There's a growing list of Hollywood celebrities who are vocalizing their opposition to Arnold:

Cybil Shepherd, Barbra Streisand, Steven Spielberg, Warren Beatty, Susan Sarandon, Al Franken, Ed Asner, Carrie Fisher, Mike Farrell and Rob Reiner are among them.

In other recall news, Sen. Diane Feinstein says she is so opposed to the recall that she will not vote for a replacement candidate if the recall passes.

Sky News reports that two U.S. soldiers have been captured by Islamic forces:

The Pentagon is looking into claims that two US troops - one a woman - have been captured by Islamic forces in Iraq. A Lebanese TV station reported that the group, calling itself Fukat al-Madina al-Munawara, or Medina Faction, had captured the pair during a shootout. LBCI showed what it said was photocopies of the soldiers' military identity cards.

Developing....link via Atrios.

Update: The Pentagon says the male soldier has been accounted for and the report is untrue. No news yet on the female soldier.

Yesterday the feds decided not to bring charges against the cops and prosecutors in Chicago's infamous Ford Heights case. An exhaustive state report by Cooks County was released that clears them of deliberate wrongdoing. While this may wrap up the Ford Heights case, it is apparent that reviews must be made in every case of wrongful conviction. Only by knowing what went wrong inside the system, can we figure out how to prevent it from happening again.

Dennis Williams, Verneal Jimerson, Kenneth Adams and Willie Raines were all in their 20s when they were wrongfully convicted of the gang rape and double murder of Carol Schmal and Lawrence Lionberg.

Their freedom came with the aid of a Northwestern University journalism professor and his class who uncovered new evidence. The evidence included written confessions from two of the three other men who were charged with the murders in July 1996.

The four wrongfully convicted men won a $36 million settlement in 1999--the largest of its kind in U.S. history. The 348 page Cook County report says there was insufficient evidence to prove the cops or prosecutors intentionally lied to convict the men.

Asked today what were the biggest flaws in the prosecutors' case agains the original defendants, Appellate Court Justice Gino DiVito, who conducted the 4-year study, cited the "tunnel vision" of investigators.

Say hello to Capital Defense Weekly. Now in blog format, the site has been covering death penalty legal decisions since 1997.

From an editorial in today's New York Times, Injustice in Guantánamo:

The Bush administration has already denied each of the Guantánamo detainees one basic right guaranteed in the civilian justice system: a speedy trial. Now it appears determined to deny many more. Before these prosecutions go any further, the administration should overhaul its procedures until it has a system capable of exonerating the innocent, and of showing a skeptical world that those who are convicted are in fact guilty.

On August 2, 2003, the Board of Directors of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) passed a resolution regarding lawyers' participation in the tribunals. We just received the full text today:

WHEREBY a Military Order of November 13, 2001, “Detention, Treatment, and Trial of Certain Non-Citizens in the War Against Terrorism,” 66 F.R. 57833 (Nov. 16, 2001), and its implementing instructions issued April 30, 2003, defined the proceedings for representing the accused in Military Commissions at Guantanamo Bay;

WHEREBY the Military Commission Instructions impose severe limitations on defense counsel and deny due process and attorney-client confidentiality and privilege;

WHEREBY such limitations make it impossible for counsel to provide adequate or ethical representation, and representation before such a commission would make it necessary for a criminal defense attorney to contract away his or her client’s rights, including the right to zealous advocacy;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that NACDL deems it unethical for a criminal defense lawyer to represent a person accused before these military commissions;

Is Attorney General John Ashcroft stepping over the line? In a memo to the 93 U.S. Attorneys in the country, Guy A. Lewis, director of the executive office for United States Attorneys, urges them to lobby Congress to keep funding "sneak and peek" searches.

The federal Anti-Lobbying Act generally prohibits government employees from lobbying for or against legislation. Ashcroft's spokesman says the 93 U.S. Attorneys are exempt because they are political appointees.

In addition to meeting with local House members, the memo instructs the 93 chief federal prosecutors to hold community meetings to press the virtues of the Patriot Act, the anti-terrorism legislation that passed overwhelmingly weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and gave the government significant new powers to conduct searches and surveillance in terrorism investigations.

Congressman John Conyers (D-Mi) has already fired off a letter to Ashcroft:

Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, told Mr. Ashcroft in a letter that he should either "desist from further speaking engagements" or explain why they do not violate restrictions on political activities by government officials.

Mr. Conyers said that the speeches in defense of the USA Patriot Act, as the antiterrorism law is known, appeared to conflict with Congressional restrictions preventing the use of Justice Department money for "publicity or propaganda purposes not authorized by Congress." He said they might also violate the Anti-Lobbying Act and its restrictions on grass-roots lobbying on legislative matters.

'Flood the Zone' Friday is here. Do your part. Anyone But Bush in 2004.

Natasha of Pacific Views attended a public panel sponsored by Congressman Jay Inslee (D-WA) in Shoreline, WA, on the subject of the possible mishandling of the intelligence information that was used to lead America to war. Great quotes, and great reporting.

Eric at Hamster has Arianna's reply to Susan Estrich:

I assumed we were long past the argument over whether you could be a woman, a leader and a mother without having the powers that be shaking their heads and pulling out the slime. This kind of dirty politics is one reason more than 13 million Californians didn't vote in the last election. People are sick and tired of campaigns as demolition derbies, with candidates -- and their designated hatchet men and women -- attacking each other until there is only one candidate left standing.

Philadelphia bloggers make the Inquirer.

Jim Capozzola of Rittenhouse Review takes off on Ashcroft, and his dog and pony show to garner support for the Patriot Act.

Jesse of Pandagon has the latest on Bush's continued ratings slide, as measured by this new Zogby poll.

Matt Yglesias sends us over to the Clark Sphere for the daily meme.

Skippy details the unfair treatment accorded protesters at the Bush appearance in Portland.

Oliver Willis quotes the Constitution on the Alabama Ten Commandments Case....we agree, it seems simple to us, too. We're just not suprised the "homegrown fundamentalists" don't accept it. It's because they don't want to.

Bump and Update: Judge Fred Gannett in Eagle, Colorado makes the right decision. Here is the text of his order. The search warrants, affidavits and the affidavit for the arrest warrant will stay sealed at least until Kobe is acquitted, convicted or the case is dismissed. Even thereafter, Kobe can move to keep them sealed. Disclosure of the documents now would be contrary to the public interest and would be unduly prejudicial to Kobe's Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial.

The best part of the Order is the last full paragraph on page 12. We highly recommend reading it.

Other documents that do not contain factual information about the case will be released. This includes the arrest warrant (again, not the affidavit which contains the reasons for the arrest warrant), the bond and appearance documents, the request for non-testimonial identification evidence (which Kobe complied with and which also are devoid of facts) and the like. Even the affidavit for the request for non-testimonial identificiation evidence stays sealed.

We don't understand why the media is playing this up like the Judge ruled for them. Clearly, he ruled for Kobe and his right to a fair trial.

Update: Some better reporting in the morning editions of the papers here and here. This AP story is good.

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The Judge in the Kobe Bryant case says his office is typing up his decision on unsealing arrest-related documents in the Kobe Bryant case this afternoon. His decision will be released late today or tomorrow.

The decision will be available here.

In other Kobe related news, a 22 year old from Iowa has been arrested and indicted by a Colorado federal grand jury for making threatening to kill Kobe's accuser.

Say hello to Riverbend, a 24 year old female, Iraqi blogger who has the new blog in Baghdad town, Baghdad Burning. We like her, she's got some attitude. [link via Buzzflash]

The comments to our post on the granting of parole to former member of the Weather Underground Kathy Boudin show strong feelings. We wish some of those objecting to her parole would think more about what it is like to spend 25 years in prison for a crime, and remember that she also was deprived of raising her son, Chesa, now a Rhodes scholar:

Chesa Boudin. When he was 14 months old, his mother and father were sent to a maximum-security prison in New York State and, 21 years later, they remain there. He was born with epilepsy and dyslexia. He was unable to read until the third grade, and was marked as a "problem child" from an early age because of frequent temper tantrums. He has the sort of unenviable personal history out of which bad guys and life’s losers are made.

So where is Mr. Boudin today? Last month, he joined 31 other Americans to accept a Rhodes Scholarship, the country’s most prestigious academic honor, and will be heading to Oxford University to deepen his study of international development—an interest he developed as a Phi Beta Kappa at Yale. As The New York Times reported, his parents are barred from receiving phone calls or e-mail in prison, and so would only learn of their son’s accomplishment in the newspapers.

Here's the latest on Cobell v. Norton, the Indian Trust case:

Members of the Navajo Nation have been cheated out of tens of millions of dollars of trust revenue by the Secretary of the Interior who, in concert with major oil & gas companies, has permitted them to profit from sweetheart deals for rights of way across the Indians' individual trust lands in the West, a court official said today.

Special Master Balaran found that Interior Secretary Gale Norton has violated federal law and breached her trust duties to the Indians by allowing contracts that grossly undervalue individual Navajo trust lands, as much as 20 to 200 times below comparable lands owned by non-Indians and tribes. This allowed the gas companies to run pipelines to California at a fraction of real market costs.