Instapundit weighs in on the same- sex marriage issue and says he's for it. He's getting a bunch of hate mail for his position--envy,perhaps? It began with an op-ed written by David Brooks, in which Brooks says,

Anybody who has several sexual partners in a year is committing spiritual suicide. He or she is ripping the veil from all that is private and delicate in oneself, and pulverizing it in an assembly line of selfish sensations.

Glenn responded,

Actually, I had quite a few years like that before I was married, and I consider it a good thing, though I'm quite happy to be married now and wouldn't have wanted to live that way forever. (But I think that one reason that I'm happily married now is that I did live that way for quite a while first). But I agree with David Brooks that gay marriage is a good thing, and actually strengthens traditional values rather than harming them.

Go read the weird emails Glenn got in response. And then Glenn's final retort.

The small town of Gueda Springs, Kansas, has no local police force. For self protection, the city council has passed an ordinance that with few exceptions, requires homeowners to keep guns:

This ordinance fulfills the duty to protect by allowing each individual householder to provide for his or her protection," said Councilman John Brewer.

"This is simply using the U.S. Constitution - Second Amendment in particular - to the city of Geuda Springs' advantage."

The ordinance is not the first in the country. Kennesaw, Georgia passed a similar law 21 years ago--and it's still in force.

The town sounds a little defensive about the bill:

Many Geuda Springs residents refused to talk about it, and others were tightlipped, saying outsiders should stay out of it. "It's nobody's business but our own," said Phillip Russell, who owns a motorcycle shop in the town. "Everybody out of town is making this their business."

The town has 210 residents. Failure to comply results in a $10 fine.

Skippy reports on the latest war toll of U.S. soldiers in Iraq. These were particularly gruesome deaths, in that an Iraqi mob beat the soldiers' bloodied dead bodies. Skippy aptly asks, "so, how much safer is the world now that we've ousted saddam?

A total of three U.S. soldiers died today. Here's another gruesome article.

In Mosul, two shopkeepers in this main northern city said two soldiers had their throats slit after they were ambushed in traffic.

And another.

Update: In Afganistan today, five U.S. soldiers were killed and seven wounded in a helicopter crash.

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Our good pal, NY criminal defense lawyer Joe Tacopina, made Page Six of the Post today....

DASHING defense lawyer Joe Tacopina, who's made his name representing high-profile clients like publishing guru Judith Regan and Abner Louima cop Thomas Wiese, is copping an eyeful of himself on TV. Script writers for CBS's legal drama "The Guardian" confess they used Tacopina's courtroom charms as the model for their slick lawyer Clay Simms, played by Mark Kiely. "I looked Joe up on the Internet," Kiely tells PAGE SIX. "He's a classic alpha male - knows no fear." Tacopina is flattered by the attention but says, "When do I get my check?"

Update: Joe Tacopina will be guest hosting the Dan Abrams report Wednesday night on MSNBC.

Update: We'll be on with him.

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Abuse and mistreatment of juveniles in Texas detention facilities and half-way houses has doubled in the past five years.

Last year, the Texas Youth Commission received 1,458 allegations of abuse and mistreatment and determined that 535 cases were valid. That compared with 260 confirmed cases out of 693 allegations in 1998.

Almost half of the 5,200 juvenile detainees are mentally ill. Eight years ago, the number was only 27%.

Handling young people with mental illness, experts say, requires different skills from those needed for other minors convicted of delinquent behavior. They worry that most juvenile corrections officers don't have the experience and training to deal with mentally ill youths. There are no national standards for housing mentally ill juvenile offenders or for the staffing and training to handle them.

"I've talked to detention officers all over this state, and they say, `Give me a gangbanger any day of the week,' " said Frank Birchak, supervising attorney for the University of Houston Law School juvenile defense clinic. "They are much easier to deal with, easier to control."

Many juvenile corrections officers are just a few years out of high school, earning a typical starting salary of $20k a year. The turnover rate of staff is 33%, in part caused by a staff injury rate of 54%. One facility's superintendant said, ""We're doing the best we can with what we've got."

Sorry, but that's not good enough. This broken system needs to change.

Spaniards have raised $150,000 to pay for the Death Row appeal of Florida prisoner Pablo Ibar, who was convicted in 1994 of a triple homicide.

As Ibar's case reaches the Florida Supreme Court next month, eight Spanish senators will visit Ibar on Death Row and then watch his lawyer argue in Tallahassee. Spanish citizens have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay for Florida Death Row defenses, including $150,000 for Ibar's appeal. Florida has become the focus of their passionate opposition to the death penalty.

The fervor of Spanish opposition, and the whole of Europe, is in stark contrast to the American point of view -- where politicians often consider opposition to capital punishment a career-killer. The European Union won't grant membership to countries that execute prisoners.

''It's considered an accomplishment of a higher degree of civilization,'' said Joaquin Roy, a Barcelona native who directs the University of Miami's European Union Center.... If Ibar loses his appeals, Spanish officials will refocus their efforts on Jeb Bush. ''The governor will always listen to input from people he meets as he travels around the state or overseas,'' said spokeswoman Alia Faraj. ``But as governor of Florida, he has the constitutional duty to uphold the laws of our state.''

Michael Isikoff of Newsweek reports on how the Justice Department is using a Patriot Act provision that allows it to obtain financial records of suspected terrorists or money launderers in non-terror cases:

In effect, the Patriot Act allows the Feds to search every financial institution in the country for the records of anybody they have suspicions about -- the very definition, critics say, of a fishing expedition. Law enforcement agencies can submit the name of any suspect to the Treasury Department, which then orders financial institutions across the country to search their records for any matches. If they get a "hit" -- evidence that the person has an account -- the financial institution is slapped with a subpoena for the person's records.

....It's the Patriot Act's money-laundering language that has allowed the Feds
to stretch the way the law can be used. Essentially, money laundering is an effort to disguise illicit profits. But it's such a broad statute that prosecutors can use it in the pursuit of more than 200 different federal crimes, Isikoff reports. Treasury Department figures reviewed by Newsweek show that this year the Feds have used the Patriot Act to conduct searches on 962 suspects, yielding "hits" on 6,397 financial records. Of those, two thirds (4,261) were in money-laundering cases with no terror connection. Among the agencies making requests, Newsweek has learned, were the IRS (which investigates tax fraud), the Postal Service (postal fraud) and the Secret Service counterfeiting). One request came from the Agriculture Department -- a case that apparently involved food stamp fraud.

Tim O'Reilly informs his readers that "Dennis Kucinich has outfoxed Diebold by putting some of some of the more egregious Diebold memos up on his part of the House of Representative web site . Let's see Diebold serve the House with a DMCA letter."

Kucinich has written a letter to the House Judiciary Committee leaders demanding a hearing on Diebold abuses. [links via What Really Happened.]

California will be the first state to require a paper trail as evidence in electronic voting. This should be no-brainer in every state. Unfortunately, the requirement in California won't go into effect until 2006. Lucky Bush?

Georg-Andreas Pogany is the special forces soldier who was sent home from Iraq and charged with cowardice after asking to speak a counselor when images of a body blown apart kept resurfacing in his mind to the point where he thought he was having a nervous breakdown. The charge has been reduced to derelection of duty and Pogany will stand trial. He faces a six month sentence and a dishonorable discharge if convicted.

Today's Denver Post has a long feature on Pogany, including his version of what happened. Pogany was interviewed in his lawyer's office.

Georg-Andreas Pogany's eyes honed in on the white body bag near the door. Inside was the mangled corpse of an Iraqi man, a hole where his chest should have been. Pogany, a 32-year-old staff sergeant attached to the elite Special Forces, said he stuffed the image to the back of his mind, unfazed.

A few hours later, the image came back with a vengeance. Pogany said he couldn't breathe. His body shook. He vomited again and again. As morning dawned on Sept. 29, Pogany said he thought he was headed for a nervous breakdown. He asked his commander for help.

"Get your head out of your (expletive)," Pogany recalled the commander saying.

Post columnist Jim Spencer provides his views on Pogany:

This doesn't sound fair to us. Canadian counter-terrorism expert David Hudak was tried in New Mexico on 9 federal charges relating to a training program he ran in Roswell, NM, and he was acquitted. His bond had been set at $10,000. Now the Bureau of Immigration Control Enforcement (ICE) has moved to revoke that bond and have him held without bond. U.S. District Judge M. Christina Armijo is asking for an explanation:

"I find preliminarily that there is evidence of arbitrary behavior on the part of this federal agency," Armijo said of Homeland Security, as represented by Justice Department lawyers.

So far, the only explanation that has been forthcoming from ICE is that Hudak's visa is expired. Hudak's lawyers say the bond revocation is a vindictive action in retaliation for his acquittal. Hudak has been in custody for more than a year.

Newsweek's new issue includes " From Moonwalk to Perp Walk with more details about the parents of the 12 year old cancer survivor who is accusing Michael Jackson.

[attorney for the child's father] Rick Halpern further alleges that the mother has coached the children in the past to make untrue statements in legal cases, once in a slip-and-fall suit against a chain store, and later during her acrimonious divorce battle, which began in 2001.

The mother, who has been in seclusion with her children, couldn't be reached for comment. But the father has his own credibility problems. In 2001, he pleaded no contest to a charge of wife-beating and was sentenced to attend domestic-violence counseling. The following year, he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of willful cruelty to a child in an incident involving his daughter. In a court filing seeking a restraining order against him, the mother claimed that "instances of violence in our marriage were a daily occurrence."

For more on the child and his parents, see our post from last evening here, quoting an assortment of news articles.

Update: Elizabeth Taylor released a statement Sunday affirming her belief in Michael's innocence:

Actress Elizabeth Taylor says she believes pop star and good friend Michael Jackson is "absolutely innocent" of child molestation charges and will be "vindicated." In a statement on Sunday, Taylor also criticized the press for behaving "abominably" toward the self-styled King of Pop, who was arrested this week on suspicion of sexually abusing a young boy. "Their whole reaction is that he is guilty. I thought the law was 'innocent until proven guilty.' I know he is innocent and I hope they all eat crow," Taylor said of the press.

The Modesto Bee has a detailed recap of the Scott Peterson preliminary hearing. Given the paucity of direct evidence presented at the hearing, the question arises, was the prosecution holding back or is that all they have? Our views are among those included in the article:

"His behavior and words (since Dec. 24) don't make him a murderer," said Jeralyn Merritt, a criminal defense attorney in Denver..... "Mark Geragos' strategy at the prelim was to rebut every piece of information capable of more than one interpretation," Merritt said, "and he did a very effective job at it."

"There is no murder weapon, no cause of death, no crime scene. What do they have?" Merritt said. "There is no evidence even of a struggle, let alone a murder."

....[defense attorney Bernie] Grimm and Merritt said if they were in Geragos' shoes, they would push for a speedy trial when Peterson is arraigned again Dec. 3 on the upheld charges.

As to the low threshold of proof necessary to establish "probable cause," Mark Geragos says, "I like to jokingly say it's, 'Is my client breathing?'"