The Innocence Project today announced the opening of an office in their New Orleans center to serve Mississippi.

We have already received more than 100 applications from inmates seeking assistance," said Emily Maw, a staffer for the Mississippi project. A case in which two sisters, Jamie and Gladys Scott, were sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of taking about $10 at gunpoint is among those being reviewed.

The Innocence Project was instrumental in winning a new trial last year for former Mississippi death-row inmate Kennedy Brewer. Local lawyers handled the case for the national Innocence Project.

....Mississippi ranks second only to Louisiana in the number of individuals incarcerated per 100,000 people, according to the Innocence Project. "If the system's failure rate is a mere one percent, 215 people in prison in Mississippi are innocent," the project says.

Another group, the Mississippi Justice Project will work with the Innocence Project to get information and applications to inmates.

....The project will be looking at questionable convictions in which inmates received more than 20 years in prison.

The goal is one project in every state. We'll keep reporting on the progress.

In Florida, lawyers with the aid of law students are furiously battling a coming DNA testing deadline, after which they will not be allowed testing to prove their innocence.

Meanwhile, Barry Scheck, cofounder of the The Innocence Project at Cardozo Law School in New York, is trying to line up support from lawyers around the state to find a way to lift the ''arbitrary deadline,'' established by the Legislature two years ago.

He characterizes the situation as a looming miscarriage of justice for possibly hundreds of inmates who could be cheated out of the chance the law was designed to provide.

Under the law, passed in 2001 and sponsored by Sen. Alex Villalobos, R-Miami, 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.

Villalobos is willing to consider extending the deadline, but Florida Governor Jeb Bush is not.

Thanks to Atrios, we found this article in The Guardian explaining the numbers of soldiers dead and wounded in Iraq:

US military casualties from the occupation of Iraq have been more than twice the number most Americans have been led to believe because of an extraordinarily high number of accidents, suicides and other non-combat deaths in the ranks that have gone largely unreported in the media.

Since May 1, when President George Bush declared the end of major combat operations, 52 American soldiers have been killed by hostile fire, according to Pentagon figures quoted in almost all the war coverage. But the total number of US deaths from all causes is much higher: 112.

The other unreported cost of the war for the US is the number of American wounded, 827 since Operation Iraqi Freedom began.

Bush's support for continued presence in Iraq is declining in the face of the increasing casualties. 25% of Americans want the troops home now. An additional 33% want the troops home if casualties continue to rise.

In fact, the total death toll this time is 248 - including accidents and suicides - and as the number of non-combat deaths and serious injuries becomes more widely known, the erosion of public confidence is likely to continue, posing a threat to Mr Bush's prospects of re-election, which at the beginning of May had seemed a foregone conclusion.

Military observers say it is unusual, even in a "low-intensity" guerrilla war such as the situation seen in Iraq, for non-combat deaths to outnumber combat casualties.

The Washington Post reports that Secretary of State Colin Powell and his deputy Richard Armitage will not stay on for a second term with Bush. They intend to step down in January, 2005.

Since Colin Powell enjoys much popularity across party lines, we think this could hurt Bush in the 2004 election. It's not like Powell is quitting now, so the country won't have much, if any, time to adjust to his replacement before the election.

We also wonder why this is coming out now. Won't foreign governments begin viewing Powell as a "lame duck" of sorts, decreasing their incentive to pay much attention to him?

The Post says National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz are the leading candidates to replace Powell, but Rice may not want the job because of the bureaucracy involved.

We'll be curious to see what the professional politicos make of this.

The Monday New York Times has an important article evidencing growing disdain for Bush in "democratic strongholds":

There is a powerful disdain for the Bush administration, stoked by the aftermath of the war in Iraq and the continuing lag in the economy. There is also a conviction that President Bush is eminently beatable and a hunger to hear their party's leaders and candidates make the case against him — straight up, from the heart rather than the polling data.

It is not simply a lurch to the left, many Democrats say; it could, in fact, lead caucus voters to more centrist candidates, if they seem most likely to defeat Mr. Bush in the general election.

It seems the message is spreading--forget whether you're right or left and the fact that no particular candidate speaks to you on every issue --if he or she can beat Bush, that's what counts.

Geoff Garin, a pollster who is working for Senator Bob Graham of Florida, who is seeking the Democratic nomination, said the Democratic anger toward Mr. Bush was "as strong as anything I've experienced in 25 years now of polling," and perhaps comes closest to the way many Democrats felt about President Richard M. Nixon.

California's embattled Governor Gray Davis signed into law a bill that prohibits transgendered discrimination in housing and employment. Only three other states, New Mexico, Rhode Island and Minnesota, provide similar protection to the transgendered.

The new California law will prohibit discrimination against people whose ``perceived gender characteristics are different from those traditionally associated with the individual's sex at birth.''

The New York Times reviews John Mellencamp's July 31 performance favorably and notes that he has inserted some anti-Bush politics into his songs:

Mr. Mellencamp's new song "To Washington," with an Appalachian melody by way of the Carter Family and Woody Guthrie, showed misgivings about the current Bush administration and war in Iraq. And when Mr. Mellencamp sang Bob Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisited," with its verse about a roving gambler trying to create a next world war, he made it a "Texas gambler" and altered the last lines: "Just give Donald Rumsfeld about a million guns, and have it out on Highway 61."

We've always liked Mellencamp a lot and are glad to see he's singing his politics out loud. With Willie Nelson singing for Kucinich, we hope it's the start of a trend.

Howard Dean makes the cover of both Time and Newsweek, and Dave Cullen of Conclusive Evidence puts all the articles from both magazines in one place, with summaries and analyis.

Here is the transcript of Attorney General John Ashcroft's appearance today on Fox News Sunday. He discusses the Patriot Act, Sneak 'N Peeks, Patriot Act II and enemy combatants. It's a must read.

What a great sign--the LA Times reports that Republicans in Congress are increasingly defying Bush.

The GOP-controlled Congress has in recent weeks defied Bush on domestic policies ranging from drug imports to media deregulation to tax credits for the working poor.

Congress is also presenting new challenges to Bush in foreign affairs. Members of both parties have expressed qualms about postwar policy in Iraq. The No. 2 House GOP leader has questioned Bush's "road map" to peace in the Middle East. And the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee last week criticized the president's policy on Liberia.

The article also explains how we the populace have been affecting Congress and the Republicans --such as on the media deregulation issue. We recommend reading the whole thing.

Grand Theft America on Katherine Harris and the scrubbing of 58,000 voters from the Florida voter registration lists....it's mesmerizing in video with great audio. The gist of the charge is that Harris first scrubbed the names of felons, then people with the same names as felons, and the final list was 85% incorrect. Too bad she's already been elected to Congress. [thanks to Snowdog for the link] .

Jay Caruso of The Daily Rant writes critically of a new law in Illiniois, reportedly the first in the country, that provides that if one partner changes his/her mind after intercourse has begun, and the other partner doesn't stop, it's rape.

To show how such a law can be misapplied, consider this California Supreme Court ruling in January, which we think borders on the ridiculous: A 17 year old female engaged in admittedly consensual intercourse with a juvenile teenage male. During the act, the female said she wanted to go home. She didn't say "stop" or "no," only that she wanted to go home. The juvenile male was convicted of rape, and the California Supreme Court upheld it.

The dissenting justice? Janice Rogers Brown, now nominated by Bush to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, and considered to be a contender for a Supreme Court vacancy. Liberals oppose her as a Clarence Thomas clone. We have criticized her, for that and other reasons. But her dissent in this rape case is the only voice of sanity:

The majority provided no guidance about what constitutes withdrawal of consent and what amount of force turns consensual sex into rape. The majority relies heavily on [the defendant's] failure to desist immediately, but it does not tell us how soon would have been soon enough. Ten seconds? Thirty? A minute? Is persistence the same thing as force? And even if we conclude persistence should be criminalized in this situation, should the penalty be the same as for forcible rape?"

Rogers Brown argued:

...prosecutors should still have the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that a victim clearly communicated withdrawal of consent, and the perpetrator exercised some degree of force.

She noted that the victim in John Z. had enjoyed the sex, had simply said she had to go and had never overtly told John Z. she didn't want to keep having sex.

We agree that as a matter of legal principle, if prosecutors prove beyond a reasonable doubt that consent was withdrawn after the act begins. and that the withdrawal was clearly and unequivocally communicated to the partner, who then forcibly continued, it's rape. But that's a tough burden for prosecutors, and that's why they rightfully are reluctant to file such charges.

But we just can't see how "I want to go home" is a clear and unequivocal "no" or "stop" or "stop now" that a teenage boy is supposed to understand means a withdrawal of consent.

Update: We edited the post as to age. The girl was 17 not 19 as we originally said, and the boy was a juvenile, not necessarily 15.