Former Senator Gary Hart has an excellent op-ed in today's Boston Globe: Where is Bush Leading Us? We'll quote a little, but go read the whole thing.

....when the Bush administration decided to go after terrorism everywhere it fundamentally defined a new role for America in the world.

Iraq represented no immediate or unavoidable threat to the United States. We overthrew its government because key Bush administration officials convinced the president it was the next step in the war on terrorism. But they had decided Saddam Hussein must go a full decade before 9/11. The destruction of the World Trade towers, which Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with, simply gave them the excuse to resurrect an old agenda.

But the war on terrorism is now the excuse for America to assume imperial powers and to employ those powers even when our traditional allies oppose our actions....All this has transpired in the space of a few months without congressional hearings or review, any comprehensive statement by the administration, serious editorial discussion, or public debate over this new foreign policy. Throughout American history major departures in foreign policy have been the occasion for lively, even contentious debate. This has not been the case as the war on terrorism morphed into the centerpiece of a new imperial foreign policy.

[Thanks to Eric at Hamster for the link.]

Daily Kos and Nathan Newman debunk the GOP on 'states' rights'.

We agree. As the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers ( NACDL) points out in its Legislative Priorities:

In recent years, crime bills have granted federal prosecutors greater and greater authority by creating more federal crimes out of historically state and local crimes. For example, domestic violence, carjacking and failure to pay child support are traditionally the prerogative of state and local governments; federal jurisdiction is unwarranted, unwise and contrary to the Constitution. Regarding these and other federalized crimes, Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist observed that "one senses from the context in which they were enacted that the question of whether the states were doing an adequate job in this particular area was never seriously asked."

Before enacting federal criminal legislation, Congress should consider whether a federal interest is implicated and whether the state or local remedy is inadequate to address that interest. The impact on federal law enforcement and court resources should also be assessed.

For anyone not familiar with the term, "states' rights" refers to:

...a doctrine based on the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, which states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” The term embraces both the doctrine of absolute state sovereignty that was espoused by John C. Calhoun and that of the so-called strict constructionist interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, which reserves to the state governments all powers not specifically granted by that document to the federal government.

The Rave Act takes hold in Montana--read this email from a NORML member.

Well, you may or have not heard by now but the Rave Act has hit very close to home. On the 30th of May the Billings chapter of Montana NORML/SSDP had organized a highly publicized and expensive benefit concert featuring a number of local acts, the proceeds from which would have gone to help the medical marijuana campaign in Montana in 2004. Unfortunately, not only did my probation officer arrest me the day before, but the DEA came and shut things down the day of. The reason being of course that due to the RAVE Act anyone caught on the premisis with marijuana would automatically subjects our generous venue to a fine of $250,000.

Not only did this cause us to lose money, hope, and face, but it will seriously endanger the chance of trying anything like this again in Billings. What the hell happened to my first amendment?

The famous and mysterious blogger from Iraq, Salam Pax, is real. Journalist and author Peter Maas says Pax worked for him in Iraq as an interpreter and guide. [link via Instapundit]

Update: Salam Pax will be writing a bi-weekly column in the Guardian, beginning Wednesday. [link via Demagogue] You can read a profile of Salam here.

What's wrong with this picture, asks the National Coalition Against the Death Penalty?

Seven of the eight people facing serious execution dates in June are African American or Latino, demonstrating unfair bias in the way the death penalty is applied, the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty said today.

Between June 5 and June 27, eight people face serious execution dates in the states of Indiana, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas and Utah. (A ninth person, Troy Kell of Utah, also has an execution date pending but is expected to receive a stay.) Of the eight people with serious dates, six are African American, one is Latino and one is white.

This just in:

DOJ Inspector General Thrown In Brig With Padilla, Hamdi Ashcroft, Rumsfeld Mum

Dateline: Washington, D.C.
June 2, 2003 3:24 p.m.

A few hours after the Justice Department's Inspector General, Glenn A. Fine, issued a 239-page report critical of the FBI and the INS in their handling of post-9/11 detainees, black helicopters landed on the lawn in front of Fine's office building. Minutes later Fine was bundled into one of the choppers by black-clad troopers. "They just barged in and grabbed him," sobbed Fine's secretary.

Responding to reporters' questions, White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer confirmed that Mr. Fine has been designated an "enemy combatant" and would be detained without charges (and without the right to counsel) for the duration of the war on terror. "We can't afford to take any chances," stated Fleischer. "We took a second look at his resume and realized he had studied abroad at Oxford, in the U.K. Now, the Al Qaeda shoe bomber, Richard Reid, was also from the U.K., so you can see the obvious connection. If and when Mr. Fine is cleared of any and all connections with Mr. Reid and Al Qaeda, we will consider releasing him. But it could take a while to sort this all out."

Attorney General John Ashcroft and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, at an undisclosed location with Vice President Chaney, declined to comment.

* NOTE: This is a parody, courtesy of Immigration Lawyer Dan Kowalski -- but you weren't really sure, were you?

Today in Mother Jones: Forgotten in Memorial by Chris Appy

President Bush's Memorial Day address was suitably reverent, paying tribute to those Americans who have died fighting for their country. But, as Chris Appy writes, the president's rhetoric seems out of step with his administration's actual practice. Appy, who has been compiling an oral history of the Vietnam war, notes that the White House and the mainstream media seem to have little interest in keeping count of the GI's who continue to die in Iraq -- never mind the Iraqi civilians.

Bump and Update: The report is out and available here.
A six page summary of the report by DOJ is here. Time Magazine examines the report here.

Certain employees of the Justice Department have been advised to hire lawyers to defend them in a spate of lawsuits that could be filed shortly by people who were detained in the wake of 9/11.

CNN files this report.

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A new report by the Justice Department's investigatory arm, the Office of Inspector General, is scheduled for release Monday on "allegations by civil rights groups and private attorneys that those detained [in the aftermath of September 11] were being deprived of their rights."

The reported findings:

...Immigration and law-enforcement authorities were indifferent to civil rights in the frenzied effort to investigate suspects and to avoid another catastrophe, according to people familiar with the inquiry.

....One conclusion, according to a Justice Department official, is that several dozen people were held beyond the 90-day Immigration and Naturalization Service deadline for deporting or releasing detainees.

The official said that in some cases, the report concludes that the delays were the product of bureaucratic bungling. The official also said, however, that a number of violations may have been ''deliberate.''

[thanks to Patriot Watch for finding the link to the report]

The feds will try accused bomber Eric Rudolph first in Alabama, then in Atlanta.

Attorney General John Ashcroft said the legal maneuver of trying the single case in Alabama before three others in Georgia will ''provide the best opportunity to bring justice to all of the victims of the bombings and to each community that experienced these attacks.''

....Rudolph faces six charges of using an explosive against a facility in interstate commerce and could face the death penalty. Besides the Olympic and Birmingham bombings, he is accused of 1997 bombings in Atlanta outside a gay nightclub and an office building that housed an abortion clinic. In all, two people were killed and about 150 injured in the four attacks.

Rudolph's former sister-in-law described some of his beliefs on Good Morning America this morning.

Former sister-in-law Deborah Rudolph, who helped develop a profile for investigators, told ABC's ''Good Morning America'' that Rudolph believed that whites should further their race and opposed abortion because it was killing, in his view, too many white babies. And he had particularly harsh feelings about Jews, she said.

'I think he hated the Jews more than probably any other race,'' she said. ''He felt that, you know, they've been run out of every country they've ever been in. They've destroyed every country they've ever been in. They have too much control in our country. ''

You can read the Alabama Indictment against him here.

Update: "The Republican-led Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 to allow the broadcast networks to own television stations that reach a combined 45 percent of the national audience, up from 35 percent. "

*********
The FCC is set to vote today on revamping media ownership rules. The fight isn't over even if the media prevails.

The FCC is expected to vote today to ease long-standing rules governing ownership of newspapers, TV and radio stations. The rules limit the number of TV stations a company can own, prevent big networks from merging and prohibit companies from owning newspapers and broadcast stations in the same market.

Today's vote will likely fall along party lines, with the three Republican commissioners indicating they support lifting some ownership limits, including a ban on one company owning newspapers and broadcast stations in the same city. The two Democratic commissioners are opposed....But deregulation opponents say they have no intention of letting the fight end today. They plan to battle on in the courts, and on Capitol Hill.

Consumer groups claim the issue is gaining traction with growing numbers of Americans of all political persuasions. Those groups have been sounding the alarm about the threat of concentration of media power in fewer corporate hands....Unlikely bedfellows on both sides of the political fence are rallying against the changes - from the National Rifle Association and the Family Research Council to the CodePink women's peace movement and the National Organization for Women.

``We're immediately going to mobilize and focus on Congress,'' said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. ``It says an awful lot when groups both on the left and right think the media is too tightly controlled and are fearful that their voices aren't being heard.''

Lisa English of Ruminate This has been covering this issue from top to bottom. Go over and read how you can join the fight and be heard. She provides all the tools. As Lisa says, "These are our airwaves, let them know we've only begun to fight."

From Atrios we learn that we've won--we've finally overtaken Russia. The U.S. now has the largest prison population largest in world .

We have over 2 million in jail. That comes to 702 prisoners per 100,000 population.

On a per capita basis, according to the best available figures, the United States has three times more prisoners than Iran, four times more than Poland, five times more than Tanzania and seven times more than Germany.

The Justice Department reports that one in eight black men in their 20s and early 30s were behind bars last year, compared with 1 in 63 white men. The chance of a black man going to prison in his lifetime is one in three, the department says.

The Sentencing Project says a major cause is the war on drugs. Whereas in 1980, there were 40,000 in jail for drug crimes, now there are 450,000, "three-fourths of them black or Latino, though drug use is no higher in those groups than among whites."

(If you want more than the dry statistics, go over and read Atrios on this, he is right on the money and he'll make you laugh out loud.)

Eric Rudolph was arrested in North Carolina. He is suspected of being responsible for the bomb placed at the Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, Georgia in 1996 that killed one person and injured another 100 people. He is also a suspect in the 1998 bombing of the New Woman All Women Health Care clinic in Birmingham, Alabama that killed a police officer and maimed a nurse.

So where will he be tried first, Alabama or Georgia? The decision is going to be up to Attorney General Ashcroft. But Alabama officials are lobbying mightily to have him tried first in Alabama.

"My view is that the Atlanta case depends on the Birmingham evidence. There was nothing to link him to the Atlanta bombing before Birmingham," said former U.S. Attorney Doug Jones.

Jones, who was the top federal prosecutor in north Alabama at the height of the manhunt, said the Janet Reno Justice Department agreed years ago to try Rudolph in Birmingham first because officials felt the evidence here was stronger.

With a new regime in charge at the Justice Department, any prior agreements have been scrapped. Ashcroft has asked prosecutors in Atlanta and Birmingham to submit memos to him to assist him in making the final decision.

We're not sure it makes that much of a difference. The Government will go with the case that has the strongest direct evidence linking Rudolph to the crimes. This isn't like the sniper case where Ashcroft shopped for the forum most likely to impose the death penalty. Since Rudolph will be tried in federal court, the laws and the sentencing guidelines are the same. It would be a black eye for the Government to try him in a jurisdiction and lose. So look for Ascroft to pick the stronger case to try first from an evidentiary standpoint--regardless of which district has the greater emotional investment in a conviction.

The Washington Post has more on the upcoming decision here.

The Justice Department can -- and likely will -- seek the death penalty for Rudolph, regardless of where he is tried.....A Justice Department official said that Ashcroft will base his decision on where to try Rudolph first on the strength of the evidence in all the cases. "Where do we have the strongest evidence?" he said.

The Post also examines whether Rudolph was a "Christian Terrorist."

The question is not just whether Rudolph is a terrorist, or whether he considers himself a Christian. It is whether he planted bombs at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, two abortion clinics and a gay nightclub to advance a religious ideology -- and how numerous, organized and violent others who share that ideology may be.