Colorado journalist and blogger Dave Cullen, writing for Slate, says that the Air Force Academy's sexual assault court martial proceeding against cadet Douglas Meester may just be a show trial.

Meester appears increasingly like a convenient scapegoat. After Meester's Article 32 hearing in May—the military analogue of a grand jury—the presiding investigating officer found the charges so flimsy that he recommended the court-martial be scuttled. And Weida's own legal adviser, Staff Judge Advocate Col. James Moody, advised the commandant of the court-martial's futility in a June memo: "To be frank, the rape and forcible sodomy charges are unlikely to result in findings of guilty."

Since the article went up on the web, Dave has received a torrent of hate mail.

But the pleasant military responses were not half as surprising as the level of venom coming from a lot of young men and women. Many staunchly believe that if you have sex with a drunk woman you're automatically a rapist. I find that perplexing. Then with all the people hooking up at singles bars, getting drunk and going home together, all the men are rapists? And what are the women?

A spokesman for the Colorado Bureau of Investigation has confirmed receiving tangible items for testing in the alleged sexual assault charge levied by a 19 year old hotel employee against Kobe Bryant.

"Anytime we deal with (an alleged) crime of violence we look at exchange of hairs and fibers, exchange of body fluids -- that's blood, semen, saliva," Mang said, as well as "anomalies like torn clothing buttons or the sort of things that we may not expect to find in normal wear and tear. Any evidence of any degree of force used."

The spokesman said the agency is in hourly contact with the Sheriff's department. Bottom line on the testing:

"If there isn't any evidence it won't take very long. If we find any evidence it will take more time."

The latest news is that a Vail, CO cabdriver says he picked Kobe and two bodyguards up at a Glenwood Springs, CO hospital the day after the alleged incident.

A cab driver says he picked up Kobe Bryant and three bodyguards at a Glenwood Springs hospital less than a day after the NBA superstar was accused of sexually assaulting a woman at a mountain resort.

Vail Taxi driver Terry O'Brien, 38, also told The Orange County Register that Bryant was flanked by sheriff's deputies at the emergency room of Valley View Hospital in Glenwood Springs early July 2.

...According to the cabbie's account, Bryant was accompanied by three members of his entourage and was in the presence of sheriff's deputies when he arrived at the hospital about 2:30 a.m. on July 2.

Bryant pulled a towel over his head before ducking down into the back seat of the cab, O'Brien said. He said he dropped the Los Angeles Lakers' guard and two members of the entourage at the Hotel Colorado in Glenwood, then gave the third bodyguard a ride to the spa, 40 miles away. The man "cleared out" Bryant's belongings, O'Brien said. When the trip ended at 5 a.m. the fare of $372 was paid by bodyguard Michael Ortiz, the cabbie said.

The Sheriff has said Kobe was cooperative, so it may be that he agreed to go to the hospital to submit DNA samples.

And not surprsingly, Kobe's image is taking a hit.

Take Back the Media has suggested Bush is impeachable for having sworn an oath and lied to Congress during an official duty. Snowdog writes he has filed a class action lawsuit to impeach President Bush and Veep Cheney. He is looking for people to sign on. Details here, just type in the case number is 214493. If you want to sign up by e-mail, send your message to info@bigclassaction.com. Oh, and the site says Snowdog is looking for a lawyer to represent the class.

[comments now closed]

The ACLU released a new report on the Patriot Act today. From its press release:

The American Civil Liberties Union today said that it has found a consistent pattern of factually inaccurate assertions by the Department of Justice in statements to the media and Congress, statements that mischaracterize the scope, potential impact and likely harm of the now-notorious USA PATRIOT Act.

The ACLU’s findings were released this morning in a special report that contrasts the Justice Department’s assertions about the USA PATRIOT Act with the language of the Act itself, and in some cases contrasts the Justice Department’s public statements with language from internal Justice Department memoranda that the ACLU was able to obtain through a Freedom of Information Act request. The report – “Seeking Truth From Justice” – cites about a dozen specific instances in which Justice Department and other law enforcement officials misrepresented the scope or impact of the USA PATRIOT Act.

To illustrate its point, the ACLU lists a number of specific representations made by the Justice Department, which it labels false or misleading, including:

We received this by email today....

"From the brief time that we did spend occupying Iraqi territory after the war, I am certain that had we taken all of Iraq, we would have been like the dinosaur in the tar pit -- we would still be there, and we, not the United Nations, would be bearing the costs of the occupation. This is a burden I am sure the beleaguered American taxpayer would not have been happy to take on."-- Norman Schwarzkopf, from his 1993 autobiography, It Doesn't Take a Hero

"We should not march into Baghdad. To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab world against us and make a broken tyrant into a latter-day Arab hero. Assigning young soldiers to a fruitless hunt for a securely entrenched dictator and condemning them to fight in what would be an unwinnable urban guerilla war, it could only plunge that part of the world into ever greater instability." - George H.W. Bush, A World Transformed, 1998

Our hosting company is upgrading our server, should be any minute now, and we will be down for up to one half hour. We haven't written anything today since we are having cable internet access installed and it's more complicated than they thought. We still have dsl, but we're anxious to try cable. We'll try to catch up on the news in the meantime.

Mark Glaser of OnLine Journalism Review writes a long article about the recent 9th Circuit decision exempting online publishers from liability for material posted by third parties on their websites. We are among those interviewed, as is Yale Law Professor Jack Balkin, who writes the estimable blog Balkanization. You can read Jack's insightful analysis of the case here. Our analysis of the case is here.

We've got to run out for a few hours--so here's some links (rather than our comments) on the Diebold voting machine scandal --

A reader emails us:

A New Zealand reporter has discovered that the Diebold "black box" voting machines being pushed in so many jurisdictions are easy to hack and change vote totals, and that this may explain to anomolies in our last election. If the reporter has the goods, this is potentially huge. Here's the earlier story from February

Bob Morris of Politics in the Zeros says,

Among their findings:

1) They could open the password file, copy an encrypted password elsewhere, then use that password to access data.

2) The machines keep three sets of books. Set 2 can be changed by anyone who knows how to use Microsoft Access. This will effect the vote totals.

As a programmer, I find it appalling that voting data is kept in Access, is
not encrypted, and the system is so badly designed that data can easily be changed.

Here's some background on Diebold Systems connections to the Republican Party.

Bev Harris is the author of the soon to be published book " Black Box Voting: Ballot Tampering In The 21st Century "

We've been to Alcatraz and done the tour - now here's a new one: The Crime and Punishment Museum in Auburn, Georgia.

Visitors to the Crime and Punishment Museum in Turner County will see the old trap door used for hangings, the steel cages that housed prisoners and the inmates' rough black-and-white striped uniforms.

It's not the cozy Southern slammer depicted in reruns of "The Andy Griffith Show." For 90 years, Turner County's prisoners lived in bleak steel cages and slept on bolted-down steel cots.

The museum highlights harsh Southern jail conditions from about 1900 through the 1990s, when many counties, under pressure from the U.S. Justice Department to provide more humane treatment, either refurbished their old jails or built new ones.

Opening day is August 27 and 20,000 to 30,000 visitors are expected yearly. Isn't it too morbid? Will anyone besides wierdos want to tour the inside--or make a special trip to see it? The local historian and spokeswoman for the local Chamber of Commerce think so--they say it will be a learning experience.

Oakland, CA pot guru Ed Rosenthal is back in the news. Last time we reported, he had received a one day sentence from a federal judge for growing marijuana for cancer patients - with the permission of the Oakland City Government.

Today comes news that the Government is appealing the sentence.

Rosenthal was convicted last spring of growing pot in an Oakland warehouse. The marijuana growing operation, which supplied a dispensary on Sixth Street in San Francisco, was legal under California law and had been inspected and signed off on by Oakland city officials.

But because federal law does not recognize medical pot, Judge Charles Breyer excluded any testimony dealing with California law, which allows for the medical use of weed with doctors' approval. After the trial, a majority of the jurors who convicted Rosenthal said they would have reached a different verdict had they been allowed to consider the purposes of the growth and that Rosenthal was acting in accordance with local and state laws.

The San Francisco Examiner says it best:

OH, FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE, why don't the feds just give it a rest?

After that, we like Ed's comment:

Rosenthal also said he thinks the appeal is a waste of taxpayers' money. "If they have all that money, why don't they build some schools?" he asked. [from Bay City News]

An appeals court today rejected Bush and Chenecy's attempt to block a lawsuit delving into Cheney's energy task force.

Business Week reports that Bush is Not a Shoo-In for '04 . He's facing three obstacles, any one of which could blow up and cost him the election: The growing mess in Iraq, slow economic growth and his inability to speak well. [Via Political Wire]