The Austin-Statesman today calls upon Texas to bring lethal executions of humans up to animal standards.

A drug that veterinarians find too painful to use in euthanizing pets is being used to execute people on Texas' death row. Texas should cease using this chemical -- pancuronium bromide -- which now is thought to mask the suffering it unleashes.

Read more on the issue here.

Last April, we wrote about Choice Point, a company hired by the U.S. to collect data on hundreds of millions of citizens of Latin American countries.

During the past 18 months, the U.S. government has bought access to data on hundreds of millions of residents of 10 Latin American countries --apparently without their consent or knowledge --allowing myriad federal agencies to track foreigners entering and living in the United States.

A suburban Atlanta company, ChoicePoint Inc., collects the information abroad and sells it to U.S. government officials in three dozen agencies, including immigration investigators who've used it to arrest illegal immigrants.

The Miami Herald has new details and says the Governments of these countries are not happy with the plan and have opened investigations into the practice:

Prosecutors in Nicaragua, Mexico and elsewhere across Latin America have opened investigations into the business of private information mining after discovering that the U.S. Justice Department hired a Georgia company [Choice Point] to collect personal information on up to 300 million people throughout the region without their knowledge.

....The project is part of the U.S. government's attempt to expand its intelligence sources in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. U.S. officials say the data are being used by the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies to verify the identities of foreign-born criminal suspects, illegal immigrants and suspected terrorists.

Here's the latest on activist plans to mobilize for the GOP Convention next August.

Opponents of the Iraq war, welfare reform - even those angered by the selection of New York City - say they will seek protest permits and arrange travel for the four-day convention that begins Aug. 30, 2004.

Protests are an expected sideshow to any political convention, but Steve Ault, a veteran activist helping organize a massive anti-war demonstration, said the events taking shape for next year are unprecedented.

This looks big. There's a lot of advance planning going on, and the Internet and email campaigns will help spread the word.

One international group, Food Not Bombs, promises to cook and serve donated food to activists, delivering by bicycle if necessary.

Keith McHenry, who co-founded the group in 1980, said chapters from as far away as Vancouver, British Columbia, and Ireland are coming. "I've been doing this for 30 years and I can't believe how organized this is," he said.

What happens when a defendant, previously ruled incompetent to stand trial for murder, is suddenly declared to be competent--20 years later? He goes to trial. In a capital case. Representing himself.

This is the story of Richard Taylor, who stands trial this week for murdering a prison guard in 1981. Taylor had been declared incompetent and has been medicated ever since. Now the Judge says he can go to trial.

Taylor is acting as his own attorney. He has a plan for his trial. He will do nothing and say nothing.

This is how the 43-year-old inmate plans to serve as his own attorney in a Williamson County capital murder trial. It will be a reprise of a 1984 proceeding that saw Taylor convicted and sentenced to death, a case that in the intervening two decades has produced a post-conviction review of the defendant's complex and lengthy mental-health history, revelations of inmate torture in a Tennessee prison, an overturning of his death sentence, the setting aside of the conviction and an appellate court review.

Were Taylor ever deemed competent in the future, the courts determined, he could stand trial again. Now, in the opinion of Williamson County Chancery Court Judge Russell Heldman, that day has come. Jury selection is slated to begin Tuesday.

President Bush and the Justice Department claim to be for states' rights-- except when states don't agree with them. One example: medical marijuana.

Oregon's citizens voted to legalize medical marijuana. Travis Paulson, who lives with his 84 year old mother, got the required license and grew the plant in his back yard. Until the feds came to his house one day, dressed in black like "Ninja warriors" and stopped him. It was the second such raid in Oregon this year.

So what about states' rights?

"The legal scuffling doesn't sit well with Oregon House Rep. Floyd Prozanski, D-Eugene. The Bush administration is "very quick to say they believe in states' rights, except for (these issues) and anything else they don't agree with," he said. "When the federal administration differs with state law in any state, they are applying their enforcement procedures to gain compliance."

When asked about the raids and the feds' policy towards medical marijuana activities that are legal in the state in which they occur, Brian Blake, spokesman for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, gave this doublespeak:

Bump and Update: You can find the latest on what possible defenses Muhammed may raise here and here . If Muhammed is convicted, here's what the State intends to introduce against him in the death penalty phase.

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original post:

On Tuesday, October 14, trial begins for John Muhammed, the older of the two "sniper" suspects.

Prosecutors in the Muhammad case said they plan to introduce evidence from up to 15 shootings across the country they have connected to the two defendants. About 20 investigators from the sniper task force have moved to Virginia Beach, and a truck full of evidence went down Monday. Defense attorneys will be taking their own trucks soon.

We just got hit with 31 "preteen" spamming comments. We don't have the time to individually find the posts, delete the comments and then rebuild the entries. We spent a few hours doing that yesterday with "lolita" comments. So if you see a comment with "preteen" that says something about this being a nice site, don't read it. It's child pr0n.

Lots of other MT blogs are being hit, and we understand a solution may be out tomorrow. We'll install it when it's available, provided we can figure out the instructions.

Update: We have such a great hosting company. It's called Hosting Matters. They are totally on top of the problem and have just instituted a block on the range of IP addresses this spam is coming from. We've gone through several hosting companies, and really think this one is tops. The site works fast and they are always available to respond to problems. We found them through Instapundit, but we know that lots of other big weblogs use them as well. Calpundit is one that comes to mind. So if you're in the need of a new hosting company, we highly recommend them.

According to some of those interviewed by the FBI in connection with the leaks probe of the disclosure of the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame, the focus is now June, the month before Robert Novak wrote his now infamous column:

In their interviews, FBI agents are asking questions about events going back to at least early June, the sources said. That indicates investigators are examining not just who passed the information to Novak and other reporters but also how Plame's name may have first become linked with Wilson and his mission, who did it and how the information made its way around the government.

...Investigators are trying to establish the chain of events leading to the leak because, for a successful prosecution under the law prohibiting unauthorized disclosure of a covert U.S. officer's name, the disclosure must have been intentional, the accused must have known the person was a covert officer and the identity must not have been disclosed earlier.

The first column to mention Joseph Wilson's mission to Niger (without mentioning him by name) was the May 6 Nicholas Kristof column in the New York Times.

The New York Times today has an in-depth report on the Buffalo (Lackawanna) Six terror case. Unclear Danger is being released in conjunction with a new Frontline special that will air October 16, Chasing the Sleeper Cell.

Both are highly recommended. An index to our coverage of the case is here.

Great Britain is backing off plans to require its citizens to obtain a national identity card. New research shows the cards are "close to useless in the fight against terrorism."

Here are five reasons to reject national ID cards, provided by the ACLU.

The Guardian reports on a new resolution by the International Bar Association's Task Force in which Judges from around the world condemn Camp X-Ray:

The International Bar Association's task force on international terrorism said: "States cannot hold detainees, for which they are responsible, outside of the jurisdiction of all international courts ."

The task force was led by Justice Richard Goldstone, a judge of South Africa's constitutional court and former chief prosecutor of the international tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and Emilio Cardenas, president of the IBA and Argentina's ambassador to the UN. The UK delegate is the Labour peer Helena Kennedy.

...Justice Goldstone said: "The law just doesn't accept black holes. If they're prisoners of war they've got rights under the Geneva convention. If they're civilians they've got rights under the domestic law of the US.

Lawyers beware....we now have less First Amendment protections in our personal lives than other citizens.

According to this Connecticut ruling, we're officers of the Court even when we're off-duty!

An attorney's poison-pen letter to former West Hartford Probate Judge John A. Berman is not protected free speech, a Connecticut Superior Court judge ruled late last month, upholding a reprimand lodged against Joseph Notopoulos.

The West Hartford, Conn., lawyer had argued that he wrote and sent the letter in his capacity as a private citizen, not a member of the bar, and therefore shouldn't be disciplined under ethics rules prohibiting attorneys from engaging in conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice or making statements intended to disrupt a tribunal.

Not so said the Court: