Linda Tripp has settled her lawsuit against the Government for privacy violations. She will get $595,000.

According to USA Today, among the privacy violations are leaking information to the New Yorker:

Based on information supplied by Pentagon officials in 1998, The New Yorker reported Tripp did not admit an arrest on her security application for her job at the Defense Department. She had been arrested for grand larceny when she was a teenager.

....The 1974 Privacy Act prohibits the government from releasing unauthorized personal information about individual Americans to nonfederal organizations. Tripp claimed administration officials retaliated for her role in triggering the impeachment proceedings. Tripp provided Independent Counsel Ken Starr with tape-recorded conversations in which Lewinsky confided an intimate relationship with the president.

Tripp also gets a retroactive pay increase which will be used to calculate her retirement benefits. Her lawyers haven't said if she is still working for the Government. Assuming she is not, she is entitled under the agreement to reapply to the Government for a job.

You can read the Settlement Agreement here.

Update: Eric Alterman at Altercation says the news reports have the details way wrong.

About 15 minutes after our last post on Sunday night, we got hit by food poisoning and a fever that reached 101, sending us to the doctor Monday morning and then back to bed until just now. We're going to try to make it to work today, we should be back here tonight.

Public Defender Dude has been in a jury trial the past two weeks. The jury is out now. His thoughts on the various stages of the trial, from the day there was testimony by "lying cops" to closing arguments and now to sweating out the deliberations is a great read for anyone who's interested in trials.

James Ridgeway of the Village Voice analyzes the Democratic candidates positions on the death penalty. Three are opposed in all instances: Dennis Kucinich, Al Sharpton, and Carol Moseley Braun. Here are the positions of the remaining six, from least worst to worst (in our view):

Clark and Kerry support the death penalty in some instances but voice the strongest doubts.

Wesley Clark:

He would support mandatory review of all death penalty sentences. "I'll tell you, I'm uneasy about the death penalty," Clark said answering a question recently in Arkansas. "A government like the United States has the right to, in extraordinary cases, take the life of a criminal, but I don't like the way the death penalty has been applied in America," Clark said. "I think it's been applied in an unfair and discriminatory fashion and I think we need to go back and use modern technology and unpack all those cases on death row."

John Kerry:

John Kerry says he favors life imprisonment over the death penalty, though he advocates the execution of terrorists. Interviewed on Meet the Press last February, Kerry told host Tim Russert that he advocates a moratorium on the death penalty, but that in the end it's up to the states to decide: "It’s fought state for state by state prosecutors. That’s where it’s done. And I would honor, obviously, the laws of those states, and that’s the way we should proceed."

We support H.R. 1709, the “Security and Freedom Ensured Act of 2003” also referred to as the “SAFE Act,” introduced to cut back on excess surveillance powers authroized in the Patriot Act, which have made it easier for law enforcement agencies to monitor the innocent activities of American citizens with minimal or no judicial oversight. The bill would:

• Place reasonable limitations on the government’s authority to obtain roving wiretaps under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 by requiring that the warrant identify either the target of the wiretap or the place to be wiretapped an by requiring that surveillance be conducted only when the suspect is present at the place to be wiretapped.

• Impose reasonable limits on the government’s ability to obtain sneak and peak warrants for physical evidence by limiting the instances when a court can authorize such warrants, set a reasonable time for notification of the covert search.

• Provide privacy protections for library, bookseller and other personal records under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 by requiring that the government specify that there are specific and articulable facts giving rise believe that the person to whom the records relate is a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power and requiring that a court must find that there are such specific and articulable facts before a subpoena may be issued.

• Provide privacy protections for computer users at libraries under national security authority by excluding libraries for the reach of Title 18 U.S.C. § 2709.

• Amend Section 224 of the PATRIOT Act to sunset Sections 213 (sneak and peak warrants), 216 (application of pen registers and trap and trace devices to electronic communications), 219 (single-jurisdiction, nationwide search warrants for terrorism), and 505 (national security letters) on December 31, 2005.

Mrs. Kos has gone into labor and Baby Kos is on its way. Stay tuned.

Update: It's a healthy boy. We got a phone call from Kos, the labor was 23 hours. Congrats to Kos and Elisa.

We all know that lawyers are not allowed to put their client on the stand to tell a lie. The issue becomes murky, however, as to deciding if the lawyer really knows that what the client intends to say is untrue. Two articles in the current issue of Ethics and Lawyering address the issue.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has defined the lawyer's obligaton:

In State v. McDowell, 2003 WI App 168 (Wis. Ct. App. July 22, 2003), the court set out what the lawyer's obligation is when the lawyer merely believes the witness will testify falsely, but the witness does not admit to the lawyer that he will testify falsely.

Another problem Governor-Elect Arnold Schwarzenegger will inherit is the bloated California prison expense which is $544 million over budget--largely the fault of Gov. Gray Davis and his catering to the prison guard's union:

The California Department of Corrections is overspending its budget by more than $544 million, and perhaps far more, largely because of pay hikes, overtime and other benefits granted to prison guards by Gov. Gray Davis and the Legislature last year.

...The department attributes the largest single chunk -- $184 million -- to increases of nearly 7 percent this year in salaries for prison officers and raises for other prison employees. Another $168.5 million results from the department's need to increase payments to the employees' pension fund, in part because of past stock market declines, but also because increased salaries had added to retirement pay.

....The Davis administration negotiated a labor package with the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn. last year, granting roughly 28,000 members salary increases of as much as 37 percent spread over the five-year life of the contract. By 2006, prison officers are expected to be making $73,000 a year.

The prison guard union is enormously influential in California because they contribute heavily to political campaigns:

The union contributed $1.4 million to Davis directly and indirectly during his first term. The union gave his 2002 reelection campaign $251,000 two months after he signed the legislation approving their pay raise.

Some suggest turning to private prisons. The prison guards union has objected to that. We have a better idea. Reduce the number of inmates. Release the drug and non-violent offenders. Home detention and electronic monitoring is another option.

Here's the latest on the Colorado soldier charged with cowardice after being sent home from Iraq following his request for psychological counseling. We note that he had volunteered to go to Iraq:

FORT CARSON - A hearing is set for noon Friday for 32-year-old Staff Sgt. Georg Pogany. Pogany, a member of the 10th Special Forces Group, has been charged with violating Article 99 of military code, specifically of cowardice while on duty in Iraq.

Pogany suffered stress while he was in Iraq in late September and asked a commanding officer if he could see a psychologist, said his attorney, Richard Travis. After that visit, Travis said, commanding officers ordered Pogany to return to the United States.

Pogany volunteered to go to Iraq, Travis said. "He wasn't trying to shirk his responsibilities."

15 U.S. soldiers, headed for R&R were killed today when their helicopter was shot down. Another 6 were wounded.

The only day that saw more U.S. casualties came March 23, during the first week of the invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein.

Update: One of the first comments to this post referred to the deaths as "excellent." Like many of the subseuqent commenters, we are offended by the remark and are deleting the comment. We mention it so that these subsequent comments retain context.

Update: 18 Americans in all died today.

15 U.S. soldiers, headed for R&R were killed today when their helicopter was shot down. Another 6 were wounded.

The only day that saw more U.S. casualties came March 23, during the first week of the invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein.

Update: One of the first comments to this post referred to the deaths as "excellent." Like many of the subseuqent commenters, we are offended by the remark and are deleting the comment. We mention it so that these subsequent comments retain context.

Update: 18 Americans in all died today.

A Colorado woman i faces punishment for refusing Iraq duty to avoid losing custody of children.

Simone Holcomb and her husband of three years, Vaughn Holcomb, also a soldier, were both sent to Iraq early this year. The children's paternal grandmother came from Ohio to look after them.

Then an ex-wife came along and sued for custoday. The Holcombs came home on emergency leave....

A judge in a custodial hearing mandated that one of the parents must stay home to look after the children in order for Vaughn to retain full custody of the two. ....Vaughn, 40, went back to Iraq. Simone, 30, stayed - without the Army's permission. Now she faces dismissal and even jail time.

"I was told by the Army ... to get on a plane," Simone said Saturday night. "I even told them it was unlawful and they said 'I don't care, get on a plane.' It's against the law for me to abandon my children. I can no sooner walk out on my children than I can rob a bank just because the Army told me to."

Simone is being treated as an AWOL.