The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal by the Guantanamo detainees challenging their confinement. The Court let stand a lower court decision holding that the parties that brought the suit on behalf of the detainees, a coalition of lawyers, professors and clergy, lacked standing.

The lawsuit claimed the detainees have been held without due process, have not been told the charges against them and have no access to lawyers. It said their captivity violated the U.S. Constitution and the Geneva Convention.

A federal judge in Los Angeles and the California-based appeals court had dismissed the lawsuit. The appeals court ruled the coalition failed to show any relationship with the detainees.

You can read more about the case and the initial ruling here. The full text of the lower court decision is available here.

Let's hear it for Arcata, California. The Northern California town, not content to voice its disapproval of the Patriot Act, has gone further and made it a crime to comply with the Act.

Starting this month, a new city ordinance would impose a fine of $57 on any city department head who voluntarily complies with investigations or arrests under the aegis of the Patriot Act, the anti-terrorism bill passed after Sept. 11.

The town knows its ordinance is "mostly symbolic" since federal law takes precedence over state law. It doesn't care.

Home to about 16,000 and nearly 300 miles up the coast from San Francisco, Arcata made waves in the early 1990s as the first city with a Green Party majority. Greens now hold two of five seats on the council, which recently issued a proclamation against war in Iraq.

Bob Herbert on Jayson Blair in Truth, Lies and Subtext:

The idea that blacks can get away with the journalistic equivalent of murder at The Times because they are black is preposterous. There's a real shortage of black reporters, editors and columnists at The Times. But the few who are here are doing fine and serious work day in and day out and don't deserve to be stigmatized by people who can see them only through the prism of a stereotype.

The problem with American newsrooms is too little diversity, not too much. Blacks have always faced discrimination and maddening double standards in the newsroom, and they continue to do so. So do women, Latinos and many other groups that are not part of the traditional newsroom in-crowd.

So let's be real. Discrimination in the newsroom --in hiring, in the quality of assignments and in promotions -- is a much more pervasive problem than Jayson Blair's aberrant behavior. A black reporter told me angrily last week, "After hundreds of years in America, we are still on probation."

Racial profiling by Alabama state troopers is now formally banned.

The policy, unveiled last week, prohibits troopers from stopping motorists based solely on ethnicity, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, religion, economic status, age or cultural group and mandates annual training.

"This policy clearly states that such actions will not be tolerated," Public Safety Director Mike Coppage said.

There's a new drug in town, one recently approved by the FDA. It is buprenorphine hydrochloride and officials in San Francisco are hoping it will become the "drug of choice" for heroin addicts. It sounds promising.

Buprenorphine hydrochloride is an opiate, but one that is milder than heroin. It is an alternative to methadone. The best part is that users don't have to go to a clinic to get it--treatment will be available in "the privacy of a physician's office in their own neighborhood."

Interestingly, it is not being pushed as a cure for heroin addiction.

Comedian Lenny Bruce has been dead a long time. Contributing to his early demise were his troubles with the law. He was convicted of misdemeanor obscenity charges arising from language he used in his stand-up comic acts.

There will be a news conference in New York this Tuesday at which it will be announced that performance artists and First Amendment scholars are forming a petition drive to ask Governor Pataki to grant Bruce a posthumous pardon.

At the time of his death, some of Bruce's friends mourned him as a suicide victim driven to desperation while trying to appeal the guilty verdict. After he was sentenced to four months on Rikers Island, a jail term he had not yet begun to serve, Bruce grew distrustful of the law and lawyers and insisted on representing himself.

We are finally headed home today after a full week in Manhattan attending graduation events and turning over our last spare dollar to Bed Bath and Beyond, Office Depot and Bloomingdales to furnish the graduate's new apartment--we'll be especially glad to return to high speed internet access so we can resume posting at our normal rate--in the meantime, check out Supreme Court Shuffle, with its comprehensive speculation on likely Supreme Court Justice retirees and replacements.

On the injustice front, Tennessee is scheduled to execute Abu-Ali Abdur'Rahman on June 18, notwithstanding the consensus of opinion that he was denied effective assistance of counsel. Law Professor William McClain eloquently writes:

James Bovard takes on Ashcroft and the Patriot Acts I and II in Surveillance State--published in the May 19 issue of American Conservative. Bovard is the author of the upcoming Terrorism & Tyranny: How Bush's Crusade is Sabotaging Freedom, Justice, and Peace.

Welcome to America under the Patriot Act. One person claims to “smell something,” and the feds can round up everyone’s records. From books you check out to credit card purchases, money transfers to medications, your activities are now subject to federal surveillance. Uncle Sam now has a blank check to search and pry—all in the name of security.

Three months after 9/11, Ashcroft announced, “To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this, your tactics only aid terrorists for they erode our national unity and ... give ammunition to American’s enemies.” Ashcroft is wrong to portray any criticism of Bush administration civil liberties policies as aiding and abetting terrorism. America is overdue for a searching examination of the powers the Bush administration has seized and the powers it is seeking.

Why is it that so many Conservatives seem to get it while the Democrats remain catatonic when it comes to the loss of our liberties? [link via Buzzflash]

Feel like smoking pot legally this weekend? Head to Ontario, Canada where the Globe and Mail reports that:

Canada has no laws prohibiting marijuana possession, an Ontario Superior Court judge said yesterday in a ruling that will be binding on judges in the province and may soon be picked up across the country.

"For today, and for the Victoria Day weekend, it's a very pleasant state of affairs for recreational pot smokers," said criminal lawyer Paul Burstein, who helped argue the case successfully.

The proposed decriminalization law may be unnecessaryif this ruling is upheld and broadened across the country. In fact, some say under this court ruling, the new decriminalization law would actually recriminalize pot possession by allowing fines for pot possession.

Randy Paul over at Beautiful Horizens has an interesting post, Back to Reality, on Human Rights Watch's recent report of an attempt by Ashcroft's Justice Department to effectively quash the Alien Torts Claim Act.

In a brief filed in John Doe I, et al. v. Unocal Corporation, et al., a case originally filed in 1996 and currently being reheard by the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Justice Department

...argued for a radical re-interpretation of the 1789 Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA). For over 20 years, courts have held that the ATCA permits victims of serious violations of international law abroad to seek civil damages in U.S. courts against their alleged abusers who are found in the United States. The Justice Department would deny victims the right to sue under the ATCA for abuses committed abroad.

“This is a craven attempt to protect human rights abusers at the expense of victims,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “The Bush administration is trying to overturn a longstanding judicial precedent that has been very important in the protection of human rights.”

The first national study on drug testing has been released. The findings: Drug testing has no effect on deterring student drug use.

The study, published last month in The Journal of School Health, a peer-reviewed publication of the American School Health Association, found that 37 percent of 12th graders in schools that tested for drugs said they had smoked marijuana in the last year, compared with 36 percent in schools that did not. In a universe of tens of thousands of students, such a slight deviation is statistically insignificant, and it means the results are essentially identical, the researchers said. Similarly, 21 percent of 12th graders in schools with testing said they had used other illicit drugs like cocaine or heroin in the last year, while 19 percent of their counterparts in schools without screening said they had done so.

The same pattern held for every other drug and grade level. Whether looking at marijuana or harder drugs like cocaine and heroin, or middle school pupils compared with high school students, the fact that their schools tested for drugs showed no signs of slowing their drug use.

The Supreme Court, in upholding drug testing of student athletes and those involved in extra-curricular activities, justified the privacy intrusion , relied upon the assumption that the screening combats drug abuse.

This is the largest study ever conducted on the subject. It was paid for by the federal government and tracked students across the nation for 30 years. "The study, published last month in The Journal of School Health, a peer-reviewed publication of the American School Health Association."

Since the Supreme Court did not have the benefit of this study at the time it ruled in the student drug testing cases, we hope the Supreme Court accepts another case on the issue and reverses itself. As one expert says,

"Schools should not implement a drug testing program until they're proven to work," he added. "They're too expensive. It's like having experimental surgery that's never been shown to work."

Put another way, ACLU lawyer Graham Boyd, says,

"Now there should be no reason for a school to impose an intrusive or even insulting drug test when it's not going to do anything about student drug use."

The White House uses television and technology to promote Bush's presidential image --we can't help but wonder who pays for it all, and we have a sinking feeling that we, the people do. One example:

The White House efforts have been ambitious — and costly. For the prime-time television address that Mr. Bush delivered to the nation on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, the White House rented three barges of giant Musco lights, the kind used to illuminate sports stadiums and rock concerts, sent them across New York Harbor, tethered them in the water around the base of the Statue of Liberty and then blasted them upward to illuminate all 305 feet of America's symbol of freedom. It was the ultimate patriotic backdrop for Mr. Bush, who spoke from Ellis Island.