Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson is number two at the Justice Department under Ashcroft. As much as we've bashed Ashcroft at TalkLeft over the past year, we've never bashed Larry--you can read our early endorsement of him here.

So it is with great appreciation that we bring you news of his speech to the 9th Circuit judges today in Hawaii at the judge's judicial conference. He did everything but issue an apology for the ill-conceived Feeney Amendment which was tacked onto the Amber Alert bill and which reduced judicial discretion in sentencing to a practical nullity.

Deputy U.S. Attorney General Larry Thompson stopped just short of apologizing to federal judges from the Western states for the Bush administration's behind-the-scenes sponsorship of the controversial Feeney Amendment.

"I know the process was viewed as something less than aboveboard," the No. 2 man in the U.S. Justice Department said to several hundred judges and attorneys meeting on Kauai at the annual conference of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

"We will not have a situation again where you, the judiciary, feel we have been less than open in our dealings," Thompson added.

Mr. Thompson has been mentioned as a possible replacement to retiring Supreme Court justices. That too would be okay in our book. He has been a defense attorney as well as a prosecutor. He understands constitutional rights, due process and fundamental fairness. He's certainly not a liberal, but he's as fair and honest as they get. Which is more than we can say for his boss and the Administration as a whole.

San Francisco has dropped criminal charges against all but about 20 of the 407 war protesters .

....The decision was based largely on the difficulty in prosecuting individuals in what were essentially mass arrests. [Asst. District Attorney Messini] said the Police Department had indicated that it could not "establish the facts necessary to convict any of these individuals" because the arrest reports were too general.

"Identifying individual acts of the protesters arrested was continuing to be very problematic," Mr. Menesini said. "As a consequence, the district attorney felt it was in the interest of justice to just bite the bullet and stand up and do what was right. That is always difficult."

A jury sentenced Chante Mallard to 50 years in the death of a man impaled in her windshield.

How symmetrical. Now, instead of losing one life, we lose two.

Our congratulations to Howard Dean for winning the internet Democratic primary held on MoveOn.Org. Dr. Dean came in with 44% of the votes. Dennis Kucinich followed with 24%.

If only all states had this much sense....

Delaware has passed a bill that reduces the mandatory minimum sentences in some drug crimes in order to make more room for violent offenders. After passing in the Delaware House, the bill passed the Senate by a vote of 20 to 1.

The bill is a compromise among the Attorney General's Office, the state's Sentencing Accountability Commission and Stand Up for What's Right and Just, a citizens group dedicated to criminal justice reform.

Among the bill's most controversial provisions in the Senate was language that cuts the minimum mandatory sentence for cocaine trafficking from three years to two years, and increasing the amount of the drug needed to trigger the sentence from 5 grams to 10 grams.

Jacob Sullem of Reason has written " Know Thy Enemy Combatant." Nat Hentoff's new Village Voice column is up, Is the Attorney General Fit for Office?

We recommend both.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) has introduced H.R. 2585, which has been referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary. The caption of the bill reads:

A bill to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to permit certain long-term permanent resident aliens to seek cancellation of removal under such Act, and for other purposes.

What a welcome idea. We'll report more when we've had a chance to read the whole thing. For information, go to Thomas, the federal legislation server.

Our hosting company's server will be brought down at approx. 3:00 PM CST and is expected back up no later than 3:20 PM CST today due to an upgrade which should make Talkleft load faster. We will be unavailable for about 10-15 minutes (we are prepared for 30 minutes.)

Brian Linse at Aint No Bad Dude says "At this point, I'm ready to trim the field down to Dean, Edwards, and Kerry." Us too, although we'd like to see Wesley Clark attach himself to one of the three above as a VP candidate--or jump in the race himself.

The National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty speaks out on Thursday's Supreme Court ruling overturning a death sentence.

"Former Death Row inmate Aaron Patterson, who was pardoned by Gov. George Ryan in January, filed a federal lawsuit seeking $30 million Thursday alleging he was tortured by Chicago police and Cook County prosecutors covered it up. Patterson alleged he was tortured or threatened by former Cmdr. Jon Burge and officers he commanded as they investigated the 1986 murders of Vincent and Rafaela Sanchez in their South Chicago home."

Patterson is the second of the pardoned inmates to sue.

"This lawsuit is a road map for people who want to understand the police scandal and torture" that has occurred for the last 30 years."

On the Supreme Court's decision in Wiggins v. Smith , we recommend the analysis in Friday's Washington Post .

Yesterday's decision adds new specificity to the court's standards for attorney performance, signaling lower courts and state governments that the justices intend to keep a closer watch on the right to counsel. It also gives new legal ammunition to hundreds of death row inmates. In particular, the court referred to the American Bar Association's demanding guidelines for capital counsel performance as "well-defined norms."

Also take a look at Slate columnist and lawyer Dahlia Lathwick's piece on the death penalty and other cases decided Thursday, in which she notes that the opinions are decidedly liberal for a conservative court. An example:

Then we have Wiggins v. Smith, where, by a 7-2 vote, the same court that would ordinarily uphold any death penalty conviction—even if defense counsel had been hopped up on crack and dressed up as Cookie Monster—actually accepts an ineffective assistance of counsel claim. This court, which has blindly sided with the prosecution in the last few ineffective assistance of counsel cases, seems to have figured out (finally!) how shockingly bad/young/ inexperienced/overburdened some court- appointed defense counsel can really be.

In the same piece, Walter Dellinger writes that "the number of progressive results is close to stunning."

• The method of funding of Legal Services for the poor by "taking" the interest on lawyers trust accounts is upheld against a property rights challenge.
• The Family Medical Leave Act is upheld as applied to the states, in spite of strong case law on state sovereignty.
• Justice Powell's lone opinion in Bakke sustaining the use of race for diversity becomes the opinion of the court.
• A capital case is overturned because of ineffective assistance of counsel.
• The retroactive extension of the time for bringing sex abuse charges is held unconstitutional.
• Bowers v. Hardwick is overruled.

As an aside, no retirements were announced, except for that of the Supreme Court Librarian.