Literary groups are banding together to decry the Patriot Act as an invasion of privacy:

32 organizations, including the American Booksellers Association, the Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers, the American Library Association, PEN American Center, and the giant booksellers Borders and Barnes & Noble. It endorses a bill filed in March by Representative Bernard Sanders, Independent of Vermont, that would exempt bookstore sales records and library borrowing records from some provisions of the act.

In a separate statement supporting the Sanders bill, former US representative Patricia Schroeder, president of the library association, said, ''Section 215 seriously undermines the First Amendment-protected activities of authors and publishers, booksellers and librarians, and indeed anyone who reads.''

[link via PatriotWatch]

Ed Rosenthal, convicted of cultivating marijuana in federal court despite having a state license to do so, was denied a new trial Friday.

Rosenthal wanted to argue that he was cultivating the drug as an "officer" for the city of Oakland's medical marijuana program approved by California voters. Judge Charles Breyer did not allow defense lawyers to introduce testimony on that issue because growing marijuana for any reason is a federal offense.

Some of the jurors later said they would not have convicted Rosenthal had he been allowed to explain his medical focus in growing the marijuana.

"It is simply not relevant to the question of guilt or innocence," Breyer wrote in denying the appeal for a new trial. "The Court concluded that there was no evidence from which a jury could conclude that the federal government's conduct led the defendant to believe that he was immune from criminal liability."

...."It was not a shock because this judge has consistently ruled for the prosecution," Rosenthal told Reuters. "I think in the end I'll be exonerated and the people who are persecuting me and, by proxy, medical marijuana users, will be hanging their heads in shame."

Rosenthal will be sentenced on June 4, and then will appeal the conviction to the 9th Circuit Court of appeals. You can access all of our prior coverage of the case here.

From the BBC....Via Tapped:

Witnesses told us that the special forces knew that the Iraqi military had fled a day before they swooped on the hospital.

"We were surprised. Why do this? There was no military, there were no soldiers in the hospital," said Dr Anmar Uday, who worked at the hospital.

"It was like a Hollywood film. They cried 'go, go, go', with guns and blanks without bullets, blanks and the sound of explosions. They made a show for the American attack on the hospital -- action movies like Sylvester Stallone or Jackie Chan."

There was one more twist. Two days before the snatch squad arrived, Harith had arranged to deliver Jessica to the Americans in an ambulance. But as the ambulance, with Private Lynch inside, approached a checkpoint American troops opened fire, forcing it to flee back to the hospital. The Americans had almost killed their prize catch.

Tapped isn't sure whether to believe the story.

On the other hand, this kinda fits. It might explain, for instance, the shifting stories about Lynch's injuries. First the Pentagon reported that she had broken bones, but no gunshot wounds. Then, later, she was somehow discovered to have wounds "consistent with low-velocity small arms," according to a family spokesman in Lynch's home town, who, oddly, seems to speak in military jargon. Did they add the story of the gunshot wound after the fact to make it sound more dire? It would also explain why the man who supposedly alerted U.S. forces to Lynch's whereabouts, an Iraqi lawyer known only as Mohammed -- they know he's a lawyer but not his last name, even though, according to Newsweek, he had three visits with a Marine detachment before the raid -- has mysteriously disappeared. If the BBC is to be believed, maybe he didn't exist at all.

The curious part of the story to us has always been that the lawyer disappeared and was reported to have been sent to a refugee camp. If he was really the hero the press made him out to be, why wouldn't he be rewarded? But then , a few weeks ago, reports came out saying that the lawyer and his wife and child had been flown to America where they will receive asylum.

Utah still retains the firing squad as a means of execution, and two death row inmates have recently chosen it over lethal injection, according to Pravda.Ru. The reason? To ridicule the system.

On schedule to die are Troy Kell and Roberto Arguelles. Arguelles will be shot June 27 and Troy next day. Both men have chosen to stop any pending appeals and to die the rough way.

It is not uncommon that prisoners on death row take that course. Earlier this year, Earl Bramblett was executed in the electric chair of the state Virginia. He could have chosen to drift into sleep on the execution gurney, will death be pumped in his arm by an injection needle, but went out in a blaze of electricity to state his innocence. Other motives for preferring a terrible death like hanging on the gallows, the firing squad or the electric chair are simply a call for attention, the hope that its cruelty will lead to a stop of execution or even a pardon or even to brag in public about how tough someone is. And sometimes, it can be asked, it may not be clear to the condemned was he is choosing.

How does it work?

....They will be strapped to a chair in dark clothing. Five men or women, mostly peace officers of the district the murders occurred will take aim and fire four bullets and a blank in a human body. Death will be instant, if the aim is all right.

[comments now closed]

LA Weekly is featuring Taryn Simon and The Innocents--highly recommended. The Innocents recounts 46 stories of exonerations from wrongful convictions. It is,

a collaboration of Simon, a 28-year-old photography wunderkind, and the Innocence Project, Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck’s New York–based effort that employs DNA testing to free the wrongly convicted. In the 11 years since its founding, the project has helped secure the release of 127 men and women. All 45 men and the one woman featured in The Innocents were freed with the help of the project, which provided some funding for the book as well as case narratives and a brief opening commentary by Neufeld and Scheck.

But the bulk of the work for the book fell to Simon. With the help of a Guggenheim Fellowship, she spent three years crisscrossing the country, interviewing and photographing the book’s subjects, whose wrongful convictions occurred in 18 different states, from California to Kentucky, Texas to Indiana.

Here's more.

The Justice Department is inflating terrorism charges according to the Deluth News.

Of the 56 terrorism cases filed by Justice in January and February, 2003, the agency concedes that 41 did not involve terrorism. The article has a host of examples of the non-terrorist cases. Here's one.

Meanwhile, in Detroit, the case of Hassan Nasrallah -- whose name is the same as that of the chief of the Lebanese group Hezbollah -- was, like the 55 others, labeled as terrorism.

His attorney, Mark Haidar, said he is charged with using six phony checks to pay his MasterCard bill.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric M. Straus, who is prosecuting the case, said last week: "He is not the leader of Hezbollah.... This is not a terrorist case." [hat tip to Matthew of Untelevised.Org]

Received from NORML:

A primary compound in marijuana, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), is effective in reducing "tics" in patients suffering from Tourette's Syndrome (TS), according to clinical trail data published in a recent edition of the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. Tourette's Syndrome is a complex neuropsychiatric disorder characterized by motor tics (sudden spasms especially in the facial muscles, neck and shoulders) and one or more vocal tics.

Twenty-four patients participated in the double-blind placebo-controlled trial over a period of six weeks. Treatment with up to 10 mg of THC resulted in significant improvement of tic severity, authors wrote. No serious adverse effects to the treatment were reported.

In a separate article published in Neuropsychopharmacology, authors elaborated, "No detrimental effect was seen on learning curve, interference, recall and recognition of word lists, immediate visual memory span, and divided attention" from THC during or after the treatment.

Sam Hamod and Elayne Cassel tell readers how they can resist the Bush Administration's War on Liberty with some concrete ideas for activism.

William Scott Stewart's article, "How to Beat the Lie Detector" (Esquire magazine, November 1941) may be the earliest ever published on polygraph countermeasures. It also documents waste, fraud, and abuse associated with the use of the lie detector. It's amazing how little some things have changed in sixty years. (via Antipolygraph.org)

Fox News' Bill O'Reilly is conducting a poll on his website about decriminalizing marijuana. Go over and vote. Right now, decriminalization is losing!

Comedian and satirist Tommy Chong became the first defendant to plead guilty in federal court to selling drug paraphernalia as part of Operation Pipe Dreams. The maximum penalty is 3 years, but federal sentencing guidelines provide for 6 months to 1 year. He is also eligible for home detention rather than prison. His lawyer, Richard Hirsch (an excellent lawyer and friend of ours who practices in LA with another terrific lawyer, Michael Nasitir) said:

Chong's attorneys said he was accepting responsibility, but noted he was careful not to sell to minors. "This isn't his work. His work is that of a comedian and satirist," said attorney Richard G. Hirsch. After the hearing, Chong said he did not use drugs. "I don't smoke; I quit," he said.

This is the first federal prosecution in a decade for drug paraphernalia sales. As usual, Ashcroft is out of step, moving backwards. Putting bong sellers out of business and in jail is hardly going to equate to fewer people smoking pot.

Here's more about Operation Pipe Dreams.

We're watching Lou Dobbs on CNN presenting a report on the New York Times meeting today about Jayson Blair. The theme Dobbs keeps repeating is that no top editors are accepting responsibility.

According to the Times, Howell Raines accepted full responsibility and turned the meeting into a grievance session against himself and his management style. So what gives with CNN? Raines said,

"I was guilty of a failure of vigilance that, since I sit in this chair where the buck stops, I should have prevented."

If that isn't accepting responsibility, what is?

Raines said he would resign if Sultzburger asked him to.

Mr. Sulzberger, who was sitting next to Mr. Raines, quickly interjected that he would not accept Mr. Raines's resignation even if offered.

When asked whether race played a role in keeping Jayson Blair, Raines said,

"Our paper has a commitment to diversity and by all accounts he appeared to be a promising young minority reporter," Mr. Raines said. "I believe in aggressively providing hiring and career opportunities for minorities."

"Does that mean I personally favored Jayson?" he added, a moment later. "Not consciously. But you have a right to ask if I, as a white man from Alabama, with those convictions, gave him one chance too many by not stopping his appointment to the sniper team. When I look into my heart for the truth of that, the answer is yes."

What are we missing?