A California judge has sentenced a 16 year old to life in prison without the possibility of parole in a case in which no one died.

Antonio Nunez was 14 when he was arrested on April 25, 2001, and charged with kidnapping a Santa Ana businessman and shooting at police with an AK-47 semiautomatic weapon during a subsequent chase. No one was injured.

In addition to life without parole, Nunez received four additional life terms and 121 years for being found guilty of six counts of attempted murder of a police officer, assault, evading, street terrorism and committing crimes for the benefit of a street gang.

Defense attorney Joel Garson asked the judge to weigh "the mental maturity" of the youth, whose reading and math skills were purportedly at a second-grade level. Garson also claimed Nunez had a "very minor" past criminal history and a traumatic family life, including witnessing his brother's murder and parents who did not properly supervise him.

This troubles us. We should not give up on these kids. They are poor, disadvantaged and left behind in our society. We need to find a way to give every one of them an equal chance to succeed. We need to break the cycle. Life without parole is not the answer.

Scott Peterson's attorney has filed a motion to rescind the gag order issued earlier this week by the Judge in the Laci Peterson murder case. He also filed a motion seeking to have Gloria Allred, attorney for Peterson's former girlfriend, Amber Frey, held in contempt of court for violating the order.

Allred says she is not covered by the gag order. The order covers witnesses for the proseuction, of which her client undeniably is one, but it does not specifcially include lawyers representing such witnesses.

We're scheduled to debate the issue of the gag order with Gloria tomorrow on Fox News at 2:35 pm EST. If you're in the Denver area today, and have an AM radio nearby, we'll be discussing the role of the media in high-profile cases on KNRC radio with host Jean-Jacques de Mesterton from 2 to 3 pm--1150 am on the dial.

Sen. Jim Jeffords delivered this speech at the National Press Club on June 5, 2003 to commemorate the second anniversary of his decision to leave the Republican Party and become the Senate's only Independent. Check it out, it's a speech we've been waiting to hear a Democrat give, and we've seen almost no media coverage of it. Here are some quotes:

The promises of candidate Bush, who pledged to bring a new tone to Washington and packaged himself as a compassionate conservative, are unmet. On issue after issue the Bush administration is not what it claims to be. Since coming into office, the president has dragged the Republican Party into short-sighted positions that maximize short-term gain while neglecting the long-term needs of families and the nation.

President Bush hasn't just over-reached, he has set a new standard for extreme partisan politics that on many occasions has been supported by the Republican-controlled Congress.

In place of thoughtful policy we now have superficial and cynical sound-bites. Instead of confronting pressing national problems, our president lands airplanes while Rome burns.

Germany In 1933: The Easy Slide Into Fascism Bernard Weiner, Co-Editor, The Crisis Papers
June 9, 2003

If my email is any indication, a goodly number of folks wonder if they're living in America in 2003 or Germany in 1933.

All this emphasis on nationalism, the militarization of society, identifying The Leader as the nation, a constant state of fear and anxiety heightened by the authorities, repressive laws that shred constitutional guarantees of due process, wars of aggression launched on weaker nations, the desire to assume global hegemony, the merging of corporate and governmental interests, vast mass-media propaganda campaigns, a populace that tends to believe the slogans and lies it's fed without asking too many questions, a timid opposition that barely contests the administration's reckless adventurism abroad and police-state policies at home, etc. etc.

The parallels are not exact, of course; America in 2003 and Germany seventy ears earlier are not the same, and Bush certainly is not Adolf Hitler. But there are enough disquieting similarities in the two periods at least to see what we can learn -- cautionary tales, as it were -- and then figure out what to do with our knowledge. ...

A good share of what we know about how this happened in Germany usually comes to us many years later from post-facto books, looking backward to the horror. There are very few examples of accounts written from the inside at the very time the events were unfolding.

One such book is " Defying Hitler," by the noted German journalist/author Sebastian Haffner. ... "Defying Hitler" is a brilliantly written social document, begun (and ended abruptly) in 1939; even though it fills in the reader on German history from the First World War on, its major focus is on the year 1933, when, as Hitler assumed power, Haffner was a 25-year-old law student, in-training to join the German courts as a junior administrator.

The AP is reporting that California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown (San Francisco) is a likely replacement for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Who's Janice Rogers Brown?

In many ways, her line of thinking mirrors both the Bush administration and recent U.S. Supreme Court precedent. A Christian black woman from the segregated South, Brown supports limits on abortion rights and corporate liability, routinely upholds the death penalty and opposes affirmative action.

...she formulates opinions "in prayer and quiet study of the Bible." And in her commencement address, she criticized philosophers and scientists for trying to mold society "as if God did not exist."

....But when it comes to the death penalty, Brown routinely affirms death sentences. Two years ago, she wrote that "murderers do not deserve a fate better than that inflicted on their victims."

The White House, which is trying to expand the use of federal death penalty statutes, declined comment on rumors that its lawyers have interviewed Brown in the event a seat on the high court opens.

Howard Bashman of How Appealing, who probably gets more inside dirt on the issue of appellate judges than the rest of us combined, thinks Brown is a likely replacement.

Justice Brown does not have a friendly record to the criminally accused. consider this from 1996:

We're sorry we missed this--FBI Director Robert Mueller spoke at the ACLU Meeting in Washington Friday--1.400 members were present--and he got good marks.

We don't know what he said besides the few quips reported in the article, but we give Mueller a lot of credit for showing up and for saying he wants to keep a dialogue open on civil liberties issues. Unlike Ashcroft, he didn't unconditionally defend the treatment of immigrants post-9/11 even in face of the recent Inspector General Report. To the contrary, he said he expected the FBI to adopt many of the report's recommendations.

Oliver Willis reports that the FBI is negotiating with the Taliban...Jesse at Pandagon and Jim Henley have more.

Great news from Binghamton. Jury votes life in death penalty case.

This case--US v MATTHEWS--is one in which the local US ATTY recommended against the death penalty and John Ashcroft overruled him and directed a capital prosecution. Jury selection commenced on February 2, 2003. Along the way--after 6 weeks of jury selection--the government conceded that one of the three co-D's was mentally retarded and withdrew the death notice. Today, after 4 1/2 difficult and expensive months in trial the jury returned life verdicts in the cases of the 2 capital defendants.

Big time congratulations to lawyers Carl Herman of New Jersey and Gaspar Castillo, Albany, New York, on a job magnificently done. Raspberries to Ashcroft who foolishly wasted a zillion dollars of Tom DeLay's money and the valuable time of a truly fine federal district court judge (Thomas A. McAvoy).

Terry Kindlon, Albany Criminal Defense Attorney

Albuquerqe, New Mexico passed what has been called the toughest sex offender registration law in the country. It was struck down as unconsitutional Friday.

[the law] banished pedophiles, rapists and other former sex criminals from the city.
The law required sex offenders to register with police and notify employers and landlords of their criminal history. The measure also prevented sex offenders from living within 1,000 feet of a school and required them to give police DNA samples and imprints of feet and teeth, if asked.

The law had been passed by the Albuquerque city council and signed by the mayor. It will not go into effect.

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So you thought the war in Iraq was over?

U.S. forces killed 27 Iraqi fighters in a ground and air pursuit Friday after the Iraqis attacked an American tank patrol north of Baghdad, the military said. The fighting came as U.S. forces pressed forward with a massive, four-day-old sweep to crush resistance by supporters of Saddam Hussein's regime north of Baghdad.

U.S. Central Command said an "organized group" ambushed the tanks with rocket propelled grenades in Balad, about 35 miles from the capital on the main highway north. The statement made no mention of U.S. casualties.

There are 40 millionaires in the U.S. Senate--22 Republicans, 18 Democrats, 6 women. Check out the list here.

As to presidential hopefuls, here's a partial breakdown:

Among the 2004 Democratic White House hopefuls who are serving in the Senate, Kerry reported the most holdings. But Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina was not hurting. He reported a net worth ranging from $12.8 million to $60 million. Sen. Bob Graham of Florida reported holdings of $7.7 million to $31.6 million, and Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut had an estimated net worth of $482,000 to $1.8 million.

Update: Bill and Hillary did pretty well too. They deserve to....the groundless investigation into Whitewater by the Independent Counsel cost them over $7 million in legal fees already paid out and between $1.7 and $6 million more that they still owe. Under the independent counsel statute, they are entitled to be reimbursed by the Government for their legal fees because they weren't indicted.

The independent counsel statute in effect was 28 U.S.C. Section 553, which provided:

(f) Attorneys' fees.

(1) Award of fees. Upon the request of an individual who is the subject of an investigation conducted by an independent counsel pursuant to this chapter, the division of the court may, if no indictment is brought against such individual pursuant to that investigation, award reimbursement for those reasonable attorneys' fees incurred by that individual during that investigation which would not have been incurred but for the requirements of this chapter. The division of the court shall notify the independent counsel who conducted the investigation and the Attorney General of any request for attorneys' fees under this subsection.

We hope the Bill and Hillary and in particular, attorney David Kendall, get every last penny of their legal fees paid by the Government.

Sunday is the first anniversary of the conversion of TalkLeft to a blog. Here is our first post.

Thanks to all of you who have read TalkLeft this year and written about it. We've had 625,000 visitors, and 1 million page views.

Just today we were notified by our hosting company that our bandwidth must be increased to 5 GB a month and our server space to 300 mg. We're not sure what those numbers mean (only what they cost)-- but we take it as a sign our popularity is increasing. So we're glad.

We also have some special thanks to extend: Daily Kos for the site design of TalkLeft--Kos spent an untold number of hours creating the site in MT so we could leave blogger behind; Eric Alterman of Altercation and Instapundit for mentioning us very early on and frequently enough to get noticed; Atrios for sending loads of hits our way.

And Cursor, Media Horse, Buzzflash, Tapped and Common Dreams for linking to us on their excellent sites.