We're taking a wait and see attitude towards President Bush's immigration reform plan. Here are the necessary components according to the AILA (American Immigration Lawyers Association):

• Comprehensively reforms our immigration laws: Since many of the problems with the U.S.'s current immigration system are interrelated, reform must be comprehensive to successfully address our nation's needs. ...Our current system is characterized by families being separated for long periods of time and U.S. employers unable to bring in needed workers. People are forced to live an underground existence, hiding from the government for fear of being separated from their families and jobs. ....Our immigration system needs to be reformed so that legality is the norm, and immigration is legal, safe, orderly, and reflective of the needs of American families, businesses, and national security.

• Allows people already living and working in the United States to legalize their status: People who work hard, pay taxes, and contribute to the U.S. should be allowed to obtain permanent residence. This reform would stabilize the workforce of U.S. employers, encourage people to come out of the shadows to be scrutinized by our government, and allow immigrants to work and travel legally and be treated equally. Many have been here for years, are paying taxes, raising families, contributing to their communities and are essential to the industries within which they work. In order to unite families and keep them together, appropriate waivers must be available for grounds of inadmissibility and deportability.

An undocumented person does the right thing and gets deported:

Danny Sigui saw a murder unfold. He called 911 and testified as the key witness during the trial. In the process, he unwittingly alerted officials to his immigration status, and days later was arrested and jailed.

On the same day that Arkansas executes a mentally ill prisoner forced to take medication to become same enough to be executed, the California Supreme Court rules that former prisoners who are still in state custody for mental health reasons can't be forced to take medication:

Mentally ill former prisoners who are held in state hospitals after completing their sentences have the right to refuse psychiatric medication unless they are incompetent or dangerous, the state Supreme Court ruled Monday.

In a 6-1 decision, the court said ex-cons held for treatment under the state's Mentally Disordered Offender Act have the same right as current prisoners to reject drugs unless a judge decides they are incapable of making an informed decision, or recent incidents show they are dangerous to themselves or others.

Does anyone else see a disconnect here?

[Ed. name of court corrected--it was not the 9th Cir. but the Calif. Supreme Court]

The newsest USA Today/Gallup Poll shows a surge for Wesley Clark and a drop for Dean. The results are here.

Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) writes in an op-ed in the Detroit Free Press that Attorney General John Ashcroft's late recusal from the CIA leaks investigation leaves credibility damage:

Here we have a case where the attorney general was investigating the very White House responsible for the resuscitation of his political career. In addition, the investigation involves the political Svengali, Karl Rove, who was inextricably tied to the attorney general by virtue of receiving a staggering $746,000 for consulting on his past Senate and governor's races. It's difficult to conceive of a more blatant conflict of interest.

....In addition, by failing to appoint an outside individual with no ties to the department or loyalty to the administration, the public can have little faith the investigation will be pursued diligently and impartially. Fitzgerald may be a fine prosecutor, but at the end of the day he still owes his job to President George W. Bush.

There's lots more, go read the whole thing. [link via Buzzflash.]

What poetic justice. The advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather, creator of the obsequious anti-drug ads for the Office of National Drug Control Policy, have been charged with conspiracy for overbilling the Government:

Thomas Early, the agency's director of finance, and Shona Seifert, who formerly directed Ogilvy's $684-million contract with the government, were accused in U.S. District Court of directing employees to exaggerate their work on the project when they filled out time sheets. They also allegedly caused the company to submit false vouchers to support the inflated labour costs, according to the indictment.

The overbilling occurred as the agency worked on a national media campaign for the Office of the National Drug Control Policy, a branch of the executive office of the U.S. president, the government said. [link via Drug War Rant]

Our previoius thoughts on the ads, in particular, those that played during the Superbowl, are here .

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Charles Singleton was mentally ill. The courts declared him too unfit to be executed because he couldn't understand why he was being executed. Then the state forcibly medicated him with anti-pyschotic medication. Under medication, the Court ruled, he could understand and the execution could proceed. In other words, the court ruled that it's okay to forcibly medicate a mentally ill prisoner to make him sane enough to execute.

Singleton had his death sentence commuted to life imprisonment by a federal appeal court panel on the grounds of mental illness. But the full court ruled last year that he could be executed if forcibly treated with drugs. The court decided that "involuntary medication followed by an execution" was preferable to "no medication followed by psychosis and imprisonment".

"Eligibility for execution is the only unwanted consequence of the medication" and did not have to be taken into account, it said. A minority of the judges presiding over the case took issue with the ruling, saying it was wrong to execute a man who is psychotic when not on medication.

"I am left with no alternative but to conclude that drug-induced sanity is not the same as true sanity," Judge Gerald Heaney wrote in a dissenting opinion. "Singleton is not 'cured'; his insanity is merely muted, at times, by the powerful drugs he is forced to take."

A 1986 US Supreme Court judgment banned the execution of the insane as one of the "cruel and unusual punishments" outlawed in the Bill of Rights.

Charles Singleton, age 44, was executed tonight. He heard voices until the very end.

Update: Here's an article explaining the issues.

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There will be a live internet chat tomorrow with Wesley Clark. Here are the details, from his campaign:

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

We will also be mirroring the closed #wireside channel on a web-based page, which any one can view at this URL. The chat is scheduled to begin promptly at 5:00 PM EST, tomorrow January 7, 2004. It will last approximately 30 minutes.

The questions that will be asked are being drawn from 15 leading political
bloggers. Follow-up questions will be taken, if time permits. We estimate approximately 3000 people to be participating in this live real-time chat with General Clark.

CincyDemo asks:

Is it true that Bush's occupation forces have tortured Iraqi POWs?

Yes. Bush's occupation forces have tortured Iraqi POWs. Prisoner deaths have been ruled homicides by US military coroners too. And mass graves in Afghanistan brim full with the bodies of thousands of disappeared POWs from Bush's Afghan war. Since no one has bothered to conduct a credible investigation of any Bush War Crime, it's worth considering why one minor incident in Bush's gruesome War Crimes history should receive worldwide attention this week.

He provides news sources and more, go read.

Why are federal officials prosecuting people for importing lobster tails in plastic bags instead of cardboard boxes? Or because a small percentage of the lobsters in a particular shipment were less than 51/2 inches in possible violation of Honduran law? Law Prof Ellen Podgor and Heritage Senior Research Fellow Paul Rosenweig ask: Have we won the war on terror or the drug war? Why the waste of resources? Read their op-ed in today's Washington Times, Bum Lobster Rap:

Four people, caught in the government's net, face as many as eight years in prison because U.S. officials have decided to prosecute them for alleged violations of the Lacey Act, which permits the government to indict individuals for importing "fish or wildlife taken, possessed, transported, or sold in violation of ... any foreign law." On top of that, the government seized the entire shipment — more than $4 million worth of lobsters.

To make matters worse, federal prosecutors tacked on charges of smuggling, money laundering and conspiracy. The lobsters were "smuggled" in plastic bags for all to see. The proceeds from the sale of the lobsters were "laundered" because they were deposited in a bank. And the "conspiracy" charges attach because it takes more than one person to run a lobster boat.

The U.S. government thinks Honduran law was violated. Honduras doesn't agree.

The attorney general of Honduras wrote to Attorney General John Ashcroft to tell him there is no violation, and Honduran officials have filed a "friend of the court" brief in U.S. courts to explain what Honduran law says on the matter.

So what gives? Two things. Federal prosecutors have too much power and there is an overcriminalization of conduct in this country.

The real problem is overcriminalization. Members of Congress continue to pass criminal laws to impress their constituents. According to a 1999 study by the American Bar Association, there are more than 3,000 federal criminal offenses on the books, more than 40 percent of were enacted since 1970. (Although the Lacey Act was passed in 1900, its reach was expanded in 1981.)

Chances are, Americans would prefer federal law enforcement officials to spend their time on terrorism, drug trafficking and corporate corruption. With the amount of crime we have today, we simply can't afford to have them play lobster police.

Amadou Diallo was young West African man killed by a rainstorm of police bullets in 1999. His case was major news. Bruce Springsteen wrote a song about him, "American Skin (41 shots)" that angered New York's finest at the time. The cops who shot Diallo were tried and acquitted in 2000.

Today, New York City agreed to pay his family $3 million .

We like to see big awards for police misconduct. Abner Louima, the Haitian man tortured with a broomstick in a New York police precinct bathroom got $8.75 million.

Diallo and Louima have the same great lawyers:

Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld founded and direct the Innocence Project, which currently represents more than two hundred inmates seeking post-conviction release through DNA testing.

Perhaps the most prominent civil rights lawyers in America, Scheck and Neufeld represent the family of Amadou Diallo, Abner Louima, and the four black and latino youths wrongfully shot by NY State Troopers.

Should Ed Gillespie denounce this as hate speech?

The Rev. Fred Phelps wants his message on homosexuality ever-present in Topeka's Gage Park and memorialized on a park bench. Phelps sent Rogers Brazier, director of Parks and Recreation of Topeka, a $250 check and the memorial message he wants on the park bench. He wants it to read: "Matt Shepard in Hell. He Defied God's Law." He called the right to have a memorial park bench a "preaching opportunity."

Would John Ashcroft consider it protected speech under the First Amendment?