From the House Judiciary Committee website:

House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr. (R-Wis.) and Ranking Member John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.) Tuesday released the answers received last week from the Justice Department regarding the USA PATRIOT Act and the war on terrorism. Chairman Sensenbrenner and Rep. Conyers wrote Attorney General John Ashcroft on April 1, 2003 (accessible here) requesting information on these issues.

Among the findings:

~ The Department has used the new powers of the PATRIOT Act for non-terrorism cases (drug violations, credit card fraud, theft from a bank account, a lawyer who defrauded his clients).

~The Department has sought and the courts have authorized delayed notification of search warrants 47 times. Some courts have authorized delayed notification lasting until the indictment was unsealed. The Department has sought extensions of such delayed notifications 248 times.

~The Attorney General made emergency authorizations 113 times for FISA electronic surveillance and/or physical searches in a one-year period.

~Prior to moving to DHS, the INS did not charge any aliens with the expanded terrorism grounds of inadmissibility or deportability provided under section 411 of the PATRIOT Act.

On monitoring of attorney-client communications, Justice says:

~The Attorney General has ordered the monitoring of attorney communications for a single inmate: Sheik Omar Ahmad Rahman, who was convicted for his part in the 1993 plot to bomb the World Trade Center. Rahman and his attorney were notified that their communications were subject to monitoring. No monitoring has occurred, however, because the inmate and his attorneys thus far have chose not to communicate further with each other.

You can read the full 62 page report here. The New York Times' has this on the report.

Tuesday, Senator Kennedy, joined by Senators Leahy, Feingold, and Lautenberg, introduced S.1086 (The JUDGES Act) to repeal provisions of the PROTECT Act (Amber Alert Bill) that do not specifically deal with the prevention of the exploitation of children -- specifically the Feeney Amendment. A similar bill is being introduced in the House by Rep. Conyers.

The remarks of Sen. Kennedy and Sen. Leahy, beginning at S6711 of the Congressional Record of 5/20/03, included the following:

Mr. President, it is a privilege to join my colleagues in introducing this legislation on fairness in our Federal sentencing system. The Judicial Use of Discretion to Guarantee Equity in Sentencing Act, or the JUDGES Act, will repeal a number of controversial sentencing provisions that were added at the last moment to the recently enacted ``AMBER Alert law'' on missing, abducted, and exploited children.

These provisions--called the ``Feeney Amendment''--have nothing to do with protecting children, and everything to do with handcuffing judges and
eliminating fairness in our Federal sentencing system. As Chief Justice Rehnquist said, they ``do serious harm to the basic structure of the sentencing guidelines system and . . . seriously impair the ability of courts to impose just and responsible sentences.''

The judicial nomination of Justice Department official Michael Chertoff was held up today as Democrats wanted to learn more about the ruckus over whistleblower Jesselyn Radack, who, while working in the Justice Department's Professional Responsibility Advisory Office, had issued an opinion that the FBI could not interrogate John Walker Lindh without an attorney present. She was later pressured to resign.

I'm very concerned about this Radack situation," Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, said today after meeting with Mr. Chertoff. "It appears she was effectively fired for providing legal advice that the department didn't agree with."

Forbes.Com reports:

Government regulators issued a set of rules that require banks, securities brokers and dealers, mutual funds and other financial institutions to help the feds catch terrorists using their own dollars. There's little proof that the rules will help capture any terrorists, but software makers claim their anti-money-laundering programs could catch fraud.

bq. In an April 30 ruling, the Department of Treasury, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and seven other federal regulatory bodies ordered that financial businesses have to implement systems that "determine whether the person [opening an account] appears on any list of known or suspected terrorist organizations," and maintain records of the information used to verify the person's identity.

The feds expect financial institutions to be in full compliance by Oct. 1. Failure to comply could result in criminal prosecution and multimillion-dollar fines. Prosecutors in New York, using the Patriot Act's provision to report suspicious activity, already slapped a $4 million fine on Broadway Bank for "failing to maintain a legally required anti-money-laundering program."

But the punchline is at the end:

Given the system's wealth of intelligence, banks are already looking to use their anti-money-laundering software to mine customer data for marketing purposes and enhance fraud-protection services.

[via In_Defense_of_Freedom mailing list]

Tomorrow the House will mark up a bill to allow the National Drug Control Office and Drug Czar John Walters to spend what could amount to up to a billion of our taxpaying dollars on advertising to fight state marijuana ballot initiatives. Marijuana Policy Project says:

Until now, the ONDCP authorization has included sensible language barring the use of National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign funds for "partisan political purposes." The new language creates an exemption from this ban when the ONDCP director is acting "to oppose an attempt to legalize the use of [marijuana]." If this provision becomes law, there is no doubt that the drug czar will use it to his maximum advantage. The idea that the drug czar will have control over $1 billion to use for partisan political purposes is almost too scary to consider.

Visit here to send a pre-written fax to your U.S. representative today.

TomPaine.Com has more:

Last month we wrote about a lawsuit brought in Mississippi by the ACLU alleging that death row conditions were so bad, inmates were being driven insane.

A Judge in Mississippi did the right thing today, granting relief and ordering ten reforms, including:

annual mental health checkups, better lighting, improved toilets, insect control and ways to keep inmates cool during the summer heat.

...Davis also ordered the Corrections Department to draw up plans to upgrade the plumbing and lighting, provide cleaning materials and make sure all windows are repaired and screened to protect the inmates from insects.

...Davis said officials should also provide sneakers and a shaded area with access to water for exercise. Currently, inmates wear prison-issued flip-flops in individual pens for exercise.

Margaret Winter, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union's National Prison Project, said the decision sets new standards for death row:

Judge Davis really did the right thing here in recognizing the basic principle in our society that we treat everybody humanely, that we don't subject anybody to torture," she said. "Even prisoners sentenced to death cannot be subjected to subhuman conditions of confinement."

From the Associated Press:

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (May 21) - An explosion was reported in a mail room at the Yale University law school, a city spokesman said.

James Foye, a spokesman for Mayor John DeStefano, said he had no immediate information about any injuries.

The FBI in New Haven said members of the agency's terrorism task force were sent to the scene. Smoke could be seen rising from downtown.

The incident came as the nation was on elevated alert for possible terrorist attacks and several hours after President Bush - a Yale alumnus - visited the state to speak at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy graduation ceremony in New London.

Many of you may have noticed we have not posted since Monday. That's because our server has been having problems with one of its hosted sites which gobbled up all its bandwidth, making other hosted sites load incredibly slowly. TalkLeft has been running so slowly since Monday night that it's been inaccessible to us -- it times out before we can save and publish a post. It took us almost an hour last night to get the newsfeed up.

The hosting company is working on it now, and if you are reading this, it means the problem is hopefully fixed. If any of you still are experiencing delays accessing TalkLeft, please let us know, either by email to talkleft@aol.com, or by posting in the comments section here.

Thanks for your patience, and we'll be back with some substantive posts tonight.

Update: We're told it's all fixed. The hosting company has been very responsive -- they called us three times today on the phone to discuss the issue with us, the last call being to let us know all is well again.

"The California Assembly on Monday called for Rep. Howard Coble to resign as chair of a key House subcommittee because of his comments about the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II."

Law Professor Eric Muller of Is That Legal? has been all over the story. Go read. "Even the 32 Republicans in the Assembly voted for the measure."

After two months of testimony, closing arguments began today in the Detroit terror trial. Arguments will resume Tuesday. The defense says the prosecution's case is built on lies. The Governement's star witness was discredited. Enough for the jury to acquit? We'll stay tuned.

A New York man, Michael Mercer, who has spent the past 11 years in prison for rape has been freed through DNA testing proving his innocence.

Cause of conviction: the teenage victim's "insistent identification" of the inmate as the rapist. The real perpertrator: a repeat felon serving two life prison terms. The Manhattan DA's office made the request to free Mercer.

Understatement of the year: In freeing Mercer, the Judge said, ''Obviously a terrible mistake was made.'' Obviously, there are no words to adequately address the needless waste of 11 years of their life. Money would help. New York does have a law allowing wrongfully convicted persons to obtain compensation. All states should have one. The federal government should withhold federal funds from states that refuse to enact such a law.

[comments now closed]

Don't miss Mother Jones today and The Return of the Poppy Fields in Afganistan

With America's attention elsewhere, the reconstruction effort in Afghanistan is faltering. As a result, poor and desperate farmers are once again turning to the only crop they can count on.

Last year opium production in Afghanistan increased 18 fold to 3,400 tons, leaving the fragile country once again responsible for more than 75 percent of the world's heroin. The harvest this summer is expected to break new records, owing to high prices and new poppy fields in the country's most remote reaches.

This resurgence is among the greatest threats to the country's stability. Ashraf Ghani, the nation's finance minister, recently warned that Afghanistan could soon revert to a "narco-mafia" state. As it stands, the lawless and tribal foes of Hamid Karzai's government outside Kabul have become the country's primary moneymen. Warlords and militias oversaw a crop harvest worth more than $1.2 billion in 2002, according to the United Nations, more than twice as much as the Afghan government's annual operating budget.

Let's get something straight. According to Unicef, children in Iraq are in grave peril and undergoing crisis conditions as a result of the war. Our war in Afganistan (and our failure to provide rebuilding tools and money) has resulted in a huge increase in production of the world's most addictive substance. But the war was a success? Not to us.

[comments now closed]