If you have been planning a trip to Amsterdam thinking you can relax in one of the Netherlands' 800 cannibis cafes, you better go soon.

A ban on smoking in coffeehouses, purportedly aimed at protecting workers from second-hand smoke, is is likely to become law very soon.

Coffee shop owners were aghast. "The whole point of going to a coffee shop is to smoke," said Arjan Roskam, chairman of the Union for Cannabis Retailers.

....The Netherlands boasts around 800 cannabis cafes. Smoking a joint in an Amsterdam coffee shop vies with canal boat tours and trips to the flower market for a place on tourists' itineraries.

There is a one year exception from the new law for bars and restaurants, but not for coffee shops.

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Rachel Neumann in Alternet presents a good wrap-up of the threats to our civil liberties resulting from the Patriot Act (I and II) and other legislation since Sept. 11--along with the good advice, "Use Them or Lose Them."

Still, it is not enough to wait for politicians to act. We must disabuse ourselves of the notion that it is only "other people's" liberties that are at stake. Our own government threatens our collective liberty far more than do outside sources. The response, as the Bill of Rights Defense Committees have shown, is to use our rights or lose them. Our right to think and speak for ourselves, without fear of spying neighbors, surveillance cameras or retaliation, is gravely threatened and only our collective and coordinated resistance will stop that threat.

It's not too early to start now. Go over to Stop George in 2004 and get your high tech anti-Bush re-election materials. Good stuff. [link via Cursor]

We wrote in passing last week about the annoyance of the new "click it or ticket" campaign in Colorado aimed at getting drivers to wear seatbelts. Apparently, it's a nationwide program.

The ACLU today denounced the program as unfairly targeting hispanics.

Federal officials defend the checkpoints, saying Hispanics are less likely to buckle up because wearing seat belts is often not the law or custom in their countries of origin.

"Click It or Ticket" campaigns aimed at the general population began nationwide last week and run through Sunday. A separate program grants money for seat belt campaigns in Hispanic neighborhoods. Both are funded by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

"In the absence of any data, I would ask why are they targeting Latinos?" said King Downing, the national coordinator for the American Civil Liberties Union's Campaign Against Racial Profiling. "Deciding to target certain areas based upon race goes right to the foundation of racial profiling.

NHTSA says the checkpoints are random in that they target one out of every ten drivers, not hispanics. We side with the ACLU director, who responds: "It's not exactly a random driver if the area that is targeted is a Latino area."

But the best line comes from Lorraine Novak, a senior regional program manager for the NHTSA.

"It's not profiling, it's targeting a specific population," Novak said.

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Hosting Matters seems to be back on track after the fire today: Instapundit and Matt Yglesias are back up.

It may or may not make a difference, but we certainly appreciate the gesture of Bill Lockyer, California Attorney General and 8 of the 12 jurors in the Ed Rosenthal marijuana cultivation case, who are urging a federal judge to impose a lenient sentence on the "Guru of Ganj."

Sentencing is June 4. Rosenthal's lawyers are seeking community service and probation instead of the mandatory minimum five year sentence.

At the heart of the motion is a portrayal of Rosenthal as an atypical marijuana cultivator who grew the substance out of humanitarian concern for suffering patients, did not financially profit from the activity, and believed his actions were legal, based on state law and advice from public officials.

Attorney General Lockyer wrote:

For criminal defense lawyers and wannabes....Make your plans now, this one will be great:

With advances in science and technology occurring daily, it has never been more critical for defense lawyers to learn how science can help or hinder their cases. This innovative seminar will present the most cutting-edge techniques available to defend every kind of criminal case.

Among the areas highlighted are evidence collection, lab protocols, selecting and cross-examining experts, the use of Daubert to challenge "junk" and "novel" sciences, and attacking commonly accepted "sciences" that have recently begun to fall out of favor. You will receive an insider's view of how the expert prepares for and against these challenges and learn the fundamentals of a broad array of sciences confronted by the defense lawyer in the trenches -- including DNA, ballistics, arson investigations, time of death, and forensic pathology. NACDL has brought together the most nationally renowned scientific experts in their fields, coupled with the best lawyers in America for this ground-breaking seminar. Don't miss it!

The Faculty:

Larry Pozner-Voir Dire: Science & Technologies; Jeralyn Merritt-Attacking Eyewitness Evidence: Effective Use of the Psychological Expert; Dr. Henry C. Lee -Physical Evidence Found on the Human Body;Barry Scheck -Proving Innocence Through Forensics: With and Without DNA; David S. Rudolph -Zen and the Art of Cross-Examining Experts (or How I Became an Idiot Savant); David Wymore-Derailing the Physical Evidence Railroad; Norm Mueller- Ethics and Experts: Avoiding Traps for the Unwary;Rick Williamson -Smoke and Mirrors: Dealing with Expert Testimony in Arson Cases; Jim P. Cooney, III -Time of Death, Entomology, and the Body Farm in Tennessee; Dr. Suzanne Pinto-Bernhard-Sex Offenders: What You Need to Know About What Your Client is Getting Into; Drew Findling-You’re My Homicide Detective and I Love You, Man!; and David Lewis -Forensics Failure: The Chief Justice Gives Us a Defense. (Speakers & topics are subject to change)

Special Events:

Luncheon Address—Former U.S. Senator Gary Hart will be the keynote speaker for our luncheon, Friday, August 1, 2003 at the Adam’s Mark Hotel.

Shooting Range—Join us for a rare opportunity to visit a shooting range and learn first-hand about firearms, ballistic evidence, and how to utilize your experience to build on a winning defense for your client. (Additional fees may apply depending on the amount of your activity)

Amnesty International has released its annual report on global human rights abuses in 2002. The report finds:

Washington's ``war on terror'' has made the world more dangerous by curbing human rights, undermining international law and shielding governments from scrutiny.

The news article about the report goes on to say:

....In one of its most critical sideswipes yet at Washington, Amnesty said the bid to stamp out terror in the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001, had largely backfired.

``It has deepened divisions among people of different faiths and origins, sowing the seeds for more conflict,'' it said in a statement. ``The overwhelming impact of all this is genuine fear across all sectors of society.''

More information about the report is available from Amnesty here.

Matt Taibbi writes in the New York Press of his near encounter with Ascroft and the Buffalo Six and the Unocal cases. We won't give away the acid part, go read, but we'll quote Matt's Buffalo Six (now Seven) case thoughts:

So a kid from a Buffalo ghetto travels to Afghanistan, visits a terrorist training camp and comes home. Before he commits any crime, he goes to jail for 10 years. Even the government admits there was no overt violent crime here: "Material assistance to a foreign terrorist organization" was stretched to include the purchase of a uniform at the camp. But if an American company goes overseas and for six years invests millions of dollars and uses slave labor and torture to build some miserable gas pipeline–committing not one crime, but many hideous violent crimes, at a systemic level–it shouldn’t even be sued, according to our attorney general.

Just this week, a seventh Lackawanna suspect, Jaber Elbaneh, was indicted by the Justice Department. He’s overseas somewhere. There would have been an eighth named Kamal Derwish, but he was killed last year in a CIA missile attack in Yemen. In Iraq and everywhere else, the whole world has been informed that it is subject to U.S. law. With a few exceptions."

For those of you following the Miami trial of Fabio Ochoa, charged with rejoining the Medellin drug cartel after leaving prison and receiving amnesty, the jury found him guilty today.

A leader of a mighty 1980s Colombian cocaine cartel was convicted Wednesday of charges he rejoined a smuggling network after he was released from prison in his homeland and given amnesty.

Fabio Ochoa faces a possible life prison sentence on two federal drug conspiracy charges alleging he joined a 30-ton-a-month smuggling network from 1997 to 1999. Sentencing was set for Aug. 19. Ochoa, 46, made a sign of the cross, closed his eyes and dropped to his knees in the courtroom after the verdict was read. Jurors reached their verdict after spending five hours on deliberations over two days. The defense said an appeal was planned.

....''The government was able to spend half of the trial on the exploits of the Medellin cartel,'' Black said after the verdict. The jury found Ochoa ''guilty by history or association or something other than what he was charged with.''

Here's a wrap-up of the case:

We haven't been able to access Instapundit or Matt Yglesias all day. We remembered that Instapundit is hosted by Hosting Matters, so we logged on to its site, and sure enough, there was a fire at "NOC" (whatever that is, some kind of command center we think) and workers was evacuated and the sites they host are down. But they promise to be back up shortly. We don't know if that's where Matt is hosting, but it's a good bet.

From the Institute for Public Accuracy:

Three experts come awfully close to suggesting that Iran may be a new target for the U.S.:

The White House is portraying Iran as having hostile intentions towards the United States. They said the same thing about Iraq, and there's been no evidence of that in either case. Iran has regional interests, but it's never been in an attack mode against the United States. It's actually in a defensive posture against intensifying U.S. and Israeli manipulation of monarchist Iranian opposition in exile. Allegations that Iran is exporting Shi'ite zealotry to Iraq have been contradicted by the top British commander there.