Gary Hart spoke today in Los Angeles, outlining his plan for investing in America's future.

...he accused the administration of favoring the wealthy and of employing "market radicalism, a form of economic extremism that deceptively uses these tax cuts to shred the social safety net in the name of fiscal stimulation."

...In his prepared remarks, Hart distanced himself from his own party. Democrats, he said, are guilty of "nebulous centrism -- featuring more streetlights and school uniforms -- that too readily devolves into a least-common-denominator outcome."

Hart... called for tax law changes to increase eligibility of earned income and child care credits. "A rich nation can provide health care, high quality education, protection and supervision for every child -- and a civilized nation would do so," Hart said.

Hart ...condemned an "immoral" U.S. energy policy that, he said, relies on foreign oil and on fighting if supplies are threatened. "We are using our military, our sons and daughters lives, as the guarantor of our wasteful lifestyle," he said.

We have to say, once again, that Gary Hart is not only very smart, but he is the only one who comes to the table with defined goals for America at home and abroad. He doesn't generalize or speak in platitudes. He has well-developed and concrete proposals that may just offer us the solutions we need.

We still don't know if he's planning on running for President. But at least read his speeches at Gary Hart News. com and listen to what he has to say. Instead of chasing campaign funding and watching poll numbers, he's been thinking, writing, and presenting original ideas on how to restore America and keep it safe--and free.

The Los Angeles Times Wednesday reports that

"the Justice Department has stepped up use of a secretive process that enables the attorney general to personally authorize electronic surveillance and physical searches of suspected terrorists, spies and other national-security threats without immediate court oversight. Attorney General John Ashcroft told the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday that he had authorized more than 170 such "emergency" searches since the Sept. 11 attacks-- more than triple the 47 emergency searches that have been authorized by other attorneys general in the last 20 years.

Ashcroft has been accomplishing this by using FISA (The Foreign Intelligence Security Act of 1978) to get the warrants, instead of going through the federal criminal justice system--where a federal judge must find probable cause of criminal activity for a warrant. Aside from the number of secret wiretap and search applications, Ashcroft is pushing the limits of the FISA statute in other ways.

Since Sept. 11, officials have seized on a provision that allows them to launch emergency searches signed only by the attorney general. The department must still convince the FISA court that the search is justified-- but officials have 72 hours from the time the search is launched, and such requests are almost always granted.

We disagree that the Justice Department must convince the FISA Court that the search is justified. All they have to do is submit an application and make the allegation that one of the purposes for which the warrant is sought is intelligence gathering and that it is non-trivial. As Reporter Vanessa Blum wrote in this Legal Times article

In a scathing opinion made public Aug. 22, the FISA court ... ruling points to more than 70 cases in the late 1990s in which FISA judges were misled about coordination between law enforcement and intelligence agents. ...The court has approved approximately 13,000 applications since its inception. And just once, in 1997, the government withdrew a request that the court had found deficient. "

Ashcroft has claimed he has new powers as a result of changes in the Patriot Act, which changes he interprets as providing that applications for FISA surveillance warrants can have criminal investigative rather than intelligence gathering purposes as their principal goal. This interpretation is contrary to the intent of Congress in passing the Patriot Act as we have previously argued in-depth here. More from Reporter Vanessa Blum :

We talked to some Turkish friends today and they say this is right:

[Turkish Parliament member] Ozal and other senior party members urged patience, arguing that the Turkish government could seek another vote in parliament well before U.S. ships now in Turkish waters could reach Kuwait.....

Special elections scheduled for Sunday could also help the measure. [Turkey's Justice and Development Party leader, Recep Tayyip] Erdogan is seeking a vacant parliament seat in that vote, and if he wins, political analysts predict that Prime Minister Abdullah Gul, an ally of Erdogan's, will step aside and let him form a new government. Erdogan was banned from running in the November elections that put his party in power because of a 1998 conviction for reciting a poem with Islamic overtones at a rally. Parliament has since lifted that ban.

If Erdogan becomes prime minister, he could purge the cabinet of several ministers who have opposed the U.S. deployment, an important step because the cabinet's unanimous approval is required to submit a proposal to parliament.

...."The government is not going to let this go down," said Nevzat Yacintas, a Justice and Development Party legislator. "They will do something, I am sure, because the friendship of the United States is very important to us."

According to our friends, Erdogan is a sure bet. They say Abdullah Gul has just been standing in for Erdogan during his "time out" which ends Sunday. One caveat: Our Turkish friends don't speak much English, and we don't speak Turkish. Their six year old bi-lingual child did most of the translating. What we understood from him is that Erdogan was the leader, he said something bad, and got put in "time out", and his friend took over, but his "time out" is up this weekend and he will come back and America will get the support from Turkey it wants. We weren't sure we understood any of it, until we read the Washington Post article quoted above, and then it kind of fell into place. We think. Anyway, it's probably as good a basic "International Relations 101" course as we're likely to get.

Update and Bump:A panel appointed by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has issued a report recommending a death penalty moratorium in order to study the issue of racial disparity in the application of the punishment.

You can read the report here.

Update: The New York Times reports further, here.

"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.