Talk about non-compassionate conservatism, Bryan Baptiste, the Mayor of Kauai gets our vote today. Kauai is the only Hawaiian county without a homeless shelter. Nonetheless, the Mayor put into action last week a plan to get rid of the island's homeless, many whom are working poor, by evicting them from campsites and throwing them in jail. The Mayor said the homeless weren't motivated enough and he wanted them to have to make important life decisions.

Contact information for Mayor Baptiste ® is here.

The Senate has now joined the House in passing the new anti-terror bill we've discussed here and here. In addition to expanding the use of non-judicially approved national security letters (which are like subpoenas) to businesses such as car dealerships, casinos and pawnbrokers, the bill also :

• requires Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet to prepare a report as soon as possible on what intelligence agencies have learned from their experiences in Iraq. An internal review has been under way. Both the House and Senate intelligence committees have been conducting their own inquiries on prewar intelligence.

• creates a new intelligence office in the Treasury Department to improve coordination with intelligence agencies on fighting terrorist financing.

• creates pilot programs to examine whether analysts from one agency should have access to raw data from another and to improve information sharing with state and local governments.

• authorizes agencies to continue research on computerized terrorism surveillance projects formerly operated by the Defense Department. Those projects were widely criticized on civil liberties grounds, prompting Congress to remove them from the Pentagon. A report accompanying the bill said that research on the programs can proceed even though Congress has prevented the programs from being implemented. But it said any experiments can be conducted only on government foreign intelligence databases. It also required an examination of the programs' legal and civil liberty implications.

The House bill is H.R. 2417, and you can read it here by typing in its number. The research programs authorized by the bill are expected to cost $40 billion.

The defense in the Kobe Bryant case denies leaking information about the accuser to a retired judge as previously reported.

This troubles us: The prosecution is seeking to have all future pleadings in the case that refer to evidence in the case filed under seal. This is wrong, and there is a much fairer way to accomplish the goal. Each side should file two versions of any pleading containing information that shoud not be made public--one of which is the entire pleading, filed under seal, and the other is a redacted version for the public, with just the sensitive material deleted and so noted. This was done in the Oklahoma bombing trials and it worked well.

To seal all evidentiary pleadings in their entirety is contrary to the public's right to know and the First Amendment. We hope the media lawyers get right on opposing it.

In other Kobe case news, the new issue of the Globe will not only be running the accuser's picture again, but making an explosive allegation that she had sex with a certain prosecution witness who is critical to the prosecution's case not long before the incident with Kobe.

All Kobe pleadings are available at the court's website here. Read them while you still can.

New York lawyer Lynne Stewart pleaded "not guilty" Friday to the new terrorism charge brought against her by the Justice Department. Elaine Cassel discusses the case in "Vengeance, Thy Name is Ashcroft":

At this point, it seems that the allegations are an absurd interpretation of the law: an attorney repeats something a client said to the press and that is defined as aiding and abetting terrorism? At this point, I can’t see that this charge is any "better" than the one Judge Koeltl dismissed.

That’s not the point, right now, as I see it. Rather, what is significant is that with the trial date less than two months away, Ashcroft came up with this to (1) get back at Stewart and her attorney, Michael Tigar, for their win on the prior terrorist charges and (2) try to insure that this time, the charges will stick. This time, the Judge won’t be so bold as to strike the charges, Ashcroft must be hoping.

....I wish we did not have a religious zealot, a wolf in wolf’s clothing, who holds himself out as a "Christian," as the chief law enforcement officer in the United States. I wish we had someone who believed in justice, and in justice tempered with mercy.

Public Defender Dude has a thoughtful post on lawyers representing high-profile defendants. He astutely describes the lawyer's job and explains why it is not a matter of victim-bashing:

Talk radio is saying that Geragos may try to "trash" the victim in the Michael Jackson case, and trash his family. Well, I have some news for you. When trying to cast reasonable doubt on a case, you are required to look at the motives and biases of the witnesses against you. Everytime you go to the police you put your credibility at issue. I don't know the facts of the Michael Jackson case well, but I have heard rumors that when Michael Jackson cut off funding for the family, they went to a lawyer to see how they could get back on the gravy train. This may be true, it may not be true. However, exploring this possibility is not a matter of "trashing the victim." It is a legitemate investigation into the background of someone who's statements could put you in prison for the rest of your life.

Julia at Sisyphus Shrugged picked up on this letter to the editor in Friday's Washington Post:

In the recent marathon debate on judicial nominations, Sen. Orrin G. Hatch earnestly expressed the view that the Democrats' filibuster against several of President Bush's nominations was unprecedented and even unconstitutional. This led me to dig up some old Congressional Records from April 1980, when Senate Republicans mounted a filibuster against President Carter's nominee for general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board -- a man who had served as a career attorney at the board for 27 years.

The senator leading the filibuster said it was his "unfortunate duty to challenge the nomination" because, although he "personally liked" the nominee, he was "too pro-labor" and other qualified nominees would be "acceptable to business." After five days of floor debate, the filibuster was broken on the second cloture vote, and the nominee was confirmed for a four-year term.

The reason I remember this episode so well is that the nominee was William A. Lubbers, my father, and the senator leading the filibuster was Orrin G. Hatch.

JEFFREY S. LUBBERS

With the bill expanding Patriot Act rights moving full speed through Congress this week, people sound surpised--as if they thought things were going to get better. We think they will get worse. The Victory Act has yet to be introduced, but that doesn't mean it's dead:

“Vital Interdiction of Criminal Terrorist Organizations Act of 2003” or the VICTORY Act”.

Certain provisions in the draft bill expand the scope of money laundering offenses, increase the government’s ability to seize and forfeit assets, and increase the use of administrative subpoenas. Among the objectionable provisions are those that:

• Change the requirement that in order to obtain a conviction for money laundering and forfeiture the government must prove that the defendant conducted a transaction with the proceeds of a specified unlawful activity.

• Create an offense for someone to transport more than $10,000 in interstate commerce without having to prove that the money came from a particular crime and that the defendant actually knew the money was illegal proceeds.

• Authorize the Attorney General to freeze bank accounts for investigation and without proof that may be subject to forfeiture.

• Authorize the pretrial restraint of substitute assets.

• Diminish the due process protections presently afforded under the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act, Pub. L No 106-185, 114 Stat. 202, 106th Cong.
  (2000).

• Extend the Attorney General’s ability to use administrative subpoenas to any investigation with respect to terrorism or the apprehension of a fugitive, that is, anyone accused or convicted of committing any federal or state felony.

Kimberly at Brief Intelligence recommends Orson Welle's The Trial (1963), from the novel By Franz Kafka:

Josef K. awakens one morning to find that he has been arrested by officers who refuse to disclose the charges. His nervous protests estrange his friends and neighbors who proceed to distance themselves while his every action seems to further indict him. Josef's attempts to discover his alleged crime pull him into a perplexing world full of secrets and lies. As the horror and brutality of this nightmare world becomes apparent to Josef, he attempts to fight back with argument, avoidance, disobedience and pleading - all to no avail. Orson Welles' vision of Kafka's world is faithfully disorienting, absurd and suspicious. From the vast, overwhelming courtroom to the wasteland of books and papers in the advocate's office, Josef K. is spectacularly dwarfed by the power and madness surrounding him. Accented by a revolutionary "pinscreen" prologue and remarkable performances by Anthony Perkins and Orson Welles, "The Trial" is a brilliant adaptation of Kafka's masterpiece.

Kimberly calls it "a stunning and chilling achievement" and that "today’s poisonous political climate and the dawn of the Patriot Act give it an especially jarring relevance."

We're still thinking about Mystic River, which we saw two weeks ago. We might want to see it again. Sean Penn was that good and the story was a mystery until the end.

As for reading, now that we've finished two novels, Namesake and the DaVinci Code, we're ready to break into The Brass Wall by NY Times reporter David Kocieniewski.

It's written with the tone and pace of a legal thriller, but at its heart, is an expose--showing how the Guliani Administration allowed the NYPD's good ol' boys to risk the life of an undercover agent and undermine the investigation of two mob-related homicides that remain unsolved. It examines the way New York City handled dangerous police corruption cases during the time the Mollen Commission was supposed to be reforming the NYPD--and when the Abner Louima and Amadou Diallo cases raised concerns that the department's failure to police itself was endangering the public.

This editorial in the Toronto Star, written in the wake of yesterday's bombings in Turkey, gets it right:

After 9/11 the main thing was to put Al Qaeda out of business. That didn't happen. Instead, Bush invested vast resources into hammering Saddam Hussein's regime, which, while criminally brutal, was not a terrorist threat. Terror had not taken root in Iraq, before the invasion. It has now.

Meanwhile, bin Laden remains free to preach murder, and to bankroll it as his adherents stage a deadly comeback. Yet Bush is poorly placed to counter the threat to America and its allies, so bogged down is he in Iraq.

This is tragic. Bush has no priority more important than running bin Laden to ground and putting his crew out of business. It's past time to refocus the war on terror.

Bush, it appears, still does not get it:

A senior U.S. general said on Friday that al Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden had "taken himself out of the picture" and that his capture was not essential to winning the "war on terror."

Some good news....a U.S. envoy speaking in Spain said that 24 detainees are scheduled for release from Guantanamo in the next few weeks.

Pierre-Richard Prosper, the U.S ambassador-at-large for war crimes, said several dozen other prisoners will be transferred to the custody of authorities in their native countries.

More than 600 prisoners are being held incommunicado at the U.S. naval base in Cuba, accused of links to al-Qaida or the former Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Some 60 former suspects have been freed and sent home.

"We expect to see almost two dozen individuals released in the coming weeks who no longer pose a threat to the international community," Prosper told a news conference at the U.S. Embassy in Madrid.

The latest Texecution news: A state court judge in Texas has given the green light to the execution of James Lee Clark who is mildly retarded:

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stayed James Lee Clark's execution in November 2002 days before he was scheduled to die. They wanted a judge to review claims by Clark's attorneys that he is mentally retarded. A Supreme Court ruling [ Atkins v. Virginia ] bars the execution of mentally retarded inmates.

District Judge Lee Gabriel ruled Thursday if Clark is mildly retarded, he is not so impaired that he can be exempted from the death penalty.

[link via Paper Chase]

Don't miss " Jails for Jesus" in the November/December issue of Mother Jones:

President Bush wants faith-based programs to take over social services. But what happens when evangelical Christians try their hand at running prisons?

....Aided by friends in high places -- such as the White House -- legislators in Kansas, Iowa, Texas, and Minnesota have, in the last six years, turned over portions of their prisons, and corrections budgets, to the politically powerful evangelical Christian group, Prison Fellowship Ministries.

....The largest prison ministry in the world, PFM sends more than 50,000 volunteers into prisons in every state with the goal of "declaring the good news of Jesus Christ to those impacted by crime." The Ministries' "Angel Tree" program has presented more than 4 million children of inmates with Christmas presents and evangelistic materials. The goal is clear....