A new Zogby poll has Howard Dean expanding his lead. Clark is slipping.

Felony disenfranchisement is a major issue to us. Al Gore would be our President today if Floridian felons had the vote back then. Rebecca Perl of the Center for Investigative Reporting has a new article in the Nation on this single largest group of citizens banned from voting.

Felons and former felons are the single largest group barred by law from voting in the US. Most states passed disenfranchisement laws after the Civil War when blacks were first gaining the right to vote. Prisoners never lose their right to vote in twenty countries across Europe. Eighty percent of Americans favor restoring the right to vote to ex-prisoners who have completed their sentences. If felons had the vote in 2000, Al Gore would have won the popular vote by more than a million votes.

....Civil rights advocates predict that voting rights for prisoners and ex-prisoners will be the next US suffrage movement, as lawyers, prison advocates, voting rights groups and foundations have recently begun to join forces and take up the cause. "The United States, this great democracy, was founded as this experiment, and it was a great experiment. But it was a very limited one as well," says Marc Mauer of the Sentencing Project, a prison advocacy group in Washington, DC. "At the time the country was founded, essentially a group of wealthy white men granted themselves the right to vote." Mauer says that today, we look back on that decision with some degree of national embarrassment, and our history since then has been one of trying to open the franchise.

For more, see Whose Vote Counts? Our prior writings on the topic are accessible here.

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If you've got an anti-war website, don't be surprised to get a knock at your door. The FBI is making in person visits to anti-war websites.

Cryptome received a visit today from FBI Special Agents TR and CK from the FBI Counterterrorism Office in New York, 26 Federal Plaza, telephone (212) 384-1000. Both agents presented official ID and business cards. SA Renner said that a person had reported Cryptome as a source of information that could be used to harm the United States. He said Cryptome website had been examined and nothing on the site was illegal but information there might be used for harmful purposes. He noted that information in the Cryptome CDs might wind up in the wrong hands.

SA TR said there is no investigation of Cryptome, that the purpose of the visit was to ask Cryptome to report to the FBI any information which Cryptome "had a gut feeling" could be a threat to the nation.

Terry at Nitpicker is being called to Iraq. He's looking for someone to take over writing his blog for a year. You can e-mail him at nitpickerblog@hotmail.com. It's really a good blog. We hope someone keeps it going for him.

Attorney Clay S. Conrad has an excellent article in the new National Review titled "Justice Goes to Pot." Conrad also is the author of a leading book on jury nullification. He writes about Sen. Richard Durbin's soon to be introduced Truth in Trials Act, which we strongly support.

Durbin is currently seeking cosponsors for a bill that allows federal juries to be informed when defendants facing medical marijuana charges were in fact complying with state medical-marijuana laws. A similar measure is pending in the House (introduced by Sam Farr, D., Calif.). Federal prosecutors say if these bills pass and juries learn that marijuana involved in a case is for medical use, they will commit "jury nullification of the law" — acquitting plainly guilty criminals.

Bump and Update: Here's the latest:

This just in via e-mail from the ACLU:

We are pleased to report a significant victory in the Illinois Senate! A few hours ago, the Illinois Senate overrode Governor Blagojevich’s amendatory veto of Senate Bill 472, threatening to undermine critical reform of the failed and discredited death penalty system in Illinois. The vote on the override motion was 58 in favor, 0 opposed and 1 not voting – a sweeping victory. We thank all the members of the Action Alert Team who called their Senators and urged them to vote for this important legislation.

Senate Bill 472 includes many of the proposals recommended by the Governor's Commission on Capital Punishment, including: compelling police to produce exculpatory information in homicide cases; mandating a pre-trial process to test the veracity of "informant" or "jailhouse snitch" testimony; and, banning the execution of persons who are mentally ill. After the session, Governor Blagojevich used his amendatory veto authority to delete a provision that created a penalty for false testimony by police officers in homicide cases.

Later this evening, we anticipate that the Senate also will give overwhelming approval to an amendment to House Bill 576 – language that forms an agreement addressing the Governor’s concerns and those expressed by law enforcement about Senate Bill 472. Under the agreement, the hearings to decide whether a police officer charged with having lied during death penalty cases now will involve three state agencies, rather than the one agency originally proposed in Senate Bill 472.

For more on the controversy between the Governor and the legislature on the bill, go here. For more details on the bill passed by both houses of the state legislature, go here.

This just in via email:

Wednesday, by a vote of 357-67, the House of Representatives approved H.R. 3214, the Advancing Justice Through DNA Technology Act of 2003, a comprehensive package of programs that provides over $1 billion over the next five years to assist Federal and State authorities in solving crimes and protecting the innocent.

H.R. 3214 includes the Innocence Protection Act of 2003, which would help ensure eligible inmates access to DNA testing to establish their innocence and would authorize grants to the States to improve the quality of legal representation in capital cases.

As hard as we have lobbied for an Innocence Protection Act the past several years, this bill is not a cure-all and contains several changes and omissions from the Innocence Protection Acts introduced in recent Congresses. We regret the degree to which protections have been watered down in order to achieve political compromise and passage. Still, this is an achievement for which the primary champions of the legislation, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-MA) and Congressmen William Delahunt (D-MA) and Ray LaHood (R-IL), deserve praise.

Here is the position of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers ( NACDL) on the legislation, with which we whole-heartedly agree.

Baby Kos, now called Ari, is home with his happy and tired parents. Kos wrote the most amazing story of the 23 hour labor and birth that you can read over at his baby blog, FishyShark. You should read it. Kos is a amazing story teller and writes in riveting detail about all 23 hours of Elisa's labor. We read it in one sitting, holding our breath the entire time. Congrats to Markos and Elisa, and to Ari, a big welcome to the Planet earth. Kos and Elisa, you done good!

Proving he couldn't care less what Congress or the people think, Attorney General John Ashcroft continues to march to his own drummer. He issued new National Security guidelines Wednesday for the FBI--making it easier for them to do background checks on people.

The guidelines enable the FBI to conduct a "threat assessment" of potential terrorists or terrorist activity without initial evidence of a crime or national security threat, as required to begin a more formal preliminary or full investigation. The purpose is to ensure the FBI approaches these investigations "with an eye toward early intervention and prevention of acts of terrorism before they occur," according to the guidelines.

The FBI will be allowed to collect information on "individuals, groups and organizations of possible investigative interest" in national security cases in the ways that agents already can in cases involving more traditional crimes such as illegal drugs and organized crime. ... the relaxed guidelines would, for example, enable the FBI to run a credit check on an individual or run a person's name through law enforcement databases without opening a formal investigation.

....Timothy Edgar, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said the guidelines raise another caution flag in the nation's fight against terrorism. ....This is exactly what Americans are worried about," he said. "It's the notion that the government can put your life under a microscope without any evidence that you're doing anything wrong." Edgar said the changes could mark a return to the days when the FBI routinely opened investigations on Vietnam War protesters and other dissidents, before the first national security investigation guidelines were issued in 1976.

[link via The Agonist.]

Update: The ACLU responds to the guidelines, saying the Justice Department is overlooking the lessons of Waco, Ruby Ridge and Watergate. [link via Cursor.]

As Jeb Bush is pushing for life in the Terri Schiavo case, we thought we'd post this link to a chart showing the list of death warrants/executions signed by Jeb Bush.

For more on Jeb Bush's death record, go here.

[We're still up in the air on the Schiavo case. We're just using it as an example of Bush's hypocrisy. We think the right-to-lifers are phonies for not trying to save every life--including those of the condemned on death row]

Check out this article: Parents who protested war mourn death of soldier son

As a boy, Benjamin Colgan marched with his parents in peace protests. Joseph and Pat Colgan, 62 and 60, respectively, whose activism dates from the Vietnam War, were surprised when their son enlisted in the Army. But they continued to support him, even as they opposed the war in Iraq.

On Monday, their worst fears came true. Colgan, 30, a second lieutenant, the father of two young daughters with a third child due next month, died Saturday when a roadside bomb exploded as he responded to a rocket-propelled grenade attack in Baghdad, the Defense Department said.

Word came with a knock on the door at the Colgans' home. "I saw the cross on his lapel pin and I said, 'No, not my son! Not my son!' " his mother said. "There will be many people experiencing the same thing," she added. "This war, it shouldn't be."

Lt. Colgan had recently become disenchanted with the war.

His parents were concerned when he gave a dim appraisal of Baghdad in an e-mail Friday. "What raised a red flag was when he said, 'It's getting real old and getting real crazy,' " his father said. As a young child, he had joined his parents on marches to protest nuclear weapons at Naval Submarine Base Bangor. Then, to pay for college, he enlisted in the Army after graduation from Mount Rainier High School in Des Moines in 1991. "That was hard, but you support your children," his mother said.

More from Lt. Colgan's mother:

His mother says his death has only strengthened her position against the war. "People keep asking, 'Are the Iraqis better off?'" she said. "What we have to start asking is, 'Are we better off?' And we're not. We're losing our children."

[Thanks to Ziska's John Emerson for the link]

Sierra Magazine says Ralph Nader is thinking about running for President again on the Green Party ticket. The party's convention is in late July and early buzz is they want to run a candidate.

Nader has yet to formally commit himself, but his statements suggest a strong inclination to run again. He promises a decision early in 2004.

As Sierra says, can't you just see the headline now?

"November 3, 2004: George W. Bush was returned to the White House for another four years after Green Party candidate Ralph Nader drew off enough votes from the Democratic challenger . . ."

[link via TomPaine Blog.]