Congress is back in session, starting today.

One of the first items scheduled for a vote may be the Victim's Rights Amendment which we adamantly oppose--see here and here. The New York Times opposes it, as does the Washington Post. Republican, self-described "law-and-order-type" Law Professor Eugene Volokh of the Volokh Conspiracy opposes it -- read his letter to Congress, co-signed by several other law professors, here. The bill has many detractors in Congress.

The Senate Judiciary Committee held hearings on the Victims' Rights Amendment in April. It was approved 5-4 by the Constitution Subcommittee on June 12. The next step is a vote of the full Judiciary Committee, perhaps as soon as Thursday, September 4.

The proposed Amendment would hinder effective prosecution of crime in several ways, among them:

Arnold Schwarzenegger has agreed to participate in one debate --but its not the one being held this Wednesday. This week's debate will feature:

Bustamante, Republicans Tom McClintock and Ueberroth, independent Arianna Huffington and Green Party candidate Peter Camejo.

Arnold will debate the third week in September in a match sponsored by the California Broadcaster's Association.

It looks like Arnold will have his hands full this week even without prepping for a debate. An old body-building crony-turned-journalist is about to hit the airwaves with an allegation that Arnold made racist comments to him many years back about blacks in South Africa. The other candidates are taking pot shots at him. The trade union activists have begun a big and expensive campaign to oppose the recall, focusing on Pete Wilson, who is now advising Arnold.

Hollywood celebrities, for the most part, have stayed silent so far and refrained from attacks on Arnold. Arianna is doing pretty well with the celeb crowd though.

As of Saturday, independent candidate Arianna Huffington had received the most celebrity and industry donations, including $21,200 from producer Lawrence Bender ("Pulp Fiction" and "Good Will Hunting"), $21,000 from "Seinfeld" co-creator Larry David and $5,000 each from actor Noah Wyle (NBC's "ER) and writer Aaron Sorkin (NBC's "The West Wing").

We wish everyone would concentrate on opposing the recall rather than on who to support as a replacement. That way, the Republicans --all of them--lose. Bustamante and Arnold can duke it out in 2006 if they want -- and by then, there should be some more worthy democratic contenders joining the fray.

We're glad to report that skippy is back from his Alaska vacation and sounds just like, well, Skippy. And Howard Bashman of How Appealing is back from his week at the shore and blogging away. We missed both of them and found ourselves checking in to read some of their older stuff.

We're still waiting for Jim Capozzola of Rittenhouse Review to return from his labor day weekend break, and Lisa English of Ruminate This to come back after getting her kids settled into their first week of the new school year, and then we'll feel like things are right side up in the blogosphere.

Elsewhere around the hood, Kevin of Reach M High Cowboy has an interesting post about Bernard Henri Levy's book on the murder of Daniel Pearl, which is about to be published in English. Kevin says the book will be controversial, and likely cause more French-bashing but that Levy is "not so easily pigeonholed." In an interview, Levy says, "I am alarmed by the way anti-Americanism is becoming globalized. Through Danny Pearl's experience, I had the feeling that the idea of America as a magnet for the worst was becoming a global phenomenon."

In other globalization news, check out the blog Earth Info.net which has the latest on the The World Trade Organization's Ministerial Conference taking place in Cancun, Mexico from September 10th-14th.

Nathan Newman has the first post in a new series on the importance of labor unions and on unionization as the key to progressive social change. Today's entry is Nathan's personal story of how he became so committed to unionism.

Liberal Oasis has an interview with Paul Krugman, about his new book, The Great Unraveling.

And Buzzflash was on the job all through this holiday weekend, so if you took a few days off from the computer, you can catch up there in no time.

Attorney General John Ashcroft has taken his Patriot Act road show to Norway. On the last day of his four day visit, he warns about a suspected terrorist in Norway, and suggests if he's extradited, the death penalty can be avoided:

Ashcroft said a ban by European nations including Norway on extraditing suspects to countries such as the United States where they might risk the death penalty for their alleged crimes could be skirted round if necessary.

"European countries do extradite individuals to the United States. They sometimes require in specific cases that there won't be the likelihood or the possibility of the death penalty," he said. "It could be an option in any (legal) case that we would negotiate extradition based on those kinds of considerations," he said, referring to demands that the death penalty not be applied.

The U.S. has not yet sought the extradition of Mullah Krekar, an ex-Kurd leader and founder of the Ansar al-Islam group in northern Iraq, who is currently living in Norway.

On Friday, Ashcroft talked to reporters in Oslo about weapons of mass destruction:

US Attorney General John Ashcroft said on Friday it was likely that components of Saddam Hussein’s alleged nuclear weapons programme would eventually be found in Iraq.

“We’ve already found a number of things which are troublesome, things that relate to the development of the evil chemistry and evil biology that could be very dangerous to the human kind,” Ashcroft told reporters during a visit to Oslo.

Despite urgings from Norway's Justice Minister, Ashcroft also pledged that the U.S. would not change its mind about refusing to provide P.O.W. status to the detainees at Guanatanamo:

Back in April, we wrote about Green Card Troops, the 37,000 non-citizen, green card holders in the military. A major incentive for them to join is that they receive a shortcut to citizenship.

The Al Jazeera English website is back up today and has this report on British MP George Galloway's criticism of the U.S. over the policy:

Galloway went on to attack the US policy of putting its poor minorities and non-citizens in the frontline of its foreign wars. In an exclusive interview he told Aljazeera.net that it was part of a long US tradition of using its underclass as cannon fodder.

The statistics, buried by White House spin doctors, reveal that a significant minority of troops fighting under the US banner are not in fact US citizens but residents hoping to speed up their citizenship.

Galloway said that this was typical of a government used to having the marginalised fight its battles. "Nothing has changed since that last failed attempt to invade and determine the future of another country, Vietnam," he told Aljazeera.net from his holiday villa in Portugal.

"Of course the underclass has now become increasingly more Hispanic than black." This explains why a disproportionate number of the so-called US casualties in the invasion and occupation of Iraq have borne Latino names.

U.S. military officials confirm the shortcut:

"The military services have processes and programmes in place to help service members expedite their citizenship," says a US Department of Defence spokesperson. "The estimated time for the application is about six months."

There is a serious downside: Advancing the process only helps if the soldier comes home alive. Given the number of deaths in Iraq, it appears to us to be more and more like a proposition of Russian Roulette.

Well, he admitted he smoked pot in the past. Nothing wrong with that. From the look on his face in this decades-old photo , he really enjoyed it. [Source: Grow a Brain]

What he could say now, but undoubtedly won't:

It was long ago and it was far away
And it was so much better than it is today

[Meatloaf, Paradise By The Dashboard Light]

[comments now closed]

Labor Day. It has us thinking about the many political and social justice bloggers--on the left and right--who toil long and hard hours in front of their computer screens to keep their readers as up to date as possible on issues and events.

We suggest visiting your favorite bloggers today and dropping a few bucks in their tip jars. In appreciation of their work--and recognition that their blogs are the fruit of their labor. Nothing big, just something that says, "Hey, thanks for the time and effort you spend writing, I enjoy reading you."

The Netherlands this week will become the first country to make marijuana available in pharmacies, by prescription.

The Netherlands will this week become the world's first country to make cannabis available as a prescription drug in pharmacies to treat chronically ill patients, a top Dutch health official said on Sunday.

The Dutch government has given the country's 1,650 pharmacies the green light to sell cannabis to sufferers of cancer, HIV, multiple sclerosis (MS) and Tourette's Syndrome in a ground-breaking acceptance of the drug's medicinal use.

"It's a historic step. What is unique is that we are making it available on a prescription only basis through pharmacies," said Willem Scholten, head of the Office of Medicinal Cannabis at the Dutch Health Ministry.

The Netherlands, where prostitution and the sale of cannabis in coffee shops are regulated by the government, has a history of pioneering social reforms. It was also the first country to legalise euthanasia.

The St. Louis Post Dispatch has a long analysis of the Missouri Supreme Court's decision this week throwing out a juvenile offender death sentence.

The text of the opinion in the case is here.

If the decision stands, prosecutors in Missouri will no longer be able to seek the death penalty against an offender who was under 18 at the time of the crime.

Here are the current statistics on executing juvenile offenders, from the National Coalition Against the Death Penalty ( NCADP):

Approximately 80 juvenile offenders are on death rows in the United States. Six of the past seven executed juvenile offenders have been from Texas and have been African American. Scott Hain, a white juvenile offender, was executed earlier this year by the state of Oklahoma.

Twenty-eight states now ban the execution of juvenile offenders – 16 states that permit the death penalty and 12 states that ban all executions. Hawkins argues that juvenile offender executions must be banned, just as the executions of people with mental retardation have been.

We need to get the remaining twenty-two states on board.

The Washington Post has an interesting profile of California Lt. Governor Bustamante. Some details:

He got his college degree this year.

He supports the death penalty.

He backed farmers against environmentalists.

While his entire career has been in politics, he was a staffer for most of it.

He wasn't the choice candidate of the Democratic party in California:

Although prominent Democrats were warned by state and national party officials and California labor leaders not to put their names forward as replacement candidates, Bustamante surprised many and took the plunge. "He was nobody's choice as party standard-bearer," said one Democratic strategist in California.

Bustamante said his strategy is, first and foremost, to urge voters to reject a Davis recall, but then to punch his name as a replacement. After a month of stiff resistance, elected Democrats and the state's powerful unions have come around to support his "no on recall, yes on Bustamante" campaign. The state Democratic Party will likely endorse him soon.

Bustamante's relationship with Gray Davis is described as "frosty."

In his favor, from our viewpoint:

His strong opposition to Proposition 187 which denied government services to illegal immigrants. It passed but was later invalidated by the courts.

Questionable: The large sums of money he receives from groups that run Indian casinos. We're not enamored of Bustamante's justification:

Bustamante defends himself by saying he is not some millionaire like Schwarzenegger who can fund his own race.

Where does that reasoning stop? Is there any group he would not accept money from? Here's more on the loophole that allows Bustamante to accept the money.(scroll to the middle of the article.)

In our view, there's only one clear, rational option for Californians on October 7: Vote no to the recall.

Update: The Mercury News editorializes that Bustamente needs to learn Econ 101.

``Gasoline -- and the business of selling gasoline -- is part of interstate commerce that belongs to Congress to regulate, if at all,'' Anthony Sabino, a law professor in New York told the Los Angeles Times. ``With all due respect to Mr. Bustamante, he is either very ignorant of the law, or he's getting incredibly bad advice from his advisers, or it's a publicity stunt.''

Do we have to pick just one?

Ouch.

The Associated Press reports that race may become an issue in the Kobe Bryant case. Polls already show more blacks are sympathetic to his plight than whites. And many compare Kobe's case to OJ Simpson's--in which the vast majority of people think OJ got away with murder.

Two CNN/USA Today/Gallup polls conducted in late July and early August found that 63 percent of blacks surveyed felt sympathetic to Bryant, compared to 40 percent of whites. About 68 percent of blacks said the charges of sexual assault are not true, but only 41 percent of whites said the same.

....Both blacks and whites mentioned O.J. Simpson, whose acquittal at his criminal trial for the 1994 deaths of ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman divided the groups. Most whites concluded the verdict was wrong, while most blacks favored it.

Bryant and others, including Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods, have been viewed as athletes first and black men second, said Tony N. Brown, assistant sociology professor at Vanderbilt University.

But, he noted, that "doesn't last long. At the first sign of trouble, race comes right in the picture."

Well, we've succumbed. We're headed up to Vail for today and tomorrow-we'll be hosting a barbecue back home Sunday night, so blogging will resume either late Sunday or Monday. Have a great weekend.