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.

[comments now closed]

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.

DNA testing exonerates yet another man after twelve years of imprisonment, this time in Michigan. Congrats to the Innocence Project at Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Lansing for their hard work in freeing Kenneth Wyniemko.

Don't miss South Knox Bubba on a case involving alleged outrageous abuse of juveniles by the Forest Hill Baptist Church and its representatives in Blount County, Tennessee. Read the whole thing.

Don't miss Jim Capozzola of Rittenhouse Review on women bloggers. Every one he mentions is top notch.

As to his comments and praise for Lisa English of Ruminate This, we couldn't agree more. She is one special person and blogger. We e-mail with her frequently and put her at the very top of our list of bloggers for warmth, generosity of spirit and commitment to liberal values. (We also have nothing but compliments for Wampum Blog, we just haven't had occasion, as Jim has, to personally interact with Mary Beth Williams, its author. Now that we've read his remarks, we'll look for one.)

And a special thanks to Jim for including us in his list of favorite women bloggers. Here is his list--we recommend you read them all--in addition to Lisa and Mary Beth, whom Jim lists separately because they are so special to him:

Jeanne d’Arc of Body and Soul, Jeralyn Merritt of TalkLeft, Avendon Carol of The Sideshow, Madeleine Begun Kane of Mad Kane’s Notables and her other sites (be sure to visit ALL of them), Julia of Sisyphus Shrugged, Jane Finch of the Daily Rant, Susan Madrak of Suburban Guerrilla, Ann Salisbury of Two Tears in a Bucket, Devra of Blue Streak, Janet Petrik of Beyond Corporate, Susan of Easy Bake Coven, Kim Osterwalder of Free Pie, Teresa Nielsen Hayden of Making Light, Vanessa Gatsch of Plucky Punk’s Happy Land, Amy Carlton of RubberNun, the anonymous female writer of Doxagora, Elayne Riggs of Pen-Elayne, and Maru Suze of WTF Is It Now?, among others.

An edited transcript of the June 3 closed hearing before the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in the Moussaoui case has been released

The Government, in arguing to overturn the trial judge's order that Moussaoui must be allowed to interview Ramzi Binalshibh because he may have evidence that would helpful to Moussaoui's defense, told the Court that Moussaoui's involvement was greater than just September 11, and that Binalshibh would do more harm than good to Moussaoui's case.

We're skeptical of the first claim. A key issue at trial will be whether Moussaoui was involved in planning or participating in 9/11 at all --as opposed to a plan to engage in different and later activities.

Second, it's not up to the Government to assess Binalshibh's value as a whole to Moussaoui's case. It's their job to turn over any evidence that shows Moussaoui may not be guilty of the charged crime, may be guilty of a lesser crime, or, and this is important, may indicate that a lesser penalty is warranted.

The Government is seeking to execute Moussaoui. That Binalshibh may have provided information that inculpates Moussaoui is irrelevant to their duty to turn over anything he said that indicates Moussaoui is either innocent of the charged crimes, guilty of a lesser offense or not deserving of the death penalty .

Once they have turned over that information, it is up to Moussaoui and his lawyers to decide whether they want to develop the information further by interviewing Binalshibh, and then, whether they want to call Binalshibh as a trial witness.

The Fourth Circuit is one of the most conservative in the nation. Thus, we are not predicting the Government will lose this appeal. But it should.

The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) has given an award to the Office of Drug Policy Control's ridiculous marijuana ads. What were they smoking? Talk about spin....

Marijuana is the most widely used illicit drug among youth today. Research shows that marijuana can be addictive and can lead to a host of health, social, learning and behavioral problems at a crucial time in young lives.

Our take on the ads is here.