Robert Levy, senior fellow at the CATO Institute, reviews the Jose "Dirty Bomber" Padilla case in a smart op-ed in today's Chicago Times. By now, we're all familiar with the facts: Padilla, an American citizen, has been declared an enemy combatant and held in a military brig for over a year without charges or access to counsel.

Padilla may deserve the treatment he is receiving--perhaps worse. That is not the point. When Americans are taken into custody, they have the right to retain an attorney.

Congress must first set the rules. Then an impartial judge, not the president, should make the ultimate decision as to whether the arrest and imprisonment comport with the Constitution.

James Madison, in Federalist No. 47, put it succinctly: ''The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands . . . may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.''

We are letting Bush, Ashcroft and Rumsfeld, our own favorite axis of evil, take all the power. They are weakening the judiciary, both by taking power away from federal judges and by nominating only conservatives who agree with them to the bench. Their cronies dominate Congress. Unless we get our act together and vote this triumverate out in 2004, we won't recognize our own system of justice in five or ten years--it truly will have become a system of injustice.

Give a little to the Democrats, give often and do your part to get out the vote.

This is great news. Billionaire philanthropist George Soros is teaming with liberal groups and individuals to form a $75 million fund to get out the vote in 2004 and defeat Bush.

Labor, environmental and women's organizations, with strong backing from international financier George Soros, have joined forces behind a new political group that plans to spend an unprecedented $75 million to mobilize voters to defeat President Bush in 2004.

The organization, Americans Coming Together (ACT), will conduct "a massive get-out-the-vote operation that we think will defeat George W. Bush in 2004," said Ellen Malcolm, the president of EMILY's List, who will become ACT's president.

....The formation of ACT reflects growing fears in liberal and Democratic circles that with Republicans likely to retain control of Congress, a second Bush term could mean passage of legislation, adoption of regulations and the appointment of judges that together could devastate left-supported policies and institutions.

The group has received $30 million in committed funds to date, including $10 million from Soros. [link via Cursor.]

Our aging, sick and dying prison population is presenting a fiscal crisis and worsening. What can states do about it?

A report by the non-partisan California Legislative Analyst's Office says elderly inmates cost two to three times more to care for than do younger ones. It notes that the National Center of Institutions and Alternatives estimates incarceration costs for an elderly inmate are $69,000 a year, compared with a national average of $22,000 for all inmates.

Some states are adopting early release for aging prisoners. We hope the practice spreads:

When considering dangerous, violent and predatory inmates, one does not usually envision an elderly man hobbling down a prison corridor with a cane or walker," says a new institute report for the Justice Department's National Institute of Corrections.

"However, in reality, some of the most dangerous and/or persistent criminals sentenced to life in prison without parole 30 years ago are now old, debilitated, frail, chronically ill, depressed and no longer considered a threat to society or the institution," the report says.

The Warden at Angola, Louisiana's harshest prison, takes it one step further:

In a state where a "life sentence" means just that, officials at Angola are determined to provide "death with dignity" for inmates. There is a hospice for the terminally ill. No one dies alone. Since 1998, a glass-enclosed hearse, made by prisoners and drawn by two Percheron horses, carries bodies to the prison cemetery in handmade coffins. Inmates walk behind, singing Amazing Grace as they go.

Joanna Spilbor, guest columnist at Findlaw, examines false reporting in rape cases and asks what happens if Kobe Bryant is falsely accused:

Spilbor argues that Colorado's and other states' decision to make false reports mere misdemeanors, with light penalties, is unfair to the accused. She also suggests several legal changes that would help deter false claims -- including allowing juries to find an accuser "Not Credible."

[comments now closed]

The National Institute of Justice, which is the research arm of the Department of Justice, has completed a ten year study on boot-camps as an effective alternative to prison.

This NIJ Research for Practice presents findings from 10 years of data analyzing whether boot camps are successful in reducing recidivism, prison populations, and operating costs.

The report found that although boot camps generally had positive effects on the attitudes and behaviors of inmates during confinement, these changes did not translate into reduced recidivism. Programs were often too brief to exert a lasting effect on inmates released to the community and they lacked, as well, a strong treatment model or sufficient preparation for reentry into the community.

Boot camps' efforts to achieve multiple goals contributed to conflicting results. For example, lengthening camps so that more treatment programs could be included, which reduced recidivism, also shortened the discount in time served and undercut lower prison bed costs.

The full report is available here.

Arnold Schwarzenegger earned $50 million in the past two years.

Schwarzenegger's tax returns, made public at a news conference, showed he earned $31 million in 2000 and paid more than $10 million in state and federal taxes. Income dipped slightly in 2001 to $26.1 million, with $9.3 million paid in taxes.

He also made charitable donations of close to $5 million in those two years, including $1.1 million to Proposition 49, the voter initiative that he successfully backed which increases funding for after school programs.

Why did he release list such a detailed list of his business holdings when he wasn't required to disclose them? Probably because his advisors want him cast as a successful businessman who could turn around California's economic woes, instead of as an actor.

Arnold is leading in the polls.

The other day we touted Arnold's progressive stand on social justice issues. But, today we learned something we don't like: He voted for Proposition 187--the resolution that denies health and other social services to illegal mmigrants.

The GOP-backed Proposition 187 (search) to deny health care and public education to illegal immigrants was passed by a wide margin, although it was eventually ruled unconstitutional. It remains a contentious issue and a litmus test for some voters, particularly Hispanics (search), to gauge whether a candidate is immigrant-friendly.

Gray Davis voted against Proposition 187.

The Washington Post reports that Democrats are unlikely to win back the House in 2004:

Analysts who have been following the early battle for control of the 435-member House say a relative lack of public anger to fuel anti-incumbent voting and a strong GOP fundraising effort underway will be difficult for Democrats to surmount.

The biggest factor, however, is one that has thwarted Democratic hopes before and, if anything, is growing worse: Congressional redistricting has produced a remarkably small number of competitive districts nationwide. As a result, Democrats must win a huge percentage of the toss-up races to regain the House majority they lost a decade ago.

A self-help group in California, composed mostly of those dying of AIDS and cancer, intend to make history with a civil rights lawsuit against the Feds over their right to use marijuana for medicinal purposes. The City and County of Santa Cruz have joined the lawsuit on their behalf.

An elderly woman leans unsteadily on her walker. A hip young paraplegic fellow glides his electric wheelchair past a dapper old man clutching a cane. Men wiry with AIDS sidle into folding chairs in the cramped meeting hall. A blind man hunkers at the edge of the throng. There is talk of housing and finances, discussions of dipping health and impending death.

They finish by flouting federal law.

Marijuana, deemed illegal by the U.S. for any purpose, is dispensed in small baggies to the group, most of them terminally ill with AIDS or cancer. They say their brand of medicine, justified under California's 1996 medicinal marijuana initiative, brings relief from pain and suffering.

Read the whole thing.

This Monday (8/11) from 9-10 AM, C-SPAN will broadcast a debate between Ronald Weich,Former Counsel, U.S. Sentencing Commission and Daniel Collins, Associate Deputy Attorney General (Justice Department) on recent changes to federal sentencing laws. Tune in to watch Ron defend truth, justice and the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984. The 1984 Act is far from perfect, but it was way better before Congress passed the Feeney Amendment to the Amber Alert bill and before Ashcroft got his hands on it.

You can watch on television or your computer.

We just returned from San Francisco and the American Bar Association annual meeting. We participated in the two mornings of the Criminal Justice Section Council meetings. NACDL has a voting seat on the Council, which we have occupied for the past two years, since Albert Krieger of Miami, who had it for the five previous years, moved up to be the Chair-Elect and then Chair of the Section. Albert is a past president of NACDL and one of our favorite lawyers. [Here's a picture of the two of us after we won awards at an NACDL meeting several years ago.]

The Criminal Justice Section is composed of prosecutors, defense lawyers and judges. As you can imagine, we don't always see eye to eye. Among other duties, the Section sponsors and co-sponsors resolutions that then go to the ABA House of Delegates. If passed, the resolutions become ABA policy.

A big issue this year was a resolution by one of the corporate sections to amend the ABA's Model Rules of Conduct for lawyers in a way that would allow lawyers to reveal client confidences in a greater number of situations. The requested changes were in response to the Enron and other corporate scandals in recent years, as well as changes brought about by the Sabranes-Oxley Act.

If the changes are approved, the code would permit, but not compel, a lawyer to disclose client confidences to prevent or to mitigate "injury to the financial interests or property of another," when the lawyer's services were used to further a client's crime. In 2001, the delegates approved a narrower change, permitting a lawyer to breach client confidentiality "to prevent reasonably certain death or substantial bodily harm," but even that change was controversial.

As one corporate lawyer quoted in the Times says,

....The confidentiality privilege belongs to a client... and only the client can waive it. Besides, it is rarely a black and white question whether a client's plan is illegal, and it is not the lawyer's job to make that determination.

We didn't like the resolution and voted against co-sponsoring it. The nays carried the day. That doesn't mean it won't pass the House of Delegates, only that in its present form, the Criminal Justice Section delegates to the House of Delegates will vote against it when it comes up there for consideration.

The number two position at the Justice Department is held by Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson, who has just announced he is leaving the Department to return to private practice. He is the fourth Justice Department higher-up to leave in recent months.

We like Larry Thompson a lot, and have always felt a little better knowing he was at Justice, hopefully providing some measure of moderation to Ashcroft. We don't like the list of possible replacements and are concerned that Larry's departure will be a bad omen for freedom and justice.