The Bill of Rights Defense Committee reports that to date, one state and 102 cities, towns, and counties have passed resolutions opposing the Patriot Act.

As Bush gets ready to unleash Patriot Act II on us, we encourage all of you to check in with this site and the ACLU to learn how you can mount opposition in your town.

[link via PatriotWatch].

"Jan Arriens was so moved by a 1987 BBC film about a US death row prisoner, he wrote to the executed man's cellmates. The replies inspired him to found a group - now boasting 1,700 members - to correspond with condemned convicts."

We are reminded of Joseph Amrine, who sat on death row in Missouri for killing another prisoner from 1986 until until last week, when the Missouri Supreme Court vacated his death sentence and found that Amrine had shown "clear and convincing evidence of actual innocence that undermines confidence" in his conviction. When interviewed a few years ago for the Benneton anti-death penalty campaign, "We on Death Row," Amrine was asked what he would like people reading his interview to know.

"Could you put in there that I like to write? That if there's anybody out there that wants to write me, that I'll write him back."

[ed. note. Due to the controversy surrounding the Benneton campaign, it is no longer available on the Internet, to our knowledge. We have around ten hard copies of it left, which we use when we lecture on the topic of "Defending the Hated Defendant: Why We Do What We Do." About the size of an issue of Life Magazine, with similar full page pictures, it was included as a supplement to the now defunct Talk Magazine in January, 2000. If you can get your hands on a copy, we highly recommend it.]

Attorney General John Ashcroft is on the warpath again, trying to impose the death penalty in a state which doesn't allow for it. This time it's Minnesota.

Minnesota hasn't had an execution since 1906 when it hanged William Williams. The state doesn't have a death penalty law on the books. But that isn't stopping Ashcroft. Richard A. Oslund is awaiting trial in Minnesota state court on murder charges. Ashcroft's minions are considering stepping in to move the case to federal court where Oslund could be made to face the death penalty.

Oslund has a fairly routine murder case--the kind that is traditionally tried in state court. Ashcroft is using an interstate commerce connection to justify his attempt to remove the case to federal court.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune has more on the Feeney Amendment and its restrictive effect on judges' sentencing discretion.

Some Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee are taking a dim view of Feeney's idea. Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., said the law will result in "robot-like conformity" in sentencing, adding that it doesn't recognize that circumstances can vary in individual cases.

ABA Preident Alfred Carlton, who wrote a strong protest letter against the bill before it passed (as a last minute add-on to the Amber child alert bill,) has been in Washington recently to try and gather support for its repeal. Carlton thinks the bill was the result of the strong negative reaction to Congress's subpoena of Minnesota federal Judge James Rosenbaum's sentencing records in drug cases.

"It came out of nowhere," he said. "I think it was a result of the powers-that-be recognizing that the subpoena route wasn't going to be very fruitful. . . . Better to just go ahead and legislate -- and that's what they did."

The law also requires judges to give specific written reasons when they stray from the guidelines. Critics fear that judges will be intimidated and less likely to impose lenient sentences. "Every time you depart from the guidelines, the attorney general will be notified. Talk about a blacklist for judges," said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.

For more information on the Feeney Amendment, go here. For why the unprecedented subpoena of Judge Rosenbaum's sentencing records is a bad idea, go here.

At Media Horse, we find Letterman's Top Ten Excuses Bush gives for not finding weapons of mass destruction.

10. "We've only looked through 99% of the country"

9. "We spent entire budget making those playing cards"

8. "Containers are labeled in some crazy language"

7. "They must have been stolen by some of them evil X-Men mutants"

6. "Did I say Iraq has weapons of mass destruction? I meant they have goats"

5. "How are we supposed to find weapons of mass destruction when we can't even find Cheney?"

4. "Still screwed up because of Daylight Savings Time"

3. "When you're trying to find something, it's always in the last place you look, am I right, people?"

2. "Let's face it -- I ain't exactly a genius"

1. "Geraldo took them"

Human Rights Watch has issued a 25 page report alleging that Vancouver police are persecuting drug users in a downtown, impoverished neighborhood.

An anti-drug crackdown by the Vancouver Police Department has driven injection drug users away from life-saving HIV prevention services, raising fears of a new wave of HIV transmission in the city that is already home to the worst AIDS crisis in the developed world, said Human Rights Watch.

Based on a field study conducted in recent weeks, Human Rights Watch documented cases of police officers beating and otherwise mistreating drug users in custody, conducting public strip searches, and using petty allegations such as jaywalking to justify stops and searches. The report also documents a significant reduction in the use of needle exchange programs and other life-saving services related to fear of police abuse and harassment among drug users.

You can read the report here.

Could Your Secret Security Profile Stop You from Traveling? Take this quiz from the ACLU and find out.

The next time you go to the airport, your name could be entered in a secretive new government database, and depending on your threat rating -- red, yellow or green -- you could be prevented from flying or even detained.

This new background check program, called Computer-Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening System or CAPPS II, would assign a rating to every American based on information from secret intelligence and law enforcement databases and even commercial data such as purchase history and banking records.

Innocent Americans have already been stopped and banned from flying because their names erroneously appeared on government “no fly” lists. Take the ACLU’s new quiz to find out who’s being stopped from flying, and whether you could become one of them.

[link via Lisa English at Ruminate This.]

The Connecticut Supreme Court Wednesday ruled that a fetus is a "body part- like teeth, skin and hair - that is eventually shed. The decision has both sides of the abortion debate up in arms.

Anti-abortion groups applauded the court's protection of the fetus, but criticized the identification of a fetus as a body part.

The Chief Justice of the Court, in a separate opinion, wrote that a fetus may be entitled to legal protection.

"Any time I hear about giving rights to fetuses, I get concerned," said Elaine Werner, executive director of the Connecticut chapter of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League. "That's the slippery slope to eroding Roe vs. Wade."

An appeal is certain. You can read the opinion here.

Twelve faculty members and 50 law students to date have signed a petition protesting the selection of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as the commencement speaker at the University of Georgia law school.

The protest is over Thomas' role in the Bush v. Gore 2000 election decision, and the speaker selection process. The leader of the protest is law professor Donald Wilkes, who says he will give a speech on another part of the campus at the same time on the need to protect civil liberties.

Wilkes described the number of people who've signed the anti-Thomas petition as "roughly one-third of the law school faculty and includes the only tenured black professor at the law school.

"The decision to invite Justice Thomas is appalling, unwise and perverse - the embodiment of bad judgment," Wilkes told CNSNews.com.

The petition argued the selection process was "under inclusive, clandestine and divisive," and claimed the decision to have Thomas deliver commencement remarks was "divisive and disrespectful to a substantial number of students and their families."

[link via Instapundit]

Pete Townsend, lead guitarist for the Who, has resolved his legal difficulties arising from his arrest on child porn charges this past January. He will receive a "caution" and be listed in the sex offender registry for five years.

British authorities concede Townsend cooperated in the investigation against him, and that he did not download any material from the website he accessed. Townsend said he accessed the site while doing research--he believes he was sexually abused as a child.

"I accept that I was wrong to access this site, and that by doing so, I broke the law, and I have accepted the caution that the police have given me," Townshend said in a statement.

We don't see the value to labeling Townsend a sex offender. But it's better than facing criminal charges and jail, so we certainly understood why he agreed to it.

Just received this via email from Gary Hart:

It has been one of the truly great blessings of my life to have had the finest people one can imagine as friends and supporters in many public causes. I don't know of any candidate for any public office who has enjoyed such support from so many dedicated and talented friends. And our recent exploration of a national campaign was certainly no exception.

Although I will not be an active candidate for the presidency, I want each and every one of you to know that I will never forget your commitment to the cause of rescuing American politics and government from the corrupting influence of special interest money and the access and influence it purchases.

And I hope all of you will continue to oppose an economics of class and wealth, a global policy of unilateralism, and a military policy of preemption.

I will never be able to thank you enough for the many hours and the many small contributions that made this effort so worthwhile for me...and I hope to a degree also for you. I urge you to continue to follow the path of reform of politics and policy and the restoration of the values of the republic.

In the coming days I will be returning the many contributions that were made to this website and to our effort. I know that many of you have many charities you are supporting. If you choose to do so, you might consider sending all or part of your original contribution to me to one of the several very worthy efforts I support...such as Share Our Strength, Operation USA, or Global Green.

For myself, I intend to keep fighting. Through writing, speaking, and teaching, I hope to continue to make an effort to elevate public discourse and dialogue and to change the direction of our nation. I urge you as strongly as I can to do so also. Never give up.

In the words of the immortal Yeats, I close: "Think where man's glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends." I thank you all.

We thank him too, for sharing his wisdom, insights and ideas and for giving us a clearer vision of where our country should be headed. We will keep up the good fight and stay involved. Anyone but Bush and Ashcroft in 2004.

Maryland is not alone in its rising rate of infectious diseases among prisoners.

Nearly one in three inmates entering the Maryland prison system is infected with HIV, syphilis, hepatitis B virus or hepatitis C virus -- many of them with more than one infection -- according to a blood survey released yesterday by state health officials.

The most prevalent infection in Maryland state prisons was hepatitis C, a blood-borne virus that can cause liver disease, including cancer and cirrhosis, and other serious complications, according to the report by the Maryland AIDS Administration. At a time when less than 2 percent of the U.S. population is infected with hepatitis C, 29.7 percent of Maryland prisoners had it, said Liza Solomon, the agency's director.

Even if you don't care about prisoners, you should know that this has consequences for all of us.

The higher rate of disease among prisoners has major public health implications beyond prison walls, she said, because inmates eventually are released into the community, where they can spread the infections. Reaching undiagnosed inmates in prison is an important opportunity for the state to limit diseases that can disrupt or prematurely end lives.

Here's more on the problem and what should be done about it.