Happy second blogiversary (ywctp) to The Hamster. Eric has one of the most up-to-date, liberal sites around. We were astonished last year to find out that he was 19 and a freshman at GW. This year he'll be a sophomore. We used to think Matt Yglesias was the youngest, most politically aware blogger we knew (along with Jesse of Pandagon and Andrew Northrup of Poor Man , who vascillate between politics, humor and satire, with a smattering of issues of import mostly to those in their age group,) but Eric has proved himself to be right in their league. If these young men are in any way representative of their peers, and we believe they are, the future is beginning to look a lot brighter to us.

We can't say we're surprised to read that Al Qaeda official al-Zawahri is threatening the U.S. if it harms the Guantanamo detainees:

An audio tape purportedly of top al Qaeda official Ayman al-Zawahri warned the United States on Sunday it would pay a high price if it harmed any of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

The voice on the tape, broadcast by the Dubai-based Arabic television Al Arabiya, also told the United States that the "real battle" against it has not started yet.

"America has announced it will start putting on trial in front of military tribunals the Muslim detainees at Guantanamo and might sentence them to death...," said the voice, which Al Arabiya television identified as Zawahri's.
"I swear in the name of God that the crusader America will pay a dear price for any harm it inflicts on any of the Muslim detainees...."

Is it just our imagination, or does it seem like Al Qaeda is rising again, along with the Taliban. It's not looking so certain to us that we won the war instead of just a battle.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg is acknowledging the growing effect of international law on Supreme Court decisions, particularly in the areas of the death penalty, race admissions and gay sex:

"Our island or lone ranger mentality is beginning to change," Ginsburg said during a speech to the American Constitution Society, a liberal lawyers group holding its first convention. Justices "are becoming more open to comparative and international law perspectives," said Ginsburg, who has supported a more global view of judicial decision making.

Ginsburg cited an international treaty in her vote in June to uphold the use of race in college admissions....Last month, Ginsburg and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Stephen Breyer discussed the death penalty and terrorism with French President Jacques Chirac during a European tour.

Ginsburg said Saturday that the Internet is making decisions of courts in other countries more readily available in America, and they should not be ignored.

Not surprisingly, conservatives are upset by the trend.

Some good news....support for the First Amendment is rising after 9/11.

E.J. Dionee in the Boston Globe says it's too early to count out Gephardt and Edwards.

The Sunday Washington Post has an article called A Key Matchup comparing Eagle, Colorado Prosecutor Mark Hurlburt to Denver defense attorney Pamela Mackey who are on opposite sides of the Kobe Bryant case. We take issue with two items in the article:

Number One:

In a murder case last year, Hurlbert repeatedly reminded the jury that the defendant had lied to police about some elements of the case. He ended his oration with a ringing declaration: "You only lie when the truth will not set you free." The verdict: guilty.

In fact, the verdict was not guilty of the murder one charge sought by Hurlbert, who co-tried the case as a deputy DA with his then boss, Michael Goodbee. The conviction was on the lesser charge of murder two, murder committed during a crime of passion, a significant loss for the prosecution.

From the 3/21/02 Denver Post ( lexis.com):

The nation's largest criminal defense organization, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers ( NACDL) voted today that the Administration's rules for military tribunals make it ethically impossible for lawyers to participate in them.

"We took the position that it is unethical for a lawyer to represent a client under current conditions for military tribunals, and if a lawyer chose to do so, he or she must contest all of those unethical conditions," said Barry Scheck, the incoming president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

The organization will issue the ethics statement to its 11,000 members. Lawyers are not legally bound by the organization's positions, but state bar associations sometimes adopt the same reasoning for their rules.

We voted for the resolution condemning the procedures. There was a long debate, at which numous facets of the issue were debated, but the bottom line was, almost all of us felt that these regulations posed the most dangerous threat to due process, justice and the mission of the legal profession that any of us had ever seen. Not only could we not accept the rules, most of us felt that the rules must be actively opposed.

The American Bar Association will be voting on the tribunal procedures at its annual meeting next week in San Francisco. As a member of the ABA Criminal Justice Section Council, we'll be at that meeting as well.

What's so bad about the rules contained in Military Commission Instruction No. 5? If it's not apparent from the rule, scroll down to Annex B and read the affidavit that civilian defense lawyers must sign to be allowed to participate.

Here's more with specifics of the objectionable provisions of the rule.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is in the process of hiring a company to assist it in coordinating the exchange of information about criminal suspects and terrorists. After reading this AP article, we'd say it's something desperately needed:

A man implicated two decades ago in a Bahamian drug smuggling ring has been hired to help create a 13-state anti-terrorism network, a newspaper reported Saturday.

Hank Asher is the founder of Seisint Inc., an information technology company with a $1.6 million contract with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to work on a pilot program for the Matrix network, through which sensitive information on terrorism and other crime suspects would be exchanged.

The Boca Raton millionaire, a member of Seisint's board of directors, friend of recently retired FDLE director James ''Tim'' Moore and a major political contributor, was never charged with drug smuggling. He served as an informant and witness in several trials, and was identified by other FDLE informants as someone who provided police protection for smuggling operations, the St. Petersburg Times reported.

Asher's first company, DBT Online Inc., bought him out for $147 million in 1999 after the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration suspended its contracts over Asher's past and concerns that the company could potentially monitor targets of investigations, the Times reported.

Interim FDLE head Daryl McLaughlin called Friday for a complete assessment of Asher's background, saying previous checks were inadequate.

''You have told me stuff we didn't know,'' McLaughlin told the Times for its Saturday editions. ''We should know more about a company we are doing business with.'' (emphasis supplied.)

You can read more in the St. Petersburg Times, here.

In the past five years he's donated more than $735,000 to Democratic and Republican parties and candidates. Most of his money has gone to Democrats: $505,000 in the past five years and $65,000 to U.S. Sen. Bob Graham's 2002 initiative campaign to re-establish the state Board of Regents.

"He's a good fella," said Moore, who retired Thursday from FDLE.

Update: The 'Former Drug Smuggler' language is that used in the headline of the St. Petersberg Times Article.

Jeb Bush must be getting nervous already about getting re-elected. Today he criticized the White House for returning 12 Cubans to Cuba after their boat washed ashore in the U.S. The 600,000 members of the Cuban-American community in Miami are not pleased with President Bush, to say the least. The Cuban-American vote for Bush-Gore in the 2000 election is credited by many with being a determinative factor in that election.

Some months earlier, three men who had hijacked a ferry boat were executed in Cuba. A little background. Since Clinton, the U.S. has had a "wet foot, dry foot" policy with respect to Cubans, and only Cubans. If they make it to land, they get to stay in the U.S. If they get caught in the water, they are returned to Cuba. [Compare this to Haitian policy, where all Haitians are returned, whether they make it ashore or not.]

Several Democratic presidential contenders have sided with the exile groups, including Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, who said the decision was "an abandonment of American values" during a visit to South Florida this week that included a stop in Little Havana here.

In his remarks to The Herald, Governor Bush said: "Despite the good intentions of the administration to negotiate the safety of these folks, that is an oppressive regime and given the environment in Cuba, it's just not right" to send them back. He also hinted that the White House would modify its Cuban policy before the presidential election.

Jill Bratina, a spokeswoman for Governor Bush, reiterated his statement today. She said the governor had not discussed the decision with his brother, but had asked high-ranking officials in the administration to review it. "The governor agrees with the president's policies on Cuba and feels that the president has been a strong advocate for the people of Cuba," she said, but added that "unfortunately, in this instance it was not an appropriate decision."

Update: According to this article appearing July 31 in a Cuban newspaper, the three who were executed were the hijackers of a ferry carrying the asylum-seekers.

Does this remind you of anyone today?

Those who failed to oppose me, who readily agreed with me, accepted all my views, and yielded easily to my opinions, were those who did me the most injury, and were my worst enemies, because, by surrendering to me so easily, they encouraged me to go too far... I was then too powerful for any man, except myself, to injure me. --Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of France, (1769-1821)

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has scheduled oral arguments for the Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative and Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana on September 17th (S.F., 8 am). The cases will be heard together. At issue will be the constitutionality of the Controlled Substances Act with regards to non-interstate use of medical marijuana in California. The panel will consist of Justices Reinhardt, Schroeder and Silverman.

Later the same day, a different panel will hear the appeal of the Hemp Industry Association vs. the DEA.

[thanks to Allen St. Pierre of NORML for the heads-up]

Former Colorado Senator Gary Hart was the featured lunchtime speaker Friday at the annual meeting of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers ( NACDL) in Denver. He was introduced by his former campaign manager, criminal defense lawyer Hal Haddon (currently most widely known as Kobe Bryant's defense attorney.) We had the pleasure of sitting next to them during lunch.

When it came time to speak to the assembled group of 450 lawyers, among other things, Sen. Hart spoke about the terrorist threat. As he has said before, he believes the question of the next attack is not one of "if" but "when." He believes it is likely to be one involving biological or chemical weapons, most likely something like smallpox, in a place like Denver, Kansas City or Dallas--in other words, in the heartland and not necessarily in a major city. He also spoke of the need to to balance security and the threat to civil liberties. He said that under Bush, we have placed all decison making authority in the civil liberties arena in the hands of the one man who most shouldn't have it--Attorney General John Ashcroft. As you can imagine, his comment was met by thunderous applause.

As regular readers of this site know, we were an early Hart supporter when he considered running for President earlier this year. We hope still that if the Democrats win in 2004, Hart will be appointed Secretary of State. We asked him some questions during lunch, prior to his speech, such as whether he had a preference for any one of the current candidates. He does not.

While we will support Howard Dean if he gets the nomination, some of Dean's positions on criminal justice issues, particularly the death penalty, concern us. While we now know Dean and some of the other candidates' positions on the death penalty, today we realized we had never asked Sen. Hart directly for his position on the death penalty. So we asked him while sitting at lunch today, again, prior to his speech. His response was: "I'm against it. I've always been against it. I voted against it."

That makes us even sorrier he's not running.