This story is going to get a lot bigger. It's an FBI probe into whether major Los Angeles and Hollywood law firms knew a private investigator whose services they were using was obtaining information for them through illegal wiretaps.

Anthony Pellicano, the high-profile private investigator to the stars and their lawyers, was arrested last year and charged with possessing explosives. He pleaded guilty (no plea deal) and begins a prison term next week. He has asked to start serving the sentence now even though he isn't scheduled to be sentenced until January. He is expected to be sentenced to between 27 and 33 months.

During the search of Pellicano's computers, authorities came across reams of information and documents suggesting that Pellicano had conducted illegal wiretaps, perhaps with the assistance of someone at the LA Sheriff's Department.

A full-blown federal investigation is now underway. Here's how it all began:

Howard Dean becomes the first Democratic candidate ever to to skip public financing for a presidential campaign.

Dean made his decision based on a high-tech tally of 600,000 supporters, whom he asked to vote by e-mail, Internet, telephone or regular mail through Friday.

He was announcing the results at noon EST in Burlington, Vt., but campaign officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said about 85 percent of the 105,000 supporters who weighed in urged the former Vermont governor to opt out. He becomes the first candidate in Democratic Party history to take such a step.

We're beginning to believe that Dean is unstoppable and will be the candidate. Of course, it's still a ways away, and anything can happen, but Clark doesn't seem to have gotten the traction he needs as yet.

We're still holding back on making a final choice, but it may not be long. We hope that Dean will give criminal justice issues a higher priority and that his advisors move him a little to the left on these issues.

We think Wesley Clark would make a great VP candidate for Dean. We like John Edwards too, although his time may be coming in 2008 if Bush wins re-election in 2004. Then again, 2008 already seems to belong to Hillary.

Update: Atrios doesn't think Dean has the nomination sewn up. Like us, he hasn't endorsed a candidate yet. And this is true:

When the candidate is chosen, it's going to be important to rally behind him (sorry Ambassador Moseley-Braun, but....), with your time, energy, and wallets. Don't lose sight of that.

Dave Cullen at Conclusive Evidence explains Dean's decision.

Arthur Silber at Light of Reason has announced that the LA transit strike has done him in financially and he will be putting the blog on hiatus. He explains why the strike matters so much to him here. We're really sorry to hear this as Arthur's voice is one we highly respect. He does have a paypal button if you can spare a few dollars. We hope he'll be back.

Bump and Update: Now the school says it asked for the raid but had no idea the police would draw their weapons.

The ACLU says the execution of the raid was illegal:

Graham Boyd, director of the drug policy project for the American Civil Liberties Union [said], "You absolutely cannot bring police with guns drawn into a school." Boyd said police must suspect individual students of drug activity, then any action taken must target those suspects. He said investigators should have called individual suspected students to the principal's office to check their bags for drugs.

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Original Post, 11/7 3:20 pm

This is inexcusable. If it happened at the high school our kid attended, we would have been up in arms.

Fourteen cops, some with guns drawns, raided a South Carolina high school searching for.....marijuana. To top it off, they didn't find any.

Surveillance video from Stratford High School in Goose Creek shows 14 officers, some with guns drawn, ordering students to lie the ground as police searched for marijuana. Students who didn't comply with the orders quickly enough were reportedly handcuffed. Police didn't find any criminals in the armed sweep, but they say search dogs smelled drugs on a dozen backpacks.

Whoever ordered this raid should be fired. And if the principal agreed to it, he or she should go as well.

John Lee Malvo, also referred to as Lee Boyd Malvo, the younger of the two 'sniper' suspects, goes on trial Monday in Virginia. So far, his lawyers are pleased with the way the trial is progressing against his alleged co-coconspirator and elder sniper suspect John Muhammad. Malvo's lawyers have a defense--the "insanity-by-indoctrination defense"--and they say the Muhammad trial is strengthening it.

Both trials have been moved outside of the counties where the shooting crimes occurred. Muhammad is on trial in Virginia Beach. Malvo's trial will be held 14 miles away in Chesapeake. Here is a profile of Judge Marum Roush who will be presiding over the Malvo trial. You can read about his defense team, Michael S. Arif and Craig S. Cooley, here.

Malvo was 17 at the time the crime was committed, yet he is eligible for the death penalty under Virginia law. He has an interesting history. Three years ago he was an honors student Jamaica who loved playing cricket and reading. Today he is most often thought of as the "accused serial killer who reportedly laughed when talking about sending bullets through his victims’ heads." Here's an article on Malvo's switch to an insanity plea. The Sunday Washington Post has this lengthy article about Malvo's background.

Columnist Earl Ofari Hutchinson writes about the absurdity of the death penalty in this and all cases in light of the Green River killer who killed 48 and was permitted to plead guilty and avoid it.

We're scheduled to do another online chat for the Washington Post on jury selection in the Malvo case Monday afternoon at 3:30 pm ET. Here is the transcript of our last chat, on the day Muhammad represented himself at his trial.

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The New Hampshire Supreme Court has decided that gay sex is not adultery. An interesting decision, and a correct one in our view, holding that judges should not be the arbiter of what is or is not an intimate act. The opinion is here. [link via How Appealing.]

Part of the problem in New Hampshire is that adultery is not defined in the state's divorce laws. So the court looked up "adultery" in Webster's dictionary and found that it mentions intercourse. And it found an 1878 case that referred to adultery as "intercourse from which spurious issue may arise."

But the majority did not want the New Hampshire courts to step onto the slippery slope of defining which sex acts outside of intercourse might amount to adultery. "This standard would permit a hundred different judges ... to decide just what individual acts are so sexually intimate as to meet the definition," the court said.

Update: SSGT Pogany believes he's being pressured to quit and experts say someone should have recognized he needed help.

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As we've previously reported, the cowardice charges filed against SSGT Pogany, the soldier who asked for counseling after seeing a dead Iraqi lying on the ground whose body was cut in half, have been dropped and a lesser charge of dereliction of duty has been lodged in its place.

Former Navy JAG officer and blogger Len Clevelin (Musings of a Philosophical Scrivener) examines the old charge and the new charge and thinks the Army will have a tough time proving the new one.

First, the Army is going to have to allege and prove the specific duties that SSGT Pogany is alleged to have been derelict in the performance of. Getting around that, the critical issue at trial seems to me to be whether SSGT Pogany was derelict in the performance of those duties either willfully, or through culpable negligence. The facts of the case, as presented in the media up to this time, seem to be clear that SSGT Pogany went to his chain of command and informed them that, due to the psychological trauma of seeing the severely mutilated body of the dead Iraqi, he felt that he was no longer capable of doing his duties without psychological assistance. I don't see how the Army can prove that this is either willful refusal to perform (assuming that SSGT Pogany isn't malingering (which is another offense under the UCMJ) as he has no control over his psychological reaction to seeing the horribly mutilated corpse of an enemy combatant), or "culpably negligent" (since it's clear to me under general principles of criminal liability that psychological factors interfering with one's ability to perform one's duty in no way rise to the level of "culpable negligence").

Clevelin hedges his bets somewhat, so go over and read the whole thing.

[link via Democratic Veteran]

John Walters, Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, discussed the idea of legalizing marijuana this morning on C-Span. You can watch and listen to his 24 minutes of disingenuous (at best) spin in real-time here.

Here's what came to one colleague's mind after viewing it:

The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic, and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie -- and thus by extension, the truth becomes the greatest enemy of the State."

-- Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's Propaganda Minister

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This just in from the folks at the Federal Prison Policy Project:

We told you that we would find a sponsor for LERA which will increase good time for federal prisoners. We've done that in the House. Now we are orking on obtaining a sponsor in the Senate. Next week we will meet with numerous Congressional members are their staff members to discuss co-sponsorship of LERA. We will find a sponsor in the Senate. We are working round the clock to make increased good time for federal prisoners a reality. BUT we need your help and your financial support! We are doing what you asked us to do now we need you to do something for us. Please make a donation today so that we can continue working to insure that increased good time becomes a reality for the 173,500 federal prisoners.

The Federal Prison Policy Project
Board of Directors

Here's more on the legislation.

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Gabriel Gasave has a thoughtful new article opposing transit visas over at The Independent Institute.

This makes us ill. Send an e-mail to Jeb Bush and tell him it turns your stomach too.

DEATH ROW PRISONERS COMPLAINING OF ROTTEN FOOD
Is Aramark in Violation Of Its Contract?

Reports coming out of Florida prisons indicate that portions have been cut, and more frequently, rotten food has caused prisoners hungry enough to eat it to become ill with symptoms indicating food poisoning.

Support groups for FL death row inmates have long been receiving messages about the food service suggesting sub-standard food, uncooked food, filthy trays, dirty utensils, foreign objects found in the food, food served at the wrong temperature, etc. Recent food poisoning incidents on death row might have been prevented had the prisons paid reasonable attention to the grievances which have been filed by the inmates, in accordance with Department of Corrections rules. However, the DOC chose to ignore such grievances, ostensibly on the basis that "because the food [mentioned on the grievance] had long since been discarded, no investigation [was] possible." While the DOC acknowledged the problem, no action was taken to investigate or remedy the problem.

The South Dakota Supreme Court ruled Thursday that "medical necessity" is not a defense to a possession of marijuana charge. A quadriplegic who used marijuana to attempt to treat spastic tremors and pain throughout his body attempted to invoke the necessity defense when arrested for possession at a local jazz festival. Based on construction of South Dakota's statute, the court unanimously ruled the defense did not apply. The case is State v. Matthew Ducheneaux and here is the opinion. [Thanks to Tim of Progressive Prairie for the link]

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