Gary Hart will begin raising funds for a possible Presidential run.

His spokesman says the money "will be used to pay expenses while he considers a run for the White House," but "is not necessarily a step toward throwing his hat in the ring."

Hart will use the money for travel as he continues to speak around the country. He will decide whether to run within the next month to six weeks.

We hope to have the information on how to donate as soon as its available. Hart's website is GaryHartNews.com

"For Josiah Sutton, the Houston man released from prison last week after DNA tests concluded he could not have been the rapist prosecutors said he was, there would be no more football heroics, no prom or graduation, no shot at a gridiron scholarship. But thanks to the momentum to reopen old criminal cases, generated by a burgeoning scandal in the Houston Police Department crime lab, there may be a future."

Josiah's story is one we are hearing far too often.

Sutton was arrested Oct. 30, 1998, five days after a woman had been taken at gunpoint from her southwest Houston apartment, raped by two attackers and dumped in a field in Fort Bend County.

Sutton, who was 16 at the time, was walking down the street with a friend when the woman, driving past in her car, identified them as her assailants. She would later testify that she recognized them by their hats, which looked like the ones worn by the men who raped her.

Once charged with kidnapping and rape, Sutton and his friend submitted saliva and blood for comparison to material recovered from the attack. DNA tests conducted by the now-discredited HPD lab ruled out Sutton's friend as one of the rapists but included him.

At his trial, an HPD analyst testified that DNA from the rape was an exact match for Sutton, who turned 17 in jail while awaiting trial. But new tests of the samples have found the DNA of two unidentified men, neither of whom could be Sutton.

At 17, here are some of the things he witnessed and had to learn to be prepared to defend himself against, according to his mother, Carol Batie:

In the early months of his incarceration, Sutton faced a difficult adjustment to the Clemens Unit in Brazoria.

"This was a (teenager) physically defending himself against men," Batie said. "He witnessed another inmate getting his throat slashed. He saw the guy lying on the ground kicking, dying before his eyes.

"He saw another prisoner die after he was thrown over a railing. These are not things my child should have been watching."

Sutton served 4 1/2 years before being released last week. He had been captain of his high school football team and on his way to earning a football scholarship for college when he was arrested. He had attracted the interest of college scouts in his sophomore year. What's ahead for him now?

Sutton, who already has a GED, wants to go to school. He would like to revive an old talent that earned the family extra cash when he was a teen, cutting hair, and may one day open his own barbershop. After he walked out of the jail, Sutton declared, "I am looking for success, period."

The Houston Chronicle has full and excellent coverage the Houston crime lab scandal, including today, an article about a prosecutor's shaken faith in the system, and another on the increased use and precision of DNA testing .

The family of a black maid who killed in self defense and was convicted after a one day trial by an all white jury in the Segregated South in 1944 with no witnesses called on her behalf is seeking her exoneration.

Lena Baker claimed that she was being held against her will by a drunken white man and acted in self-defense when she wrested his gun away and shot him.

....Now relatives of the only woman executed in Georgia's electric chair are returning to Cuthbert to honor Baker and try to clear her name with the state Board of Pardons and.

"The family doesn't need to go down in history with a bad name," said Roosevelt Curry, 59, the grandson of Baker's brother.

...After she was sentenced, her attorney filed an appeal, but it was dropped after he withdrew from the case. She was executed in March 1945.

John Cole Vodika, director of the Prison and Jail Project, an inmate advocacy program, said the family has a strong case for getting her exonerated.

"She should never have been tried for murder," he said. "It was an obvious injustice. That's what the system did with African Americans who dared resist white men's authority.

"She was a victim of racism, white man's domination over African American women," he said. "In an effort to cover up what really happened, the county moved to treat it as capital murder. It sure appears they wanted to get rid of her quickly and to limit or eliminate anything happening that would further embarrass the family of the deceased."

Baker, who had a sixth-grade education, proclaimed her innocence to the very end. "What I done, I did in self-defense," she said in her final statement. "I have nothing against anyone.... I am ready to meet my God."

There will be a memorial service for Baker on May 11 at the Mount Vernon Baptist Church. Baker's grave is behind the church and she once sang in its choir.

The Washington Post weighs in against use of torture on captured "enemy combatants."

The use of torture carries deep dangers for American society. Its use corrodes democratic values and governance. The administration's failure to instill confidence that it is not using torture augments the perception of American hypocrisy abroad: How can this country urge democratization in the Arab world if it simultaneously uses abusive Arab security services to manhandle its prisoners? Torturing enemy combatants also threatens American troops abroad by eroding the international norms of treatment for captured enemy soldiers. It would be naive to expect that intelligence interrogations overseas will comport with the rules that govern law enforcement here at home. But the United States has signed international treaties forbidding torture, and forswearing such brutality is as fundamental a commitment of civilized government as exists. It is incumbent on the administration to clarify that the war on terrorism is not inducing barbarism of its own.

Update: Atrios weighs in as well.

We are not living in the world of '24' or a James Bond movie. There is never going to be a situation in which the noble CIA agent knows that the red digits on the timer of the nuclear bomb are counting backwards and he has 90 minutes to determine the location and disarm the thing before Los Angeles blows up. However, if there is such a situation no law enforcement agency or court in the country will prosecute Kiefer Sutherland for saving us all by whatever means necessary, and he would have my full blessing to pull out the thumb screws and go to work. What we're talking about is torturing innocent people based on what they maybe possibly might be able to tell us. Innocent people? Yes. Last time I checked people were innocent until proven guilty, and frankly our intelligence agencies haven't exactly proven their ability to perform their stated job description, let alone assume the role of judge and jury too.

"In testimony before Congress this month, Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft said law enforcement officials have been tracking "hundreds and hundreds of suspected terrorists" in the United States in recent months. In some cases, the focus of the government's attention has become clear -- from the conviction of shoe bomber Richard Reid in Boston last year to the arrests and pending trials of alleged cell leaders in cities from Buffalo, N.Y., to Portland, Ore."

"But who are the others? Is the country really infiltrated by legions of terrorists? If so, why isn't the government arresting more of them?"

"Interviews with law enforcement officials, federal prosecutors, defense lawyers and civil liberties groups reveal the breadth of the government's efforts."

It was a good night for Colorado Democrats as well. 800 turned out for the Colorado Democrats' Jefferson/Jackson Day Dinner, held at the downtown Marriot. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) was the keynote speaker and delivered a memorable speech. Gary Hart also spoke and gave a great "critique" of the President's Iraq plans. Gov. Howard Dean was there as well.

Bump and Update: Here's the Denver Post report on the dinner and speeches.

Dean didn't have a monopoly on the anti-war message. Hart also spoke, and, as he has done for months, left open the question of whether he will again seek his party's nomination....

Hart...warned that the cost of a war would not only be in dollars. "If our soldiers have to fight Saddam's Republican Guard in the streets of Baghdad, thousands of American soldiers could be killed," Hart said. "And the president has a constitutional responsibility to tell the American people that."

As he has in the past, Hart described going to war as "kicking a hornet's nest" and said the U.S. is ill-prepared to guard against the terrorism a war might spawn.

Although Hart's anti-war stance could steal some limelight from Dean if he were to enter the race, the two men were exceedingly friendly Saturday night. But Hart made it clear that Dean should not count on an easy time in Denver.

"Before you start lining up delegates and slates (for the Democratic National Convention), you may want to wait a few weeks or months to see what happens."

Here's an update and profile of Louis Jones, who is scheduled to be the third federal inmate executed in the past 40 years. What makes Mr. Jones' case unique is the grounds upon which he is seeking clemency: he was exposed to nerve gas as a soldier in Iraq during Gulf War I and suffered brain damage, which, his lawyers say, contributed to his crime. Jones has asked President Bush to commute his death sentence to one of life without.

Unless the Supreme Court or President Bush acts, Mr. Jones, 53, will be executed at 7 o'clock on Tuesday morning. His lawyer, Timothy Floyd, said the chemicals to which Mr. Jones was exposed in Iraq changed his personality, unbalanced his mind and played a significant role in the crimes he was convicted of committing.

Our earlier coverage of Mr. Jones' case is here. The Washington Post reported on Mr. Jones' and his clemency petition in February, and included this summary:

Jones grew up in Chicago and spent 22 years in the military before retiring in 1993 as a master sergeant in the Airborne Rangers. His honors included a meritorious service medal, a Southwest Asia service medal with three bronze service stars, a Kuwait liberation medal, badges for marksmanship and parachuting, and a good-conduct medal, according to his plea for clemency.

But, the petition says, Jones was a changed man after returning from the Gulf in May 1991.

"It solves the mystery that was at the heart of the trial: how and why someone with the background and character of Louis Jones could have committed such a horrible crime," the petition says.

Dr. Robert W. Haley, an epidemiologist and expert on Gulf War diseases at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, said in the clemency petition that Jones suffers from brain damage, not a psychological illness.

Jones and his unit were exposed to chemical fallout following U.S. bombing raids on Iraqi weapons storage sites, the petition said. He suffered from "irritability and hostility, and numerous neurological symptoms," Haley wrote.

Jones' lawyer also notes that he lacks an enzyme that would have helped his body metabolize the nerve gas.

If you'd like to express your opinion to the President, or learn more about Mr. Jones, go here.

Daily Kos and My DD are out at the California Democratic Party's annual conference in Sacramento. We read an AP article about how Edwards got booed for his pro-war stance and Dean got cheered for his anti-war stance, but Kos' first hand reporting is just so much better. Here's Kos:

Edwards spoke in support of the Iraq war and all hell broke loose. The entire convention hall resonated in boos, the crowd chanting "no war! No war!" It was an amazing sight, and Edwards seemed a bit taken aback. Jerome thought it looked like '68. Edwards recovered with a line about Ashcroft, but the damage was done. The 20 or so brave souls waving Edwards signs were suddenly radioactive.

After a string of California officials, including the radioactive Davis, and our wonderful Boxer and Pelosi (both of them my heroes), it was Dean's turn.

By now, the whole program was running about an hour late. It was noon, and restless delegates milled around wondering about lunch. It seemed like a bad start by Dean. But suddenly, easily over half the delegates (and there were roughly 1,200) started waving Dean signs. And from the first note he didn't disappoint.

He started by blasting Bush's invasion, and the crowd was instantly hooked. It was electrifying. The whole convention center hushed, hanging on his every words (only Rep. Maxine Waters had a similar effect). Dean raised the rhetoric gradually, drawing louder applause each time. People were loving it. He uttered Wellstone's line: "I'm here to represent the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party". People went wild. His speech was repeatedly interrupted by chants of "we want Dean!".

But the most amazing part was the finale, with a fiery Dean pounding the podium:

I want my country back!

I don't want to listen to fundamentalist preachers anymore!

When Dean uttered this last line, the whole place went nuts. Utter pandemonium. It was literally one of the most amazing sights I have ever seen.

On Al Sharpton:

Sharpton was the last speaker for the day, and like Dean, he rocked the house. I'm fully convinced that Sharpton is a positive for the Democrats -- proving wrong initial fears he would divide the party.

Indeed Sharpton is the king of the one-liners.

On the costs of occupying Iraq: "We already occupy 50 states, and we haven't come up with the cost of that".

On affirmative action: The best example of a set-aside program is Bush. How can I say that? The Supreme Court set aside a whole election to make him president."

On religious wingnuts: "It's time for the Christian Right to meet the right Christians."

But most interesting of all? Sharpton never once said "vote for me" or "I'm running for president". He's in the race to move the debate left, and he's doing a beautiful job of it.

Update: Dean spoke in Denver Saturday night, here's the report.

We expect this is only the first of such incidents we'll be reading about. It's a shame people can be so arrogant in their ignorance. Thanks to Hesiod at Counterspin for emailing us the article.

On the Elizabeth Smart case: We were going to leave it alone, we posted that we were happy she was home and we noted that she may been brainwashed. We had second thoughts about bringing up that her mother had found the creep who abducted Elizabeth panhandling and she not only gave him $5.00, but brought him home and gave him a job. Who does that? With young kids at home? We didn't want to be among the first to bring that up in the midst of the homecoming celebration. But now things are beginning to seem a little funky with the case again (like they were last summer when the Smarts took to the airwaves every day) and Mr. Smart is calling for "Amber Alerts" to become law and we don't care for "Amber Alerts" any more than we care for "Megan's Laws." So we've now decided the Smarts' actions are fair game.

Jeff Taylor over at Reason's Hit and Run tackles the Smarts head-on.

Taking events at face value, the whole episode was close to self-inflicted.

Lois Smart broke two cardinal rules of living in a modern, metropolitan area. One, never give money to panhandlers, especially ones in long flowing robes. And two, never, ever invite them to do work for you at your home. This goes double if you have young children at home. And if you have an achingly beautiful teenage daughter, well, puzzle it out.

It might seem cruel to point these facts out, but Ed Smart is on a crusade to get Congress to pass a national "Amber alert" law. Such federal action would help save kids like his daughter, he avers.

Let's just assume that is true -- another federal law that makes everyone safer. OK. Heard that. The law would still be no substitute for parental awareness of the threats their kids may face. We're not talking raging paranoia, just common sense.

Is there a homeless shelter or drug treatment center nearby? A lot of construction going on in the neighborhood? Other commercial traffic or workers? Who are your kids' peers? What are their brothers and sisters and moms and dads like? And is that street preacher in flowing robes following you home?

We hope Jeff won't mind that we raided the comments to his post to bring you the following snippets:

Jeff, be careful what you think and even more careful what you say. Next incident the activist parent will push for a federal law making it a felony to voice any appreciation of a young girl's beauty. Punishable by mandatory reeducation, close monitoring and a place on the offenders'registry. You'll also have to surrender a DNA sample, just in case.

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That amber alert shit sounds kinda creepy. what happens when the wrong car gets tagged and a few right minded citizens kill an alleged - but innocent - abductor?

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Hey gang - let's pass an unenforceable, pointless law that will unnecessarily violate the Constitutional rights of the innocent and serve no practical purpose, except to the demagogue politicians who proposed it. It's easy, you know: just name the law after a child...

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The circumstances of this case are so extreme and bizarre that it's basically useless to try to draw any conclusions from it, other than the fact that we live in a big world, sometimes some really weird shit happens, and there's nothing we could have feasibly done to prevent it. You seem to understand this basic point later when you point out the silliness inherent in passing a federal law because of this one case.

To be clear, we don't agree with other posts we've read speculating that Elizabeth ran away or was sent away because she was pregnant. We don't believe that Mr. or Mrs. Smart had any complicity in her disappearance. But we do think there's a lot more to this story and that it involves the family. We also can't forget that one person--handyman, Richard Ricci-- was falsely labeled a suspect in the abduction, an accusation that generated so much media heat that he was arrested for a violation and incarcerated in hopes he would talk. Instead, he died in jail, protesting his innocence. We hope the Smart family and the police apologize to his widow and stepson.

[comments now closed.]

Officials at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California have confirmed that they will "shoot to kill" trespassing protesters who infiltrate the military complex once war starts.

Military police will use their ``judgment, experience and training'' to determine if lethal force is necessary" according to an official.

Somehow, we do not find that reassuring. In any event, the planned protesters say they are not scared off by the threat. Peter Lumsdaine of the Vandenberg Action Coalition, one of the organizers of the planned trespassing, said, "I think it does underline that people in the nonviolent resistance movement are willing to take some risks.''

Arthur Silber over at The Light of Reason is back on top of the torture issue--with observations of his own and of Hannah Arendt .

Arthur points out, rightly so in our opinion, that "the grant of any government power will always grow, including the grant of the power to use torture to elicit information."

That's one of the reasons we so oppose giving up our civil liberties and constitutional rights. Once you give up a little, it becomes easier for the Government to reach for more the next time around. Taken in little bits and pieces, whether it be surveillance cameras at traffic intersections or the Superbowl, or a national id card, the encroachments don't seem so bad. But such measures are not that many steps from other, very objectionable proposals now being tossed about--for example CAPSII and color-coding airline passengers and doing credit checks before allowing those designated a certain color to fly.

Back to torture, go over and read Arthur, he's put a great deal of thought into the subject, and today analyzes the linkage between torture and totalitarianism, in part relying upon the works of Hannah Arendt, including her "monumental work," The Origins of Totalitarianism.