were diluted by the Government yesterday in the face of a civil liberties outcry. The Civil Contingencies Bill, the biggest shake-up of emergency laws since early last century, will cover terrorist attack, natural disasters and epidemics. But the Government backed off from an earlier proposal that the powers could be triggered by an event that threatened "political, administrative or economic stability", which critics claimed could have been used to outlaw marches against the Iraq war or to combat the fuel protests of 2000. The text of said bill, courtesy the UK government.

Warblogging:

Mr. Ashcroft belongs to a sect of religious extremists that believe that dancing is immoral. Mr. Ashcroft is scared of calico cats because he feels they are associated with the devil. Mr. Ashcroft feels that gambling is the height of immorality, and that sex outside of marriage is evil. Mr. Ashcroft truly stands as the polar opposite of Las Vegas.

Pandagon:

They are ex-felons. In that they are free. In that they have served their time. In that whatever transgression, they made, they have paid their debt to society, and as such their very basic rights as American citizens are due them.

One can argue that ex-felons who committed violent crimes shouldn't be able to own guns. But what is the argument that those who aren't imprisoned any longer should no longer be allowed the franchise?