Arnold got some good and bad coverage today. On the positive side, his former boxing trainer described how as a teenager, Arnold helped break up neo-Nazi gatherings.

Trainer Kurt Marnul told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview that Schwarzenegger was "filled with rage against the Nazi regime" and took part at least twice in organized disruptions of neo-Nazi gatherings in the southern Austrian city of Graz during the 1960s.

....On Friday, the Austrian magazine NU, which caters to the alpine nation's Jewish community, quoted former politician Alfred Gerstl as describing how Schwarzenegger once "hunted down" neo-Nazis who had gathered outside a teaching institute run by an avowed anti-fascist.

On the negative side, Arnold lost the endorsement of the Oakland Tribune. And three more women have come forward with reports of past groping on movie sets. Two of the complaints pertain to the filming of the movie Twins. Arnold denies the charges, and several involved in the film, including the director, Ivan Reitman, back him up.

"I was on the set all the time and it was one of the friendliest shoots I've ever been on," said Reitman, who has known Schwarzenegger for 15 years and recently held a campaign fund-raiser for him. "No raunchy stuff. People's families were there. "Nothing even approximating what you're saying happened. I would have heard something," he said.

If enough people votes no on the recall, there will be no Arnold issue. We still refuse to endorse a replacement candidate. Vote no on the recall, and no on Prop. 54.

Update: The Times of London has this amusingly written editorial about Arnold.

Matt Welch, associate editor of Reason Magazine, has an excellent article on the Joseph Wilson-Valerie Plame affair and what it says about the Bush Administration in today's National Post (Canada).

But even the most generous possible interpretation of events -- minimizing Plame's covertness, maximizing Wilson's partisan motives and assuming the leakers acted alone -- still provides more evidence of the Bush administration's most alarming pathologies. These are people who all too frequently confuse themselves with the U.S. government, see their enormous power as a tempting means to an end, and treat their critics like enemies of the state.

[Thanks to Smythe's Blog for the heads up]

Update: MadKane has the TraitorGate song.

As expected, President Bush has named James Comey, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, as the new Deputy Attorney General of the U.S. This is the number two position, under Ashcroft. Comey replaces Larry Thompson, who resigned a few months ago.

Kynn Bartlett over at Shock and Awe has a quote-filled post about Comey and asks our opinion.

Comey appears to be a dream appointment for Ashcroft. His tenacity in terrorism and financial fraud cases is well-known. Two things we haven't liked about his positions:In the case against attorney Lynne Stewart, Comey vowed to keep fighting even after the Judge threw out the terrorism charges against her.

Second, we don't like this quote from a brief he submitted in the Jose Padilla case:

. Comey, U.S. attorney for the Southern District... declared in a brief, "A court of the United States has no jurisdiction ... to enjoin the president in the performance of his official duties." (Source: The Legal Intelligencer August 29, 2003, available on Lexis.com.)

But we're not up in arms about Comey. We're sorry to see Larry Thompson go, but we doubt Bush and Ascroft would ever appoint anyone as reasonable as Thompson to that position again. In a sense, one tough prosecutor is the same as the next. We don't know of any attacks on Comey's integrity as a prosecutor or of charges of deliberate misconduct. We don't doubt we'll be criticizing his policies, but we have no criticism now of him as an appointee. That could change, of course, but that's our position now.

The Palm Beach Post interviews several local defense attorneys and former prosecutors who explain why, from a legal standpoint, it is unlikely that Rush Limbaugh will face criminal charges. We agree with them.

The New York Times has an excellent article today titled Foreigners' Rights in the Post-9/11 Era: A Matter of Justice. Here's the beginning but we recommend reading the entire article:

More than 5,000 citizens of foreign countries have been detained by the government since 9/11 in connection with anti-terrorism measures. Only a handful have been charged with a terror-related crime. Many were held initially without charges, denied access to lawyers, judged in secret and locked up for months without any showing that they had committed crimes or otherwise posed any danger. More than 500 were deported for immigration violations.

The Bush administration's anti-terrorism campaign has set off a fierce legal and philosophical debate over what rights foreigners have compared with Americans. When is it permissible to treat noncitizens differently? Are there some rights — whether to a speedy trial or a formal charge — that transcend nationality, and should be accorded to every human being?

For more on the issue, Georgetown Law Professor and civil liberties expert David Cole's new book "Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism" is a must read. We've made it the "hot read" of the month on CrimeLynx.

Buy the Book Today!


David Cole is the country's great voice for civil liberties today. In this important book he shows how 9/11 has been used to undermine the legal rights of immigrants—and that after them, it will be easy to target American citizens.

CBS's " 48 Hours" tonight presents an interview with a former boyfriend of Kobe Bryant's accuser. We've seen advance clips. The young man, Johnray Strickland, states that the accuser asked him to present her side of the story because she feels she's being unfairly treated in the media. Among other details, Strickland says the accuser would love to see Kobe Bryant in jail; that she is definitely a victim and not just an accuser; that she was sexually assaulted by Kobe; and that the reason she went back to Kobe's room alone after getting off work that night was because she felt safe with him, primarily because she knew he was married. He also confirms her two prior overdoses on pills.

We hope people avoid watching the interview. Mr. Strickland wasn't there, didn't see anything, and is only repeating what the accuser told him and what she wants repeated. It's tabloid trash, not news, and we're suprised and disappointed a national network like CBS is running it.

Our legal view (as reported in today's Los Angeles Times):

The interview with a friend of Bryant's accuser that will air tonight on CBS' "48 Hours Investigates" is troubling to legal analysts, because Johnray Strickland said the woman asked him to go public.

"I'm appalled by it," said Jeralyn Merritt, a Colorado defense attorney. "It smacks of unfairness. We have no way of knowing that what she said to him is truthful."

The judge presiding over the case issued a gag order July 24, but it appears to apply only to attorneys and law enforcement officials — not to Bryant's accuser or other witnesses.

"She made a serious charge and should let it work through the courts," Merritt said. "If it doesn't violate the letter of the gag order, it violates the spirit."

What are the pros and cons of asking the court to allow the jury to take a field trip to the scene of the crime? This new ABA article, View to a Kill, discusses both sides.

The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) has a webpage up here with all the information about the newly introduced Advancing Justice Through DNA Technology Act of 2003, which contains a modified version of the Innocence Protection Act.

NACDL has just issued a press release praising the legislation (we will link to it when it's available on the web)--but also expressing these concerns:

We regret that the Act does not go further to redress the gross imbalance that exists between resources available to prosecutors as compared to resources available to defense counsel. Although Congress already gives hundreds of millions of dollars to state and local prosecutors, the Act requires that the newly authorized funds be allocated equally between capital defense and capital prosecution improvement purposes. Additionally, while competent counsel is the principle bulwark against wrongful convictions, there are many other steps that must be taken to reduce the risk of imprisoning or executing an innocent person. The eyewitness identification procedures used in most jurisdictions are prone to error and, despite many troubling cases of false confessions, most jurisdictions do not require that police interrogations be videotaped. NACDL urges policy-makers to more fully address the systemic problems that underlie wrongful convictions.

This just in from the folks at NIRR.org:

Free Danny Sigui – Stop Sigui’s Deportation

Danny Sigui was a key witness in a murder trial who helped win a conviction. He was turned over by the prosecutor’s office to the Department of Homeland Security one year before the trial ended for being undocumented.

For doing his civic duty, Danny Sigui is now being held in a maximum-security prison awaiting deportation. Please call the Department of Homeland Security and Rhode Island’s Congressional Delegation demanding Danny Sigui’s release. Why?

Today is the 101st day since Danny Sigui was put into immigration detention and deportation proceedings for the “crime” of doing his civic duty: providing key testimony that led to a conviction in a murder trial.

Danny Sigui is a Guatemalan who has worked as a mechanic and lived in Rhode Island for many years. He is a father of three children and was set to get married to his fiancée Mary Cordero, in August.

Law Professor and Political Analyst Susan Estrich writes in her LA Times column today that the groping allegations against Arnold are (1) no big deal (2) come too late to make a difference (3) amount to a dirty tricks campaign and (4) should not have been published by the LA Times.

As a professor of sex discrimination law for two decades and an expert on sexual harassment, I certainly don't condone the unwanted touching of women that was apparently involved here. But these acts do not appear to constitute any crime, such as rape or sodomy or even assault or battery. As for civil law, sexual harassment requires more than a single case of unwelcome touching; there must be either a threat or promise of sex in exchange for a job benefit or demotion, or the hostile environment must be severe and pervasive.

But none of these women, as The Times emphasizes, ever came forward to complain. The newspaper went looking for them, and then waited until five days before the election to tell the fragments of the story. What this story accomplishes is less an attack on Schwarzenegger than a smear on the press. It reaffirms everything that's wrong with the political process. Anonymous charges from years ago made in the closing days of a campaign undermine fair politics.

...Is this the worst they could come up with? Ho-hum.

We agree with her on the first three. We have no problem though with the Times reporting it - let the people decide. For the other side, go over and read one of our favorite writers, Jeanne D'Arc at Body and Soul.

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In the ridiculous court decision of the day department,

A federal judge said this week that it was "foolish" for Metro Transit Police to handcuff a 12-year-old girl for eating a french fry on a subway platform, but he ruled that the transit system did not violate her constitutional rights.

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan dismissed claims by Tracy Hedgepeth that Metro Transit Police Officer Jason Fazenbaker illegally searched her daughter's backpack and treated her unfairly when he arrested her Oct. 23, 2000, after watching her enter the Tenleytown-AU Station and pop a single french fry into her mouth.

Fazenbaker and other Transit Police officers were posted at the station as part of a week-long sting to catch students snacking and breaking other Metro rules. At the time of the arrest, Metro police maintained that D.C. law allowed them to issue citations of up to $300 to adults caught eating in the Metro but required that minors be arrested and taken into custody. Police seized Ansche's jacket and backpack, removed her shoelaces and transported her to the District's juvenile processing center, where the crying girl was fingerprinted and held for three hours.

Lawyer Terry Kindlon, who sent us the article, says, "This story should be entered in the "Kenneth Lay is Still Not Charged With Anything" file.