Some more egg on Ashcroft's face with the outcome of this - Portland, Oregon terror case:

Eight months ago, Sheik Mohamed Abdirahman Kariye, 41, was arrested at the airport in Portland, Ore. while he and his family were waiting to catch a flight.

Agents said at the time that a check of his luggage revealed traces of explosive residue, and he was linked to a number of allegedly pro-Taliban worshipers at the mosque, which The Oregonian said Friday was attended by the most fundamentalist members of Portland's Muslim community.

Here's the final outcome: 5 years probation and a $1,000. fine for "for fudging an application for state health insurance" by "falsifying his income in order to enroll in a health insurance program for low-income Oregon residents."

Kariye's lawyer had this to say after the sentencing:

"Shame on Washington," Cohen told reporters outside the Portland courthouse. "This is an administration with a lot of flair and no substance."

The lethal cocktail of intravenous drugs given to Tennessee death row inmates to kill them is the subject of a new court challenge. At a court hearing Thursday, Lawyers for Abu-Ali Abdur'Rahman argued that the combination of successive injections of sodium pentothal, Pavulon and potassium chloride, is a flawed process that can result in a tortuous execution, amounting to cruel and inhumane treatment.

The drug under attack is Pavulon, which paralyzes the recipient's muscles so that he cannot respond.

University of Tennessee veterinarian, Dr. Dennis Geiser, testified that Pavulon is not fit for use in putting down a household pet.

....[He] described how Pavulon makes it impossible to tell whether an animal is, in fact, conscious or unconscious and therefore is not approved for use by Tennessee veterinarians for euthanizing domesticated animals.

The drugs are administered in this order: sodium pentothal, then Pavulon to stop the breathing and finally potassium chloride to stop the heart.

Another expert testified that Pavulon is unnecessary in the execution process. A woman who received the drug during an operation testified:

...about what it is like to be paralyzed while surgeons — who wrongly assumed she was unconscious — operated on her eye. Carol Wiehrer described the scorching pain and experience of being awake at her own operation as ''worse than death.'' She was not able to tell the doctors that she was awake.

An expert anaesthesiologist testified that:

...he became intrigued by the lethal-injection protocol when convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was put to death. Heath said he thought then it was odd to use Pavulon and was alarmed when witnesses reported that McVeigh's eyes began tearing during the execution, a ''hallmark sign'' that he was either conscious or under light anesthesia — and not unconscious as expected.

Surely there must be a better way--we suggest choosing life.

We hope this story gets legs:

The top U.S. Marine commander in Iraq said Friday that U.S. intelligence was "simply wrong" in its assessment that Saddam Hussein intended to unleash chemical or biological weapons against U.S. forces during the war, but he stopped short of saying there was an overall intelligence failure.

If that's true, the Bush Administration's ineptitude is simply astounding.

Hessiod at Counterspin and Daily Kos have more.

Photographs have been found that suggest Iraqi soldiers were tortured by British troops.

A British soldier was arrested today after he left a roll of film at a photo store that appeared to show an Iraqi prisoner being tortured, the Defense Ministry said today.

The film depicted a bound and gagged Iraqi inside a net that was suspended from a forklift, according to The Sun, which first reported the story this morning. The Sun also reported that the roll included pictures of soldiers performing sex acts near Iraqi prisoners.

The story came to light after a lab technician who was developing the film alerted the local police. The police arrested the soldier at his home in Tamworth, Staffordshire.

If the allegations prove true, the soldier, and perhaps others at the scene in Iraq, would be in violation of the Geneva Conventions, which require that prisoners of war must be treated humanely.

This isn't the first such allegation.....

When we first heard that Laci Peterson's parents went to the Peterson house this afternoon to pick up her belongings, we assumed the D.A. and defense had finally agreed on the terms of such an entry and property removal.

It turns out that's not what happened. Laci's parents broke into the house (the locks had been changed, the burglar alarm went off and police had to come to the house,) walked over all the house and removed what they wanted.

That was foolish of them. And wrong. The police have speculated Laci was killed in the house. The house is a crime scene. No evidence obtained from the house from today on will have any integrity.

We don't know if Laci had a will. If not, she died "intestate" and without living children, everything she owned at the time of her death legally becomes Scott's property. Her parents had no right to any of the property.

In other words, the Rochas well may have jeopardized the case against Scott Peterson. No matter how these parents are hurting, they are not allowed to take the law into their own hands. What they did today was an act of vigilantiism. The District Attorney's office should make this clear to them and the Court should enter orders preventing them from accessing the house again until the case is over.

As Atrios says, "It's both the man's home and a crime scene, on both counts the family has really f**ked up here."

The Feeney Amendment went into effect today, along with the Amber Alert Bill (and the revised RAVE Act.) Federal Judges, from those at the District Court level up through Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist are not happy:

Beginning today, federal judges will have less discretion than ever to craft sentences for criminals, because of a little-debated new law that increases the minimum amount of prison time for several crimes and will dramatically change federal sentencing.

....''It turns me into a bureaucrat, and I do not believe for a moment that the public wants that,'' said Nancy Gertner, a US district judge in Massachusetts who has written and lectured on the existing federal guidelines, which already tightly control the range of sentences judges can hand down.

A parade of critics -- US Supreme Court justices, the American Bar Association, the Judicial Conference of the United States, and several current and former federal prosecutors -- has attacked the bill for taking discretion from trial judges.

Under the new law, Congress has "taken the unprecedented step" of dictating to federal judges what sentences must be imposed. Since 1986, when the U.S. Sentencing Commission was established, that role has belonged to the Commission. (the federal sentencing guidelines went into effect in 1987.)

CNN is reporting:

On TV and on paper, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Orrin G. Hatch pledged to hold hearings into the death of a federal prisoner the government says hanged himself even though the victim's throat was cut and his face bruised and bloodied.

A federal court recently awarded the prisoner's family $1.1 million for intentional infliction of pain for misleading the family about the case.

And Hatch didn't keep his promise to hold hearings. Who else is involved? Sen. Don Nickles (R-OK.)

Full report here:

Democratic candidate Dennis Kucinich said Thursday that if elected president, he would issue an executive order legalizing the use of medical marijuana ``as an act of compassion and expression of humanity.''

``If a doctor makes that determination, or the patient asks for it, I think it ought to be permitted,'' Kucinich, who is campaigning in California, said in a telephone interview. ``I've talked to too many people who have had family members suffering from terminal illness who feel it would provide them the most relief from pain and suffering.''

Kucinich is the only Democratic candidate to state his support for legalizing the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes. Such use is legal in California and seven other states, but federal law prohibits the use of marijuana for any purpose....

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Nat Hentoff in today's Village Voice:

From what I can find out, Ashcroft's plan may be not to introduce Patriot II as a whole, but rather to slip sections of it into bills dealing with national security. Fortunately, the ACLU's Washington staff and other civil liberties organizations keep a very close watch on bills the Justice Department can use to set more land mines for the Constitution.

But it is important to realize that the more than 100 civil-liberties-zone resolutions around the country include a requirement--sent to each of the federal legislators representing that community--that those members of Congress actively work to repeal laws and combat executive orders that violate the civil liberties enumerated in the Bill of Rights. I would also suggest messages of support to those members of Congress who already are demanding of Ashcroft, the FBI, the CIA, the Homeland Security Department, and others in the ever expanding web of surveillance that they tell us precisely how they are implementing these expanding threats to individual liberties.

Our understanding is the same as Hentoff's about the probable piecemeal approach Ashcroft may take. We wrote about the likely sneak attack on May 8 in discussing the passage of the Schumer-Kyl bill, S. 113, expanding the definition of terrorist for FISA wiretap purposes to include persons not affiliated with a foreign power (the "lone wolf" provision.)

Could this be the beginning of an attempt to pass the provisions of Patriot Act II piecemeal, thereby avoiding the controversial label "Patriot Act II" ? If another section of PA II gets introduced and passed this way, we foresee a monumental problem. The Schumer-Kyl bill was originally introduced on January 9, the same date on the draft of Patriot Act II. A coincidence?

John Muhammad, the older of the two suspects charged in the Virginia sniper cases, lost his bid to have the judge dismiss the death penalty charge against him in the Manassas, Virginia case.

Muhammad had argued that he wasn't the shooter and under Virginia law, he wasn't eligible for the death penalty. The Judge said it's too soon to know what the evidence is in the case and that throwing the count out at this point would be premature.

This is curious:

Shapiro said defense lawyers already have a good idea of the evidence in the Meyers shooting, and there is no evidence that Muhammad pulled the trigger or that he participated in the killing to the degree that it would warrant a death sentence.

''With all due respect, he doesn't know what all the evidence is,'' [DA}Conway said.

Why not? Doesn't Virginia have discovery rules that require the DA to turn over investigative reports to the defense well before trial? How can Muhammad prepare for trial without notice of the evidence against him? Trial by ambush is not due process.

More leaks in the Laci Peterson murder case, this time of one page of the autopsy report stating that plastic tape was found around the neck of the Petersons' unborn child.

The DA is now moving to unseal the entire report. We agree with the request, it's better to have the whole report out in the open.

Most experts are speculating that this information is helpful to the defense, because it tends to suggest that the baby was killed separately from the mother. While some people are able to envision Scott Peterson killing his wife, no one reasonably thinks he would intentionally murder the son as well.

We caution that it's too early to draw any conclusions because none of us have enough information. It could be the tape was debris in the water that found its way to the baby's neck--there is no information that the tape was found as a noose around its neck. The tears in the shoulder could be stab wounds--or they could be cuts resulting from encounters with rocks or other sharp objects in the water.

At TalkLeft and in real life, we always side with the presumption of innocence. We have yet to hear of any physical evidence linking Scott Peterson to a deliberate, premeditated killing of his wife and child. Peterson insists he didn't do it. A cad, a cheater, yes. A murderer? We're not buying that.

The case keeps growing in the media with no sign of abating. We'll be debating the newest developments on the O'Reilly Factor tonight, Fox News Channel, 8pm and 11 pm, EST.

Update: ABC News is reporting that they have seen the entire autopsy report and the coroner's photos and the baby's umbilical cord was not attached to the baby's body. "According to the autopsy, the skin of the child was not decomposed at all, though the right side of his body was mutilated, and the placenta and umbilical cord were not found with the body." Up until today, all other news reports we've seen since the bodies were recovered state the opposite: that the umbilical cord was attached to the baby. Several news outlets today reported the autopsy report shows the baby was attached to a 1/2-centimeter section of his umbilical cord. (See also, here.) It's just one more reason not to judge a case based on media reports.

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By a final vote of 56 to 3, the Illinois Senate passed a sweeping death penalty reform bill. The bill was passed last week by the Illinois House with a 117-0 vote. The bill now goes to Governor Rod Blagojevich for his signature.

The measure proposes refining the capital justice system at nearly every point from investigation to post-conviction legal wrangling, with a multitude of changes meant to prevent execution of the innocent.

Here are some of the provisions of the bill:

It would change police procedures regarding disclosure of their investigative field notes, set up a system to get rid of police officers who lie and create pretrial hearings to help determine the credibility of jailhouse informants.

In addition, the proposal would create a presumption that anyone with an IQ lower than 75 is mentally retarded and not eligible for the death penalty.

The law would reduce the number of situations that qualify a convicted murderer for the death penalty and would create a pilot project for certain police lineup procedures to make them more fair. The law also would require police to inform witnesses that the person administering a lineup doesn't know which person in it is the suspect and that the person who committed the crime may not be in the lineup.

Another condition, called the "fundamental justice" provision, would empower the Illinois Supreme Court to overturn a death sentence if justices thought it was not called for in a particular case. The high court would not be required to jump through the legal hoop of finding a procedural error to justify throwing out the death penalty, which it must do now.

Governor Blagojevich has not committed to signing the legislation. He says it sounds like something he will support, "But I haven't studied it. I haven't looked at it." We're fairly confident the Governor will sign the bill. Days after being elected in November, he announced he would retain the death penalty moratorium instituted under former Governor George Ryan, at least until the legislature addressed the problems pointed out by Illinois Death Penalty Commission.

For more on why this legislation is so sorely needed, we recommend Thomas Sullivan's article, Think Now, Execute Later. Sullivan served on the Illiniois Commission.