A new grass roots movement is underway to change Puerto Rico's status--it is the outgrowth of Ashcroft's insistence on seeking the death penalty in a gang-related murder case in which jury selection is now underway.

The last execution in Puerto Rico, a hanging, took place in 1927.

Two years later, Puerto Rico's legislature — like those throughout much of Latin America — outlawed the death penalty. The 1952 Constitution, which defined Puerto Rico's status as a self-governing commonwealth associated with the United States, reiterated the unconditional ban on capital punishment.

The federal death penalty trial of the gang members now underway has "brought objections from some islanders that the United States is behaving like a semicolonial ruler."

"We don't believe in capital punishment, and they are trying to impose it on us," said Arturo Luis Davila Toro, president of the Puerto Rican Bar Assn.

....some people in Puerto Rico, who are questioning whether the defendants belong in federal court at all, want the trial to become another rallying point for demanding a change in the island's status — just like the successful struggle to shut down the U.S. Navy's bombing range at Vieques island. Following a four-year campaign that landed more than 1,200 protesters behind bars, the Navy last month abandoned the lands it had held since World War II.

Professor Juan Pablo de Leon has developed an action plan:

As president of a citizens' committee opposing capital punishment, De Leon is planning to take the dispute over the San Juan trial before the United Nations. He also hopes the popular backlash will become so great that Puerto Rico's elected leaders will lobby Congress to exempt the island from the 1994 Federal Death Penalty Act.

"Behind this case is the reality of the relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States," he said.

Hey, how about this! We were just notified by True Majority.Org, run by Ben and Jerry's ice cream co-founder Ben Cohen, that TalkLeft has won a blogging award for being one of their top 25 favorite blogs. They are sending us a case of Ben and Jerry's ice cream.

"Your blogging rocks! We've been reading your stuff (and the work of others) and would like to give you a special treat from TrueMajority -- a case of tasty Ben & Jerry's ice cream. We were founded by Ben Cohen, the ice cream guy, and to recognize the work of our 25 favorite bloggers, Ben thought we should send out five pints of his best stuff to each of them. (via email)

Update: Congrats to our pal Eric over at Hamster who also was named in the top 25.

On the first anniversary of suspected "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla's detention in a military brig without access to counsel or charges, we recommend you read this speech by Judge Learned Hand from May 21, 1944 at the "I Am an American Day" ceremony held in Central Park, New York City. "Many thousands of people were present, including a large number of new citizens. Learned Hand's brief address was so eloquent and so moving that the text immediately became the object of wide demand. It was quickly printed and reprinted and also put into anthologies."

Here is but one great line:

Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it.

Jose Padilla, an American citizen, has been branded an "enemy combatant" and imprisoned for 13 months, 12 of which have been in sensory deprivation, all because of one man, Defense Department Advisor Michael Mobbs, and his two page declaration containing hearsay "intelligence."

[Received from Donald G. Rehkopf, Jr., Esq, co-chair of the Military Law Committee of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. Our thanks to Donna Newman and Andrew Patel, lawyers for Jose Padilla, for never giving up and continuing to fight for Mr. Padilla's rights.]

Here's the latest from today's Miami Herald.

Another reason to be skeptical of our government's ability to ferret out terrorists:

Feds: Bomb-Sniffing Dogs Didn’t

A L E X A N D R I A, Va., June 9 — A dog trainer is scheduled to go on trial today in Alexandria federal court, charged with providing the federal government with bomb-sniffing dogs that couldn't do their jobs.

Russell Ebersole, 43, who owns a kennel in Stephenson, is accused of defrauding the government of more than $700,000 and putting at risk the lives of thousands of federal workers whose workplaces his dogs guarded. Prosecutors claim that in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Ebersole provided federal agencies with bomb dogs that couldn't find bombs.

Shouldn't the feds have tested the dogs' abilities or required some kind of independent certification before putting them to work?

Another of Daily Kos's great ideas takes root--check out the DNC's new contribution page ePatriots--Kos says over $1,000 has been contributed in the past 40 minutes since he posted it on Daily Kos.

Daily Kos has worked with the Democratic Party to help narrow the GOP's massive cash advantage. Our nominee will emerge from the primaries bloodied and broke, only to run smack head into $200 million in GOP attack ads. The DNC recognizes the increasing power of the blogosphere, and was receptive when I approached them with a request -- give us the tools to help the party and our nominee defeat Bush. The end result? ePatriots. So donate now and help us retake our nation from Bush and his cabal. Your donations will be crucial to this effort.

Markos Moulitsas.

Get ready for another onslaught. This time, it's tiny devices known as Radio Frequency Identification Chips (RFIDs.) They are already in mass production.

Computer chips the size of grains of sand have become the latest trend among manufacturers seeking to track everything from automobiles to underwear to razor blades. The radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips now in mass production are affixed to postage-stamp-size labels.

The new technology can fix the exact location of virtually any consumer product and the humans who wear and carry the items. The radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips now in mass production are affixed to postage-stamp-size labels. Merchandisers, led by Wal-Mart, will soon use them to track goods inside the store. Shelf antennae will alert staff to restock products, or turn on surveillance cameras if shoplifting is suspected.

The implications of this technology, according to MIT, is "enormous."

The global infrastructure that MIT envisions is an Internet tool "that will make it possible for computers to identify any object anywhere in the world instantly. This network will not just provide the means to feed reliable, accurate, real-time information into existing business applications; it will usher in a whole new era of innovation and opportunity."

And that is what worries some privacy advocates, who fear the Big Brother technology attached to clothing will follow customers out of the store and be used to track people through the items they purchase.

A consumer watchdog group called Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion And Numbering (CASPIAN) is already boycotting Benneton's for putting RFID's on "smart labels" in...are you ready?...underwear.

It gets worse. The technology is capable of "X-ray vision, capable of reading personal items in handbags, brief cases and pockets.

The leading manufacturer so far is Alien Technology Corp. of California, which has a "contract from Gillette Co. to produce 500 million tags, at about 25 cents apiece, to track the firm's shaving products."

The Government is already hot on the trail of these pesky devices.

Some companies are already moving past consumer use and marketing the technology for military and homeland-security applications....ActiveWave says its RFID system can aid homeland security by real-time tracking of airport employees working in secure areas by their identification cards, and passengers by airline tickets. To expedite border crossing, the Homeland Security Department is already using the chips, embedded on identification cards.

[comments now closed]

The two reputedly highest Al Qaeda operatives in U.S. custody have denied working with Iraq. Bush has not released their statements.

Abu Zubaydah, a Qaeda planner and recruiter until his capture in March 2002, told his questioners last year that the idea of working with Mr. Hussein's government had been discussed among Qaeda leaders, but that Osama bin Laden had rejected such proposals, according to an official who has read the Central Intelligence Agency's classified report on the interrogation.

In his debriefing, Mr. Zubaydah said Mr. bin Laden had vetoed the idea because he did not want to be beholden to Mr. Hussein, the official said.

Separately, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the Qaeda chief of operations until his capture on March 1 in Pakistan, has also told interrogators that the group did not work with Mr. Hussein, officials said.

[link via Daily Kos, who by the way, along with his partner, has just been hired by the Howard Dean campaign. Dean's lucky to get them.]

Two grand juries are investigating the Houston crime lab scandal. Reports are surfacing that the grand jury wants to extend the probe to prosecutors involved in the prosecution of cases that involved tainted evidence.

Reportedly,

this reflects an awareness of a possible conflict of interest that the prosecutors face in the scandal over the laboratory's DNA unit, which was closed down in January after a state audit found widespread flaws in its work, including sloppy record-keeping, misinterpreted data and evidence contaminated by water from a leaky roof in the laboratory.

DNA legal experts Barry Scheck and William Thompson testified before the grand juries last week.

In an interview that morning, Mr. Scheck said, "The grand juries are running away because the district attorney, they realize, shouldn't be conducting this investigation in the first place because he has such terrible conflict issues."

All 22 state court judges asked the District Attorney to recuse himself. He refused.

On Saturday, The Houston Chronicle reported that Mr. Rosenthal and several of his assistants had been subpoenaed to testify before one of the grand juries and that, in a letter, the grand jury's foreman had asked Mr. Rosenthal to recuse himself from the investigation. Mr. Rosenthal again declined.

Can prosecutors fairly investigate the use of evidence in their own cases? Are grand jurors or legislators capable of fairly making scientific judgments? What sort of investigation is best suited for identifying crimes or freeing those who are wrongfully convicted?

One prisoner, Josiah Sutton, was cleared in March after the DNA that had been used to convict him of rape, based on tests by the Houston laboratory, was retested.

Hesiod at Counterspin Central brings us the inspirational story of an Egyptian civil rights activist who is using the legal system to effectuate change in his country.

Hessiod notes that:

The irony is that, at a time when our toadying, deferential courts are giving John Ashcroft and the Bush adminsitration a blank check to trample on our civil rights, activists like Abdel Mohsen Hammouda are actually IMPROVING civil liberties in a place like Egypt through the legal system.

It is also worth relaying this story if for no other reason than to point out that things CAN change in the authoritarian Middle East. No paternalistic invasions are necessary. Left to their own devices, the people will find a way.

Instapundit is right--it's odd that this criminal investigation into the Mississippi Judiciary is not getting more attention:

A web of connections exists between the judges, lawyers, politicians and investigators involved in a Mississippi judicial-corruption probe, raising questions about the fairness and thoroughness of the investigation and about possible conflicts of interest.

At issue is whether wealthy lawyers paid off loans for judges in exchange for favorable rulings. At stake is Mississippians' trust of the judiciary. The investigation is also a key battle in a nationwide tort-reform movement that often pits Democrats, who rely on trial lawyers for fund raising, against Republicans, who are under pressure from big business to limit jury awards in lawsuits.

Prosecutors and investigators have denied that politics has influenced the investigation. But The Sun Herald over the last year has uncovered a web of connections and flow of money among powerful people on all sides of the investigation....

Patriot Watch sends us to this LA Times article and outlines the new powers Ashcroft is seeking:

1. Broadening Material Support
2. Blanket Pre-Trial Detention of Suspected Terrorists
3. Harsher Sentencing and Expansion of the Death Penalty for Terrorists

It's up to all of us to see he fails. Read Law Professor David Cole's commentary in the Washington Post, We've Aimed, Detained and Missed Before :

Ashcroft wants to do more than capture and prosecute individuals who commit or conspire to commit terrorist acts. Understandably, he seeks to prevent the next atrocity from occurring. But the inspector general's report reveals the dangers of Ashcroft's approach. People were picked up on anonymous tips that "too many" Muslims worked in a convenience store, or that a Muslim neighbor kept odd hours, or simply because they were in a place the FBI visited during the investigation into Sept. 11. In the end, the attorney general was shooting in the dark, and virtually every shot missed.

Scientific researchers are moving past polygraphs and touting a new "science" called 'brain printing':

In the quest to build a better lie detector, scientists are seeking to go beyond the body's indirect signals to the very seat of deceit: the brain. One researcher has built a headband outfitted with lights and detectors able to "see" blood-flow changes in the brain. Another uses magnetic resonance imaging to snap several split-second pictures.

....Research subjects wearing the headband are told to answer some questions truthfully and others deceptively. At the moment a subject makes the decision to lie, before even uttering it, there's a milliseconds-long burst of blood flow. Those bursts are read by the sensors and show up as spikes on a laptop computer.

We agree with these critics:

"There's only one thing worse than a lie detector that doesn't work, and that's a lie detector that does work," said physicist Robert Park, a longtime polygraph critic. "It's the last invasion of privacy that you can imagine, and it frightens me that we seem to be almost able to do it."

....Barry Steinhardt, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's technology and liberty program, warns that none of the new technology has been proven to work like the scientists claim. But if it does, Steinhardt said, "then it would become another weapon in the arsenal of those who want to put us into a surveillance society where every action, every deed and one's very thoughts can be monitored, categorized and correlated."

[link via PatriotWatch]