Time for an open thread, all topics welcome.

The Denver Post has an article today about Colorado's "Make My Day" law that allows homeowners to use deadly force against an intruder in their home.

Introduced in 1985 as the Homeowner Protection Act, "make my day" gives Colorado residents the right to shoot and kill an intruder if they believe the person intends to commit a crime and use physical force, "no matter how slight." That extraordinary right stops at the door. Front porches and backyards don't count.

In other words, to shoot and kill an intruder in the home, a homeowner need only reasonably believe a trespassing person might use any measure of physical force on any occupant of the home. The law is explained here.

Outside the home:

... in Colorado, as in Florida, fists can be deemed deadly weapons that justify gun use outside the home.

[More...]

Remember Daniel Chong, the San Diego college student the DEA forgot about and left in a jail cell for 5 days? The cell was 5' by 10' with no bathroom. Since they forgot he was there, no food or water were provided and he had to drink his own urine. Nor did they hear his screams.

The U.S. has agreed to pay him $4 million. DOJ handled the negotiations. More here.

MIT has released a 182 page report on its actions in the Aaron Swartz case. The website for the documents is here. The President of MIT describes the report as:

...an independent description of the actual events at MIT and of MIT's decisions in the context of what MIT knew as the events unfolded. The report also sets the record straight by dispelling widely circulated myths. For example, it makes clear that MIT did not “target” Aaron Swartz, we did not seek federal prosecution,
punishment or jail time, and we did not oppose a plea bargain.

MIT says it adopted a policy of neutrality. MIT did not say it was opposed to jail time, only that it wasn't seeking it. It rejected his defense team and family's requests to take a position against the prosecution. [More...]

Bradley Manning hears his verdict today. Think good thoughts.

Update: Manning not guilty of charge of aiding the enemy but convicted of five counts of violating Espionage Act. Also guilty of Computer Fraud (10 years). See Nathan Fuller's Tweets and Alexa O'Brien, who says he faces 136 years in prison and sentencing will be tomorrow.

Manning was found guilty of 19 counts, 4 of which were his lesser included pleas. [More...]

The ACLU has a post today showing just how much metadata reveals about your life and associations.

Why this is important: In the attempt to justify the NSA surveillance program, the President and some in Congress resort to claims like "It's just metadata, not content."

"This is just metadata," Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein assured the American people, referring to the NSA's bulk collection of Americans call records. "There is no content involved." President Obama and his national security officials have made similar assurances.

Using a program called Immersion, developed by MIT Media Lab, he reviews almost 9 years of his own emails. Immersion examines the From, To, Cc and Timestamp fields-- from a Gmail account and visualizes it.

[More...]

Here's an open thread, all topics welcome (except Zimmerman who has his own threads.)

If you are looking for something moving to read today, try Senior U.S. District Court Judge Richard Kopf's blog post, "The best gift I ever got from a convicted killer" about sentencing decisions.

Judge Kopf is not going to be pleased that I'm praising his blog again, but now that I've read all the posts, I can't help but point out some that I especially liked. There's several on the sequester cuts to defender services. Today he proposed this solution:

Unless the House Judiciary Committee is run entirely by hypocrites, I think the Committee ought to fire one of its lawyers every time a federal public defender gets the axe as a result of the sequester. Perhaps Mr. Branden Ritchie, Deputy Chief of Staff and Chief Counsel for the House Judiciary Committee, would be a good candidate for the first sequester generated pink slip.

As Democrats in Colorado pushed through three new gun control laws in March, 2013, with virtually no support from Republicans, applications for concealed weapons permits were soaring.

In the first half of 2013, the Denver Post reports the numbers rose dramatically, from 16, 886 to 31, 518:

From January to June, 31,518 background checks were processed for concealed-carry permits by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, according to bureau data. For the same period last year, there were only 16,886 processed

Here's a chart showing the first six months of both years. [More...]

The New Zealand prosecutor's office has spent almost 10,000 hours battling Kim Dotcom in New Zealand, either on behalf of the U.S. or defending against NZ's actions in providing assistance to the FBI.

The latest figures show 9688 hours worked on the case since July 15, 2011 - the date the Crown Law Office opened its file on the American request. The estimate of $2 million is based on rates usually paid for counsel hired to work for the Crown. In this case, additional legal work for the Crown had been done by Christine Gordon QC, Kirsty McDonald QC and Mike Ruffin, adding about 200 hours.

...Some of that work is on behalf of the United States but most has been damage control around the mess which came with helping the FBI shut down Mr Dotcom's Megaupload.

It's not just a drain of money. It's also a drain on prosecutorial and court resources that could be better spent on other matters, such as crime in New Zealand.

As to why you should care, it's because the same waste of money and resources is occurring with DOJ's prosecution of Kim Dotcom and Megaupload in Virginia.[More....]

Looks like our recent George Zimmerman posts have maxed out at 200 comments, which is the limit. Here's a new thread.

Over at Slate, William Saletan breaks down the Juror B-29 interview pointing to ABC's phoney-baloney editing job, which appears to be designed to produce the maximum salacious effect. Three versions are here, here and here. [More...]

Happy birthday to Mick Jagger, who turned 70 yesterday. While I couldn't possibly list all my favorites in one post, here he is singing Satisfaction in 1969; Happy in 1972; Under My Thumb and Time is On My Side in 1982;You Can't Always Get What You Want in 1990; Gimme Shelter in 1997; Let It Bleed in 2003; Sympathy for the Devil in 2006; at the Superbowl halftime show in 2010; It's Only Rock n Roll at Hyde Park a few weeks ago.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome (except Zimmerman which will have its own post shortly.)

Meet the new Kim Dotcom, New Zealand activist for privacy rights, fighting against expansion of government surveillance and U.S. drone strikes and for the rights of whistleblowers.

Kim Dotcom spoke at a rally of thousands of New Zealanders (video here) who had gathered to voice their opposition to a bill expanding Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB)surveillance authority and information sharing with law enforcement.

Dotcom said it was very important for people to understand the GCSB is a subsidiary of the NSA and spying for the Americans, feeding them information for its war on terror to locate targets for drone strikes.

Dotcom tells the crowd the U.S. didn't want him spied upon because they thought he was a terrorist or a threat to national security, but because a handful of billionaires in Hollywood didn't like his business. The crowd cheers its approval. He asks, "Why would they spy on me?" [More...]