No, you didn't misread the title of this post. We are praising newly elected San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris who was sworn in today. From her remarks to the people of San Francisco:

We also need to reject simplistic, reactive public policies. It takes more than building prisons and locking away prisoners to keep our city safe. As district attorney, I will not use three-strikes enhancements unless the third strike is a violent or serious felony; nor will I ever ask for the death penalty. (emphasis our's.)

Don't forget to vote in the Moveon.org anti-Bush ad campaign, Bush in 30 Seconds. Here's our votes:

"If Parents Acted Like Bush" (Funniest)
"Al Keyda" (Best Youth)
"Brother, Can You Spare A Job?" (Best Animated)

Nice job by all involved.

The Judge in the Scott Peterson case gave a big victory to the defense today when he ordered a change in venue for the Scott Peterson murder case.

Defense lawyer Mark Geragos said in court papers that Peterson has been demonized and that the prosecution's argument ''can be boiled down to the old adage, 'Sure we can give him a fair trial, then we will take him out and hang him.'''

Geragos said surveys showed there was less bias against Peterson in Los Angeles, Sacramento, Alameda and Santa Clara counties.

The perp walk effect was also a factor, will prosecutors never learn?

When Peterson was brought in for booking, a crowd of more than 100 people waited outside the jail, some shouting ''murderer.''

Shades of Timothy McVeigh at the Noble County Courthouse in Oklahoma, being marched through the angry throngs shouting "baby killer."

Maybe this will be a lesson to prosecutors that they allow defendants to be demonized in the media at their peril.

We'll be discussing the change of venue and the prosecution request for a gag order in the Michael Jackson case with Lester Holt on MSNBC today.

Will someone please tell this former Judge that his 15 minutes are over?

Federal Judge David Hittner has advised the parties in the Fastow (Enron) case that he wants to have a meeting to try and salvage the Fastow plea deals.

U.S. District Court Judge David Hittner told attorneys Thursday morning he wanted to discuss the circumstances of a plea involving Lea Fastow, a former assistant treasurer at Enron, so a plea in another Enron-related matter could go forward. He did not name Andrew Fastow, whom people close to the case said was negotiating a plea deal with prosecutors that could send him to prison for 10 years and force him to pay $20 million. "We are going to lay it all out," Hittner said.

We wrote about the collapse of Lea Fastow's plea deal yesterday.

People are getting cabin-fever big time in Oregon and professional list-servs are going a little haywire with nutty people posting things they might not otherwise post. Here's one example: the first page of the Martha Stewart Jury Questionnaire:

Martha Stewart Jury Questionnaire, Page 1

1. Have you ever used a glue gun?

2. What is a caper? (Choose one):
a. a planned illegal activity, typically involving theft.
b. a pickled delicacy made from the buds of a bush grown in the Mediterranean region.

3. What should never be placed on a coffee table when guests arrive? (Choose one):
a. drink glasses without coasters.
b. the K-Mart mail order catalog.
c. bare feet.

4. When using beans in a recipe:
a. do you use fresh or canned?
b. if fresh, do you soak the beans in water or chicken broth?
c. if you use broth, is it canned or homemade?
d. if homemade, was the chicken free range and did you slaughter it yourself?

5. In what month should tulip bulbs be planted?

6. When storing towels, do you fold them or roll them? If rolled, do you tie them with a ribbon before guests arrive?

7. Have you ever received an e-mail message offering extra-virgin olive oil? If so, did you reply?

Looks to us like these list-servers are suffering from DSM-IV diagnosable cabin fever --but still, it's witty enough to spread around.

An expose of how Minnesota cops turned a small time hustler and snitch into a big time entrepeneur.

"It is overall a bad policy to rely upon informants to make your case, primarily because they get paid to send people to jail," says the Drug Policy Allliance's Bill Piper. "And so they have an incentive to manufacture evidence, which is what we're seeing around the country. It's endemic to the drug war. We've become a nation of informants, actually." If the federal government does keep the Byrne grants, Piper's organization would like to see the law rewritten to require that states receiving the grants demand corroboration of all evidence obtained from informants.

A new national poll has Wesley Clark closing the gap on Howard Dean.

Update: The New Republic has just endorsed Joe Lieberman. Kos at Daily Kos has numerous posts on why the New Republic is not a liberal publication. From his latest:

Remember, TNR is a publication that bills itself of the Left, while owned by a hard-core Republican and Zell Miller Democrat who just donated $2,000 to Bush-Cheney 2004. Whose interests do you think those guys have in mind?

So they have injected themselves into the Democratic primary process, like wolves in sheep's clothing, advertising on progressive blogs and perpetuating the myth that they are a journal of the left.

They endorsed Lieberman. Good for them. I've been trying to make the argument that The New Republic lacks any relevance within Democratic Party circles. They've just made the case for that better than I ever could.

Gary Hart vs. Ben Nighthorse Campbell? We say Run, Gary, Run!

Former Colorado Sen. Gary Hart is seriously considering a challenge to Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, according to party sources. The two-term senator and two-time presidential candidate recently discussed a possible bid with national and state party leaders who are urging him to jump in, said Democratic sources in Washington and Colorado who requested anonymity.

"It's serious enough that he's pondering the 'how to' aspect of the campaign," said one Democratic official. "He thinks if he got in this race he would win, but he's got a lot of other factors that weigh into this and this is obviously a big jump."

Here is some of the negative reaction to Bush's immigration reform plan:

"George Bush's plan leaves foreign workers as fodder for our fields and factories without giving them a path to legalization and a fair shot at the American dream. He's had an election year conversion to immigration reform, but it's too little and three years too late." - Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., a presidential candidate.

"The proposal ... is woefully inadequate and falls far short of being the serious, reform our country needs to fix our broken immigration system. The White House says this proposal is compassionate, but as the fine print makes clear, that claim is false for millions of immigrants." Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass.

"President Bush's plan would move millions of people into a second-class status with no real promise of citizenship." - Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., a presidential candidate.

[comments now closed]

In war news today, U.S. soldiers have been accused of killing an Iraqi couple, orphaning their five children:

US paratroopers fired on a house in this center of anti-American resistance, killing an Iraqi couple, orphaning their five children and enraging neighbors who insisted the pair were innocent.

In other war news, 35 American soldiers were injured in a mortar attack.

Update: 9 U.S. soldiers were killed today in an attack on a Black Hawk medivac helicopter.

Update: Read the letter from the mother of a killed Iraqi to President Bush. She says her son was murdered.

Update: Wesley Clark has answered our question on the live chat going on now:

- talkleft asks: You have criticized the Patriot Act. Which portions of the Patriot Act would you ask Congress to repeal and why? As President, how will you protect our civil liberties while trying to ensure our safety?

- I will suspend the portions of the Patriot Act that have to do with search and seizure law, and we'll go back to old way with probable cause and judges and warrants, and then we'll take the whole act back to the Congress for legislative review. We will have all the authority we need to protect the country from terrorists, but you can't win the war on terror by giving up the very freedoms we're fighting to protect. Wes

***********************
The live internet chat with Wesley Clark starts at 5pm ET--now--you can access the chat here.

If you want to participate (they expect 3,000 to log on), here are the details:

Public IRC Server: irc://irc.forclark.com
Closed Read-Only Channel: #wireside
Open Discussion Channel: #clark04

We were flattered to be invited by the campaign to submit a question-- and we did--we hope it's one Gen. Clark chooses to answer. Here are the blogger participants:

Kevin Kraynick "Tooney Bin"
Ted Barlow "Crooked Timber"
Mark A.R. Kleiman "A Fair and Balanced Weblog"
Bill Scher, Executive Editor, "LiberalOasis"
Jeralyn Merritt "TalkLeft: The Politics of Crime"
Ruy Teixeira "Donkey Rising"
Digby "Digby's Hullabaloo"