Exonerated: Bernard Webster was convicted for a rape he didn't commit. In 1982, science couldn't uncover the truth DNA evidence held. Twenty years later, it could.

Via A Moveable Beast , check out the Age Gauge--we had no idea we were too old for.....or we were so young when.....

Here's another more political one, one for tv lovers and this last one for movie buffs.

From Alberta Phillips' Austin Statesman column, Seek the truth, and let it set a wronged man free:

When Ellean Banks heard the news that a federal judge overturned her son's death sentence, she danced and shouted in her home in Nash, near Texarkana. The family prayed and wept. Laughed and made plans for a home-coming for Delma Banks Jr. that seemed just around the corner. That was in 2000.

Now, Mrs. Banks, 67, is preparing for her son's execution in three days.

After nearly 23 years, she still doesn't fully comprehend how things got this far. How her son could end up on death row based on dubious testimony. There was no physical evidence — no DNA, no fingerprints, no blood and no murder weapon. Delma Banks didn't confess. In fact, he turned down a plea that would have made him eligible for 15 years ago. When a judge urged him to bargain with prosecutors, he told them he couldn't plead guilty to a crime he didn't commit. Mrs. Banks said a lawyer urged her to create an alibi for Delma, but that meant violating her Pentecostal beliefs.

What makes Delma Banks case most unusual is those who are supporting halting his execution:

Facts in the case, especially evidence uncovered by Delma Banks' appeals lawyers, are so disturbing that U.S. District Judge David Folsom overturned the death sentence in 2000. The behavior of police and prosecutors was so unconscionable, it prompted former FBI director and U.S. District Judge William Sessions (of San Antonio) to file a friend of the court brief with the U.S. Supreme Court requesting it halt Banks' execution. "The prosecutors in this case concealed important impeachment material from the defense," Sessions said in the brief, joined by two other former federal judges and a former federal prosecutor. All are staunch death penalty supporters, but even they could not stomach the apparent misconduct by police and prosecutors.

This will be the 300th Texecution since 1976. Here's more on Delma Banks and his likely innocence.

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Three New York Times Reporters, Raymond Bonner, Don Van Natta and Amy Waldman, examine Questioning Terror Suspects in a Dark and Surreal World:

Senior American officials said physical torture would not be used against Mr. Mohammed, regarded as the operations chief of Al Qaeda and mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks. They said his interrogation would rely on what they consider acceptable techniques like sleep and light deprivation and the temporary withholding of food, water, access to sunlight and medical attention.

You think that's not so bad, right? Read on:

American officials acknowledged that such techniques were recently applied as part of the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, the highest-ranking Qaeda operative in custody until the capture of Mr. Mohammed. Painkillers were withheld from Mr. Zubaydah, who was shot several times during his capture in Pakistan. Routine techniques include covering suspects' heads with black hoods for hours at a time and forcing them to stand or kneel in uncomfortable positions in extreme cold or heat, American and other officials familiar with interrogations said. Questioners may also feign friendship and respect to elicit information. In some cases, American officials said, women are used as interrogators to try to humiliate men unaccustomed to dealing with women in positions of authority.

Have you wondered where Ramzi Binalshibh was taken? Now we know. A secret CIA base in Thailand. Ouch.

Intelligence officials also acknowledged that some suspects had been turned over to security services in countries known to employ torture. There have also been isolated, if persistent, reports of beatings in some American-operated centers. American military officials in Afghanistan are investigating the deaths of two prisoners at Bagram in December.

Here are some details provided by CIA officials on the treatment of one detainee whom they thought had information.

What is known is that the questioning was prolonged, extending day and night for weeks. It is likely, experts say, that the proceedings followed a pattern, with Mr. Faruq left naked most of the time, his hands and feet bound. While international law requires prisoners to be allowed eight hours' sleep a day, interrogators do not necessarily let them sleep for eight consecutive hours.

Mr. Faruq may also have been hooked up to sensors, then asked questions to which interrogators knew the answers, so they could gauge his truthfulness, officials said.

The Western intelligence official described Mr. Faruq's interrogation as "not quite torture, but about as close as you can get." The official said that over a three-month period, the suspect was fed very little, while being subjected to sleep and light deprivation, prolonged isolation and room temperatures that varied from 100 degrees to 10 degrees. In the end he began to cooperate.

Techniques vary from country to country.

American and foreign intelligence officials have acknowledged that suspects have been sent to Jordan, Syria and Egypt. In addition, Moroccan intelligence officials have questioned suspects and shared information with their American counterparts.

In one case in Morocco, lawyers for three Saudis and seven Moroccans accused of plotting to blow up American and British ships in the Strait of Gibraltar last summer said their clients were tortured. Moroccan officials denied that physical torture was used but acknowledged using sleep and light deprivation and serial teams of interrogators until the suspects broke.

....In Cairo, leaders of several human rights organizations and attorneys who represent prisoners said torture by the Egyptian government's internal security force had become routine. They also said they believed that the United States had sent a handful of Qaeda suspects to Egypt for harsh interrogations and torture by Egyptian officials.

"In the past, the United States harshly criticized Egypt when there was human rights violations, but now, for America, it is security first — security, before human rights," said Muhammad Zarei, a lawyer who had been director of the Cairo-based Human Rights Center for the Assistance of Prisoners."

Ouch again.

Don't miss The Power of the Fourth in Sunday's New York Times Magazine about how one court, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, is moving the country rightward. Two of its judges, J. Harvie Wilkerson, III and J. Michael Luttig, are both mentioned frequently as possible nominees for the Supreme Court.

Bush's most recent appointee to the Fourth Circuit is Dennis Shed, a former chief of staff to Strom Thurmond. His pending nominee is Terrence Boyle, a former Helms aide unsuccessfully nominated by George Bush, Sr. more than 10 years ago.

Although the Fourth Circuit has the largest African-American population of any appellate jurisdiction in the country, the court did not become ethnically or racially integrated until 2001, and was the last circuit to do so.

This is a long article, but well worth reading because it shows the jeopardy befalling our judiciary on a national scale. The independence of the judicial branch in America is under attack as never before.

Legal scholars talk about the pendulum swinging from liberal to conservative, from a preoccupation with individuals' rights to a preoccupation with states' rights, and suggest that, in time, it will swing back once more. It would certainly help many Americans sustain their faith in the system if the courts could find their equilibrium, if they could become less ideological, less predictable and less political. That doesn't appear to be on the horizon, though, not in the foreseeable future. In the historic site in Richmond where the Confederacy once thrived, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit is ushering in the 21st century.

Remember that federal judges serve for life. Every right-wing judge that Bush appoints is likely to stay on the bench for 20 to 30 years. What will happen to our consitutional liberties? Will they be there for your children? If you're concerned about this, bookmark People for the American Way and the American Civil Liberties Union. Read their reports on the nominees and write or fax (rather than e-mail) your Senators when hearings come up. Let them know you oppose any Bush nominees you find to be extremist and likely to be a judicial activist. And vote Bush out of office in 2004--no matter which Democrat runs against him. Please help preserve the independence and integrity of the judiciary for our children.

Maureen Dowd comes out swinging in her New York Times column today, The Xanax Cowboy.

The president wants to avenge his father, and please his base by changing the historical ellipsis on the Persian Gulf war to a period. Donald Rumsfeld wants to exorcise the post-Vietnam focus on American imperfections and limitations. Dick Cheney wants to establish America's primacy as the sole superpower. Richard Perle wants to liberate Iraq and remove a mortal threat to Israel. After Desert Storm, Paul Wolfowitz posited that containment is a relic, and that America must aggressively pre-empt nuclear threats. ....Saddam would be the squealing guinea pig proving America could impose its will on the world.

Chelsea Clinton has accepted a job with pay in the six figure range. She'll be working in the New York office of London-based McKinsey & Company as a consultant, researching topics ranging from health care to corporate finance.

We received this email today from Amy Robertson, a civil rights lawyer in Denver:

I hope you have the opportunity to read "Lost in the Jihad - the Dropped Case Against John Walker Lindh," by Jane Mayer, in the March 10 New Yorker. It includes an almost unbelievable account of Justice Department efforts to keep Lindh from having an attorney, including ignoring the advice of its own ethics office, withholding and hiding emails conveying that advice, and then persecuting the young ethics office lawyer who spoke up about her emails. What is perhaps most interesting is Mayer's point that DOJ fuck-ups ultimately made the case much harder to prosecute than it would have been if they had acted properly.

Here's what Slate (March 3) had to say about Mayer's piece:

The New Yorker, March 10 --Why didn't John Walker Lindh ever go to trial? A piece describes how the Justice Department's case against him disintegrated: The defense was prepared to argue that the FBI agent who extracted Lindh's confession ignored advice that such an interrogation would be illegal. Justice eventually dropped nine of the original 10 charges and settled for a 20-year sentence. Though it contends that Lindh could be innocent, the story is sharpest when detailing the ditherings of the criminal justice system post-9/11.

Truthout has posted an interview with Jane Mayer about her Lindh article, also appearing in the March 10 New Yorker, accessible here.

Former Senator Gary Hart has an op-ed in Sunday's Washington Post titled A Detour From the War on Terrorism . Here's the beginning, go read the whole thing.

The urgent necessity to disband terrorist networks abroad and to secure the American homeland has been replaced by the Bush administration's puzzling preoccupation with Saddam Hussein. He has become George Bush's White Whale, an obsession that has cost us international solidarity in eradicating terrorism, the goodwill of tens of millions of people worldwide and the role of benign democratic world leader. While deploying divisions to the Middle East our government has not been training and equipping police, fire and emergency health responders in the United States. While splitting the United Nations and NATO, our government has not made our vulnerable ports safer. While paying tens of billions of (deficit) tax dollars to Turkey, Yemen and other countries for basing rights in the Middle East, our president is not preparing the United States to respond to the terrorist attacks the CIA has predicted will most probably occur as a response to our preemptive invasion of a sovereign Arab nation. It is difficult to imagine that the president seriously believes an invasion of Iraq will reduce the terrorist threat to the United States.

The Los Angeles Times reports Former Colorado Senator Gary Hart is moving closer to deciding to run for President.

Moving closer to a possible presidential campaign, former Sen. Gary Hart of Colorado said Friday that he intends to begin raising money and hiring a staff to more systematically explore entering the Democratic race. "I think we will probably begin some preliminary fund-raising very soon, just to be able to test the waters," Hart told The Times Friday.

We sat down to our first cup of coffee this morning, opened the Rocky Mountain News, and were excited to see a full two page profile on Hart. It is well-balanced and gives you a good sense of what drives him, why he might run again, why his family (wife of 44 years and two adult children) support him, and best of all, how favorable public reaction has been to him during his past few months giving speeches across the country.

As to the 1988 Donna Rice incident. We say, Get over it. It will be a non-issue, except among Bush supporters.

Newsweek [Thanks, Atrios]

Daily Kos has this roundup of the reviews of Bush's speech, and calls them "decidedly negative."

What a great description of Florida's attitude towards criminal justice under the stewardship of Governor Jeb Bush:

Led by one of the nation's toughest anti-crime governors and guided by an attorney general known as "Chain Gang" Charlie Crist, Florida can hardly be considered a vacationland for criminals. The Sunshine State in recent years has resurrected the chain gang, built an additional 21 prisons and passed a law that requires prisoners to serve 85 percent of their sentences. In January, Gov. Jeb Bush called for the closing of state legal offices that represent inmates awaiting execution, a move that critics fear would speed the walk to death."

But that's not really the reason to read the article. This is:

Yet, despite Florida's unchallenged image as hard-nosed on crime, several law-enforcement agencies in the state's southern region have decided to voluntarily begin videotaping police interrogations, a process that many law-enforcement officials and prosecutors across the nation consider too costly and a barrier to their ability to solve crimes.

Proponents assert that electronic taping can only enhance justice by limiting or ending the number of wrongful convictions obtained through forced confessions or false admissions. They contend it would save tax money by reducing multimillion-dollar awards in wrongful arrest lawsuits and police misconduct cases. Likewise, there would be fewer costly court hearings to suppress confessions, they say.

Richard Ofshe, an authority on police interrogation tactics and false confessions, said the willingness of Florida police departments to embrace videotaping "might start the snowball rolling down the hill" and bring reluctant police departments everywhere into line.

Fort Lauderdale, all of Broward County and Miami, have already adopted the policy. Smaller Florida cities, like Coral Springs, are adopting the policy. False confessions and forced confessions do happen. They cause innocent people to be convicted--even sent to Death Row. Taping interrogations should be the rule everywhere. It protects police and it strengthens cases against the guilty. It's a win-win for everyone.