The California Assembly has joined its Senate counterpart in voting to repeal the immigrant driver's license bill. No surprise, as Gov. Arnold made this a cornerstone of his campaign.

The law, which would have taken effect next month, would have allowed an estimated 2 million illegal immigrants to submit federally issued taxpayer identification numbers instead of Social Security numbers to apply for a license.

There's a glimmer of hope, however:

The law's author, Sen. Gil Cedillo, D-Los Angeles, said the governor had promised in private meetings to work in good faith on a new version of the bill.

This is music to our ears. Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry outlined a new terrorism plan Monday:

Democrat John Kerry said Monday he will end the "era of John Ashcroft" if elected president, stepping up efforts to protect civil liberties while strengthening the war on terrorism.

"In my first 100 days, I will restore our commitment to civil rights and individual rights," Kerry said in remarks to be delivered at Iowa State University. That will begin with the appointment of "an attorney general who knows he can fight the war on terrorism without attacking America's freedoms. ... an attorney general whose name is not John Ashcroft."

S.D. Congressman and former Governor Bill Janklow is raising a diabetes defense in his manslaughter trial.

Rep. William J. Janklow (R-S.D.) was speeding and ran a stop sign when his Cadillac struck and killed a motorcyclist in August, Janklow's attorney conceded in court Monday, but the defense argued that the congressman should not be convicted of felony manslaughter because he was suffering a diabetic reaction at the time of the crash.

On the opening day of a trial that could send the 64-year-old Janklow to prison for 10 years -- and end his storied political career -- defense lawyer Edwin Evans told a jury in this quiet prairie town that Janklow "was mixed up. He was confused. . . . This was very likely an episode of low blood sugar due to his diabetes."

Will it work? Probably...first off, he's a legend in his home town. Second, he's admitting the minor misdemeanor charges....speeding and running a stop sign, in hopes of a compromise verdict. He just needs one juror to vote that the state failed to prove a "conscious disregard" of the danger. It will be easy for someone who likes him to say they can't see inside his mind to find the "conscious" element beyond a reasonable doubt. Good strategy.

Instapundit has the latest on the fake Abraham Lincoln quote making the rounds--it was debunked by the Chicago Sun Times here:

"There's no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There's nothing good in war except its ending." Attributed to Lincoln by anti-war protesters earlier this year, the statement actually was made by an actor portraying Lincoln in an episode of "Star Trek."

Nonetheless, you can buy the t-shirt here.

And former Governor George Ryan of Illiniois used it in his speech on January 7, 2003 announcing his decision to commute the sentences of Illiniois death row inmates.

As I prepare to leave office, I had to ask myself whether I could really live with the prospect of knowing that I had the opportunity to act, but that I failed to do so because I might be criticized. Could I take the chance that our capital punishment system might be reformed, that wrongful convictions might not occur, that enterprising journalism students might free more men from death row? A system that's so fragile that it depends on young journalism students is seriously flawed.

"There is no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There is nothing good in war. Except its ending."

That's what Abraham Lincoln said about the bloody war between the states. It was a war fought to end the sorriest chapter in American history--the institution of slavery. While we are not in a civil war now, we are facing what is shaping up to be one of the great civil rights struggles of our time.

We'd just say it's the thought that counts.

The National Law Journal has an article today on the refusal of two of the fifty states, Georgia and Alabama, to provide lawyers to inmates on death row for their habeas petitions.

While all states provide counsel in direct appeals, it is the federal courts inmates must turn to when those are exhausted. The habeas petition allows them to argue that their conviction was obtained in violation of a constitutional right--like effective assistance of counsel.

The result, according to critics, is that legitimate claims can go unheard, and post-conviction petitions are generally denied on procedural grounds-an action that ends their effort in state courts and blocks the route to the federal courts.

Examples are numerous, because Alabama makes liberal use of the death penalty. Since 1998, it has sentenced more people to death per capita than any other state. One hundred ninety-four are presently on death row, about 30 without counsel.

These petitions typically require intense investigation of potential claims that are outside of the trial record, investigations that can't be conducted from inside a prison. They require expert knowledge of substantive criminal law and often arcane criminal procedure.

Lilith at LegalWrites has more.

Diebold, manufacturer of electronic voting machinery, announced today it will drop plans to sue websites that have published documents about security leaks.

A Diebold attorney promised in a conference call Monday with U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel that it would not sue dozens of students, computer scientists and ISP operators who received cease-and-desist letters from August to October.

Diebold also promised not to file lawsuits against two Swarthmore College students and a San Francisco-based Internet service provider for copyright infringement, according to a motion that company attorneys filed Nov. 24 in San Jose's federal court.

A big thanks is due the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) which represented the students and service provider involved. Plus, EFF is promising to stay on the case:

EFF plans to continue with its case against Diebold, arguing under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that Diebold must pay damages for intimidating Internet service providers. The hearing is scheduled for Feb. 9.

We missed blogging Monday due to court and meetings, and we just finished catching up. Here's some of what we missed:

Atrios explains how he got his name.

Anger Management announced he was quitting blogging today...then resumed five hours later. (Via Walter in Denver.) The kid (he's 21) is a good writer, we hope he sticks with it.

Blogshares, the fictional stock trading game that popularized so many blogs, is no more. We're sorry about that too, it was practically an institution.

Patrick Nielsen Hayden of Electrolite weighs in on the President's Thanksgiving Day trip to Iraq.

Oliver Willis notes major bookstore chains are removing the comfy chairs of recent years and he's not a happy camper about it.

Ezra and Jesse at Pandagon are covering the new liberal radio network and thinking, hey, maybe they could get a gig. Actually, we think the idea of some young voices on the network is a good one. Let's hope it's not all 50 year old white men. Nick at Tapped has more, and says, "Progress Media is at least hiring entertainers with a political bent, rather than politicians and pundits with a yen to be the left's Rush. But I wonder if that will be enough." And Skippy weighs in with his usual wit.

Jeanne D'Arc at Body and Soul covers World Aids Day and Thanksgiving at her house--we almost felt like we were there.

And over here at TalkLeft, you may notice we have an ad running on the right side of the page. We like the way it looks, and are pleased we could make the text match the text of the rest of the site. We hope you will click on our ads often so the advertisers think it's worthwhile to keep advertising with us. It's not huge bucks, but it will help us buy a few more Christmas presents for those on our list.

The program was a flop. No terror leads were obtained. Good riddance.

The United States has ended its requirement men from 25 mostly Muslim countries register with the authorities every year they are in the country. The program has yielded no terror leads, U.S. Undersecretary for Border and Transportation Security Asa Hutchinson announced Monday.

A new program will take its place January 6. Officials say it will track individuals instead of groups of people.

Angela Kelley, deputy director for the National Immigration Forum, says the news is a bit of a "break in the clouds of the storm" but we're still "far from a sunny day."

Yesterday was International Day Against the Death Penalty, capping off a week long campaign called Cities for Life - Against the Death Penalty.

ZENIT - The World Seen From Rome Date: 2003-11-30
John Paul II Backs Campaign Against Death Penalty

VATICAN CITY, NOV. 30, 2003 (Zenit.org).- John Paul II added his voice in support of the renewal of the international campaign against the death penalty.

Before bidding farewell to the pilgrims gathered today in St. Peter's Square to pray the Angelus, the Pope greeted members of the Community of Sant'Egidio, an ecclesial movement involved in the struggle against capital punishment.

Today, at the initiative of Sant'Egidio and other non-governmental organizations that make up the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, 300 "Pro-Life Cities" lit up a monument to express their rejection of the death penalty.

Among the cities participating in this 2nd World Day Against the Death Penalty were Amsterdam, Netherlands; New York; Buenos Aires; Berlin; Hiroshima, Japan; Santiago, Chile; Vienna, Austria; Barcelona, Spain; and Paris. Their theme was "No Justice Without Life."

Mario Marazziti, spokesman of Sant'Egidio, explained that 112 countries have abolished the death penalty, in law or in fact, and 83 use it. Armenia, Serbia and Montenegro, Chile and Ivory Coast abolished it in the past two years.

"The judicial system is never infallible," Marazziti said. "The death penalty is an irreversible instrument of justice. And man cannot take what he cannot restore."

The Sant'Egidio campaign is calling for a universal moratorium on executions, an appeal that is supported by 5 million signatures.

Saudi interrogators are not known for their bedside manner at interrogations. They are more widely known for beheadings. But, they've changed their tune when it comes to questioning Al Qaeda members:

There's a plan behind all this.

Over time, the clerics position the prisoners to repent and renounce their past allegiance to the network established by the Saudi-born fugitive bin Laden. Then traditional interrogators are brought in to question the prisoners and learn tactical information, officials said. "We have learned that what drove them into this cult, and what causes them to cooperate, is religion," said one senior Saudi official involved in intelligence work.

Saudi interrogators often bring clerics and a Quran to their prison interviews to establish a religious connection, a technique that has proved successful in eliciting information from terrorist suspects and reorienting them to less violent religious beliefs.

The tactic, similar to the way cult deprogrammers work in the United States, has impressed American counterparts enough that Saudi intelligence was permitted to use some of the principles on their citizens being held at the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Saudi officials said. The tactic is getting results.

The religious reorientation is markedly different from some hard-core interrogation tactics that can use sleep deprivation, alternate rewards and punishment and other methods to elicit information.

Here's how it works: First, the Saudis identify midlevel and low-level al-Qaida prisoners who were attracted to Osama bin Laden's network through a perversion of Islam.

Then, shortly after these al-Qaida prisoners are taken into custody, Saudi interrogators send in a cleric who appears to espouse militant Islamic views to help build a personal bond with the young men and open a dialogue based on Islam, the officials said.

Once we connect with them, the interrogators slowly hand them over to a more moderate cleric, who sits with them and goes over what the Quran says and discusses what the traditions of the prophet are," one Saudi official explained.

Experts say the religious reprogramming tactic works well as a carrot in a society that also threatens a harsh stick - Islamic trials followed by swift, public beheadings of some criminals. It has developed over decades as the Saudis have looked for ways to rehabilitate their citizens.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution Columnist Jay Bookman writes about the two of the Administration's false assertions : One is that the war on terror and the war in Iraq are the same. The second is that we are fighting each to protect America. Bookman says the Iraq war is not about terrorists. We agree. Remember this Dick Cheney statement?

"We are aggressively striking the terrorists in Iraq, defeating them there," Vice President Dick Cheney said a week ago, "so we do not have to face them on the streets of our own cities."

False.

Such statements are simply false. Our men and women in uniform are not fighting for their lives against international terrorists in Iraq. They are not fighting the people who attacked us on Sept. 11, nor are they fighting allies of those people.

Instead, the guerrillas who are launching mortars at our military bases, attacking our troops on patrol or hiding booby traps on Iraqi highways are native Iraqis who are trying to evict American troops from their country. Despicable and cowardly as their tactics are, the Iraqi resistance is almost entirely Iraqi. They are not attacking us because they hate Americans. They are attacking us because they hate Americans who are occupying their country.

The import of fighting two wars at the same time is sobering:

It is almost never wise to start a second war when the outcome of the first is still unsettled because you are inevitably forced to divide resources. With more than 100,000 troops and many billions of dollars committed to Iraq for years to come; with our limited Arabic-language intelligence assets now targeted at the Iraqi resistance, not at al-Qaida and its network; and with international support for our war on terror eroded by our high-handed invasion, we have committed the classic mistake of military overreach.

The war on Iraq and the war on terror are two different struggles. Tackled separately, either would have taken us years to win. Tackling them simultaneously was tragic foolishness on a very large scale, no matter how much the president claims otherwise.

Prisoner of Her Past is an absolutely fascinatng portrait of a holocaust survivor who developed late-onset PTSD, written by her son, a Chicago Tribune reporter:

Sixty years ago, Sonia Reich was hunted by the Nazis in Poland. Today, she is living those horrible times all over again. Her son, Tribune reporter Howard Reich, sought to find out why, and his search into her past is chronicled in this special report.

We read the whole thing in one sitting. It's long but so rich that it goes by almost too quickly.