Salon excerpts Joe Conason's Big Lies every day this week. Don't miss Salon's picture of President Bush.

Joe Lieberman rejects moving left as a campaign strategy. His loss. Our gain. We predict he'll be one less serious contender shortly.

Tom Tomorrow of This Modern World takes on the Gary Coleman candidacy.

Atrios finds the website We Love Arnold. Here's Arnold's platform.

Stop one on the Victory Tour for Attorney General Ashcroft....

Attorney General John Ashcroft will speak to the American Enterprise Institute on Tuesday, August 19, 2003 at 2:00 p.m. EDT in Washington, D.C. The Attorney General will focus on the progress the Justice Department has made in the war on terrorism.

(Media arrival begins at 12:00 p.m.- All media must check-in by 1:30, and cameras must be set by 1:30 p.m.)

The American Enterprise Institute
Wohlstetter Conference Center, 12th Floor,
1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Wash. DC

Here's more on the details of the speech, titled Security and Liberty, How America is Winning the War on Terror.

C-Span will carry it live. We bet there are quite a few hecklers. [thanks to PG at Half the Sins of Mankind for the links]

Markos of Daily Kos racks up the well-deserved compliments:

Christopher Lydon Interviews Markos Moulitsas Zuniga aka Daily Kos. [via Lisa English of Ruminate This]

Daily Kos also gets a great compliment from journalist and Salon and New York Observer columnist, Joe Conason, who also is the author of the hot new liberal book, Big Lies.

We had dinner with Kos and his very pregnant and beautiful wife Elisa (and New Yorker writer and CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin) last week at a vegetarian restaurant in the Mission District of San Francisco. We won't be surprised if Toobin decides to write about Kos too. For newer TalkLeft readers, Kos spent untold hours designing this site and we are forever indebted to him.

Eric Alterman's new Nation column Patriotic Gore invites the British media, particularly the Guardian which is exploring a stateside version of the paper, to "come over and deliver to our media the kick in the arse they have worked so hard to deserve."

Skippy is keeping track of our dying soldiers in Iraq, with words not numbers. He's also changed his endorsement for California Governor.

Pacific Views tells us the Bush Campaign is reaching out to Bloggers. "The site will feature canned e-mail."

Denver journalist Dave Cullen, author of Conclusive Evidence has become the blog of record on gay marriage.

Jeanne at Body and Soul has all the important links to the investigation into the Reuters cameraman's killing by U.S. troops in Iraq.

Politics in the Zeros tells us about the Petition to stop John Ashcroft--on Howard Dean's blog.

Today, John Ashcroft begins a national tour promoting an extension of the USA Patriot Act. Sign the petition to stop Ashcroft's erosion of our civil rights. Add your name to the Stop Ashcroft petition, and pass it on to your friends, family, and co-workers. We will deliver your names and your comments to the Attorney General.

Now that's a good sign. Go read and add your e-signature.

This is a very interesting article about the growing hostility of Jamaicans to the British Justice System with which it is entwined. The death penalty lies at the center of the disharmony, but as you'll see, it's Jamaica, not Britain, that wants to hold onto the archaic past.

The anatagonism began spreading after a Jamaican who was sentenced to death row for killing a policeman had his conviction overturned by Britain.

Poor, young and idle, Randall Dixon was one of the usual suspects when Det. Cpl. Phillip Gordon ended up dead in a chaotic firefight between four bank robbers and four policemen. Despite witness testimony that Dixon wasn't involved in the 1996 Western Union Bank robbery, he was arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to die by hanging.

Dixon, now 37, has had his sentence struck down by the Privy Council in London on appeal because videotape from security cameras — suppressed by police for the last seven years — proved he wasn't there.

You would think the Jamaicans would be pleased that one of their own who turned out to be innocent was spared the ultimate penalty, right? Wrong.

If you haven't been following the discrimination lawsuit by hispanic federal customs agents against the agency , you should be. Here's the latest from the San Antionio Business Journal.

Law. com reviews the most probable replacements for Larry Thompson, the number two man at Justice who recently announced his departure.

The Judge in the Scott Peterson case today issued this order prohibiting television coverage of his preliminary hearing. We think it's the correct decision. Hearsay is allowed at preliminary hearings, which is not allowed at trial. Evidence is admitted at prelims that later may be determined to have been illegally obtained or to be irrelevant and therefore barred from the trial. Once the public and potential jury pool has heard the inadmissible evidence, how do can you unring the bell? In our view, the unfair prejudice to the defendant outweighs any right of the public to view the proceeding in their living rooms.

Here's a news article on the ruling. We find it interesting that only the prosecution objected to the cameras. Mark Geragos, Peterson's media savvy attorney, had asked for the prelim to be closed to the media and public. But once the judge ruled against him on that motion, he said he didn't object to televising the hearing, because it would provide a more accurate depiction than second hand news reports. He has a point, which is one of the reasons we always say, the defendant's postion should be the guiding light in deciding whether to admit cameras in the courtroom. Trials should not be televised to the general public over a defendant's objections. The Sixth Amendment guarantee of a fair trial applies to the accused. Particularly in a death case, that right should trump any first amendment right of the public to watch the proceedings at home.

Amnesty International has released a new report, Threat of a Bad Example detailing claims of dozens of former Guantanamo prisoners that they were abused by the U.S. Military:

The report, "Threat of a Bad Example," concludes that conditions at the bases may be coercive in the context of repeated interrogations and calls for the Bush administration to treat detainees humanely, provide legal counsel and charge them promptly with recognizable criminal offenses -- or release them.

In the report, one Afghan detainee, Alif Khan, recalled being given two injections, producing "a kind of unconsciousness," for his transfer from Bagram. Another, Sayed Abassin, said that while at Bagram, he was awakened by guards, denied adequate food and forced to stand or kneel for hours. A third man, Muhammad Naim Farooq, said fellow detainees at Guantanamo had wept because of pain from handcuffs. He also said that two men who had attempted suicide were punished with solitary confinement.

"These interviews with former prisoners are damning and add to the poor record of the Bush administration with regard to human rights over the past 23 months," said Alexandra Arriaga, director of government relations for Amnesty International USA.

Amnesty's press release is here.

The St. Petersberg Times takes the Tampa police force to task for driving around in cars seized from drug dealers and other offenders:

It is disappointing that neither Tampa's mayor nor police chief recognize how unbecoming it is for police brass to drive confiscated cars. The purpose of property seizure laws is to strip criminals of their illegal gains; they're not intended to be a honey pot so the chief and his staff can tool around in luxury cars.

When police agencies benefit directly from the properties they seize, it doesn't pass the smell test. There's a conflict of interest. When the fruits of the seizure can be used to buy new high tech equipment and other perks for the police, the temptation is just too great to seize the cash by breaking the rules.

Columnist Robyn Blummer also criticizes the practice :

Civil asset forfeiture is the most infamous game in law enforcement. While in its pure form, seizing the luxury cars, boats, homes and cash of drug dealers can be a useful tool in taking profit out of crime, in the real world far too many police and sheriffs offices use it to finance and enrich their operations, leading to startling abuses.

Blummer also touts our favorite investigative series on law enforcement abuses in forfeiture cases--one by Karen Dillon that appeared in the Kansas City Star in 2000, and yes, it's still on line.

The Rolling Stones for the first time are allowing their songs to be legally downloaded from the Internet.

Partnering with the Rhapsody Service and Best Buy, listeners are now only a click away from over 560 tracks by the rock n' roll history makers.

Each song costs 79 cents, which figures out to a reasonable $9.48 per 12 songs. Some of the Stones' older tracks, however, are available for listening only.

We kind of like the older stuff the best, but still, this is a great deal. You can access Rhapsody and the Stones' musice at listen.com