Reuters is reporting that Saddam Hussein's Information Minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, better known as "Comical Ali", has been captured at a roadblock in a Baghdad suburb. Washington has not confirmed this and no sources for the report are provided.

After a nine week trial and ten days of deliberations, three former federal prison guards at Colorado's maximum security federal prison in Florence, Colorado have been convicted of inmate beatings. Four were acquitted.

The guards were known as "The Cowboys."

The seven guards were charged with organizing attacks on inmates...Some were accused of kicking shackled prisoners, smashing their heads into walls and mixing human waste into their food. Three other guards previously pleaded guilty in the case....Prosecutors said the defendants fabricated records and other evidence in a cover-up and pressured fellow officers to keep quiet.

52 acts of abuse against 20 or more inmates were included in the Indictment. The convicted guards face up to ten years in prison on each count.

Update: The convicted guards have been sentenced to three plus years in federal prison.

Calpundit says now that the 20th century is over, we should be able to figure out which trial really was the "Trial of the Century." He suggests a few, and asks for more suggestions.

For anyone who hasn't viewed law professor Doug Linder's site, Famous Trials , we highly recommend you do and scroll through those in the 20th Century. Open one or two of the trials and we think you'll see what a treasure trove Linder has put together.

There's some more fallout from the Chinese "espionage" case involving accused double agent Katrina Leung and her FBI handler-lover David Smith. The FBI has removed Daniel Sayner as the head of the Los Angeles Counterintelligence office and put him back on street duty. Sayner was offered a lateral transfer which he turned down, preferring street duty.

We can't vouch for the accuracy of this information, but Bob Harris has a chart contrasting Howard Dean's and Dennic Kucinich's positions on issues. He lists his sources as the candidates' own websites and searching via Google. He offers to make any corrections, so if you know of any, let him know.

As to crime, Harris reports that Dean opposes all use of medical marijuana. We didn't know that. Kucinich supports "compassionate use." Harris says Dean supports more federal funding for all aspects of the drug war.

We did know that Dean favors the death penalty for "extreme" crimes like terrorism or the killing of a police officer, although he is critical of Bush administration's "careless" approach to executions. We'd add that Dean has promised to direct his Attorney General to study the death penalty and any need for a moratorium to protect the innocent the day he takes office. Kucinich opposes the death penalty.

On the Patriot Act, Harris says Dean would repeal parts of it, but he also wants to expand intelligence agencies. Dean has praised Russ Feingold as the only Senator who opposed the act. Harris points out Kucinich voted against the Patriot Act.

Harris says,

Finally, Dean is basically a good guy, and if he's nominated I'll vote for him in a heartbeat. It's just that it's simply not accurate to refer to him as a progressive candidate. I'm also not saying that Kucinich's positions are the "right" ones on every issue; I just personally agree with him on most of them, and I think other progressives will, too.

If nominated, we'll support Dean as well. We think his criminal justice positions could use a progressive jolt, and since those are our primary concern, we're holding off declaring a favorite candidate at this point. But if anyone from his campaign is reading, we recommend going here to print out the Legislative Priorities and views on criminal justice issues of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and putting them in Mr. Dean's briefcase.

Update: Ezra Klein writes in the following correction to Harris's chart:

Dean's position on medical marijuana is neither for nor against, his stated position is that we have processes set up to evaluate the worth of new drugs, they should not be brought in a political decision. Dean would send medical marijuana to the FDA and abide by whatever they said.

Don't forget to vote today over at MoveOn.org for your favorite Democratic Contender for the White House. 1.4 million are expected to vote and Howard Dean is expected to win. Registration is now closed, so this is just a reminder for those who did register or who are MoveOn members.

While we have not yet committed to a Democratic favorite, we are very impressed with Howard Dean's weblog have added it to our blogroll.

The latest Washington Post/ABC News poll finds more Americans think the number of casualties in the Iraq war are unacceptable:

"Again thinking about the goals versus the costs of the war, so far in your opinion has there been an acceptable or unacceptable number of U.S. military casualties in Iraq?"

Acceptable: 51 compared with 66 in April
Unacceptable: 44% compared with 28 % in April

George Paine at Warblogging.com minces no words about the Administration's announcement yesterday that Qatari native Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri has become the third person to be declared an enemy combatant: Paine calls it a perversion of justice and explains the case in detail.

Our post yesterday criticizing the designation is here.

The Senate Rules Committee, by a vote of 10 to 0, voted today to limit filibusters . Notwithstanding that Democrats oppose the limit, none of the nine democrats on the committee attending the meeting. The matter will now go to a full floor vote.

A Senate committee with all its Democratic members absent voted to limit filibusters of President Bush's judicial nominees Tuesday, a move Republicans hope will usher future federal judges through the Senate faster, even if Democrats want to stop them.

The Rules Committee officially voted 10-0 for the measure, which would reduce the number of senators needed to force a vote on a judicial nominee with each successive vote until only a 51-member majority is needed.

....Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota had another commitment he had to attend to, and Democrats did not organize a boycott of the vote, spokeswoman Ranit Schmelzer said.

The nine democrats who missed the meeting are: "...Daschle, ranking Rules Committee Democrat Chris Dodd of Connecticut, Robert Byrd of West Virginia, Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, Dianne Feinstein of California, Charles Schumer of New York, John Breaux of Louisiana, Mark Dayton of Minnesota and Richard Durbin of Illinois."

[link via How Appealing]

The Administration continually intones the national security mantra when trying to justify its secret policies. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court said that's okay in the case of the detainees, Center for National Security Studies v. DOJ . More caution is needed.

Via Victor at Balasubramania's Mania:

Timothy Lynch has an interesting Wash Post piece about a bid to reopen a half-century old case involving the government's withholding of information based on the national security rationale. The long and short of the story is that in that case a plaintiff sued under the Federal Tort Claims Act. In refusing to turn over certain documents the U.S. government claimed a national security privilege. The case resulted in a Supreme Court decision reaffirming the national security privilege (the government's right to withhold information based on national security interests). Years later, the national security claim was found to have been bogus (the documents contained nothing that could be reasonably characterized as classified). And now the plaintiffs are seeking to reopen the case. Interesting story that should serve to caution the courts and citizens against blindly accepting the national security rationale. According to Mr. Lynch, "[t]he only way to minimize . . . abuses is to treat legal claims of national security with a healthy dose of skepticism."

States are increasingly eliminating theirstatutes of limitations on crime.

The U.S. Supreme Court will tell California by June 30 whether a 205-year-old standard allows the state to prosecute a 74-year-old man on 48-year-old child molestation charges.

At least 10 states will be debating the removal of the statute of limitations on offenses in which DNA evidence is found at the crime scene. Another 20 states have passed similar laws since 2000. Eighteen states are deciding whether to remove time bars to pursue old child abuse cases. Another 12 states have done so.

On the federal level, the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, which amends the USA Patriot Act of 2001, eliminates or extends the statute of limitations on a wide variety of crimes.

A statute of limitations is essentially a time bar that prevents prosecution for crimes that were committed before a certain date. For example, in federal drug crimes, the statute of limitations is five years. If the police search your house and find drugs today, they have five years from today to charge you with a crime. After that, they are time-barred from prosecuting you.

The time bars ensure that law enforcement resources are efficiently used: when eyewitness memories are clearest and defendants' abilities to defend are most favorable. It is a common law concept that grew out of efforts by British royalty in the 1600s to persecute political dissenters by resurrecting old crimes and by criminalizing previously acceptable behavior.

The move by states to eliminate statutes of limitations corresponds to the advent of DNA testing. While DNA databases are being built, there are over 1 million untested samples. Many are from crimes in which the statute of limitations has expired.

We strongly object to the removal of statutes of limitation, on legal grounds. On a more gut level, we concur with this statement, quoted in the article:

"Are we so bloodthirsty that we have to right every conceivable wrong?" asked Lawrence S. Goldman, president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

"....Has our society become so victim-oriented that we concede to the government fundamental civil liberties so that we can have vengeance every day of every week?"

Yesterday the Supreme Court upheld an act of Congress requiring libraries to install filtering devices on computers that prevent users from accessing pornography sites, so long as the devices could be easily disabled by a librarian at the request of an adult.

In three sets of opinions, the splintered court held that forcing libraries to install anti-smut software does not violate the First Amendment rights of library patrons even though the filters also block out legitimate Web sites. The 6-3 ruling, which upholds a law passed three years ago, affects 119,000 libraries in the nation that receive federal funds, including many in the Bay Area.

....Library groups and patrons challenging the law protested that it also blocked out access to information on health, politics, gays and lesbians, and other legitimate Web sites.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that non-compliance with the law is punished by loss of federal funds. Libraries willing to forego federal funds don't have to install the devices.

Judith Krug, director of the Office of Intellectual Freedom for the American Library Association, predicted that many libraries might forgo federal funds rather than install the filters. Libraries -- including school libraries -- have received about $1 billion in federal funds in the last four years, about 1 percent of their total budget.

In San Francisco, Susan Hildreth, city librarian for the public library, said the library might give up the $240,000 it receives each year in federal funds, about half of the $430,000 the library budgets for telecommunications and Internet costs. Hildreth said that after Congress passed the filter law in 2000, San Francisco supervisors had adopted legislation that prohibits Internet filters being installed on computers used by adults or teenagers. "I don't believe our library commission or our Board of Supervisors would really be interested in the use of filters," she said.

What about poor communities that need the federal money?

"The impact of this will be much worse on poor communities rather than rich communities," said Christopher Hansen, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented the Santa Cruz public library and several other libraries and patrons challenging the law.