If you're for Martha, and want to express yourself, here's how, according to this article from Reuters:

John Small, who founded the Save Martha Web site, wrote: "What Martha Stewart did is the corporate equivalent of jaywalking, but they are treating her like she's guilty of genocide!"

Love Martha? Think she's been mistreated? Head to www.savemartha.com to tell the Internet world. Want to spread the message further? Spend a few bucks on a "Save Martha" mug, T-shirt, apron or chef's hat.

Shareholders ...were asked to weigh in on Tuesday as they made their way to Martha Stewart Living's annual meeting in midtown Manhattan. Outside the building, dozens of photographers, reporters, producers and cameramen swarmed about, shouting questions or snapping pictures.

"Is Stewart guilty?" [a shareholder named] Sawka was asked by someone in a crowd of reporters. "I'm no Gypsy, but I still say 'Go Martha!"' responded Sawka, who had taken a bus from Connecticut to attend her first shareholder meeting.

Martha's lawyer, Robert Morvillo, says she will fight all the way and go to trial. We're glad to hear it. Fight, Martha, Fight. [that's what our tee-shirt would say.]

P.S. For a serious account of the Stewart news today, here is the morning AP story. We think the Government would be wise to forego the insider trading charge and limit the indictment to obstruction of justice. It's less technical and we think there will be less public resentment.

We're also troubled by the witness against her --her former stockbroker who is singing for his supper--you can't trust testimony when it's purchased with promises of freedom or leniency. We'll be looking to see who else, if anyone, provides evidence Martha sold the ImClone stock because she knew it was going to tank. Sam Waksal sure didn't.

For those of you who represent high-rollers, or who want to, here's a new and favorable decision from a New York Judge :

Conversations between a public relations firm and lawyers for the target of a grand jury investigation are protected by the attorney-client privilege, as long as they relate to the handling of the client's legal problems, a federal judge in New York ruled in the case of an unnamed company's high-profile legal troubles. The privilege can also extend to talks between the target and the PR firm that are "for the purpose of obtaining legal services."

Hillary Clinton's memoirs hit the bookshelves Monday. The New York Times details the section about her learning her husband had an affair with Monica Lewinsky:

Mrs. Clinton said that at first she accepted her husband's story that he had befriended Ms. Lewinsky when she asked for job-hunting help, "had talked to her a few times" and that the relationship had been misconstrued. "For me, the Lewinsky imbroglio seemed like just another vicious scandal manufactured by political opponents," she wrote.

More than six months later, with the president preparing to testify before a grand jury, Mrs. Clinton was adamant that he had done nothing wrong and was the victim of a "vast right-wing conspiracy." Then, on Saturday, Aug. 15, 1998, he woke her, paced by the bed and "told me for the first time that the situation was much more serious than he had previously acknowledged."

"He now realized he would have to testify that there had been an inappropriate intimacy," Mrs. Clinton wrote. "He told me that what happened between them had been brief and sporadic."

Congratulations to our friend and fellow NACDL member James Thomas on the acquittal of his client on the terrorism charge in the Detroit sleeper cell terror case. This is the first national terrorism case to make it to a jury.

Ahmed Hannan, 34, was acquitted of conspiracy to support terrorism, and was found guilty of the non-terror-related charge of conspiracy to engage in fraud and misuse of visas, permits and other documents. He was acquitted on two other fraud counts. Two of the other three defendants were convicted on the terrorism charge. A fourth defendant was acquitted entirely.

The Government alleged the four defendants were part of a sleeper cell, and had conspired to get weapons and fake identification for religious zealots and blow up U.S. targets. Defense lawyers argued the government had twisted innocent actions into something much more sinister. You can read a synopsis of the case here.

From the Washington Post, March 27 (available on lexis.com):

"These guys were of Arab descent, and they were immediately suspect," said James Thomas, Hannan's lawyer....The case has become nationally significant, because the Detroit suspects are the first to face terrorism-related charges before a jury.

Several other cases have ended in plea agreements, such as those of the Buffalo Six and James Ujaama.

Denver, the nation's 25th largest city, elected a new mayor today--John Hickenlooper --a brew pub owner with little experience in politics. We had the opportunity to meet him last week at a local tv station when his show was ending as our's was beginnng. He was charming. He charmed us. He won easily, with 65% of the vote.

Hickenlooper, 51, who owns eight restaurants, touted his experience in business and inexperience in politics, saying he will bring fresh new approaches to governing and leading the city out of an economic slump. Recent surveys showed his message appealed to voters across all geographic, ethnic and political lines.

The new mayor will have to deal with an economic slump that has cost residents 35,000 jobs over the past 18 months. He also will have to find a way to cope with a $50 million budget gap predicted for next year.

Congrats to Mayor-elect Hickenlooper, we wish you well.

Teresa Lewis, 34, pleaded guilty to murder in Virginia and the judge sentenced her to die. If she had gone to trial, her penalty would have been what?

The last woman executed in Virginia was in 1912--a 17 year old. There are no other women on death row in the state, but there are 48 on death row nationwide, as of April 1, according to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.

Bump and Update: Well, it didn't go too smoothly, we're rebuilding all our 3,000+ posts now. If you can't post comments or access anything on the site, please email us at talkleft@aol.com.

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Well, we're doing it again--changing servers. Hopefully it will go smoother this time and there shouldn't be any down time. But if you have trouble accessing TalkLeft tomorrow, at least you'll know why.

The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL), through President Lawrence Goldman, issued the following press release today regarding the Inspector General's report concerning treatment of post-9/11 detainees:

Without checks and balances, fairness is elusive

Inspector General report on post-9/11 detentions highlights result of denial of effective oversight

Washington D.C.—In response to yesterday's release of a report on the treatment of post-9/11 detainees by the Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Justice, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers president Lawrence Goldman issued the following statement:

"This is what happens when the checks and balances of a democratic system of justice-- the press, the courts, and lawyers for the accused--are excluded.

"Where normally scrutiny by the media, presentation of exculpatory information by defense counsel, and assessment of evidence by judges minimizes wrongful detentions, in this case the Justice Department fought all three oversight mechanisms tooth and nail. Instead, the DOJ asked the American people to trust it to do justice. Its own Inspector General's report demonstrates that government in secret does not foster justice.

"The clear lesson is that the government, in its understandable and laudable resolve to protect our security, cannot be relied on to protect our basic rights and liberties. Public scrutiny and the protections of our court system are necessary to ensure elemental fairness."

Drug stamp taxes aren't new. But Iowa is making a killing on them. They've added some new twists and are raking in the dough.

Iowa law taxes all illegal drugs - from marijuana to cocaine. The state issues stamps, which vary in cost and color according to the drug, to be affixed to the drug to show the tax has been paid.

The stamps cost $5 a gram for marijuana, $750 per marijuana plant, $250 a gram for other drugs and $400 per 10 doses of drugs that come in tablet form, such as ecstasy. The minimum charge is $215.

Some may get a good chuckle out of the idea of drug users trotting down to the revenue department to buy a tax stamp - only seven batches of stamps have been sold (none were sold last year) - but the state is making a small fortune off of those who get caught without them.

In 2002, Iowa took in $1.3 million in drug stamp tax penalties and revenues.

In Iowa, failure to affix a drug stamp is punishable by up to five years in prison and a $7,500 fine - for those who aren't habitual offenders. The civil penalty is two times what the person would have paid to get a stamp; interest accrues at 7 percent a year from the day of assessment.

23 other states have a drug stamp tax but have not figured out how to implement it, without running into a probem with the fifth amendment privilege against self-incrimination. In Iowa, it's not an issue: the purchasers of the stamps remain anonymous.

"If someone came in and purchased and it was obvious that they were making a purchase to actually put on their drugs, drug containers, we would not" call authorities, which the law prohibits, Mulvey said. "People come in to make a purchase, we keep our mouths shut

Iowa also wastes no money going after the indigent. They don't pursue those in prison or without assets. They did get $119k out of a college president. And they don't collect on out of state residents.

Protestors of the tax sound a familiar refrain: "No taxation without legalization."

Marijuana activist James Getman... attended "The Greater Mississippi River Valley Tea Party" held in Rock Island, Ill., about 10 years ago to protest the tax. "It was like the Boston tea party, we (were) rebelling against an unjust tax," said Getman, director of Iowa Norml, a nonprofit organization supporting the reform of marijuana laws.

However, Getman said, the group did not throw marijuana into the river in protest.

Martha Stewart's attempts to get higher-ups at the Justice Department to intervene with the U.S. Attorneys' Office in New York has failed. Justice Department officials refused to meet with her representatives.

Experts say it is likely the local federal proseuctors made Stewart a final plea offer, and that she wanted to go above them. They speculate the offer could involve jail time.

The terms of the proposed settlement have not been made public. But the government has been veering away from insider trading charges to the lesser offence of obstructing an investigation, according to people familiar with negotiations.

That would still have serious consequences: federal sentencing guidelines mean that Ms Stewart could face prison time. A criminal plea would also prevent her from serving as an officer of her publicly-held company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia.

The case could be settled this week. The prosecutors might yet elect to refer the case to the SEC for civil charges. We hope so. We can't imagine any benefit to the public of Ms. Stewart going to jail. Good luck, Martha.

Update: Several readers posted comments to this post, they got lost in the server move. Sorry about that. If you feel like, post some more.

[comments closed]

Here is more on the findings of the Inspector General's report released today concerning the Justice Department's treatment of immigrants following 9/11:

In general, the report found, every aspect of the system conspired to detain for long periods people who might have, at other times, been released on bond while they awaited hearings or quickly deported.

The war on terror," said Anthony D. Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, "quickly turned into a war on immigrants."
The government used every procedural device at its disposal, the report said, including some of questionable legality, to ensure that people charged with immigration violations in connection with the attacks were not released until the Federal Bureau of Investigation "determined they posed no danger to the United States." They included delays in informing detainees of the charges against them, opposing bond and continuing detention long after judges ordered the detainees deported.

The general policy, which the Justice Department called "hold until cleared," might as well have been called "guilty until proven innocent," civil libertarians said. "It confirms our worst fears about what was going on," Professor Cole said. "At the highest levels of the Justice Department, the government made a conscious effort to exploit the immigration laws to lock up hundreds of people who ultimately proved to have no connection to terrorism whatsoever."

We'll end here with this finding:

The conditions under which some detainees were held, the report found, were quite harsh, particularly at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where 84 people were detained. Detainees and one corrections officer said it was common for officers to slam inmates against walls before videotaping their statements. Some were housed in brightly lighted cells around the clock. (emphasis supplied)

Once again, you can read the entire report here . A six page summary of the report bythe Justice Department is here. Our post earlier today on the report is here. Excerpts from the report are here.

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals will hear argument tomorrow on Zacarias Moussoui's claim that the Government has to allow him to interview captured Al Qaeda suspect (and alleged 9/11 coconspirator) Ramzi Binalshibh because Binalshibh has information that would show Moussaoui was not part of the 9/11 conspiracy with which he is charged. If convicted of that conspiracy, Moussaoui could get the death penalty.

Documents released today show that the trial judge, Lonnie Brinkema, has previously found that Binalshibh's testimony "could undermine the government's prosecution of Zacarias Moussaoui and possibly prevent his execution."

The Justice Department has previously said Mr. bin al-Shibh, a Yemeni in his 30's, was the go-between for Mr. Moussaoui and the Sept. 11 hijackers.

But it is seeking to deny Mr. Moussaoui access to Mr. bin al-Shibh as a defense witness, asserting that an interview would endanger national security secrets and interrupt the government's campaign to pre-empt new terrorist attacks.

Judge Brinkema said in her opinion that in trying to deny Mr. Moussaoui access to captured terrorists , the Justice Department was seeking a "categorical, `wartime' exemption" to the Constitution's Sixth Amendment protections of criminal suspects, including their right to seek testimony from witnesses who might help prove their innocence.

She made clear she believed there was no such exemption, saying, "When the government elected to bring Moussaoui to trial in this civilian tribunal, it assumed the responsibility of abiding by well-established principles of due process. The government's good-faith interest in protecting national security does not categorically override a defendant's right to a fair trial."

In comments that could be referring to Mr. bin al-Shibh, Judge Brinkema said she was "fully satisfied" that testimony from at least one Qaeda figure now in American custody would be "both material and exculpatory" if believed by Mr. Moussaoui's jury.

We have written about Binalshibh and his relationship to Moussaoui since Binalshibh's capture. You can access all our posts here.

If the Government loses, it will likely drop its federal prosecution of Moussaoui and have him tried before a military tribunal. This was supposedly Ashcroft's showcase trial, the one that would establish that the U.S. could try terrorists in civilian courts.

The government and others boasted that Moussaoui would receive swift justice in an open courtroom as a showcase for the world about the fairness of the U.S. judicial system. Now those same people say privately that the system has been turned on its head.