Gary Hart spoke at the University of Colorado in Boulder Thursday night and received a very warm reception. The crowd "...filled the aisles and spilled out all four exits of a mid-sized lecture room in the University of Colorado's physics hall," and chanted "Run, Gary, Run."

Hart refused to say whether he would run for President. He spoke on the topics of national security and "the folly" of war with Iraq.

"We will be attacked again," he said. "I'm here to tell you that if — not if, when — when we attack Iraq the threat to this country will skyrocket." He slammed the Bush administration for overlooking plausible alternatives to war and for failing to answer questions about the cost of war — in terms of both dollars and lives."

Hart also spoke on the economy, the environment and health care. Here's what one attendee had to say about Hart and the irrelevancy of the 1987 morality issue. We couldn't agree more.

"What's more immoral — fooling around with a woman or killing thousands of innocent people?" she said. "I think if it's a moral issue, this is pretty low on the list."

How would we describe Hart now? Refreshing, articulate, experienced, knowledgeable, open, smart and filled with leadership potential.

Lawyers for the rejected plaintiffs in the 1st Circuit case challenging Bush's authority to declare war plan a push to reopen the case.

A significant constitutional issue is involved: "Whether there is a wrongful concentration of power in one person - the president.'' Lawyers for the plaintiffs say that the Appeals Court did not doom the case entirely, but left it subject to reconsideration if new facts were developed. The Court rejected the Government's assertion that there is a "categorical bar" to challenges and on the court's role in such disputes.

The administration had argued that the courts have no role to play in the dispute because the Constitution assigns war-making power solely to Congress and the White House. The Appeals Court said this is a murky area of constitutional law, so it dismissed the case instead on the ground that the legal controversy was not fully developed. Courts could not review the dispute, it said, ''until the available facts make it possible to define the issues with clarity. ... Here, too many crucial facts are missing.''

Seventy-four law professors across the country "urged the appeals court to rule that Bush cannot send the nation to war against Iraq without UN approval or, failing that, without a formal declaration of war by Congress."

We regret we haven't followed this lawsuit more closely since the beginning (our prior coverage is here) and we intend to report on it from this point foward.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs promise they are not going to "wait until bombs fall" to press forward with the case.

If the Appeals Court allows the case to go forward, it could set the stage for a major constitutional conflict between the president and the courts, and it could force the White House to put war plans on hold, awaiting court action.

Additional media coverage of the lawsuit is available here and here and <a href="http://deoxy.org/wc/wc-ilaw.htm and " here. We also encourage you to re-read the text of Senator Robert Byrd's October 3, 2002 floor remarks delivered to the U.S. Senate.

You can read the major pleadings in the lawsuit here. Coverage pertaining the the First Circuit arguments in the case is here.

You can read the First Circuit's opinion in the case, Doe v. Bush, here. The Plaintiffs in the case are active-duty members of the military, parents of military personnel, and members of the U.S. House of Representatives who sought a preliminary injunction to prevent the defendants, President George W. Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, from initiating a war against Iraq based on consitutional grounds.

Special thanks to George Hunnsinger, Professor of Theology at the Princeton Theological Seminary for prodding us to report in greater detail on the lawsuit and the need for greater awareness of it. You can read some of his writings on the topic here and here. We agree with him that issues surrounding the legality of going to war without UN Security Council approval and challenges based upon principles of international and consitutional law must continue to be raised in the Courts.

We can't believe we have to go through this again, but our hosting company says it has to move TalkLeft to another server. The move is set for Saturday night, and the company assures us they have done everything they can to make a smooth transition with no down time.

However, we all know there are glitches with moves, so if we are down, or you can't comment, or find some other problem, send us an email at talkleft@aol.com.

We will be in Washington with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers for the 40th Anniversary of Gideon commemoration and to do some lobbying with some Republican members of Congress on the Innocence Protection Act on Tuesday and Wednesday, and picked the weekend to do the switch so we'd be around if there are any crises. We will be blogging evenings and early mornings from D.C.

If you're in Washington, come to the Gideon Symposium. It is free and open to the public. You can download the brochure here. Details:

March 18, 2003, 9:30 am - 5:00 pm
Georgetown University Law Center
600 New Jersey Avenue, NW
Washington, DC

From MoveOn:

Sunday, March 16, 7PM
Global Candlelight Vigil

MoveOn.org and the Win Without War coalition, together with Archbishop Desmond Tutu and many faith-based organizations, are calling this vigil, and we need your help. Beginning in New Zealand, this will be a rolling wave of candlelight gatherings that will quickly cross the globe.

Join with millions of others around the globe and in your community. Join or schedule a candlelight vigil for peace in your city. Here's how.

Criticism is being leveled today at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs for a "lewd" skit that was performed at a black-tie graduation celebration last April, to the applause of cadets and higher ranking officials. First, the setting:

Everyone from the U.S. Air Force Academy was dressed to the nines for last April's black-tie "dining in."

The pre-graduation celebration was truly an elegant affair, sponsored by the academy's Department of English and Fine Arts, and attended by as many as 80 cadets, civilians and high-ranking officers.

During the entertainment portion of the evening, two cadets performed a skit, liberally lifted from Monty Python's Meaning of Life, that had been sanctioned by the English department.

Here are the published portions of the skit in which"the actors talked about a mythical - and X-rated - sex education class":

ACTOR ONE: "Now, sex, sex, sex, sex. Where were we? The purpose of foreplay is to . . . (The cadet, in graphic detail, goes on to describe the purpose of foreplay as the preparation of a woman so a man can "penetrate" her. Then he asks the other cadet for two ways to stimulate a woman.)

ACTOR TWO: (This cadet responds with a graphic suggestion.)

ACTOR ONE: "What's wrong with a kiss, boy? Why not start her off with a nice kiss? You don't have to go leaping straight for the

Priscilla Owen had a hearing yesterday but she may never make it past the full Senate if Democrats decide to filibuster her.

In addition to reasons we have provided for opposing Owen, here are some others:

Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT):

In examining Justice Owen’s record in preparation for her first hearing and, now again, in preparation for today, I remain convinced that her record shows that in case after case involving a variety of legal issues, she is a judicial activist, willing to make law from the bench rather than follow the language and intent of the legislature. Her record of activism shows she is willing to adapt the law to her results-oriented ideological agenda.

Along with Ashcroft's expanded reach on terror and spying, come concerns...and not just from the left.

Even some of his conservative peers complain that Mr. Ashcroft may have grown too powerful. To his critics, Mr. Ashcroft is a Big Brother figure: an attorney general whose expanding scope has allowed the Justice Department to use wiretaps, backroom decisions, and an expanded street presence to spy on ordinary Americans, read their e-mail messages, or monitor their library checkouts, all in the name of fighting terrorism. And the department's consideration of proposals that could give it still greater, secret counterterrorism authority has provoked a fresh round of concerns.

Among Ashcroft's contributions are these:

He has given agents new powers to spy on possible terrorists, detain suspects and look for patterns that could predict terrorist attacks. He has centralized power at the Justice Department among a small inner circle of political appointees, frustrating some career officials and prosecutors in the field who complain that the attorney general has undercut their authority in order to further his own agenda. And, working with the White House, he and his aides have pushed for a more conservative ideology on the judiciary and on appellate issues like the Michigan affirmative action case being considered by the Supreme Court.

This is a very long article, we recommend reading the whole thing. It contains far more praise for Ashcroft than we like to see in a news article, but it also presents some of the criticism. It is distressing to see how Ashcroft and his supporters justify the erosion of our rights in the name of fighting terrorism when so few of his proposals are likely to be effective in making us safer.

"Houston Mayor Lee Brown is asking Gov. Rick Perry to place a moratorium on some Harris County death penalty cases in which DNA evidence was processed by the Police Department's troubled crime lab."

In a statement released Friday, Brown said: "There are a number of cases that will be retested. Certainly as a former police chief and the Mayor of this City, the thought of a wrongful conviction for any crime is disturbing. However, we should not assume that any or all of the cases are `wrongful convictions.' We should wait for retesting to be completed. Then I'll expect the judicial process to correct or corroborate the convictions under scrutiny." Brown mailed letters to Perry requesting a moratorium on the cases until they are reviewed.

Two freed Afgan prisoners are claiming torture by U.S. interrogators at Bagram Air Base in Afganistan. This is the same base where two prisoners whose deaths were labeled homicides, were found to have been beaten before dying.

As he shivered, naked in his cell, two men threw a bucket of ice cold water on him. "I couldn't say anything," Saif-ur Rahman said two weeks after his release from U.S. detention in Afghanistan. "I was so frightened. I didn't know what they would do next."

Rahman's account and that of another recently freed Afghan gave a rare first-hand look into interrogation of prisoners held by the United States in the war against terrorism. Human rights groups have criticized U.S. interrogation methods as abusive. ...

In separate interviews, two prisoners, Rahman and Qayyum, offered similar accounts of their time at Bagram's detention centre. They complained of sleep-deprivation, of being forced to stand for long periods of time, of humiliating taunts from women soldiers, screaming abuses at them through closed doors.

Rahman spoke slowly, explaining with gestures. Sometimes he would stop, look away seemingly embarrassed to talk about his nakedness, about how he was forced to lie spread eagle on the dirt floor while his interrogators placed a chair on either hand and on his feet.

For 20 straight days Rahman was handcuffed. At meal time his hands were tied but the constraints more relaxed. Qayyum said he was held in a large hall with about 100 prisoners, 10 people to a cubicle cordoned off from other similar cubicles by sheets of mesh. He was held for two months and five days and throughout that time was forbidden to talk to his cellmates.

U.S. Military Spokesman Roger King acknowledged some and disputed other allegations by the two men.

A new Justice Department report criticizes the Miami Police for its policies on use of force and choice of weapons.

The report is part of an investigation the Justice Department began into alleged police misconduct against minorities in the Miami area last yea, resulting from accusations of racism and police brutality.

Here is Miami Police Chief John Timmony's response to the report

Addressing the U.S. Department of Justice's critical findings of some Miami police policies and practices, Miami Chief John Timoney said today that he will make necessary changes after he finishes his own review of the agency. ''We have been looking at the entire department,'' Timoney said. ``Our review is even more extensive and exhaustive than the one they are doing.''

You can read the entire Justice Department report here. A Miami Herald intensive report, Fatal Fire, Flawed Justice, is accessible here.

Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) has written a letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft regarding the federal death penalty. Here is the first part of it:

March 14, 2003

The Honorable John D. Ashcroft
Attorney General of the United States
U.S. Department of Justice
10th Street & Constitution Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20530

Dear Attorney General Ashcroft,

I write to inquire about the decision-making process for determining whether to seek the death penalty in federal capital-eligible cases.

I am concerned about the fairness of the decision-making process, after reading recent news reports that indicate you have overridden the recommendation of local federal prosecutors in at least 28 federal death-eligible cases. You appear to be pursuing consistency in the application of the federal death penalty nationwide by seeking it more aggressively in jurisdictions where federal prosecutors have infrequently requested authorization from the Attorney General to seek the death penalty. In other words, you seem intent on making the federal system replicative of states that aggressively pursue the death
penalty * states like Texas, which next week is scheduled to execute its 300th inmate in the modern death penalty era.

I am concerned that your apparent determination to increase death penalty prosecutions, including sometimes overriding decisions of local prosecutors, increases the risk that the federal government could execute an innocent person. Former federal prosecutors have said that "they need to take every last precaution to avoid the risk of condemning an innocent person to death." See "In Brooklyn Murder Case, Doubts on Identification," New York Times, Feb. 12, 2003. While you and I may disagree on the fundamental question of whether the federal government should be authorized to use capital punishment, I hope that we can agree that the Constitution and the integrity of our criminal justice system require the fair administration of the death penalty and that only the guilty are convicted....

Feingold then calls upon Ashcroft to provide information about his decisions. The list of requested items is too long to print here, but if we (or you) find an online copy of the letter, or a similar one written by Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy on February 7, 2003, we'll post it here.

A federal judge last week refused to prohibit the U.S. government from potentially prosecuting two women with painful medical conditions whose doctors said marijuana is their only medical hope of alleviating their pain.

In the first case of its kind, the two California medical marijuana users sued Attorney General John Ashcroft, seeking a court order allowing them to smoke, grow or obtain marijuana without threat or fear of federal prosecution. U.S. District Judge Martin Jenkins expressed sympathy for the women but said federal law required him to rule against them."

After oral arguments in the case,

defense attorneys were impressed by the Judge's evident grasp of their arguments, his willingness to grapple with the fundamental issues, and his thorough familiarity with all of the legal precedents in the case. "This was the most thorough hearing of medical marijuana given by any court," said defense attorney David Michael, a veteran of numerous medical marijuana cases.

Among the issues debated was the 9th Amendment and

- Whether the right to use medical marijuana for relief of pain and suffering was protected as a fundamental liberty interest by the Ninth amendment and substantive due process. [Randy] Barnett, a leading Ninth Amendment scholar, argued that what was at issue was the right of control one's own body, and that no right could be more fundamental.

The Judge also considered whether the federal Controlled Substance Act violated the 10th Amendment. You can access the briefs and opinion in the case, Raiche v. Ashcroft, here.

We highly recommend reading the opinion for its exposition on the 9th and 10th Amendments, particularly with respect to drug cases.