Some justice in Texas today:

Texas prosecutors today agreed to throw out the convictions of 38 people, nearly all of them black, who faced drug charges based on the uncorroborated testimony of a former white undercover police officer.

In a stunning reversal, the state agreed with defense lawyers that the former officer, Thomas Coleman, was an unreliable witness even though his testimony was the only evidence used to convict the defendants, some of whom are serving sentences of 90 years or more.

Asked if the convictions represented a travesty of justice, the state's special prosecutor, Rod Hobson, hesitated a moment and then said, "Yes."

....Lawyers close to the case said that as part of today's agreement, Swisher County Commissioners Court would pay the defense $250,000, to be split among the defendants according to the amount of time spent incarcerated. In return, the defense would agree not to sue Swisher County, its sheriff or district attorney for civil rights damages.

Here is an earlier post of our's about the case. The ACLU has a list of older articles here.

Last week, MSNBC's Kerry Sanders reported from outside a hospital U.S. Marines had taken over in An Nasiriyah. An Nasiriyah is the town where the five soldiers on a supply run were taken into custody by the Iraqis. It's also where Jessica Lynch and another soldier disappeared.

Sanders said marines showed him at least one bloody shredded female U.S. uniform found in one room of the hospital, and in another room, a large battery charger, from which it was speculated that the g.i.'s had been tortured. On March 28, on the Brian Williams Show, Sanders said:

The hospital, if that's what it ever was, is now under full control of U.S. forces. The 2nd Battalion, 8th Marines, making a disturbing discovery here.

In a back room, the uniform of at least one U.S. service woman. It was cut up and covered in blood, the name patch and American flag torn off.

STAFF SGT. RICK ST. JOHN, U.S. MARINE CORPS: Originally, when we did the breach on the room, we saw the battery laying next to the bed, and we assumed it may have been a torture chamber, some sort of torture device.

SANDERS (on camera): While hospitals worldwide all have areas to hold unruly patients, in this hospital U.S. Marines suspect this part may have been used to detain American prisoners of war..... [transcript, Lexis.Com]

On March 29, Sanders said, "US military intelligence officers say they suspect the hospital was used by Iraqi soldiers as a headquarters."

The tv news tonight reports that Jessica had some gunshot wounds. CNN just reported she had "been through quite an ordeal."

Hopefully, if one of the bloodied uniforms was Jessica's, the blood was from a gunshot wound, not from being tortured. However, MSNBC also is reporting that the gunshot wounds occurred during Jessica's rescue, and that she had been held in the hospital since March 23 when she disappeared. The Pentagon is being very close-mouthed about the details of Jessica's rescue and her captivity. We hope she wasn't tortured and wish her a speedy recovery.

Update from Reuters on the "daring midnight raid."

She was said to be doing well, but CNN reported that Lynch had suffered had suffered multiple gunshot wounds at some point during her ordeal in Iraq that made it hard to move her. ....Military officials would not discuss the fate of the other captives, but CNN reported that Lynch's rescue team also brought out the bodies of up to 11 people believed to be U.S. soldiers."

We are almost done with our move to a new hosting company. Right now there are still a few glitches, but it should be smooth sailing by tomorrow or the next day. It has been difficult for us since Sunday, when the site went down and we made the decision to switch, as we've cotninued to write new posts, read the comments and email , stay on top of the news of both war and crime issues, and at the same time, try to remember all of the site peculiarities to relay them to the new hosting company. Not to mention, put in full days at work.

So please bear with us a little longer, and excuse any dead links should you run across one. If you run across something that doesn't work right, send us an email, talkleft@aol.com.

The missing Newsdayjournalists are alive and well in Jordan. The reporter and his cameraman, as well as two others, Molly Bingham from Kentucky and a Danish reporter, phoned in today. Next stop for the group: Amman.

Two other journalists from Britain's Independent Television News remain missing.

Update: Democracy Now! features an interview with Israeli reporter Dan Scemama, who was among four foreign journalists detained by the U.S. Military last week.

The House of Representatives today passed a bill that would defer student loan payments for those on active duty in the military. The bill passed 421-1.

Who voted against this and why? This is a no-brainer to us. We're only sorry the alternative version was defeated. It would have deferred interest accrual on the loans as well as payments while on active duty.

The bill also requests colleges to refund tuition to those who paid and got called up--and to make it easier for the students to re-enter when their military service is over.

The bill is H.R. 1412, which now moves on to the Senate.

There are 37,000 non-citizen, green card holders in the military. A major incentive for them to join is that they receive a shortcut to citizenship.

Citing the war on terrorism, Bush in July issued an order permitting green card holders who are on active duty to immediately apply for citizenship, waiving the usual three-year waiting time. The government also created a team to quickly process citizenship applications from the military. Such requests have since quadrupled, from about 300 a month to more than 1,300 a month.

California produces the lion's share of these enlistees. Half of the first 10 Californians killed in the War on Iraq have not been citizens. Is it fair?

Critics say the government is playing off the desire for citizenship to exploit these mostly poor immigrants — from Latin America, Asia and the Caribbean — for the war effort. "Especially at a time when the doors for citizenship are closing, this may be one of few routes left," said Connie Rice, a civil rights attorney. "It's a tough but well-worn path. Is it fair? No."

We agree. It's true that many, if not most of the enlistees, have true patiriotic feelings for America. But why should citizenship be so hard for them to obtain--why should they have to risk death to get it? For example, take Los Angeles City College student Winston Leiva. He is

motivated by loyalty and respect. He came to Los Angeles at 14, joining family members who were escaping political oppression and economic hardship in Guatemala. Out of gratitude to America, the 29-year-old Koreatown resident said, he signed up for the Marines and is prepared to go to war.

After living here for 15 years, shouldn't Leiva be able to obtain citizenship any time he wanted, regardless of whether he served in the military? Apparently not, because "Some have spent years and thousands of dollars seeking citizenship through attorneys and immigration consultants, recruiters say."

We think demanding service in the military as a quid pro quo for faster citizenship is too high a price to extract from these green card holders. What good will citizenship do for them if they die on the battlefield before they have a chance to enjoy it?

Presidential contender Joseph Lieberman endorsed several liberal social goals Monday and said he would make them a priority.

Lieberman's four liberal social priorities:

· Gay rights: Pledges to sponsor a bill providing benefits to the domestic partners of gay federal employees. Push for legislation barring discrimination in employment based on sexual orientation.

· Affirmative action: Endorsed the University of Michigan admissions program that gives extra points to minority applicants.

· Racial profiling: Would work to ban it.

· Abortion: Denounced banning the procedure called "partial birth abortion." Said it was "a harbinger and a warning" of future threats against the legal right to abortion.

The Washington Post is reporting that an official has told reporters the U.S. is prepared for some very high casualties :

U.S. Prepared to Pay 'Very High Price' Monday, Mar 31, 2003; 4:04 PM

DOHA, Qatar, March 31 -- Though U.S. troops have suffered "fairly light casualties" so far, a senior official at U.S. Central Command official warned there "may come a time when things are much more shocking."

"We're prepared to pay a very high price because we’re not going to do anything other than ensure this regime goes away," the official told reporters. "And if that means there’s going to be a lot of casualties, there’s going to be a lot of casualties."

Britain's Daily Mirror has hired fired NBC jounalist Peter Arnett.

Britain's Daily Mirror said on Tuesday it had hired veteran U.S reporter Peter Arnett, sacked by American TV network NBC after he told Iraqi television the U.S, war plan against Saddam Hussein had failed. "I report the truth of what is happening in Baghdad and will not apologize for it," he told the tabloid newspaper, one of the most prominent opponents of Britain's involvement in the war.

Update: Walter Cronkite writes about Arnett in Tuesday's New York Times.

Iraq has not yet allowed the International Red Cross to visit American POWs in Iraq. The Red Cross has visited Iraqi prisoners of war held by US-led forces in the south of the country. Here is today's IRC press release.

In other news, Geraldo Rivera is denying reports that he has been asked to leave Iraq for disclosing too many tactical details of the war.

Reporting on the Fox News Channel, Rivera said he's actually further inside Iraq than he'd been before. He was standing alongside U.S. troops in a building he identified as Iraq's ruling party headquarters in a city south of Baghdad.

Rivera said it sounds like the rumors that he'd been kicked out were spread by people he described as "rats" at NBC, where he used to work. He said his rivals "can't compete fair and square on the battlefield" — so they try to stab him in the back. But in the end, he insists, "quality journalism wins out."

Rivera said he has a "great relationship" with the troops in the 101st Airborne — and that he plans to "march into Baghdad alongside them." Sources at U.S. Central Command have said that Rivera was asked to leave because he revealed tactical information.

From the BBC: The Pentagon says there are more than 300,000 coalition troops in the Gulf area, more than 100,000 inside Iraq. The UK says US led forces are holding 8,000 POWS. And Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf says Iraqi forces killed 43 US and UK soldiers in past 36 hours and destroyed 13 coalition tanks.

Al Jazeera, the Arab television network, is defending their coverage of the war, including showing "images of bombed Baghdad buildings, bloodied and screaming Iraqi children and slain or captured U.S. and British troops."

While U.S. and Britain want the war portrayed as one to liberate Iraqis, Al Jazeera insists that its coverage, intended to "show the war in all its horrors," is not ideologically based but fact based.

Al Jazeera also complains that the U.S. and Britain are not allowing their journalists enough access. Only one of its reporters is "embedded."

Al Jazeera's English website is here, but AOL seems to be blocking our access to it. We get an error message saying we are not authorized to view the site, followed by "HTTP 401.3 - Access denied by ACL on resource Internet Information Services." Is anyone else getting through?

Update: Thanks to a commenter, we learn that Al Jazeera in English is now available here. It works for us as of now.

Correction: The aljazeerah info site is not related to Al Jazeera tv. The website itself states, "This website (aljazeerah.info) is not related by any means to the Arabic TV network, "Aljazeera."

The site's being hacked is old news, but from emails we received, we thought it was back up. Guess not.

From Free Mike Hawash:

On Thursday, March 20, 2003, our friend and colleague Maher (Mike) Hawash was arrested ("detained") as a "material witness" by the FBI and the Joint Terrorism Task Force in the parking lot of Intel Corp's Hawthorne Farms parking lot. Simultaneously, FBI agents in bulletproof vests and carrying assault rifles awoke Mike's wife Lisa and their three children in the home, which they proceeded to search. Since then, Mike has been held in the Federal Prison at Sheridan, OR.

Here are some facts:

Mike is not charged with any crime, and it has not been suggested that he will be;

Mike is a U.S. citizen of middle-eastern descent;

The warrants and subpoenas in Mike's case are all secret, sealed by the court at the U.S. government's request;

The U.S. has held other middle-eastern men for as long as 15 months without charge as "material witnesses";

Historically, "material witness" arrests were solely for grand-jury or trial witnesses who were either a "flight risk" or represented a "danger" to the community. Mike has a job, a home, a family, and deep roots in his community.

What you can do

Write your Congressmen! Write to your U.S. Senators and representative. Most have webmail forms on their congressional websites, and all have their postal addresses on their sites.  Here is one letter that has been sent.

Go to www.senate.gov to find your Senators, and www.house.gov to find your U.S. Representatives.  If you live in Oregon, your Senators are Senator Wyden and Senator Smith.

Your U.S. Represenative may be one of: Earl Blumenauer, Peter DeFazio, Darlene Hooley, Gregory Walden and David Wu.

The host of the site is a former Intel Corp. Vice President and was Mike's boss at Intel during much of the 1990s. Thanks to Atrios and Jim Capozzola at Rittenhouse Review for the link.

We wonder whether this arrest is a result of information obtained from a cooperating defendant in the federal terrorism case pending in Oregon against six suspects. Ziska has more links to the case, which the LA Times suggested may be more of a case of bumbling holy warriors than terrorism. Via Cursor, here's more.