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.

This just in from People for the American Way:

CARE PACKAGES GO TO SENATORS: "UP ALL NIGHT FOR JUSTICE"

November 12, 2003

Washington - The Coalition for a Fair and Independent Judiciary is delivering "care packages" to Capitol Hill Wednesday for the comfort of Senators who are courageously standing up for the Constitution and the use of the filibuster in judicial nominations.

The group, composed of advocates for civil rights and liberties, the environment, reproductive choice and equality, and other progressive groups, is sending a "Care Package for Courageous Senators," which includes:

The latest criticism of the Bush Administration's plan for military tribunals comes from an unlikely source: Philip Lacovara is a former deputy solicitor general of the United States and former counsel to the Watergate special prosecutor. During the Nixon era, he was in charge of the government's criminal and internal security cases before the Supreme Court. Now he serves on the board of the Lawyers' Committee for Human Rights and he criticizes the planned military tribunals in the op-ed Trial and Errors in today's Washington Post.

He debunks the Administration's (and its apologists') repeated ad nauseum assertion that the Ex Parte Quiran case from World War II authorizes the planned commissions:

In defending these military commissions, representatives of the Bush administration constantly refer to the well-known Quirin case -- in which the Roosevelt administration established a military commission during World War II to try eight Nazi saboteurs who had sneaked into the United States and thereby forfeited their status as soldiers entitled to be treated as POWs.

What they fail to note is that the Supreme Court decision in that case accorded much more in the way of legal rights to those eight Nazis than the administration is proposing today. The accused saboteurs retained the right to confidential communications with their counsel, access to all relevant evidence and Supreme Court review of the lawfulness of the proceedings against them. In a subsequent case involving the notorious Japanese Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita, the Supreme Court reaffirmed this important principle, granting even enemy leaders the right to have civil courts review the lawfulness of their prosecution and conviction by military commissions.

It's official. Howard Dean has picked up the endorsement of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union. The vote was unanimous.

Presidential hopeful Wesley Clark outlined a three point plan yesterday for catching Osama bin Laden:

First, Clark said he would pressure Saudi Arabia to contribute to a joint U.S.-Saudi commando force to scour the Afghan-Pakistani border where bin Laden is thought to be hiding.

Second, Clark proposed reassigning some of the intelligence specialists, linguists, and special operations forces now searching Iraq for weapons of mass destruction to the hunt for bin Laden.

Third, he said the United States needs to repair relations with allies and friends.