Lisa English is back at Ruminate This. Mary from The Watch did a superb job of covering for Lisa while her allergy-stricken eye healed.

Say hello to the Guerilla News Network (found via Skippy who's celebrating his anniversary this weekend) and K Marx the Spot by the folks at Bear-Left.

Wampum has made the move to MT and its own home here so update your bookmarks.

For longer reads, check out the San Francisco Chronicle and how women are losing freedom in the chaos of Post-War Iraq and On the Roads of Ruin by Peter Oborne in the Sunday Oberserver. Oborne recently returned from an extensive tour of Afganistan to see if the U.S. and Britain were living up to their promise to fund a rebuilding effort. He found the country deserted by the West and left to fend for itself against massive thuggery. David Neiwert of Orcinus has written a moving tribute to a dear uncle who recently passed away.

Oops, never mind, says the FBI.

A year ago, Crazy Tomato was a popular restaurant in Evansville, Indiana, near the Kentucky border. Then its owner, Tarek Albasti, and seven other Egyptian-born men were arrested by the FBI and accused of plotting terrorist attacks against the U.S. They became known as the "Evansville Eight."

Pictured in prison stripes, the men were splashed across the front pages, ridiculed and shunned even after their release by people who assumed their guilt. Whispers about flying lessons and money trails from Evansville to Egypt spread rapidly.

But the FBI said it had all been a mistake. And at a meeting last month with more than 100 people in the Muslim community here, the FBI offered a rare apology because suspicion about the arrests -- which resulted from a bogus tip -- hung over the men's heads for so long and disrupted their lives.

Read the whole article to see how little justification there was for arresting the men on material witness warrants and holding them in isolation for over a week.

As part of a national roundup in the weeks after the terrorist attacks, the "Evansville 8" were among 50 people held as material witnesses in maximum security jails without being charged with a crime. Thousands of more men from Middle Eastern countries were questioned, some arrested and detained, allegedly for links to terrorism, only to be let go or deported on immigration violations. Civil liberties groups protested that the arrests amounted to racial stereotyping.

Yes, the FBI apologized. But that still doesn't undo the damage to these men.

"The situation that happened to you was horrible," Thomas V. Fuentes, the FBI's agent in charge in Indiana, said during a meeting at the Islamic Center of Evansville. "On behalf of the FBI, I will apologize. . . ."

They were wrongly accused," FBI Agent Fuentes said in a later interview. "They have almost lost their business. This is something that has affected them in every possible way. Anybody being accused falsely of something that serious is like a teacher being accused of molesting a child. It's hard to come back from that. You can see . . . months later, the tears are still ready to flow."

A giant raspberry for the Chicago Tribune, which in an editorial Saturday, uses the Laci Peterson case as a springboard to call for greater attention to domestic violence as a leading cause of murder of pregnant women.

How is it domestic violence if her husband, who is presumed innocent, didn't do it? It is outrageous for a national newspaper to make Laci Peterson the poster child for this issue.

Greater awareness of spouse abuse and other domestic violence has helped many victims to improve their home life or relocate to a safer place. The Laci Peterson case underscores the need for a similar awareness about the danger that can rise up during what should be a time of joy.

Shame, shame on the Tribune.

The owner of a Utah chain of private "disciplinary academy" for teens has been arrested in Costa Rica and charged with violating the civil liberties of the students.

The academies are owned by the Utah organization, the World Wide Association of Speciality Programs and Schools, known as Wwasps, but are located in Costa Rica, Jamaica and Mexico. Parents pay $30,000 a year for the privilege of having their children learn discipline--and according to the charges--suffer physical and emotional abuse.

Democratic presidential contender Dennis Kucinich issues the strongest criticism to date of the drug war.

"A judge authorized doctors Friday to perform an abortion on a 28-year-old disabled woman who has the cognitive skills of a 4-year-old."

"Circuit Judge Arthur Rothenberg allowed doctors to do a tubal ligation so the woman cannot become pregnant again. He also ordered doctors to take a DNA sample from the nearly 6-month-old fetus to help identify the father. Police believe the woman was likely raped more than once.
The woman's lawyer said she appeared to be pleased with the ruling. ``She can't verbalize much of anything, but you can see by her actions that she is happy,'' said attorney Lewis H. Fogle Jr."

This is the second such case in Florida in recent weeks. In a case involving an Orlando woman, Gov. Jeb Bush made headlines by calling for a guardian to be appointed for the fetus.

Due to an erosion of trust in the FBI's disciplinary system, Director Robert Mueller has ordered an independent review of the agency's Office of Professional Responsibility.

Among the chief complaints are claims of retaliation against whistleblowers--and that agents are sanctioned more severely than managers.

A report by the Justice Department's inspector general last fall said the FBI "suffers from a strong, and not unreasonable, perception among employees that a double standard exists within the FBI." That view grew in part from the existence of a separate disciplinary system for managers until August 2000.

The inspector general cited several "troubling cases" in which discipline for managers appeared "unduly lenient." These included the handling of the confrontation at Ruby Ridge and falsified expense accounts submitted by several FBI managers who traveled to Washington to attend a retirement party for one of their colleagues.

Another inspector general's report early this year found that the current head of the OPR [Office of Professional Responsibility], Robert Jordan, exercised poor judgment in denying a promotion to FBI agent John Roberts after Roberts told the CBS program "60 Minutes" that managers and line employees weren't disciplined equally.

The review will be conducted by Attorney General Griffin Bell and former FBI Associate Director Lee Colwell. They will examine the practices of the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility. The review is expected to take three to six months.

From the Chicago Tribune :

More than a quarter-century after they were sent to prison for one of the most sensational crimes of the 1970s, two Chicago men walked free into the arms of tearful relatives and a dramatically different world Friday after prosecutors agreed they should have a new trial.

Citing DNA tests that excluded Michael Evans and Paul Terry in the 1976 rape and murder of 9-year-old Lisa Cabassa, Cook County prosecutors dropped their opposition to a new trial, though they plan to try the two men again.

....Evans and Terry were sentenced to 200 to 400 years in prison for the abduction, rape and murder of Lisa on Jan. 14, 1976. The girl was abducted as she walked near her home in the South Chicago neighborhood. Her body was found the next day.

At the time, Evans and Terry were 17.

If prosecutors do not try Evans and Terry or if the two men are acquitted, the case would be the oldest DNA exoneration in the nation, said Rob Warden of the Center on Wrongful Convictions. Winning a conviction would seem difficult in the face of the DNA evidence and the numerous contradictions in Januszewski's testimony, lawyers for the men said.

Evans also called on prosecutors to drop the case. "They know they were wrong," he said. "They need to let it go."

Salon Readers respond to Andrew Sullivan on President Bush's "looming package of manhood." Here's one:

Since Chris Matthews and Gordon Liddy, the criminal, have stated that women will vote for Bush because of the bulge in his flight suit, the formerly private parts of Bush are now a subject open for questions and answers. Why did he have an erection upon seeing all those young men aboard the carrier? At our house we've been laughing about Bush's stuffing his flight suit with socks, à la male ballet dancers. I've been polling my girlfriends. None of us, not a single one, will vote for Bush, bulge or not.

Or maybe all of this is none of our business and we should attack him on more worthwhile grounds. I personally think his bulge is as worthless as his brain. And women are far too smart to trade their civil rights and future aspirations for a roll of socks.

Atrios reports that Neil Young is afraid of getting deported for his Dixie Chick-like criticism of George Bush.

The People's Republic of Seabrook got a major bloglift and is looking good.

Arthur at Light of Reason writes about a federal judge in Seattle who has struck down a law on first amendment grounds that made it illegal for anyone to disseminate personal information about law enforcement-related employees if it was being done for malicious reasons.

Update your bookmarks, the Volokh Conspiracy has left Blogger for Volokh.Com.

Happy wedding anniversary to Skippy. His weekend blogpicks:

go read talkleft or atrios or calpundit or little red cookbook or roger ailes or tom tomorrow or body and soul or eric alterman or wtf is it now? or the daily kos or the horse or ruminate this! or lean left or spadehammer or plucky punk or liberal oasis or cursor or blah3 or antiwar or the smirking chimp or the daily rant or madkane or gail davis or brad de long or the democratic veteran or the rittenhouse review or max sawicky...or any other fine blog on our blog roll.

This tale of alleged police abuse comes from Detroit, where an officer has been charged in federal court with supplying drugs to one group of people and then charging other people to watch the first group use the drugs on a website. Even we couldn't make this one up.

A police officer who officials say supplied narcotics to people, filmed them and ran a Web site where people paid to watch them use drugs was arraigned Friday on federal charges.

Police say Campbell, who had been with the Detroit department for eight years, supplied narcotics to individuals and secured their approval to film them while they used the drugs.

The cop is charged with conspiracy to distribute controlled substances. If he's convicted, maybe a webcam can be installed in his cell so we all can watch him do his time.

A Colorado judge has overturned the death sentence of a man convicted of a brutal murder because the jury read and referred to bibles during its deliberations.

While noting that [Robert] Harlan's crimes ``were among the most grievous, heinous and reprehensible'' he had seen in 18 years on the bench, Adams County District Judge John J. Vigil said court officials failed to properly sequester the jury.

Jury members stayed in a hotel during deliberations and court officials made sure newspapers were not delivered to their rooms, but the jurors did find bibles in the rooms.

In a five-day hearing last month, Harlan's attorneys argued that several jurors consulted biblical scripture during jury deliberations, particularly two Old Testament passages from Leviticus that read, ``fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, as he has caused disfigurement of a man, so shall it be done to him.'' And, ``whoever kills an animal shall restore it, but whoever kills a man shall be put to death.''

``The jury supervision performed in this case was extremely negligent and appallingly lax,'' Vigil wrote in his ruling. ``Jury resort to biblical code has no place in a constitutional death penalty proceeding.''

The prosecution said it will appeal.

Alaska has joined Hawaii and 112 other cities and towns across the nation in passing a resolution opposing the Patriot Act.

Alaska's measure goes further than most, advising police and other state agencies not to "initiate, participate in, or assist or cooperate with an inquiry, investigation, surveillance or detention" if there is not "reasonable suspicion of criminal activity under Alaska State law."

"We have a concern that [the Patriot Act] could be abused. The potential for abuse is too great," said Rep. David Guttenberg, a Democrat who co-sponsored the resolution. "America is an open state. There's a cost to that. Where are we willing to sacrifice for that? Guys are dying on the battlefield to protect our freedoms. It's up to us to protect those freedoms here at home."

The ACLU also reports on Alaska's tough stance.

This resolution affirms the motto of Alaska, ‘North to the Future,’” said Jennifer Rudinger, Executive Director of the AkCLU. “As a state, we have always led the Lower 48 in respecting and ensuring the individual rights of our residents under the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. This exceptionally strong resolution reflects our dedication to civil liberties and our deep-seated belief that Alaska – and America – can be both safe and free.”

The Alaska resolution was bipartisan and passed in the House with a vote of 37 to 1. On May 20 it passed the Senate with a vote of 19 to 0.

The Alaska resolution explicitly prohibits state agencies from engaging in racial profiling and prohibits the use of state resources or institutions for the enforcement of federal immigration matters. It also bars state agencies from creating intelligence dossiers on the political, religious and social views of individuals and organizations, unless the information directly relates to an investigation of criminal activities.

Further, in the absence of reasonable suspicion of criminal activity under Alaska state law, it prohibits participation in investigations, detentions and surveillance as well as seizure of personal library, medical, financial, student and sales records, even when authorized by the PATRIOT Act. Additionally, the resolution calls upon the Alaskan Congressional delegation to work to correct sections of the USA PATRIOT Act and other measures that unduly restrict personal freedoms.

You can read the text of the resolution here. [Thanks to Manish of Damn Foreigner for tipping us to the news and link]

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