Liberal Oasis did the research and comes up with this gem from Attorney General John Ashcroft from October 4, 1997 when he appeared on CNN's Evans & Novak, in which he expresses his support for independent counsel to investigate issues surrounding Al Gore's fundraising:

ASHCROFT: The truth of the matter is that if the law's been violated, we should be able to ascertain that. We can, if we have an independent person without a conflict of interest…

ROWLAND EVANS: …The attorney general has shaved down all the allegations that Vice President Gore apparently down to one single allegation -- which telephone he used to make these fundraising calls from. Do you really think that alone is worthy of a special prosecutor?

ASHCROFT: …you know, a single allegation can be most worthy of a special prosecutor. If you're abusing government property, if you're abusing your status in office, it can be a single fact that makes the difference on that.

Pat M. Holt, former chief of staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, writes in Tuesday's Christian Science Monitor, that John Ashcroft is the worst Attorney General in the nation's history, save for A. Mitchell Palmer, who held the office during the Woodrow Wilson Administration. Holt says its a tossup as to who is worse.

One of the duties of the attorney general as head of the Justice Department is to protect the Constitution. Both Mr. Ashcroft and Palmer found that the Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights, got in their way more than it protected anything. It has gotten in Ashcroft's way in his pursuit of terrorists after Sept. 11, especially those who dress differently and practice a different religion.

Palmer's crusade was the pursuit of communists, in the aftermath of World War I. He especially went after people with what to him were funny names from Eastern Europe. He tended to equate liberals with communists.

Ashcroft's vehicle is the USA Patriot Act, which Congress, abdicating its own duties of vigilance, passed with a whoop and a holler in the days after Sept. 11. Even the name of this odious legislation is offensive. It implies that the purpose of the act is to promote patriotism and that those not cooperating with it are somehow less patriotic.

Update 10/7: The Toledo police department is investigating the use of NORML's logo on its internet site.

Check out the "wallpaper" on this page from the Toledo Police Department's Vice and Narcotics Unit manual. Think they are paying licensing rights? [received from NORML]

Update: link really fixed now. If you were looking for the jury nullification article, it's here.

A county treasurer is handing out booklets to potential jurors saying they are answerable "only to God almighty" and not to the law when it comes to deliberations. Jefferson County Treasurer Mark Paschall, a former state lawmaker known for his anti-abortion and pro-gun views, said the booklets are "my personal gift to the people."

The 61-page booklets promote "jury nullification," a concept promoted by conservative groups that say juries have the right to not only decide guilt or innocence, but also whether laws are just and adhere to God's law. "You are above the law!" the booklet says. "As a juror in a trial setting, when it comes to your individual vote of innocent or guilty, you truly are answerable only to God almighty."

Ugh, it's politicians like Paschall that give jury nullification a bad name.

While the conservative concept is relatively new, juries have always in effect practiced nullification from time to time. Juries refused to convict people who harbored runaway slaves before the Civil War, sold alcohol during Prohibition or resisted the draft during the Vietnam War.

Update: Walter in Denver has more on the jury nullification issue.

Notice how Reuters begins its afternoon's article describing the White House request of its employees to provide information on the Wilson-Plame matter:

The White House said on Wednesday that anyone with information about a leak that blew the cover of a CIA officer, whose husband is an Iraq war critic, should report it to the Justice Department for criminal investigation.

Plame is named as an officer, not an undercover operative.

Joseph Wilson is described solely as an "Iraq war critic," rather than as former ambassador or by other titled position he held.

We don't know if this is Reuters' doing or if Reuters just passed along the language the White House provided to it. We suspect it's White House language because three paragraphs down, Reuters gets it right:

The Justice Department is investigating whether someone at the White House or CIA disclosed the identity of Valerie Plame, a CIA operative whose husband, a former U.S. diplomat in Iraq, Joseph Wilson, challenged President Bush's claims about Iraq's weapons threat. Revealing classified information is a federal crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

The problem is, many people will just read the first paragraph and move on. The first paragraph of this article is misleading at best. Maybe we're being too picky as we've been writing a brief and playing with words all day, but it just strikes us as poor and biased reporting.

Josh Marshall of Talking Points interviews Gen. Wesley Clark, [link via Media Horse]

How ironic:

DUBAI: Iran will soon enact a law banning death penalty for offenders under 18 years of age.

Iran's judiciary has drafted a bill to be presented to parliament shortly raising the minimum age for death sentences to 18 from 15 and also excluding under-18s from receiving life terms or lashing as punishment, media in Iran quoted Alireza Jamshidi, Secretary of the Supreme Council for Judicial Development, as saying.

As Curtiss Leung, our reader who sent in the article, writes:

I understand that Supreme Court's latest word on juvenile execution was a 1989 decision written by Justice Scalia that affirmed 16 and 17 year olds could be sentenced to death. How ironic that an Islamic theocracy should be more humane than the United States.

In a press release this afternoon titled " Intimigate" Scandal at the White House, the Center for American Progress says:

...the White House has developed a pattern of firing, intimidating and defaming anyone who has had the courage to tell the truth about Iraq. In fact, the Iraq policymakers whose influence has grown in the White House are largely those who parsed and distorted intelligence and misled the American people.

INTIMIGATE

The recent story of the Bush Administration leaking classified information in an effort to defame a WMD report is just the latest in a well-established pattern. A look at the historical record shows that the Bush Administration has summarily fired, intimidated and defamed anyone who has had the courage to tell the truth about Iraq. In fact, the Iraq policymakers who have remained in the White House are largely those who parsed and distorted intelligence and misled the American people.

They go on to give several examples. As we haven't had time to read them, we'd like to hear your thoughts.

Former Congressman Bob Barr has filed formal objections to CAPPS II , the Passenger Profiling System. Barr calls the proposed profiling system unconsitutional, unfair and ineffective.

Barr, who occupies the 21st Century Liberties Chair for Privacy and Freedom at the American Conservative Union, headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia, submitted six pages of reasons why the proposed system violated provisions of the U.S. Constitution, including citizens' right to privacy. Barr also included in his objections, recommendations that other, less intrusive and constitutional steps by the government would be more likely to identify terrorists than the vast database of information on the travelling public, whose only "crime" leading the government to gather evidence against them, was that they needed to travel by air.

Way to go, Bob. Nice to have you on our side on this one.

Congrats to Atrios and Daily Kos who have had 1 million unique visitors for the month of September--records for both sites. We always begin our blog day by reading both of them--it's no surprise that the rest of the politically-oriented news world does too.

This is an outrage.

CANTON, Ohio (AP) - A man who sold a bag of baking soda as crack cocaine to an undercover police officer in a drug sting has been sentenced to 11 years in prison. Kenyan L. Chandler, 22, of Massillon, was sentenced Tuesday in Stark County Common Pleas Court.

Police said Chandler negotiated a deal with the officer in July that he would deliver 4.5 ounces of crack for $8,000. Chandler produced a small bag and was arrested. Later, tests showed it was baking soda. A jury convicted him last week of cocaine trafficking, which Ohio law defines as selling or offering to sell the drug. It makes no difference that Chandler was peddling a fake, Stark County assistant prosecutor Joe Vance said.

The amount was found to be more than 100 grams, qualifying Chandler as a major drug offender. That brings a mandatory 10-year sentence, and a judge may add up to 10 more years.

Here's the kicker: Chandler could have been charged with selling fake drugs, known as counterfeit controlled substances. The maximum prison term for that offense is one year.

This is a state case. But under Ashcroft's new memos, it could happen easily in the federal system. The case is a great example of why it is such a horrible idea to grant more powers to prosecutors and direct them to file the most serious charges possible, while reducing the role of the judiciary to depart from mandatory minimums and guideline sentences in situations judges believe a departure is called for.

Hesiod at Counterspin has the latest on the varying reports as to whether Valerie Plame was a CIA analyst or undercover operative and who knew what when. He's got really good links up to sites with additional info on the topic. And he says the evidence is mounting.

Back in March we made reference to the arrest of anti-police brutality activist Laro Nicol on explosives charges in Tempe, AZ. We just received this update:

[Laro Nicol] is an activist being targeted by the BATF. He spoke at the College of Law yesterday and is a very committed and passionate person. He claims that he is the victim of a paid informant who told the BATF that Laro was a drug addict. Then the BATF raided his home and declared that the guns he possessed were illegal firearms and arrested him as a "prohibited possessor" due to his alleged "drug addiction".

Laro is extremely clean cut and eloquent. His job at the time was as an Air Traffic Controller, meaning that he was subjected to random drug testing for the previous 8 years (and he never had any problems passing). He is going to arraignment today for additional charges. The BATF is claiming that one of his guns is an 'automatic weapon'. Laro says that
this is not true.

We believe that Laro is being targeted due to several reasons: