A major thanks to TChris who posted some great stuff on TalkLeft yesterday while we gave our wrist a rest. If you haven't read his stuff, please scroll down and do so now. He's smart, articulate, writes really well and shares our views on just about every issue. Leave some comments, so he'll want to come back and post some more!

Avedon Carol of Sideshow , one of our favorite blogs, had her laptop swiped. She has a paypal button on her main page, it you can help her out, please do.

By TChris

The Vegas traveler should no longer rely on the axiom, "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas." When the FBI comes calling, Vegas hotels willingly disclose guest information. Seeking to compare hotel registration records to "a U.S. master list of suspected terrorists" in response to concerns associated with the elevated threat level during the holidays, the FBI encountered only one hotel that put up even token resistence. That hotel requested the issuance of a subpoena (known as a "friendly" subpoena), presumably to provide cover for hotel management if guests expecting anonymity were to complain.

As the ACLU points out, the free availability of private information to law enforcement agencies is troubling.

A representative of the American Civil Liberties Union said the demand for guest records, without any individual suspicion, infringed on the privacy of as many as 300,000 people "whose leisure activities are no one's business but their own."

The action also showed the FBI's expanded, post-Sept. 11 power to obtain personal records without judicial review or suspicion about an individual "may well be used to monitor ordinary Americans," said Timothy Edgar, the ACLU's legislative counsel.

The need for this sort of information might be legitimate, given a legitimate threat, but the ever-increasing power of law enforcement to obtain records that people generally regard as private, without judicial authorization, is unhealthy. Until that trend changes, remember ... nothing stays in Vegas any more.

By TChris

An AP story suggests that Michael Jackson may benefit from a case pending in a California appellate court. The trial judge in that case found that a county's failure to follow up when individuals receive but disobey a summons to report for jury service resulted in a jury that failed to reflect the racial diveristy of the county.

The lack of follow-up results in "a volunteer jury," said Los Angeles criminal defense attorney Steve Cron, who is familiar with the procedure. He said many Hispanics in the agricultural areas around Santa Maria are farm laborers who might not return the jury summons because they can't afford to take time off work for jury service.

The problem of courts failing to assure that jury pools reflect the demographics of the community is a familiar one to those involved in the criminal justice system. People who have fewer resources (such as day care or a permanent address) are less able to respond to a summons, skewing the jury to populations that do not reflect the community as a whole.

Whether the decision would benefit Jackson, even if ultimately favorable to the defense, is unclear.

By TChris

Talkleft readers may be interested in two election-related pieces in today's New York Times Magazine. The first is a short essay by Jeffrey Rosen that asks whether voters will have the will to elect leaders "who will insist on laws and technologies that strike a reasonable balance between freedom and security." One can always hope .... The second is James Traub's article exploring a popular debate this election year: whether Dean can persuade voters that he will be a credible leader on foreign policy and defense issues by selectively positioning himself to the right of Bush, and whether Clark hurts his established credibility on those issues by positioning himself to the left of Dean. Perhaps voters will recognize that either candidate can articulate a better vision for national security than can Bush. Again, one can always hope ....

By TChris

Lionel Tate -- the 16 year old boy who, at the age of 14, became the youngest person ever sentenced to life in prison -- signed a plea agreement that, if approved by the court, should cause Lionel to be released from detention this month. The agreement is similar to one that Lionel rejected before his trial. A Florida appellate court reversed Lionel's first degree murder conviction after concluding that Lionel's competence to understand the proceedings should have been evaluated prior to his trial. Talkleft has written about Lionel's case here and here.

The agreement calls upon Lionel to plead guilty to the lesser charge of second degree murder in exchange for a recommended sentence of three years in detention (almost all of which Lionel has already served), a year of house arrest and 10 years of probation. During his trial, Lionel's defense contended that Lionel inflicted injuries accidentally while imitating wrestling moves that he had seen on television. Given the risk that the defense might fail in a second trial and that Lionel might lose his freedom for the rest of his life, signing the agreement was the right choice. Offering Lionel an agreement that recognized the difference between a child's immature decisionmaking and an adult's calculated intent was also the right choice.

Too funny. From a deposition of Neil Bush in which he is grilled about his extramarital affairs by the attorney for his former wife Sharon--from New York Daily News :

Bush: "I had sexual intercourse with perhaps three or four, I don't remember the exact number, women, at different times. In Thailand once, I have a pretty clear recollection that there was one time in Thailand and in Hong Kong."

Brown: "And you were married to Mrs. Bush?"

Bush: "Yes."

Brown: "Is that where you caught the venereal diseases?"

Bush: "No."

Brown: "Where did you catch those?"

Bush: "Diseases plural? I didn't catch..."

Brown: "Well, I'm sorry. How ... how many venereal diseases do you suffer from?"

Bush: "I've had one venereal disease."

Brown: "Which was?"

Bush: "Herpes."

Brown then interrogates Bush's about his various sex partners:

"Did you pay them for that sex?"

Bush: "No, I did not."

Brown: "Pick them up in a sushi house?"

Bush: "No. ... My recollection is, where I can recall, they came to my room."

Brown: "Do you know the name of that hotel? I may go to Thailand sometime."

A new tape has surfaced, purportedly of Osama bin Laden, who makes reference to the capture of Saddam Hussein.

In the new tape, the speaker said to be bin Laden warned that unless the United States was stopped, it would go on occupying Saudi Arabia and the entire oil-rich Gulf region after Iraq. There can be no dialogue with the occupiers except with weapons," the speaker said.

He urged Muslims to resort to jihad, or holy war, to "repel the huge conspiracies woven against our nation" -- from "the crusaders' occupation of Baghdad using the weapons of mass destruction deceit ... to the fierce attempt to crush the jihad and the mujahedeen in beloved Palestine using the deceit of the roadmap and the Geneva peace initiative."

The United States was feverishly going after "those who raise the banner of jihad under the guise of fighting terrorism, with the help of the hypocrites, because they all know that jihad is the potent force that can thwart all plots," the speaker said.

So, Osama likely is still alive. Are Bush and Rumsfeld any closer to finding him?

By TChris

It comes as no surprise that Democrats in the Senate try to block extremely conservative nominees to the federal judiciary while Republicans try to block the most liberal nominees. The leaking of internal memos apparently written by aides to two Democratic Senators and stored in the computers of the Senate Judiciary Committee -- memos that "sketch the evolution between 2001 and early 2003 of plans to filibuster court nominees perceived as too conservative" -- has nonetheless provoked predictable controversy and finger-pointing. The leaker, underlining a sentence recommending that the Committe refrain from approving Sixth Circuit nominations until the Supreme Court decided the affirmative action cases that were then pending, wrote "Talk about political!" in the margin.

But Democrats on the committee are happy to return fire, noting that when Bill Clinton was president, Senate Republicans blocked all nominees to the same court, perhaps with the same explosive affirmative action cases in mind.

... "Each party ratchets up the politicization of the process," said Peter Berkowitz, a fellow of the Hoover Institution. "There were Republican abuses that are now taken a step farther by the Democrats -- and I expect when we see the next Democratic president, the Republicans will ratchet it up one more step."

The fact that each party seeks to mold the judiciary to reflect the party's values is not a well kept secret. Nor is it surprising that Republicans seek to gain political advantage from the memos by holding them up as proof that Democrats have "contrived a controversial filibuster of judicial nominees from the raw material of crass politics, driven by the demands of liberal special interest groups." Democrats, in turn, "see the memos as evidence of GOP perfidy, no less incriminating than a pillowcase full of silverware in the gloved hands of a burglar." Debate about the memos is a pointless distractiion from the Judiciary Committee's critical task: evaluating and approving the nomination of qualified judicial candidates who are acceptable to both political parties.

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By TChris

John Fugh, a retired major general and former judge advocate general, has criticized the decision of military prosecutors to pursue minor charges against Capt. James J. Yee, the Muslim chaplain who was initially viewed as a suspect in an espionage ring at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay. Yee, who spent 76 days in solitary confinement (often in leg irons and manacles) prior to his release on Dec. 8, has been charged with mishandling classified information, as well as adultery and keeping pornography on his government computer.

According to General Fugh, "This whole thing makes the military prosecutors look ridiculous."

"It certainly seems like they couldn't get him on what they first thought they had," General Fugh said, "so they said, `Let's get the son of a gun on something.'"

General Fugh, who has played no role in the prosecution or the defense of Captain Yee, said, "Adding these Mickey Mouse charges just makes them look dumb, in my mind."

Interviews conducted by The New York Times suggest a number of events that "led the military ever deeper into its prosecution," including assigning inexperienced reservists to act as counterintelligence officers at the camp, confusion about whether documents were or were not classified, and an atmosphere of suspicion that surrounded the decision to allow Muslims and Arab-Americans to be involved in camp operations. The evidence of Captain Yee's adultery and the pornography on his computer were discovered as the military was tying to strengthen its case for espionage. The espionage theory was not borne out, and the most serious charges against Air Force translator Ahmad I. al-Halabi (whose weekly dinners with Capt. Yee apparently led to Yee's arrest), once viewed as the central figure in a plot to pass secrets to a foreign government, have been dropped.

By TChris

In the past, students who violated a dress code were sent to the principal's office for a scolding. In Toledo, a student whose low cut top and unbuttoned sweater were unacceptable to school officials, and who refused to wear the bowling shirt they offered as alternative garb, was arrested, handcuffed, and taken to the juvenile detention center. Other violations of Toledo's "safe school ordinance" deemed worthy of arrest include "being loud and disruptive, cursing at school officials," and "shouting at classmates." Only a handful of 1,727 school-related arrests in Lucas County in 2002 were for serious incidents.

The administrative judge for the Lucas County juvenile court is concerned that school officials and the courts are "demonizing children" by referring increasing numbers of minor offenses to the juvenile justice system. The "growing criminalization of student misbehavior" has become a widespread problem, leading to complaints from juvenile court judges in states that include Ohio, Virginia, Kentucky, and Florida.

Arresting and incarcerating students for nonviolent behavior does little to promote school safety. It reflects the "zero tolerance" mentality that has allowed school officials the luxury of replacing discretion and common sense with "zero thinking." Arbitrary and heavy-handed use of the criminal justice system in schools teaches students to resent authority, not to respect the law. It also wastes limited resources that the police and courts can devote to serious offenders.

If you want ephedra before the ban goes into effect, join the throngs who feel the way you do. The Rocky Mountain News is one newspaper that opposes the ban.

We're not endorsing ephedra, nor condemning it. Jacob Sullum has a lot to say about the ban, here and here.

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