"An Army of One?" by Gen. Wesley Clark from the September, 2002 issue of Washington Monthly:

Bin Laden, War Criminal The Kosovo campaign suggests alternatives in waging and winning the struggle against terrorism: greater reliance on diplomacy and law and relatively less on the military alone. Soon after September 11, without surrendering our right of self defense, we should have helped the United Nations create an International Criminal Tribunal on International Terrorism. We could have taken advantage of the outpourings of shock, grief, and sympathy to forge a legal definition of terrorism and obtain the indictment of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban as war criminals charged with crimes against humanity. Had we done so, I believe we would have had greater legitimacy and won stronger support in the Islamic world. We could have used the increased legitimacy to raise pressure on Saudi Arabia and other Arab states to cut off fully the moral, religious, intellectual, and financial support to terrorism. We could have used such legitimacy to strengthen the international coalition against Saddam Hussein. Or to encourage our European allies and others to condemn more strongly the use of terror against Israel and bring peace to that region. Reliance on a compelling U.N. indictment might have given us the edge in legitimacy throughout much of the Islamic world that no amount of "strategic information" and spin control can provide.

From the inimitable, irreverent, excellent Neal Pollack at The Maelstrom on Senator Joe Biden and his planned attempt to sneak the Rave Act past the House-Senate Conferees and into the Amber Child Alert bill:

Now you must excuse me. I'm going to drive down to Delaware, where I assume Senator Biden still keeps an office. There I will snort a delicious line of cocaine. It's Biden's property. Therefore, my drug use is technically his fault. Prisoner Number 34093. Senator Joseph Biden. Convicted April 10, 2003, letting some guy snort coke in his office. Sentence, 50 years. Up for...in 30.

Instapundit nails it on the Buffalo Six cases:

The FBI last fall arrested six Lackawanna, N.Y., men of Yemeni origin and charged them with conspiracy and aiding a terrorist organization. All six had been to Afghanistan in early 2001 for training by Al Qaeda. But prosecutors used dubious tactics to force the men into a plea-bargain admitting guilt to lesser charges. According to The Wall Street Journal, they threatened the defendants with "enemy combatant" status - meaning they could have been turned over to the military, deprived of counsel, and held incommunicado indefinitely. If I recall correctly, at least some of these guys are American.

Instapundit also links to this article in the Christian Science Monitor:

In other words, the government said, convict yourself or we will strip you of your rights and you can rot in jail. That doesn't sound like respect for due process and trial by jury.

Prosecutors also threatened to bring treason charges that carry the death penalty. That's hardball, but within bounds, since the defendants would have a lawyer and a jury trial.

The case is disturbing because it appears the evidence is weak. A former FBI official said surveillance showed no sign the men had hostile intent. The US attorney in Buffalo confirmed he has no evidence they were involved in a violent plot. Several of the men had quit the training, reportedly disillusioned with Al Qaeda.

In passing sentence, the judge should consider the coercive pressure brought on the men to plead guilty and mitigate their sentences.

We still have our doubts that, legally speaking, attending a training camp and listening to or meeting with a terrorist leader or even providing oneself as a soldier (as opposed to providing the services of others) constitutes providing "material support" under the statute. We don't think you can overlook the word "material." As we reported here, even the prosecutorial guidelines contained in the U.S. Attorney's Manual (9-91.100 , scroll down to Personnel and Training) seems to acknowlege this.

The 9th Circuit has declared portions of the law unconsitutionally vague. Hopefully, the Supreme Court will get the case soon and decide the issue--before Bush packs the Court with his right-wing ideologues.

Our full coverage of the case can be accessed here.

A defense lawyer and paralegal representing an Egyptian client charged in a major New York terrorism case were held in a locked cell for two hours after concluding their meeting with their client, despite repeated requests to leave. A federal judge has ordered an investigation.

The lawyer and the paralegal who visited Mr. Sattar on March 20 told a guard they were ready to leave at 3:20 p.m., according to a memo sent by his lawyers to the judge. They asked again at 4:45 p.m., and as 5 p.m. approached, they asked a guard to call their offices so their co-workers would not worry about them, the memo said, but the request was refused. They were released at 5:15, the memo said.

This was not the first time the legal team had problems at the jail, MCC in lower Manhattan. But the situation has gotten progressively worse.

In the last two weeks, our associates and a paralegal have encountered problems which go beyond what we have previously experienced," they wrote, citing what they called "the completely unacceptable behavior" by staff members at the jail.

The jailers' response was essentially, "Sorry, it was busy, we forgot."

Michael Tomasky writes an article on warbloggers in New York Magazine, Blog On:

But newspaper dispatches are merely a sideshow. The media keep telling us that the military difference between this Gulf War and the last one is technology. True. But it's the media difference, too. The change is the Web, and the people really following this war are following it online. Dozens of bloggers, writing under rubrics like the Fly Bottle, Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, and the Volokh Conspiracy, are providing serious, up-to-the-minute critiques of the action.

Say hello to The DAILY WHIRL--bringing you the latest posts from top legal blogs and legal news sites on one page--You can pick your own favorites to display: How Appealing, SCOTUSblog, Ignatz, Volokh, TalkLeft and lots more. You can choose law blogs, law news or both. If your blog or your favorite blog or news site is not listed, they are accepting recommendations.

Here are the details of the House-Senate Conference on the Feeney Amendment, submitted by Kyle O'Dowd, Legislative Affairs Director for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyerss (NACDL):

The S.151 conferees met today and approved a Hatch-Sensenbrenner amendment to the Feeney provisions in the House-passed bill.  Senator Kennedy's second-degree amendment to strike the Feeney provisions altogether and direct the Sentencing Commission to study departures failed on a strictly party line vote, all Dems voting aye and all Repubs voting nay.

Sen. Hatch described his amendment as addressing the concerns raised by judges and others.  He suggested that it only affects departures in sex cases involving minor victims, while requiring the Commission to study other departures.  IN FACT, THE HATCH-SENSENBRENNER AMENDMENT RETAINS MUCH OF THE UNDERLYING FEENEY AMENDMENT AND DRAMATICALLY LIMITS DEPARTURES IN ALL CASES.  Indeed, the new amendment directs the Sentencing Commission to amend the guidelines and policy statements "to ensure that the incidence of downward departures are [sic] substantially reduced."

The following are the key components of the Feeney amendment as amended by
Hatch-Sensenbrenner.  It is based on a preliminary analysis of the complete text.

The FBI Lab is facing scrutiny in over 100 cases in which it performed DNA tests.

Five years after FBI administrators pledged to clean up their much-maligned evidence lab, officials are again facing questions over shoddy lab work -- this time involving more than 100 DNA tests.

A bureau spokesman says the Justice Department's Office of Inspector General, its internal investigative branch, is looking into how an FBI lab technician might have compromised DNA tests over a two-year span.

Officials at the National Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, which has been critical of the lab, said they were unaware of the latest problem and urged the FBI to reveal more information.

"Our concern is just the typical Justice Department stonewalling on this thing," said Dan Dodson, an association spokesman. "Every defense attorney in every case should be notified."

Dr. Frederic Whitehurst, the former FBI lab chemist whose allegations of incompetence sparked the 1997 investigation, said the technician's mistakes are more proof that the lab should be subject to independent regulation and inspection.

Via GovExec.Com: Here comes TID (Terrorist Information Database)

The FBI is building a massive database to store case information, leads, intelligence and even newspaper and magazine articles related to terrorism.

Articles, the names of suspected terrorists on watch lists and terrorism-related message traffic from the Defense Department and the CIA have been placed into the database, which is being tested by some agents, according to Wilson Lowery, the FBI executive assistant director leading the project. Visa information from the State Department will be added to the database within 60 days, he said.

The database also would store information from state and local law enforcement agencies, records of telephone calls and terrorism-related information from the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Defense agencies. It would also contain data from the 66 joint terrorism task forces at FBI field offices, as well as from the Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force, an interagency group formed by Attorney General John Ashcroft in October 2001 to keep known terrorists and suspects out of the United States and to track them if they do enter the country.

Reporters have already been briefed on the new system. Lowery acknowledged that security is an issue, and said one safeguard will be that "information would be collected according to guidelines established by the attorney general." That's supposed to make us less concerned about the civil liberties and privacy issues involved? If anything, it makes us worry more.

Update: Patriot Watch explains the danger in these databases.

The House-Senate Conferees met today on the Feeney Amendment. The news is not good. Senator Kennedy submitted a secondary amendment to strike the Feeney provisions altogether and direct the Sentencing Commission to study departures. That failed on a strictly party line vote, with all Democrats voting in favor and all Republicans voting against it.

Hatch and Sensenbrenner submitted an Amendment. They are presenting it as a compromise amendment that only limits prevention of downward departures to sex cases with minor children and merely requires the Commission to study other departures. It's not true. We've seen a preliminary point-by point-analysis prepared by two pre-eminent legislative analysts. We can't publish it yet because it's not in final form and we don't have the authors' permission. We hope to have a final analysis from them tomorrow and will reprint it here.

Here's what we can say for now. The Hatch-Sensenbrenner Amendment Retains Much of the Underlying Feeney Amendment and Dramatically Limits Departures in All Cases. In fact, the Amendment directs the Sentencing Commission to amend the guidelines and policy statements "to ensure that the incidence of downward departures are [sic] substantially reduced." There's a lot more, stay tuned.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has issued a statement criticizing both sides in the war for the death of journalists. They are also calling for an inquiry. You can read the statement here.

To date 12 reporters have died covering the war and two are missing.

MEDIA DEATHS IN IRAQ 8 April: Jose Couso (Telecinco, Spain)
8 April: Taras Protsyuk (Reuters, UK)
8 April: Tareq Ayoub (al-Jazeera, Qatar)
7 April: Christian Liebig (Focus, Germany)
7 April: Julio Anguita Parrado (El Mundo, Spain)
6 April: David Bloom (NBC, US)
6 April: Kamaran Abdurazaq Muhamed (BBC, UK)
4 April: Michael Kelly (Washington Post, US)
2 April: Kaveh Golestan (BBC, UK)
30 March: Gaby Rado (ITN, UK)
22 March: Paul Moran (ABC, Australia)
22 March: Terry Lloyd (ITN, UK)

The U.S. also comes under fire today from Reporters Without Borders , which has issued a statement accusing the US military of deliberately firing at journalists. Reporters Without Borders called today on US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld to provide evidence that the offices of the pan-Arab TV station Al-Jazeera and the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad were not deliberately fired at by US forces earlier in the day in attacks that killed three journalists.

"We are appalled at what happened because it was known that both places contained journalists," said the organisation's secretary-general Robert Ménard. "Film shot by the French TV station France 3 and descriptions by journalists show the neighbourhood was very quiet at that hour and that the US tank crew took their time, waiting for a couple of minutes and adjusting its gun before opening fire."

Nathan Newman examines yesterday's Supreme Court ruling limiting punitive damages and its recent ruling upholding three strikes laws, and concludes that pro-corporate bias is what really lies behind the Court's "judicial restraint" policy.

So it's unreasonable to significantly decrease shareholder profits for an insurance company that commits fraud, but it's "reasonable and proportionate" to essentially obliterate a life of someone stealing $153 worth of goods?

My general legal position is pretty much one of judicial restraint-- it's up to the political branches to define the limits of punishment, not the courts who have no greater philosophical wisdom than those enacting either fraud or criminal statutes.

But this kind of contrasting justice for corporations versus the poor in our rightwing-dominated courts just shows the pro-corporate bias that really lies behind all the "judicial restraint" rhetoric from so much of the conservative side.

Update: Sam Heldman at Ignatz is livid over the opinion for the same reasons. Calpundit agrees.