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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It's not just anti-war sites receiving house calls from the FBI. At least one software engineer has also, one with a connection to the electronic voting machine issue. A software engineer named Jonathan Inskeep of CASE Consulting writes on a Yahoo electronic voting message board:

Jonathan Inskeep here, from Crofton, Maryland which is approximately in
the middle of the triangle formed by Washington, DC, Baltimore, and
Annapolis. I'm a software engineer. My personal view is that every line of computer code used in any capacity to count votes should be made public. Any company that intends to claim their software as proprietary or a trade secret should be prohibited from bidding on contracts. Once the system is complete,
it should be put up and hackers worldwide should be invited to break it. As each flaw is exposed, it should be corrected and the process begun again.

The toughest issue I see, other than the fact that the Republicans have been and currently are actively cheating, is privacy versus verification. How can an individual make sure his or her vote is counted while maintaining a "secret" ballot? I would like to see some sort of paper trail.

He goes on about problems with the machines in his precinct, then says,

This system is about to be replaced by our Republican governor with
some sort of paperless touch screen system based on untested software
that has no audit trail.

Also, two FBI agents came by my house last week asking for names of radicals and organizations. My email is being monitored. Anyone on
this board should assume the same.

Is this an anomoly or does this mean that if you dig too far into the problems with electronic voting systems you might get a visit from the FBI?

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Charges dropped.

The Army dismissed a cowardice charge but filed another count against an Army interrogator who sought counseling after he saw the body of an Iraqi man cut in half by American fire.

...After seeing the mangled corpse, Pogany says he began shaking and vomiting and feared for his life. Soon, Pogany says, he had trouble sleeping and started suffering what he thought were panic attacks.

Now he faces another charge: Dereliction of Duty.

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Bush judicial nominee for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, Calif. Justice Janice Rogers Brown, was approved by a 10-9 vote of the Judiciary Committee Thursday.

A filibuster is expected when the nomination comes to a full Senate vote. This is an important nomination to block because Brown is frequently mentioned as a possible Supreme Court replacement. The DC Circuit Court of Appeals is considered the most influential appeals court in the nation.

Call your Senators today and tell them you want a filibuster. Here's the phone list with their individual office numbers. Or call the toll free Congressional switchboard, 1- 800-839-5276. For some reasons why, go here and here. Here's some of the latest news on the planned filibuster.

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Lea Fastow, indicted wife of Enron's former financial chief Andrew Fastow, may be seeking a plea deal. Speculation has it she would agree to serve five months, so she could be out and home with the kids by the time her husband's trial begins.

There was a hearing today in the case on Mrs. Fastow's motion to change venue outside of Houston. Mrs. Fastow is represented by one of the country's finest defense lawyers, Mike DeGeurin of Houston.

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Across town today, Mike's brother, Dick DeGuerin, another of this country's stellar criminal defense lawyers, is waiting out a verdict in the murder trial of NY real estate heir Robert Durtz.

No, we didn't spell their names wrong. They spell their last names differently. Both used to practice with the late, legendary Texas lawyer, Percy Foreman. They are two of our all-time defense heros.

Atrios thanks his lawyer who helped him with the Donald Luskin threat to expose his identity and sue him. It is none other than Alabama lawyer Sam Heldman, who writes the blog Ignatz, currently on hiatus. Great job, Sam.

Atrios will be donating his paypal donations for six weeks to a very worthy organization--the Equal Justice Initiative of Alabama, which provides quality legal representation to those on death row and those without funds to retain counsel. Alabama is a nasty Southern state when it comes to the rights of the accused. Give all you can. You can give directly to EJI by mailing a check to them (let Atrios know because he's keeping a tally):

Equal Justice Initiative of Alabama
122 Commerce Street
Montgomery, AL 36104

Atrios, you're a mensch. And, of course, so is Sam.

Excellent profiles on the two run-off candidates for the San Francisco Mayor's race. Both are in their 30's.

Newsom, a liberal Democrat by the standards of most other cities, has been cast by opponents here as a socialite "Republocrat." He is allied with billionaire Gordon Getty and lives in a multimillion-dollar mansion in Pacific Heights, one of the city's most expensive neighborhoods, with his wife, a prosecutor and CNN commentator who is a former lingerie model.

By contrast, Gonzalez, an arts aficionado and poetry buff, doesn't own a car and rents an apartment in the considerably less fashionable Western Addition neighborhood. Newsom's supporters portray Gonzalez as an ultra-left "cafe brat" whose support won't extend beyond the city's young hipsters.

A new British scientific studyshows that a marijuana pill helps relieve pain from MS. Our clients have told us this for some time. But a pill available in the U.S., Marinol, according to our clients, has a tolerance factor. After a few months, the pill doesn't work as well. Smoking marijuana, on the other hand, we're told, doesn't lose its pain-relieving effect over time. Marinol is available with a doctor's prescription in the U.S.

The British study has been published in the Lancet medical journal. We don't know if the pill referred to is the same as Marinol.

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On the subject of Canadian citizen Maher Arar and his allegations of torture at the hands of the Syrians after being deported there by the U.S.....Check out this page from Human Rights Watch. It has a list of countries we have deported people to that practice torture. Among them, Syria:

Syria : Administration of electric shocks; pulling out fingernails; forcing objects into the rectum; beatings; bending detainees into the frame of a wheel and whipping exposed body parts.

Here's more from the same page:

The December 26 Washington Post article also discussed the rendition, or transfer, of suspected members of Al Qaeda to third countries that not only use the "stress and duress" techniques described above, but other, more brutal methods of interrogation. According to the article, U.S. officials defended renditions by saying interrogators with a greater cultural, religious and language affinity would be more successful in obtaining information. However, other comments from anonymous officials suggested that detainees were deliberately moved to countries known for their use of torture because the officers of the third countries face fewer constraints on their interrogations. One unnamed official was quoted as saying, "We don't kick the [expletive] out of them. We send them to other countries so they can kick the [expletive] out of them." The various methods of torture used in the third countries, like the "stress and duress" techniques, are also described and condemned in the State Department's Country Reports on Human Rights. Listed below are the descriptions of the torture techniques used in reported countries of rendition, as reported by the State Department.

Here's Mr. Arar's account of his torture: