The second Rocky Mountain Blog Roundup is up, courtesy of Andrew Olmsted. There's lots of good reading.

Gary Farber of Amydgala is doing Rush this week. Soundbitten has been as well.

Mad Kane has been nominated in two categories of the About.com Political Humor Awards--go over and vote for her.

Juan Cole reports on a member of the Interim Governing Council who says that Saddam's trial might be held in secret.

Oliver Willis is trying something new for 2004. Go over and give him some constructive comments.

Update: Gary Farber could use some money if you've got some extra.

Coming to your tv screen in January--two shows, 60 Minutes and West Wing, will feature the negative side of mandatory minimum sentences. Leaders of FAMM (Families Against Mandatory Minimums) worked closely with producers of both shows. Set your tivos now.

On Jan. 4, 60 Minutes will air Ed Bradley’s investigation of recent attacks on judicial discretion and the effects of mandatory sentencing. FAMM member Brenda Valencia, who served a 10-year federal mandatory minimum sentence, and Eric Sterling, FAMM board member, were interviewed for the segment.

On Jan. 14, The West Wing will show President Bartlett, just before the State of the Union address, deciding whether to veto a popular piece of legislation because it contains an amendment limiting judicial discretion in sentencing (he decries the “war on judges” being waged by some in Congress.) As a signal of the seriousness of his purpose in opposing long mandatory sentencing, he also considers commuting the sentences of a number of drug offenders, as recommended by the Justice Department. We were told that the episode includes a scene in which the President talks to the president of FAMM (portrayed on the show as a man!) whose sister is serving a mandatory minimum drug sentence. Although we feel our Julie Stewart is the real star, we are thrilled that FAMM is part of the show.

[link via Hit and Run]

18 million people watched Michael Jackson's 60 Minutes interview last night. Today, his personal spokesman, Stuart Backerman, resigned, citing "strategic differences."

Update: Mark Geragos, Michael Jackson's lawyer, says Backerman was fired.

"He was terminated by me personally for talking when I told him not to," Geragos said. Backerman responded: "That's untrue. I was the spokesman up until I just resigned. I was not fired."

And how big a role will the Nation of Islam play in Michael's defense? For now, it sounds like it's spriritual advice and security assistance:

Two of Jackson's advisers, Charles Koppelman and Alan Whitman, said they remain in charge of his music and finances. Asked about the Nation of Islam's reported role in directing Jackson's affairs, Koppelman said, "It's not the case as to his music, finances and assets. I think it's primarily in security."

The New York Times has more on the role of the Nation of Islam in Michael Jackson's affairs.

Sorry, but this sounds about as reliable to us as the old drug pretext stops--cops would actually go into court and say they stopped a vehicle for a traffic offense but when they saw that the occupants of the car had fast food wrappings in the vehicle, they got suspicious because they knew that drug dealers ate at McDonalds, so they asked for permission to search and lo and behold they got it and found 50 kilos of coke in the car.

Today, instead of drug dealers, they're looking for terrorists--and they want cops to alert on people carrying almanacs:

The FBI is warning police nationwide to be alert for people carrying almanacs, cautioning that the popular reference books covering everything from abbreviations to weather trends could be used for terrorist planning.

In a bulletin sent Christmas Eve to about 18,000 police organizations, the FBI said terrorists may use almanacs "to assist with target selection and pre-operational planning." It urged officers to watch during searches, traffic stops and other investigations for anyone carrying almanacs, especially if the books are annotated in suspicious ways.

If we're stopped for a traffic offense with an almanac in plain view and asked for permission to search the car, the only words we're saying are "Officer, Am I free to leave?"

Via Avedon Carol at Sideshow:

Eric Boehlert was four years old during The greatest week in rock history in the Billboard album charts.... Says Eric: "There's never been another lineup quite like it -- and there will never be again. That's why, for me, Dec. 20, 1969, represents rock's summit."

No. 1, "Abbey Road," the Beatles
No. 2, "Led Zeppelin II," Led Zeppelin
No. 3, "Tom Jones Live in Las Vegas," Tom Jones
No. 4, "Green River," Creedence Clearwater Revival
No. 5, "Let It Bleed," the Rolling Stones
No. 6, "Santana," Santana
No. 7, "Puzzle People," the Temptations
No. 8, "Blood Sweat & Tears," Blood Sweat & Tears
No. 9, "Crosby, Stills & Nash," Crosby, Stills & Nash
No. 10, "Easy Rider" soundtrack (featuring the Byrds, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and Steppenwolf)

Wesley Clark's new tv ad features former President Bill Clinton placing the medal of Freedom on Clark. Here's a still photo from the event. Will it help?

Reporter Fox Butterfield reports in the New York Times on the growing numbers of growing numbers of female prisoners:

Nationally, from 1993 through 2002, while overall crime was falling, the number of women arrested rose 14.1 percent, according to the F.B.I.'s Uniform Crime Report. In the same period, the number of men arrested fell 5.9 percent.

Some individual crimes show even more striking disparities. While the number of men arrested on charges of aggravated assault fell 12.3 percent in the decade, the number of women arrested on the same charge rose 24.9 percent. Drug arrests rose 34.5 percent for men in this period, 50 percent for women. And the number of women arrested on embezzlement charges increased 80.5 percent, actually surpassing the number of men arrested on the same charges, the only crime for which that is true.

Similarly, from 1990 through 2002, the number of women in state and federal prisons jumped 121 percent, to 97,491 from 44,065, said Allen J. Beck, the chief prison demographer for the Bureau of Justice Statistics. By comparison, the number of men in state and federal prisons rose 84 percent in that period, to 1,343,164 from 729,840.

What's behind the trend? Butterfield tries to explain.

U.S. courts exonerated 10 death row prisoners in 2003. Since 1973, when capital punishment was reinstated by the Supreme Court, 112 death row inmates have been exonerated in 25 states. It's time to end our flawed system of capital punishment by declaring a national moratorium.

Continuing the work started by former Gov. George Ryan, Illinois legislators passed an extensive death penalty reform package this fall, although a moratorium on executions remains in place. In North Carolina, senators voted to impose a moratorium while examining that state's capital punishment system for flaws, and the bill may come up for a vote in the house next year.

The death penalty also became an issue in Congress this year when the House passed a modified version of the Innocence Protection Act, a measure providing funds for DNA testing and improved legal representation in capital punishment cases. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, the Senate may consider the legislation in 2004.

But in the end, the system cannot be fixed. It is inherently flawed. As long as governments continue to put people to death, they run the risk of executing people innocent of murder.

To support a national moratorium, visit the Moratorium Campaign. Donate generously.

In a new interview with journalist Craig Oliver, Canadian Maher Arar and his wife renew their call for a full inquiry into his seizure at JFK by American authorities who transported him to Syria where he was imprisoned and tortured. [Background here.]

Oliver: why have you decided not to let this thing go?

Arar: Because what happened to me could also happen to other people in the future, so I felt it's an obligation upon me as a human being and as a Canadian, to do something for other people in the future and, so to keep my story alive will help other people. It will also put more pressure on the government to call for public inquiry and we have not found the answers yet for what happened to me.

It's a long and interesting interview, we recommend reading the whole thing.

Thousands of soldiers are being forced to stay in the service through "stop-loss" orders and many of them are very unhappy about it.

....thousands of soldiers [are being] forbidden to leave military service under the Army's "stop-loss" orders, intended to stanch the seepage of troops, through retirement and discharge, from a military stretched thin by its burgeoning overseas missions.

"It reflects the fact that the military is too small, which nobody wants to admit," said Charles Moskos of Northwestern University, a leading military sociologist. To the Pentagon, stop-loss orders are a finger in the dike -- a tool to halt the hemorrhage of personnel, and maximize cohesion and experience, for units in the field in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Through a series of stop-loss orders, the Army alone has blocked the possible retirements and departures of more than 40,000 soldiers, about 16,000 of them National Guard and reserve members who were eligible to leave the service this year. Hundreds more in the Air Force, Navy and Marines were briefly blocked from retiring or departing the military at some point this year.

....To many of the soldiers whose retirements and departures are on ice, however, stop-loss is an inconvenience, a hardship and, in some cases, a personal disaster. Some are resigned to fulfilling what they consider their patriotic duty. Others are livid, insisting they have fallen victim to a policy that amounts to an unannounced, unheralded draft.

One soldier said, "I'm furious. I'm aggravated. I feel violated. I feel used." The military's response has not been sympathethic.

"We're all soldiers. We go where were told," said Maj. Steve Stover, an Army spokesman. "Fair has nothing to do with it."

Sounds like involuntary servitude to us. We just hope it's not another sign the draft is coming.

[comments now closed]

Doctors who choose to treat patients in chronic pain by prescribing painkillers are being increasingly subjected to criminal prosecution. Doctors charge they are the target of overzealous prosecutors and DEA agents. The Pain Relief Network is fighting back.

....charges of illegally prescribing prescription narcotics, criminal conspiracy, racketeering and even murder have been brought in dozens of states against scores of doctors who treat chronic pain with prescription narcotics. At least two have been imprisoned, one committed suicide, several are awaiting sentencing, many are preparing for trial, and more have lost their licenses to practice medicine and accumulated huge legal bills.

Their crime, it seems, is that they were supplying their chronic pain patients with sometimes large numbers of prescriptions for controlled but legal medications to treat their pain. The result, the doctors say, is that the established medical use of opium-based drugs for pain is becoming criminalized by aggressive drug agents and zealous prosecutors. Adding to their concern, the official rhetoric has escalated to the point that federal and state prosecutors often accuse arrested doctors of being no different than drug kingpins or crack dealers.

....Some pain doctors are organizing to push back, and in recent months a loose national movement has been formed to contest what some call the "war" being waged against pain doctors, pharmacists and suffering patients. A new group called the Pain Relief Network is organizing a march on Washington in April to protest the prosecutions and has hired an attorney to develop a legal strategy for appealing some of the convictions.

Texas authors are rightfully upset by the sudden enforcement of a ban against visiting prison inmates.

A long-standing but little known Texas Department of Criminal Justice policy prohibiting nonacademic book authors from interviewing privileges was suddenly being enforced. No exceptions.

...."We are legitimate media," said [Suzy] Spencer, who has penned three true-crime books. "We're not out to damage TDCJ. We're just out to do our jobs. I don't see why if AP gets an interview, we should not be able to."

They have enlisted the support of the National Writers Union and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, both of which wrote letters of protest to prison system general counsel Carl Reynolds. "We find it ironic that you would seek to limit access to the very journalists who have the ability to provide the most thorough and detailed accounts of criminal cases," wrote Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee. "This criterion is arbitrary and unfair to nonfiction book authors."

The change in policy seems to be due to a change in leadership of the prison system's public information office. The new public information director says authors usually take more time to conduct interviews and he doesn't want to have to use his staff to monitor writers--or to have to verify credentials.

How's this for a catch-22?

[Director] Viesca pointed out that book authors are free to write an inmate and request to be put on his or her approved visitor list. That would allow them more contact with the inmate than most reporters get. But Casey said visitors, unlike members of the press, are not allowed to bring in notepads, pens and tape recorders, rendering an interview almost worthless.

We think Viesca's title should be changed from "public information director " to "public information suppressor."