Democratic presidential hopeful Dennis Kucinich introduced a bill in the House yesterday to repeal portions of the Patriot Act. The sections that would be repealed are those that:

allow secret searches and wiretaps as well as detaining suspects indefinitely without meaningful judicial review, and that broaden the definition of what constitutes a terrorist group.

Kucinich's bill also would overturn laws that require airport screeners to be U.S. citizens, repeal Justice and Homeland Security department exemptions to the Freedom of Information Act and toss out a law that lets the FBI conduct undercover investigations of religious centers.

The ACLU and NAACP have given their support to the bill, as have 18 Democrats and 1 Republican in the House. Kucinich named the bill the "Benjamin Franklin True Patriot Act." The Act begins with the quote,

"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

We received this email a little while ago, and think the writer makes a good point:

Dear TalkLeft:

I would like to encourage TalkLeft to give accelerated coverage to the possibility of election fraud and vote manipulation through touch screen voting machines and also internet voting, including military internet voting. Far too few people know about this potentially massive problem and I think it is a very good idea for all of us who are concerned about this issue to bring it into wide public view before the primaries begin.

Here's where you can get the info:

David Neiwert at Orcinus

Bev Harris at Black Box Voting (Diebold shut the site down but their activism page is up with lots of info.)

Kos at Daily Kos.

Jeanne D'Arc at Body and Soul.

Salon: An Open Invitation to Election Fraud

Slashdot

Law Prof Rick Haasen's Election Law

Florida has a two year statute of limitations on inmates requesting DNA testing to prove their innocence -- the shortest of any major state. And it's running out . With a prison population of 78,000, Florida ranks fourth among the states in the total number of inmates.

Florida's restrictive law was passed in 2001, sponsored by Sen. Alex Villalobos, R-Miami. It provides that anyone convicted of a crime has two years after a sentence becomes final to ask a judge to review DNA testing of physical evidence. Those convicted before the Villalobos law went into effect have until Oct. 1 to file their petitions.

Lawyers in Florida have asked the Courts for a one year emergency stay of the deadline, but as of now, there has been no ruling. Villalobos has no problem with granting a stay for a specified period. But Florida Governor Jeb Bush does object.

In the federal system, since 1996 and the passage of AEDPA (the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act) there has been a one year statute of limitations on all claims, including those based on new evidence showing factual innocence.

Why is the deadline so short? How harmful is the deadline?

Congratulations to Atrios. Eschaton recorded its 5 millionth visitor today.

Atrios asks you to express your congratulations by donating to the DNC.

We'll do the same. We're small potatoes by comparison, but TalkLeft will hit the 1 million visitor mark sometime tomorrow morning (And 1,700,000 page views. Since June, 2002.) Boot Bush in 2004, give early and give often.

The Government agreed with standby lawyers for Zacarias Moussaoui today that criminal charges should be dismissed in the case.

Prosecutors claim they made the motion so that they can appeal the Court's prior ruling ordering the Government to make three captured al-Qaeda members available for an interview by Moussaoui.

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has already heard legal arguments in the case, but declined to rule until Judge Brinkema decides what sanctions to impose on the Government for failing to comply with her order. The penalty could range from dismissal of the charges to preventing the Government from seeking the death penalty.

We think the Government wants to avoid being told it can't impose the death penalty in the federal case. It would rather the charges were dismissed first. Otherwise, as a public relations matter, if the Administration later declares Moussaoui an enemy combatant and tries to get a death verdict from a military tribunal, it will be viewed as bad form. The decision will be criticized world-wide. Think about it. The leader of the free world tries an individual and seeks to execute him in a secret proceeding after a judge in an open proceeding declares he is being treated unfairly.

As to the appeal,

The government said in the motion the issue before the court is whether the constitutional right to access to favorable witnesses applies to an enemy combatant "seized and held abroad during armed hostilities."

We have little doubt that the Government is proceeding under the theory that one way or another Moussaoui will be moved to a tribunal proceeding. It wants as little interference with that as possible.

We hope Judge Brinkema stops the Government from seeking the death penalty in the federal trial. How can we send a man to his death when we don't allow him the opportunity to obtain and present evidence to show he isn't guilty of the very offense carrying the death penalty?

Here is the full transcript of today's debate among Democratic contenders for the presidential nomination. Wesley Clark participated. The Washington Post reports that Kerry and Gephardt went after Dean and all the candidates avoided heavy criticism of Clark.

Al Sharpton, as always, provided the humor:

It was the feistiest of the trio of debates held so far. But it was also leavened with moments of humor, as when Al Sharpton described the field as "eight career politicians, an officer (pointing to Clark) and a gentleman (pointing to himself)."

As the laughter from the audience died down, former Illinois Sen. Carol Moseley Braun added, "And a lady."

Good for her. We're glad Mosely Braun is in the race. She's smart, liberal, poised and experienced. She won't win, and likely doesn't expect to, but she at least can get the country used to the idea that a woman easily can be as effective as a man in the position of President. And who knows, maybe she will end up as the VP candiate. A Clark-Braun ticket or a Dean-Braun ticket could really be something.

Former President Jimmy Carter attacks the Patriot Act:

"Former President Jimmy Carter warned Americans against curtailing human rights in the name of homeland security, saying it undermines the country's credibility in nations struggling with oppressive governments.

Carter, speaking Tuesday at the Carter Center in Atlanta, said the Patriot Act, profiling of Muslims and holding suspected terrorists in Guantanamo Bay run counter to the principles of democracy the United States preaches to the rest of the world.

They have been held in prison without access to their families, or a lawyer, or without knowing the charges against them, Carter said. We've got hundreds of people, some of them as young as 12, captured in Afghanistan, brought to Guantanomo Bay and kept in cages for what is going on two years."

[link via Patriot Watch, the best site around for monitoring Patriot Act developments.]

Law Professor and Instapundit Glenn Reynolds reviews Scott Turow's new book Ultimate Punishment at his MSNBC weblog Glenn Reynolds.com today. Glenn succinctly describes Turow's main points:

...regardless of whether the death penalty is moral or not as applied to the guilty, everyone agrees that it’s wrong to execute the innocent. And, he says — echoing Charles Black — the innocent often wind up being executed. What’s more, as Turow demonstrates, prosecutors aren’t always above stretching a point to obtain a conviction...

But it's Glenn, not Turow, who makes the astute observation:

One needn’t, however, be soft on criminals to pick up on another point that Turow himself doesn’t raise: If death penalty cases, subject to far more rigorous safeguards than ordinary criminal cases, still manage to convict the innocent, how many innocent people are convicted of crimes that don’t carry the death penalty? Far too many, I would imagine. Some of the safeguards proposed for death penalty cases — like requiring that all questioning of suspects by police be videotaped, or that all defendants have access to DNA evidence that might clear them — should be applied to criminal cases across the board.

Peter Neufeld, co-founder and co-director of the Innocence Project, echoes this point in an interview with New Scientist.com :

There are wrongful convictions everywhere in the world. The US probably has one of the fairest criminal justice systems, but nevertheless we have seen how easy it is to make mistakes. It is certainly terrible to execute people who are innocent but it's not a hell of a lot better keeping them in prison for the rest of their lives. If you are innocent you are innocent and you don't belong there.

We wrote at length about Turow's involvement with capital punishment and his new book here. [link fixed]

A new law enforcement study in Minnesota makes two important findings: Racial profiling exists--and it is ineffective at ferreting out crime.

Blacks, Latinos and American Indians are more likely than whites to be stopped by police and searched but much less likely to be found with anything illegal, a study of alleged racial profiling by Minnesota law enforcers showed Wednesday.

Analyzing more than 200,000 traffic stops, the report finds racial minorities (black, latino, American Indian) are stopped and searched more often than whites in almost every jurisdiction studied. Even though whites are stopped least often, once stopped they are found to have committed crimes at a much higher rate than racial minorities.

Bill Gillespie, executive director of the 7,000-member Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association, said the study proves that white and minority suspects are handled differently but doesn't show why. He called the search findings the most disturbing. "That tells me some of those stops of minorities are fishing expeditions," he said. "That needs to be further explored."

So, not only is racial profiling found to exist, it is exposed as a patently ineffective policing tool.

The ACLU is filing a lawsuit today in federal court in Ohio to force prisons to make public the entire exeuction process. First off, they're not talking about live television coverage of executions, although that will likely be the subject of future suits brought by the media.

At issue today is the process of inserting the IV needles into the condemned person's arm. The ACLU says the prisons are doing this in private--when the inmate is brought into the execution chamber to be killed in the presence of media and witnesses, the needles have already been inserted. The ACLU says the public doesn't get to see how painful the needle insertion procedure is to the inmate:

"What they've done is taken the process of judicially taking a man's life and reduced it to a minor surgical procedure," he said.

Getting killed is painful, even when it's by lethal injection. First there's the needle insertion process. Then there's the sharp burning of some of the chemicals. It's not just peacefully dozing off into a sleep from which you don't awake. The ACLU wants people to know this. Courts in California and Oregon, for example, have already agreed with them.

We have mixed feelings on this. We think if the inmate objects on privacy grounds to having his pain and discomfort made public, his wishes should be accorded respect. On the other hand, executions are open to the media so that the public can be accurately informed about the killing. Bottom line for us: the need for accuracy in reporting on executions favors the ACLU's position.

News analyst Danny Schecter has a new column up on Media Channel about how the networks intend to cover the 2004 elections. He begins,

Network television thrives on wars and elections. With the last war over for now, politics is becoming THE BIG STORY once again as the 2004 presidential election draws near. Special election programming is being planned, graphics are being commissioned, and reporting teams are being embedded within campaigns. And just as war coverage was enhanced with news gizmos and state of the art technology, election journalism is being retrofitted with NGT -- the next groovy thing....

Yet, Schecter says, the more techno the networks go, the more people tune out. Fewer people are watching election coverage. He has some ideas to improve the situation--like getting rid of the "endless panels of mostly white men in suits, sitting around tables prognosticating" who are usually wrong.

In a footnote, Media Channel says that it has been signing up correspondents from overseas in its effort to provide "political coverage that does not claim for promotional effect to be "fair and balanced." Just accurate and informative."

Amina Lawal's sentence to death by stoning for adultery has been vacated by the Islanic appeals court . The Court determined there were errors in her original trial. Four of the five judges voted to throw out her sentence.

The Islamic appeals panel ruled the conviction couldn't stand because Lawal wasn't given enough time to understand the charges against her; only one judge, instead of the required three, presided at her trial; and she was not caught in the act of sex out of wedlock.

In the sole dissenting opinion, Judge Sule Sada said Lawal had confessed to the crime and the conviction should stand. But the defense had argued that the court should reject Lawal's confession because no lawyers were present when she made it.