"A jury's award to a former hotel manager who allegedly was fired by Leona Helmsley because he was gay was reduced Tuesday from $11.17 million to $554,000.

State Supreme Court Justice Walter Tolub said Helmsley is not a multibillion-dollar pinata "to poke a stick at in the hopes of hitting the jackpot." He ruled that Charles Bell was not entitled to $1.1 million in economic damages, and the $10 million in punitive damages was excessive."

You can access the Indictments of the San Francisco Police Chief Earl Sanders and nine other officers here. All ten were in court today and entered pleas of "not guilty." Sanders is on medical leave with pay. The others are suspended without pay. Trial for the Chief and six commanding officers is set for April 18.

Count 5 charges the Chief and six commanding officers with conspiracy to obstruct justice between November 20, 2002. and February 23, 2003. The overt acts alleged in furtherance of the conspiracy ([paraphrased] are these:

Assitant Chief David Robison Robinson allegedly "rejected investigators' requests to interview key officers involved in the initial investigation and to obtain Police Department cell phone numbers and "administrative messages" sent among the department's command staff."

Chief Sanders and Assistant Chief Alex Fagan, Sr. allegedly "removed Lt. Joe Dutto from his post as supervisor of the investigation in January. Dutto complained afterward that his bosses were putting obstacles in his path and that his transfer to the vice squad was punishment for probing too deeply into the Union Street incident."

Deputy Chief Greg Suhr, head of field operations, and David Robinson allegedly "blocked inspectors from conducting in-person interviews with certain officers, instead requiring that the investigators submit written questions."

Capt. Greg Corrales, supervisor for two of the off-duty cops at the Mission District police station and the highest-ranking officer on scene in the early hours of the probe, "allegedly "promoted misinformation" describing the Union Street incident as "mutual combat" and about the "sobriety status" of Fagan Jr., Tonsing and Lee. "

Lt. Ed Cota and patrol Sgt. John Syme who also took part in the early investigation, allegedly "promoted misinformation" describing the Union Street incident as "mutual combat" and about the "sobriety status" of Fagan Jr., Tonsing and Lee," and allegedly "failed to conduct proper police duties." Those included not allowing Santoro and Snyder to formally identify their alleged assailants at the scene, the grand jury said."

"The indictments also detailed actions of Cota and Syme, the lieutenant and sergeant on duty that morning, alleging that they delayed the alcohol testing of the accused officers for several hours. The supervisors allegedly allowed the three police to leave the scene without being brought before the two victims for possible identification. They did not retrieve their clothing, shoes or seize their pickup truck, and the urine test for alcohol was delayed for more than four hours.

Another two counts charge the three off-duty officers with felony battery and felony assault with great bodily injury charges as to Jade Santaro, one of the men they allegedly assaulted. The remaining two counts charge the three with

"felony assault and misdemeanor battery on Santoro's friend Adam Snyder, 23, a bartender who was just coming off shift at the Blue Light saloon and who has said two of the officers attacked him after he refused to hand over a take-home bag of fajitas."

The three waived their right to a speedy trial and no trial date has yet been set for them.

Defense attorneys called the Indictment "weak," "pathetic" and "ridiculous." A spokesman for DA Terence Hallinan later retorted: ''To criticize the indictment is like judging a book by its table of contents."

Is anyone else having trouble pinging weblogs.com with MT version 2.63? Our posts are taking forever to "rebuild" when we hit "publish" and the activity log says that "One or more errors occurred when sending update or TrackBack pings. Check the Activity Log for the error." The activity log says that "Ping 'http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2' failed: HTTP error: 500 read timeout"

It is just so time consuming waiting for the "publish" to take effect. If you have any ideas, please post them here or email us at talkleft@aol.com. Thanks.

Via Atrios, former Court TV and Brill's Content CEO Steven Brill has written a book, After: How America Confronted the Sept. 12 Era : "From his sweeping new book on how America responded to September 11, Steven Brill follows Attorney General John Ashcroft through the creation of the controversial USA Patriot Act." Brill writes,

Most shocking was that the bill suspended what was known in the law as habeas corpus—which gave anyone detained on American soil the right to demand a court hearing to challenge the authority of those holding them. Lincoln had suspended habeas corpus for a time during the Civil War. Now Ashcroft was proposing that it just plain be eliminated during this undefined emergency that had no designated end date. What was going on at Justice, the conservative Republican [Sensenbrenner] from Wisconsin wondered. (Ashcroft says he cannot “reconstruct with any accuracy” whether the suspension of habeas corpus was proposed. Sensenbrenner’s recollection, as well as that of two White House officials who saw the draft, seems credible.)

Yale Constitutional Law Professor and blogger Jack Balkin explains what this means. It's not good. After: How America Confronted the Sept. 12 Era by Steven Brill

Buy the Book Today!

From Eric Alterman at Altercation today:

RALPH WHO?
Also this, which should be headlined. “We Love George Bush So Much We Want to Elect Him Again!” ”“The Nader 2004 Draft Committee has opened offices in New York and San Francisco with plans under way for offices in Washington, New Hampshire and Iowa.”

An ACLU press release today responds to Ashcroft's Senate testimony. The ACLU opposes recent Government surveillance bills for the right reason: they strip citizens of civil liberties with no assurance they will make us any safer.

The two programs included in today's testimony were the Patriot Act II and CappsII. Caps II establishes a blacklist for airline passengers.

The ACLU has a new ad program targeting these bills and others that push for expanded surveillance powers.

Presidential candidate and senator John Edwards condemns Howard Coble's comments, and calls for Republican Party to reconsider Coble's chairmanship of House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security. Is That Legal has the story.

Here are the results of the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll on war with Iraq. The poll was conducted from Feb. 26 - March 2, 2003.

Two of TalkLeft's pals just returned from a two week stay in Spain and Paris. We had dinner with them last night, and they were exceptionally bridled by our media's portrayal of the French as being Anti-American. Absolutely not true, they said. The French are Anti-Bush, not Anti-American. Here's backup for their position from Elmar Thevessen, executive news director for the German television network ZDF, who was interviewed last night by MSNBC's Brian Williams

Williams: A recent poll in France shows seven out of 10 people there want their country to use its veto power to block a second U.N. resolution that would authorize war with Iraq. In Russia, an overwhelming percentage, 87 percent, oppose military action against Iraq.

And, in Germany, one poll conducted late last month found that more than half of Germans think the U.S. actually poses the greatest threat to world peace, greater than the threat posed by either Iraq or North Korea.

For more on the reaction there, we are joined tonight from Mainz by Elmar Thevessen, executive news director for the German television network ZDF, at least as it's known here. Elmar, thank you very much for being with us.

And I'm curious how bad and what are the manifestations of the negative anti -- the anti-American sentiment these days.

ELMAR THEVESSEN, ZDF GERMAN TELEVISION: The German public basically thinks that the U.S. government has done a very bad job in explaining why it tries to go about this war effort in Iraq. It's a question of bad public relations and bad communications. The U.S. government -- it seems to change the goals of why it is going against Iraq all the time.

First, it was about a regime change. Then, it was about terrorism with connections to al Qaeda that weren't there, at least from the view of European intelligence services. Then, about disarmament. And we see some progress in disarmament right now. And now, all of a sudden, it's back to regime change.

WILLIAMS: Now one way it might manifest itself -- as a visiting American, let's say, how would I feel anti-American sentiment these days, not only just in Germany, but in Europe?

THEVESSEN: I think you would encounter a lot of discussions, when you talk to Germans or to French people, that people in those countries are very much opposed to the war effort, but I think they make the distinction between the American people and the Bush administration, the government. (emphasis supplied)

Our friends asked us to put out the word that the French were extraordinarily courteous and friendly to them, and went out of their way to assure them that they have no bad feelings for the American people. They like Americans. It really is Bush (and Rumsfeld) they don't like, not us, and this was repeatedly expressed to them. Our friends say the media coverage of war and Iraq is far superior and more balanced in Europe and no one should cancel a planned trip France because they fear hostile treatment by the French.

The San Francisco Chronicle weighs in on the police indictments and department scandal, dishing out some heavy criticism to Mayor Willie Brown.

In May, 2002, the Chronicle ran an extensive series on problems with the SFPD, notably that they came in dead last in solving crime, which you can access here.

Chronicle writer Kelly St. John reports today that things have not improved in the SFPD since the May, 2002 report came out.

The indictments of San Francisco Police Chief Earl Sanders and his top administrators last week are the latest scandal to hit a Police Department that was found by The Chronicle last year to rank dead last among major U.S. cities in solving violent crime.

In May 2002, a seven-month Chronicle investigation found the poorly managed agency solved only 28 percent of violent crimes between 1996 and 2000. It was the lowest clearance rate among the nation's 20 largest cities.

During the same period, San Francisco police solved just half of all homicides and fewer than one third of the rapes reported. They did not even investigate nearly 7 in 10 robberies and assaults.

The Chronicle's analysis also found, among other things, that the department did not make solving crimes a high priority, did not select investigators based upon merit and did not always provide them with such basic tools as cell phones, two-way radios and the like. "It's a wake-up call," former Police Chief Fred Lau said at the time the series was published.

This police department is in serious need of an overhaul. As to the prosecution of the indicted police, DA Terence Halinan (whom we strongly support) has selected Assistant Prosecutor Albert Murray to prosecute the case. A profile of Murray is here.

The Indictments should be available sometime today, and we will post the link to them.

We like Ted Barlow's comments yesterday on the Administrations's co-mingling of Osama with Saddam:

Is there anyone out there still unclear about the fact that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden are two different people? And that a war on Iraq isn't going to get bin Laden? Cause he's not there? And they're not allies?

Is there anyone who thinks that it's anti-war partisans, and not pro-war partisans, who are saying "forget about bin Laden"? Cause what I see is a lot of anti-war people saying, "what about bin Laden?", while the White House ignores the question.

Is there anyone except den Beste who thinks that the emotional trauma of September 11th justifies an attack-any attack? I want to attack Zimbabwe and get rid of Mugabe. Who's with me? What- don't you remember the horror of September 11th, you unfeeling bastards? Don't you remember the courage of those firemen rushing up the stairs when everyone else was rushing down? Don't tell me to "get over it"! On to Harare!...

Tuesday, March 4, 2003:

"A Conversation on the Economy with Former US Senator Gary Hart"
The Anderson School at UCLA, Korn Convocation Hall,Los Angeles, CA

Featuring: Merli Baroudi, The Economist Intelligence Unit, Prof. Ed Learner, Director, The UCLA/Anderson Forecast, Bruce Willison, Dean, The Anderson School at UCLA

6:00 PM–6:30 PM Registration
6:30 PM–7:30 PM Program (followed by reception)
Attendance is complimentary. RSVP required.
Event Parking $7

GaryHartNews.com