Calling Drug Czar John Walters....We did a doubletake when we saw this in Monday's Washington Post. We're still laughing:

Powell's Chemical Equation

Powell described his killer schedule in an interview Thursday with Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed, a reporter for a London-based Saudi newspaper.

"So do you use sleeping tablets to organize yourself?" Al-Rashed asked.

"Yes. Well, I wouldn't call them that," Powell said. "They're a wonderful medication -- not medication. How would you call it? They're called Ambien, which is very good. You don't use Ambien? Everybody here uses Ambien."

Ambien:

Zolpidem ( Ambien ) is a Sleeping pill from a newer group of drugs called imidzopyridines. Used primarily for short-term treatment of insomnia in adults.

...Never Take a Double Dose!....The habit-forming potential is high. Psychological and physical dependence is possible. Do not stop taking this drug abruptly, this could cause psychological and physical withdrawal symptoms.

The list of common and rare side effects gave us the creeps. Sounds like it was written by Czar Walters....and we don't buy a lot of it. Ambien is a popular and widely used prescription sleep medication that is a favorite among, including others, A-type personalities and business people who take overnight flights. But still, for the Secretary of State to broadcast it to the media? What was he thinking?

[thanks to Avedon Carol at Sideshow for the link]

Our hat is off to Turkey which has formally abolished the death penalty during peacetime. From the press release from the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly:

Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly President Peter Schieder and the Secretary General of the Organisation, Walter Schwimmer, today welcomed Turkey’s formal deposition of the ratification instruments for Protocol No. 6 to the European Convention on Human Rights, abolishing the death penalty in peacetime, as a milestone on Europe’s path towards a death penalty-free continent.

A death penalty free-continent is what we need. We'll even settle for a moratorium now and abolition in the not-distant future. We are among the last vestiges of the civilized world that still condones state-sanctioned murder. It's time to put a stop to it.

Comedian Dennis Miller is jumping from Fox to CNBC where he will have his own hour long news show. It does not appear there was any contract-breaking. Dennis says he hadn't heard from Fox on renewal of his one year contract so he took the CNBC offer.

Nonetheless, Fox doesn't sound pleased with Dennis's decision:

Frankly, when we deal with talent we usually have better conversations before someone leaves," says Kevin Magee, FNC's vice president of programming. "I don't think he'll have as many viewers as he had on "Hannity & Colmes," but we'll figure out some way to fill those three minutes and move on."

Hmm....we can think of lots of liberals who would be glad to fill three minutes of Hannity and Colmes on Friday nights. Liberals? Here's our reasoning: Since the last year belonged to Dennis, who was a conservative, to put it mildly, we hope Fox goes fair and balanced and gives the spot to a liberal for the next year. [link via Atrios.]

Closing arguments are ongoing today in the trial of accused sniper suspect John Muhammad. Opening arguments are underway in the trial of younger suspect John Lee Malvo.

Yesterday, the Associated Press released details of an earlier FBI investigation into one of the state's forensic chemists who testified at Muhammad's trial. The prosecution claims it didn't know any of this stuff. Clearly, it is Brady material that should have been turned over. If the AP located the material, the Prosecution could have obtained it as well.

A government chemist who testified in the Washington sniper case kept a "sloppy" office that raised concerns of contaminated evidence and has made numerous racially insensitive remarks, according to evidence the government has had for more than a decade.

The Virginia prosecutor handling the trial of sniper defendant John Allen Muhammad said Thursday he wasn't aware of the information, obtained by The Associated Press, before he put government chemist Edward Bender on the witness stand last week. "And I'm not aware of it today," Paul Ebert said.

....FBI and Justice Department documents obtained by AP detail testimony from colleagues and supervisors that Bender made racist comments that were pervasive enough to raise concerns among at least one colleague about his impartiality in cases. A supervisor and "Bender continually and loudly expressed strong racial prejudice using such words as 'jungle bunnies' and 'niggers' repeatedly," a 1991 FBI memo stated, recounting allegations from one of Bender's lab colleagues.

There's more, go read. As to "Brady,"

The government and prosecutors are required under a Supreme Court ruling known as Brady v. Maryland to provide defendants with all "material" information affecting their case, including derogatory information that could impact the credibility of prosecution witnesses.

Another Supreme Court case, Kyles v. Whitley, 514 U.S. 419 (1995) held that the duty of disclosure is not limited to evidence in the actual possession of the prosecutor. Rather, it extends to evidence in the possession of the entire prosecution team, which includes investigative and other government agencies. See also Strickler v. Greene, 119 S.Ct. 1936, at n.12 (1999).

Update: The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) has had Bender on its list of the Ten Most Unwanted Government Forensic Witnesses for a few years. Here's the Bender information NACDL obtained from the Inspector General's report and the FBI files:

Kobe Bryant appeared in court today in Eagle County. He did not enter a plea. No trial date was set but two motions hearings were scheduled:

Ruckriegle set a pretrial hearing for Dec. 19 to consider motions by the attorneys and another for Jan. 23 to settle various disputes, including whether records from an Eagle-area rape crisis center should be given to the defense.

Trial mostly likely will occur after the end of the NBA season.

Alabama Chief Justice Roy S. Moore was removed from office after a hearing today by a state judicial panel:

The Alabama chief justice whose refusal to obey a U.S. order to move a Ten Commandments monument fueled a national debate over the place of God in public life was stripped of his office by a state judicial panel on Thursday.

"Finding no other viable alternatives, this court hereby finds that Roy S. Moore be removed from his position as chief justice of Alabama," said a statement read by a member of the nine-member judicial panel.

The panel found that Moore "willfully and publicly" defied the federal order, placing himself above the law in doing so. The 5,000-pound monument was removed on Aug. 27. The U.S. Supreme Court last week refused to hear appeals from Moore in his bid to restore the marker to public view.

To settle a lawsuit, New York has agreed to pay almost double the current rates for indigent defense lawyers in New York.

Under the settlement, the assigned counsel will be paid $75 an hour for work on felony cases and $60 an hour for work on misdemeanor criminal cases, as of Jan. 1. It would be the first increase in the rates since 1985. The settlement came one day before an appellate court was scheduled to hear arguments in the case.

A series of articles in The New York Times in 2001 reported that 38 years after the United States Supreme Court ruled in Gideon v. Wainwright that indigent defendants had a right to legal counsel, the representation given to the poor routinely fell short of even the minimal standards recommended by legal experts.

New York City in particular relies on private lawyers to represent the poor more than most big cities, because it lacks a public defender's office. The Legal Aid Society, a nonprofit organization, was supposed to function like a public defender's office, representing nearly all indigent defendants. But Legal Aid was weakened after a dispute with former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, and it represents only about half of the hundreds of thousands of people arrested each year.

Both sides seem pleased with the rate hike.

Assemblywoman Helene E. Weinstein, chairwoman of the judiciary committee, praised the lawyers association for bringing the lawsuit, which she said documented "what many of us long argued, that the inadequacy of the assigned counsel rates resulted in New York's failure to meet our constitutional and statutory obligation."

Sens. Orrin Hatch and Ted Kennedy have joined forces to promote a federal hate crimes bill. We strongly oppose it. Conservative Republicans are usually on our side on this one, and we hope they hold their ground despite Hatch's defection on the issue. The Dems are out to lunch on this misguided, ill-advised bill. They should be the ones taking the following position:

They [Republicans] are concerned that the bill would violate free-speech rights and give the Department of Justice free rein to step over local authorities to prosecute many types of violent crimes. Many worry that the expansion of federal authority could include crimes such as any rape, which is usually targeted at women. "It actually punishes someone for what he thinks," said one Senate staffer whose boss opposes any form of the legislation. "That's pretty scary."

Here are our bullet points for opposing hate crime legislation, from an article we wrote in 2000 (and reprinted on TalkLeft last June):

Via Behind the Homefront.....American troops in Iraq are becoming more antagonistic to the media:

Media people have been detained, news equipment has been confiscated and some journalists have suffered verbal and physical abuse while trying to report on events. Although the number of incidents involving soldiers and journalists is difficult to gauge, anecdotal evidence suggests it has risen sharply the past two months.

The Associated Press has complained to the Pentagon about the hostile treatment.

``The effect has been to deprive the American public of crucial images from Iraq in newspapers, broadcast stations and online news operations,'' wrote Stuart Wilk, managing editor of The Dallas Morning News.

No, it's not the infamous Tulia, Texas bogus drug case. It's the trial of former Senior Cpl. Mark Delapaz, a Dallas cop charged with manufacturing dozens of bogus drug cases against immigrants in order to meet a personal goal of 100 kilos a month of cocaine busts:

Opening statements began Wednesday in the trial of a former Dallas police officer accused of submitting false reports and lying to FBI agents in a drug scandal that put dozens of innocent immigrants in jail.

Former Senior Cpl. Mark Delapaz lied regarding drug cases in order to reach his goal of 100 kilograms worth of drug busts, prosecutor Jeffrey Blumberg told jurors. "He lied to judges, he lied to prosecutors, and he lied to the FBI. That's what this case is all about," Blumberg said.

Delapaz is charged with "five counts of deprivation of rights under the color of law and one count of making false statements to federal officials." The maximum penalty is ten years in jail.

The evidence against Delapaz includes the drugs: Some were ground gypsum or other legal substances. As a result of the Delapaz's actions, 80 drug cases were dismissed and several immigrants have sued the city. Among the witnesses will be the informant used by Delapaz-- Enrique Alonso was paid $225,000 to set up the bogus deals.

Delapaz's defense: "He was fooled by manipulative drug informants."

Interesting statistics from Harper's Index.

Patriot Watch links to this USA article about the FBI's increased need for translators in it's war against terror--and these two little paragraphs buried in the middle of the article:

The FBI also needs more translators to decipher evidence from an increasing number of secret wiretaps and other electronic surveillance that the agency is conducting on U.S. citizens and possible al-Qaeda sympathizers in this country. Timely translations can help agents ensure that a terror plot is not in the works.

A senior FBI official says that in the past year, a secret federal court has granted about 2,000 requests by government agents to conduct electronic eavesdropping. In fiscal 2002, the court approved 1,228 similar requests under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

The ACLU has learned lots more through a Freedom of Information Act Request to which a Judge ordered the Justice Department to respond.