Canada proposed a new marijuana law Tuesday that decriminalizes up to 15 grams of marijuana. Offenders would receive a citation similar to a traffic ticket and pay a fine. There would be no criminal record attached to paying the citation.

Those under 18 years old could face fines of up to $182 for minor possession while adults could be fined the equivalent of $292. At the same time, the maximum sentence for illegal growers would be increased to 14 years in prison from the current seven, while trafficking would remain punishable by up to life in prison.

Justice Minister Martin Cauchon said the law includes an education, research and treatment program aimed at persuading young people against drug use. The government intends to spend $179 million on the program.

Other issues regarding Canada's pot laws have yet to be resolved.

Canada's Supreme Court is considering a constitutional challenge to
laws that make it illegal to possess pot, and Ontario courts have
declared the federal law against possession to be invalid because of
legal questions.

The U.S., particularly Drug Czar John Walters, is upset with Canada for proposing to liberalize marijuana laws. The U.S. has threatened increased border searches if the bill becomes law. As we reported here last week:

Last week, U.S. drug czar John Walters suggested border traffic would slow to a crawl because the U.S. would increase inspections to stop smugglers from illegally shipping "poison" south.

Will Glaspy, a U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency spokesman, told The Detroit News yesterday that talk of decriminalizing pot in Canada would mean "more customs, more border patrols, more DEA. (source article here)

You can read the text of the Canadian bill here. A background briefing paper on the bill is here.

Ari Fleischer, asked about the bill at today's press briefing, gave his usual non-response:

Here is a report from today's hearing in the Scott Peterson case:

Prosecution Must Turn Over Taped Conversations to the Defense

A judge today ordered prosecutors to turn over to Scott Peterson's attorneys records of wiretapped conversations between the accused wife killer and his previous attorney, as ABCNEWS learned that investigators believe Peterson had more than one affair during his marriage.

The judge also set a preliminary hearing, when the prosecution will have to lay out its case against Peterson, for July 15. Both the prosecution and Peterson's lawyers said they want all the evidence in the case to remain sealed, as both sides are continuing to investigate what happened to Laci Peterson, who was eight months pregnant when she disappeared on Christmas Eve.

Girolami ordered the prosecution to turn over records of 69 telephone conversations police taped between Peterson and his previous attorney.

Didn't these cops ever hear of minimization? Was anybody monitoring these tapes as the conversations were being recorded?

Amber Frey's tapes will also be turned over. She secretly taped Scott after his wife disappeared. A Sacremento news station, KOVR-TV, reports that Scott has continued to write Frey from jail.

No decision was made on change of venue or on the sealing of autopsy reports and search warrants.

Update: corrected to show lack of ruling on document sealing. CNN reports:

Judge Al Girolami did not, however, rule on a request by California newspapers to release autopsy reports, the arrest warrant, a search warrant and the affidavits that accompany them -- and he suggested he might impose a gag order on participants in the case.

A senior scientist with the Center for National Security and Arms Control at Sandia National Laboratories checks out the new National Academy of Sciences (NAS) report on the reliability of polygraph screening in national security cases and finds that polygraphs are worse than worthless.

Late last year the NAS published its findings. It determined that the polygraph was not a worthless tool -- indeed, that it was much worse than worthless. The report said that "available evidence indicates that polygraph testing as currently used has extremely serious limitations . . . if the intent is both to identify security risks and protect valued employees." The NAS panel, made up of internationally respected psychologists and statisticians, further determined that the test was so nonspecific that even if the polygraphers managed to finally uncover their first spy, at least 100 innocent laboratory employees would have their clearances yanked because of the "false positives" inherent in the test. The NAS concluded: "Polygraph testing yields an unacceptable choice . . . between too many loyal employees falsely judged deceptive and too many major security threats left undetected. Its accuracy . . . is insufficient to justify reliance on its use in employee security screening in federal agencies." It doesn't get much clearer than that.

The Washington Post reports that Bush judicial nominee Charles Pickering was so upset that he had to sentence a convicted cross-burner to 7 years that he tried to get the Justice Department to intervene. Reportedly, he threatened to overturn the jury's verdict even though he agreed it was legal. He demanded Janet Reno personally review the case. Of the cross-burner, he said, ""They're wanting seven years for a young man that got drunk."

Pickering is a former Republican Party state chairman, a onetime head of the Mississippi Baptist Convention, a critic of congressional efforts to mandate uniform federal sentences and an opponent of abortion and what he calls "extensions" of federal judicial power. From the bench, he has repeatedly assailed what he calls "frivolous" lawsuits, especially petitions by prisoners alleging unlawful incarceration and workers alleging employment discrimination.

....In the cross-burning case, Pickering's pressure led the Justice Department to take the extraordinary step of withdrawing one of the three criminal charges of which Swan had been convicted, which reduced his sentence from more than seven years to 27 months. Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee cited the judge's handling of the case as their principal reason for rejecting his nomination last year.

....Bush, several months after telling an audience in Jackson, Miss., that "the Senate did wrong by Judge Pickering," renominated him in January.

Sure, we are glad the Judge opposes mandatory minimum sentences. But given his overall record, that's a drop in the bucket and hardly enough. This is a lifetime position we are talking about--a seat on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals which includes the states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. Like Miguel Estrada and Priscilla Owen, Charles Pickering has no place on the federal appeals court bench.

The Democrats aren't the only ones wanting Bush, Ashcroft and Rumsfeld gone. So do the Greens. The Greens are considering not running a candidate of their own in 2004, but rather, supporting the Demcratic candidate in hopes of unseating Bush:

As the Green Party hashes out its plans for next year's presidential election, some of its activists are urging the party to forgo the race and, instead, throw its support behind one of the Democratic candidates -- all in the hopes of unseating President Bush.

The Greens could be a huge asset in unseating Bush. We hope they keep their eye on the ultimate goal. From our vantage point, Anyone But Bush will do.

Robert Blecker and James Liebman are professors at New York Law School and Columbia Law School, respectively. The two have have frequently taken opposing sides in public debates on the death penalty. But here they agree on reforms that are needed, in Texas and elsewhere:

One of us is morally certain some people deserve to die and that society has an obligation to execute them. The other opposes the death penalty. But when we stopped debating and started discussing, we found real common ground.

Despite our different perspectives, we agree that death as a punishment should be inflicted, if at all, only upon the worst of the worst; that society can incapacitate without killing, so future dangerousness and deterrence alone are never sufficient reasons to punish someone with death; and that a state-ordered execution is a terrible, solemn act that should occur only after the greatest deliberation. We agree that legislators in Texas and elsewhere should adopt the following reforms:

Most importantly, drop the felony-murder category for a death sentence...

Stop creating capital crimes undeserving of death in knee-jerk reaction to public outrage at a particular offense or to score political points....

"It took a House Armed Services subcommittee a shade under 11 minutes on May 7 to approve $1.7 billion more than the Pentagon had requested in its 2004 budget for bombers, missiles, transport planes and a variety of Navy and Marine Corps programs."

When do we get universal health care and improve our public schools and universities? When do we adequately fund research for diseases and conditions like Alzheimers, Parkinson's and Autism? When do we start providing every child with an equal chance to succeed? Enough with the military spending, let's fund those in need here at home.

Instpundit is justifiably angry about the death of the New York woman last week during a mistaken drug raid at her house. Mayor Bloomberg has accepted responsibility, but how does make it up to the woman or her family? No-Knock warrants are inherently dangerous.

Back to Instapundit:

That ought to be a firing offense, the very first time it happens, for the officers involved and their superiors. If people die, the charge should be murder. If you decide to break down somebody's door and enter with guns drawn when no one's life is in danger, then you should be able to offer no defense if anything goes wrong. Because it's indefensible.

We file this under the "How Other's See Us" category. We think it shines a bright light on an issue that too many Americans believe doesn't affect them--that of military tribunals. After all, who really cares about the nameless, faceless, middle-eastern men held in captivity in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba for 18 months? Not too many people here, but fortunately, the rest of the world is watching.

The Australian Herald Sun reports that the U.S. is planning to turn the Guantanamo Bay prison camp into a death camp.

THE US has floated plans to turn Guantanamo Bay into a death camp, with its own death row and execution chamber. Prisoners would be tried, convicted and executed without leaving its boundaries, without a jury and without right of appeal, The Mail on Sunday newspaper reported yesterday.

The plans were revealed by Major-General Geoffrey Miller, who is in charge of 680 suspects from 43 countries, including two Australians.... General Miller said building a death row was one plan. Another was to have a permanent jail, with possibly an execution chamber.

The Mail on Sunday reported the move is seen as logical by the US, which has been attacked worldwide for breaching the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war since it established the camp at a naval base to hold alleged terrorists from Afghanistan.

But it has horrified human rights groups and lawyers representing detainees. They see it as the clearest indication America has no intention of falling in line with internationally recognised justice. The US has already said detainees would be tried by tribunals, without juries or appeals to a higher court. Detainees will be allowed only US lawyers.

....American law professor Jonathan Turley, who has led US civil rights group protests against the military tribunals planned to hear cases at Guantanamo Bay, said: "It is not surprising the authorities are building a death row because they have said they plan to try capital cases before these tribunals. "This camp was created to execute people. The administration has no interest in long-term prison sentences for people it regards as hard-core terrorists."

Thanks to R. Striker for sending this our way.

Trent Lott is behind a move to change the senate filibuster rules that will begin when Congress returns after the Memorial Day Weekend. His purpose? To secure the confirmation of controversial Bush judicial nominee Charles Pickering to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

A rules change would require a two-thirds vote in the Senate, an unlikely occurrence. GOP leaders also are considering trying to change the filibuster rule from the chair of the Senate, which would require only a simple majority vote to approve if Democrats challenged the ruling. That tactic is known as the "nuclear option." Democrats have warned of "fallout" if Republicans resort to that maneuver.

Pickering was rejected by Democrats on the first go-around because of his perceived racial insensitivities. Our prior coverage of Pickering is assembled here. According to this recent article in Salon, there is new evidence to support the claim of racial insensitivity--and in particular, to support a newer claim that Pickering was not truthful to the Committee during his 2002 confirmation hearing testimony.

Pickering told the Judiciary Committee that he engaged in efforts to better race relations in the 1960's. In 1964, he changed parties and became a Republican. He denied to the Committee that the motive for the switch was "to protest the national Democratic Party's support for civil rights and its attacks on segregation."

The new evidence to show Pickering was being disingenous, at best, and a liar, at worst, comes from newly discovered documents at the University of Mississippi Library, consisting of the files of his former law partner, avowed segregationist J. Carroll Gartin.

Gartin, who as lieutenant governor from 1956 to 1960 and again from 1964 until his sudden death in 1966 was a leading member of Mississippi's notoriously racist Sovereignty Commission.

According to Salon, :

Gartin's papers show conclusively that, contrary to McConnell's description, Pickering himself was one of those "white citizens and politicians who resisted integration and civil rights," not someone working to oppose such forces. Instead of "trying to establish better race relations" in the 1960s, Pickering worked to support segregation, attack civil rights advocates who sought to end Jim Crow, and back those who opposed national civil rights legislation, above all the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. Or, in the words of a public statement he signed in 1967, Pickering wanted to preserve "our southern way of life," and he bitterly blamed civil rights workers for stirring up "turmoil and racial hatred" in the South.

Steve Gilliard, filling in for Kos today at Daily Kos, has a delightfully wicked wrap-up on the Guliani-Nathan nupitals.

No one would mistake this blog for a wedding annoucements page, but it's rare to have such an act of evil described in such a banal way. It would be as if Bill Clinton gave away Monica Lewinsky at her wedding and the press reported that the former president gave away a White House intern he became friendly with.

There's lots, lots more. We're glad somebody said it. Herr Guliani just gives us the creeps.

The New York Post reports that an Ohio truckdriver has been arrested as an Al Qaeda operative planning an attack in the U.S.

Federal agents have nabbed an Ohio truck driver after unmasking him as an al Qaeda operative in plots to collapse a suspension bridge and blow up an airliner in the United States, according to a new report.

The information reportedly was obtained from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who has been cooperating from his overseas detention facility for some time. Mohammed is allegedly Al Qaeda's former chief operations officer.

Newsweek is the source of the report on the Ohio trucker and other suspected planned al Qaeda attacks in the U.S. this summer. The Ohio trucker story does not sound like recent news, particularly since he also has been cooperating with authorities for some time.

Intelligence sources tell NEWSWEEK that during his interrogation, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed fingered an Ohio truckdriver. In a major breakthrough, the Feds picked up the truckdriver, who began to cooperate. According to law-enforcement sources, the truck- driver was involved in plots to bring down a bridge and blow up an airliner. The truckdriver was asked by his Qaeda masters to obtain the proper tools for loosening the bolts on a suspension bridge. As for the airliner, the truckdriver said that cargo trucks could easily drive underneath passenger jets without arousing suspicion.

Also, keep in mind that interrogations of suspected al Qaeda members are likely to result in deliberate misinformation as well as credible information.