A safari being promoted by Las Vegas producer Michael Burdick, on which men would be able to shoot women with paintballs at a cost of $5k and $10k, was actually a scam to sell Burdick's paintball video, "Hunting Bambi."

Burdick should have quit while he was ahead. As soon as we saw Oscar Goodman, the great mayor of Las Vegas (and former stellar criminal defense lawyer) on O'Reilly, promising to shut him down and charge him, we knew it would happen.

....Las Vegas officials investigated and found that the purported safaris were nothing but a hoax to promote the ''Hunting for Bambi'' videos that Burdick sells. The videos show nude women being hunted by men.

The footage in the videos ''was all staged,'' Mayor Oscar Goodman said Thursday. ''There were actors and actresses and there wasn't even the real shooting of paint balls.''

John Redlein, an assistant city attorney, said Burdick offered the hunts at high prices to discourage bookings, and told investigators his Internet site could not even accept credit card charges in the amount necessary to reserve a hunt. ''He's told us in great detail ... that it's a scam to sell videotapes,'' Redlein said.

Burdick is now charged with a misdemeanor, operating without a license.

Goodman derided Burdick for promoting "abusive, violent, assaultive behavior."Burdick could face six months in jail and a $1,000 fine. "He's going to be punished for it, "the mayor said. The summons accuses him of "advertising, promoting and offering for sale paint ball activity videos, paint ball hunts and merchandise,"and operating an Internet Web site" advertising his business through the media without the proper city license."

"It's a joke and a fraud,"Goodman said of the"Hunting for Bambi"enterprise that was touted by promoter Michael Burdick on a Web site and publicized nationally. "I'll do everything I can to see this man is punished for trying to embarrass Las Vegas as a result of a lie and a scam,"Goodman said.

Before admitting the safari was a hoax, Burdick had insisted that the hunts were real, even inviting a reporter to witness one. Sounds like Burdick got outfoxed by the good Mayor.

The county court Judge presiding over the Kobe Bryant case will allow cameras in the courtroom for the August 6, Kobe Bryant hearing.

True, it's a very small courthouse and the individual courtrooms are small. But our position is that cameras should be allowed only if the defendant consents. It's the defendant who has a constitional right to a fair trial. The Bill of Rights was designed to protect the rights of the citizen accused. We don't know if Kobe's lawyers agreed.

For this hearing, it's not a big deal. The accuser does not need to be present. The hearing will be short, maybe 10 minutes or less. It is simply to advise Kobe of the charges against him and his rights, both of which his attorneys have already explained to him, and to set a date for the preliminary hearing.

This is strange....Private Jessica Lynch has selected her co-author for her book about her ordeal in Iraq. It is former New York Times reporter Rick Bragg:

The irony is Bragg, pictured at right, resigned from the New York Times over questions about his reporting methods in the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal. Blair wrote a story about Lynch wrongly claiming he was in her West Virginia hometown.

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New Nat Hentoff column up today--on the Yaser Hamdi case and the adverse 4th Circuit decision. Hentoff opens with a great quote from a dissenting judge in the Hamdi case:

Courts have no higher duty than protection of the individual freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution. This is especially true in time of war, when our carefully crafted system of checks and balances must accommodate the vital needs of national security while guarding the liberties the Constitution promises all citizens. —Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals judge Diana Gribbon Motz, dissenting, Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, July 9

He ends with this sobering thought:

In the January 9 New York Times, Elisa Massimino of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights exposed an earlier decision by a panel of the Fourth Circuit to bow to Bush and to continue the stripping of Hamdi's citizen's rights. "[The Fourth Circuit] seems to be saying that it has no role whatsoever in overseeing the administration's conduct of the war on terrorism . . . the beginning and end of which is left solely to the president's discretion."

Now, the full Fourth Circuit bench has handed George W. Bush the crown that George Washington disdained. What if the Supreme Court agrees? Bush will be King George IV.

In a study released today, computer-science researchers from Johns Hopkins University and Rice University are warning of security risks with the new electronic voting machines made by Diebold.

In a study released Friday, computer security experts warn that an electronic voting system used in some states, including Georgia, as an alternative to the troublesome punch-card ballots is highly vulnerable to fraud.

The study found "significant security flaws" with the system designed by Diebold Election Systems. The system was vulnerable to unscrupulous voters as well as "insiders such as poll workers, software developers and even janitors," who could cast multiple votes without a trace, according to the study.

The system allows ballots to be cast on a 15-inch touchscreen. The study was the first review of the software by independent researchers. Avi Rubin of Johns Hopkins University, a lead researcher on the study, said there is no quick fix for the software.

Here is our background post to this.

Sami Al-Arian, the Tampa professor charged with terrorism crimes, is going the route of Zacarias Moussaoui and demanding to proceed pro se--i.e., acting as his own counsel. He has fired his court appointed attorney.

The Judge urged him to reconsider. We would too. Al-Arian is trying to get the money together to hire Washington, D.C. defense lawyer (and former NACDL President Bill Moffitt. Moffitt is partners with Hank Asbill, and both are terrific lawyers. We hope Al-Arian can raise the money for them. The alternative, self-representation, is not very promising.

Bump and Update: Welcome 5280 Readers! Enjoy the site, and yes, we accept donations . If you're an advertiser, we consider small, tasteful ads that do not detract from our message.

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A big thanks to journalist Dave Cullen of Conclusive Evidence whose article on Colorado bloggers comes out tomorrow in Denver's upscale magazine, 5280. TalkLeft is one of the featured blogs, along with Stephen Green of VodkaPundit, Walter of WalterinDenver and Andy O'Reilly of World Wide Rant. We haven't read the whole thing yet, just the quotes Dave put on his site. Here's one of our's:

"When I'm on [FoxNews'] Hannity & Colmes, a milllion people may see me," she says. "But how many of those people are really interested in what I have to say? But when I blog, people are reading me because they're interested in the liberal viewpoint."

[Then later in the piece:]

"It's the response that keeps you going," she says. "People are really reading. And through the comments, you can see they're thinking and discussing. You know you've hit a chord, and it pumps you up."

More violence is predicted in Iraq following the killing of Saddam's sons. In related news, the U.S. says it has captured the sons' bodyguards who are now talking about the sons' lives on the run since Saddam's defeat. The real question, of course, is whether the bodyguards will lead the U.S. to Saddam. Will Saddam stick around to find out?

Andrew Marshall, a Reuters journalist writes this first hand account of being one of fifteen reporters allowed into an air-conditioned tent to view the restored bodies of Uday and Qusay. According to Marshall, here's what is causing the conspiracy theorists to say the bodies are not really those of Saddam's sons:

U.S. military official said "facial reconstruction" was used to repair wounds, particularly to the face of the elder son Uday, which had disfigured the bodies shown originally to the public in photographs taken by soldiers after the battle.
An uncharacteristic beard on the body of Qusay, seen in those U.S. pictures, had been shaved off, leaving a mustache.

nside the tent, U.S. officials said it was standard practice to use morticians putty to prepare bodies for viewing and was not intended to fool the Iraqi people.

But while it may be common in the United States, the move is unheard of in the Arab world. That could affect Washington's efforts to quash Iraqi conspiracy theories that the bodies are not in fact those of the once powerful and hated sons of Saddam, who is believed to be still in hiding in Iraq.

We're not doubting that those are Saddam's sons. People look different in death and particularly after being embalmed. We've seen too many Six Feet Underepisodes to be repelled or think it's unusual. Not to mention, DNA tests were reportedly done on the pair.

Received by e-mail from The Nation:

Yesterday, Senator Charles Schumer called for an FBI investigation into who illegally leaked information to columnist Bob Novak that former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife was a CIA agent. Newsday and the Palm Beach Post ran their own stories on the matter, the Washington Post buried it in a piece on the former CIA director, and a few small newspapers carried the AP story.

If Novak's reporting is correct, this is a blatant attempt to smear a Gerald Ford appointed, career diplomat and his wife. It's also a federal crime. Joseph Wilson spoke truth to power in his New York Times op-ed which rekindled interest in the Niger/uranium lies, and now he is being punished by the White House in an act to intimidate other people from speaking up.

Please do not let this abuse of power go under-reported. For background.....

• David Corn's original report which pointed out the illegal activity

• Corn's follow-up

• Schumer's press release calling for an investigation

• Wilson's New York Times op-ed

In Peace-loving Nuns Have Become Cause Célèbre, Rocky Mountain News columnist Mike Littwin explores the absurdity of the plight of three nuns in Colorado who are being sentenced today in federal court for damaging federal property. They are expected to receive between five and eight years.

Our story today is of the three nuclear nuns, who, in the name of peace and in the name of Jesus, committed this crime at a Minuteman III site in northeastern Colorado: They cut a chain-link fence; they banged a missile silo with a hammer; they poured some of their own blood on the silo; they waited in their hazmat suits to be taken away.

And if your government has its way, the nuns, who have dedicated their lives to saving the lives of others, will spend the next five to eight years in federal prison. Sentencing is set for Friday. Protests are set at 49 nuclear silos statewide for Saturday.

Here is one of today's news article on the case.

Update: The nuns have been sentenced: Hudson - 30 Months, Gilbert - 33 Months,Platte - 41 Months. They will also pay $3,080 in restitution.

Cuba's former ambassador to Belgium, who later spent many years in a Cuban jail as a political prisoner, now 76, writes this very moving New York Times op-ed, A Prisoner Becomes a Warden. It's about prison life in Cuba and about Castro. Here's a quote:

Four months ago, 75 brave Cuban dissidents were rounded up and two weeks later sentenced to prison terms of up to 28 years. Unlike us so-called Moncadistas, today's dissidents did not use violence. Their "weapons" were typewriters, cameras, radios and tape recorders. They are writers, doctors, lawyers, economists, teachers, peasants and human rights activists who believed, naïvely, that their ruler and former revolutionary leader would at least tolerate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (of which Cuba is a signatory) instead of jailing people for possessing and distributing it.

Lately I have been reflecting, after 50 years, on trial and punishment, on the tragic contrast between Fidel Castro, inmate, and Fidel Castro, prison warden.

A new state law in Illinois prevents doctors from being present at executions:

A measure signed into law by Gov. Rod Blagojevich on Thursday will take doctors out of the execution process in Illinois. The law currently requires that a physician be on hand to pronounce an inmate dead after the death penalty has been carried out.

The physicians felt this was a conflict of their Hippocratic Oath," said state Sen. John Cullerton (D-Chicago), the sponsor. "It was totally unnecessary to have a physician in that position. This says a coroner could easily determine the cause of death."

We understand from Rev. Mr. George Brooks, Director of Advocacy for Kolbe House in Chicago, that praise goes to the tenacious Dr. Ann Dunlap, who fought and lobbied for this legislation for over 10 years and got the Illinois Medical Association on board.