Instapundit reports on an email from Eric Alterman alerting that "C-SPan II will broadcast my talk at the LA Bookstore, Skylights on Saturday, March 1 at 4:30 pm and Monday, March 3 at 7:00 am."

What Liberal Media? by Eric Alterman


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The Pentagon has released a list of two dozen crimes that will be subject to prosecution in a military tribunal.

The crimes include use of poisons or analogous weapons and the taking of human shields--as well as more traditional offenses such as the taking of hostages, murder, rape during an armed conflict and conspiracy.

Pentagon lawyers and other legal experts described the 19-page draft as a codification of the laws of war amid the new landscape of international terrorism.

It's been 15 months since Bush signed the order authorizing trial by military tribunal for non-U.S. citizens, and Rumsfeld says they are getting closer to finalizing the rules for such proceedings.

The military commissions are expected to involve a small number of prisoners held in camps outside the United States and would be conducted outside this country. Only a small number of the 650 detainees at the U.S. Navy prison at Guantanamo Bay and the 100 or so in a U.S. military compound in Bagram, Afghanistan, are likely to be taken before a tribunal, government officials have said.... Defendants will be given military lawyers and have the right to see evidence against them, unless it is classified. A decision by a two-thirds majority of judges would be required for conviction. .

The President makes the final decision as to whether a specific individual is tried by tribunal. Zacarias Moussaoui, now awaiting federal trial in Virginia, may become the first person to be tried in before a military tribunal if the Government loses its bid in the 4th Circuit to keep Moussaoui's lawyers from interviewing Ramzi Binalshibh, a witness who could provide exculpatory information for Moussaoui.

Jim Capozzola at Rittenhouse Review, just about the best writer we've encountered in the blogosphere, has outdone himself in a blogorama today--telling us who's got the goods on whom--he had to have been up all night to read that many blogs and then cleverly write up what they were writing about --we're going to try and read them all. We may use what he said about us as our blog anthem.

Thanks to (in alphabetical order) Atrios and Instapundit, TalkLeft received its most visits ever today--3600--and 5500 page views.

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Congratulations to Miami criminal defense lawyer Neal Sonnett for his big win in the Bermuda Short money laundering trial--based on a Government sting operation. His client, Jack Purdy, was found . The jury decided the snitch was lying and Mr. Purdy was entrapped by the Government. This was a big loss for Florida prosecutors.

We were wondering when someone would get around to noticing Clarence Thomas's Cruel View of Prisoners. Derrick Z. Jackson, columnist for the Boston Globe just did.

Eight members of the Supreme Court this week agreed in Miller-El v. Cockrell ruled that a death row inmate should get a hearing on whether the prosecution's exclusion of 10 of 11 blacks from his jury deprived him of a fair trial by a jury of his peers. The lone dissent was Clarence Thomas.

The Los Angeles Times reported on the decision:

"The culture of the district attorney's office [in Dallas] in the past was suffused with bias against African Americans," said Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. Moreover, "happenstance" cannot explain why more than nine out of 10 eligible black jurors were turned away by the prosecutor, he added.

"We question the dismissive and strained interpretation" that allowed judges to explain away this evidence, he said....

In Miller-El's case, defense lawyers cited a 1963 manual that told Dallas prosecutors to exclude certain people from juries whenever possible. "Do not take Jews, Negroes, Dagos, Mexicans or a member of any minority race on a jury, no matter how rich or well educated," the manual advised.

Though versions of this manual were used into the mid-1970s, judges in Texas refused to believe race bias was behind the exclusion of most blacks from Miller-El's jury....

Justice Kennedy said that the prosecutors in Miller-El's case questioned blacks and whites differently. "Disparate questioning did occur," Kennedy wrote, and that alone is "evidence of purposeful discrimination" that calls for reopening the case.

In a nutshell, a black man is tried for capital murder, the prosecutor excludes 10 of 11 blacks from the jury, eight white members of the nation's highest court are disturbed enough about the effect of the exclusion to order the court below to give him a hearing on the issue, and the one black man on the High Court disagrees. Justice Thurgood Marshall must be turning over in his grave. But Derrick Jackson is right--Clarence Thomas has a history of cruel rulings:

Last year Thomas was one of three dissenters, with Rehnquist and Scalia, in the 6-3 decision that found that executing the mentally retarded was ''cruel and unusual punishment.'' Also last year, Thomas dissented from a 6-3 decision to ban the practice in Alabama of chaining prisoners to outdoor ''hitching posts'' and abandoning them for hours without food, water, or a chance to use the bathroom. While the majority also called that ''cruel and unusual,'' Thomas said the hitching post served ''a legitimate penological purpose,'' encouraging a prisoner's ''compliance with prison rules while out on work duty.'' Now, once again, Thomas has struck a blow that makes one wonder figuratively who beat him up in some long forgotten alleyway of his life. Once again he has issued a dissent that makes him a better fit for Saddam Hussein than the Constitution. Bush says Hussein delivers nothing but war, misery, and torture. If Clarence the Cruel truly had his way in his private war, there is no telling how much more misery and torture would go unseen and unheard in the courtrooms and the prison hallways of America.

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Union Federation, the country's largest labor federation, has passed a resolution opposing war with Iraq:

The nation's largest labor federation declared its opposition Thursday to war against Iraq at this time, saying President Bush has not made a case for an attack without broad support from U.S. allies.

The executive council of the AFL-CIO, made up of 65 unions, ended its four-day meeting by unanimously passing the carefully worded resolution, which also says Saddam Hussein must be disarmed - with "multilateral resolve, not unilateral action."

The president has not fulfilled his responsibility to make a compelling and coherent explanation to the American people and the world," the resolution said.

Organized labor has typically backed military action in the past, including strong support for the Vietnam War. "By historical standards, this is unusual and this is significant," Robert Bruno, labor professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said of Thursday's resolution.

U.S. Labor Secretary Elaine Chao spoke to the group on Wednesday and was not well received, according to AFL-CIO President John Sweeney.

Perhaps the defining moment was Wednesday's address by Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, which shocked and enraged labor leaders, Sweeney said. They were particularly angry about her response to a question about the department's proposed new financial reporting requirements. She read from a paper a list of criminal charges involving one union.

Village Voice columnist Nat Hentoff' has a new column out today-- Ashcroft Out of Control --on the Patriot Act II. If you've been wondering what Ashcroft's proposal provides in plain English, go read.

Like Hentoff, we too are curious as to why this hasn't gotten more attention in the mainstream media. We think the reason that the draft of the proposed bill was sent to House Speaker Dennis Hastert instead of being introduced in Congress, is that Ashcroft and Bush were planning on waiting until we were officially at war with Iraq, when there would be less oppostion, and then they were going to try to get it past Congress without hearings and opportunity for review--the way they did Patriot Act I. By sending it to Hastert, they could claim (unjustifiably) that this wasn't a stealth move since they had put Hastert on notice.

War or no war, the Patriot Act sequel is an unnecessary piece of legislation that will strip Americans (and non-citizens) of their rights without any guarantees it will make us safer. Be prepared to jump on the phone to your Congresspersons the second it is introduced, if not before.

For more, visit EPIC and the ACLU and the Center for Public Integrity.

Bump and Update: The Associated Press reports that the investigative articles below have resulted in halting confirmation hearings for Ernesto Velasco as the head of the Illinois Department of Corrections. Velasco was the executive director of the Cook County Jail for the past seven years, until last month when he resigned. Illinois residents owe a big thank you to reporters Steve Mills and Maurice Possley. Credit also goes to Ill. Governor Rod Blagojevich who nominated Velasco and today decided to halt the confirmation until receiving more information.

Chicago Tribune Investigative reporters Maurice Possley and Steve Mills continue their excellent coverage of the mass beatings of inmates and cover-ups by the Cook County Sheriff's Department they revealed yesterday. It turns out there was a second and separate such incident a year and a half later.

Seventeen months after a team of 40 guards at Cook County Jail allegedly terrorized and beat inmates, another group of guards punched and kicked five other inmates while they were shackled, according to two former jail guards.

The two former guards allege they received death threats from other guards and were harassed into resigning this month after they refused to cover up the July 29, 2000, beatings....

I saw them hitting them with elbows, stomping on their faces and heads, kicking them in the face," Fairley testified. "I yelled at them to stop because what I saw was too violent. But they didn't."

The inmates contend that during a shakedown for contraband and weapons, guards began tossing all of their belongings out of their cells, then forced them to run a gantlet of officers who punched them. That touched off a brawl that ended with the handcuffing and shackling of the five inmates and then the alleged beating....

The Cook County sheriff's Internal Affairs Division ruled that the claims of the inmates and the guards were "inconclusive," a middle finding between sustained and exonerated. Other guards who have been deposed so far have denied the beating....

When the disturbance erupted, Fairley said, he was summoned from another tier in the cellblock to help.

"I heard screaming. I heard people hitting each other, flesh upon flesh," he testified. "I saw blood splattered all over the doors, all over the walls, all over the piles of garbage and the floor of the corridor. A lot of blood."

When the fight ended, the five inmates were handcuffed and four were shackled at the ankles and put in an area known as the "pump room." Fairley said he went to the doorway. The four guards, he said, were "jumping in the air, coming down on their heads with their knees. I saw them kicking them in every part of their bodies with all their might."

....In a telephone interview, [inmate] Fields said the beatings were sparked by a complaint he wrote to the Cook County state's attorney's office and the FBI about the alleged beating of another inmate. Fields said that after he complained, two jail officers told him, "Anybody who don't like what happened, we'll send you to the hospital."

Fields said the guards "beat us like we were savage animals. They beat us down to the ground. They stomped us, kicked us in the face."

....Richard Gackowski, 37, another guard and a friend of Fairley's, testified in a separate deposition that the lieutenant later told him that before the inmates were cuffed, he had grabbed Mitchell, the inmate who had a cast on his leg.

"He stated to me that he grabbed inmate Mitchell's good leg and did everything he could--twisted it, jumped on it, hit it--did whatever he could to get that leg to snap," Gackowski said. "And it just wouldn't snap and he laughed about it. He thought it was funny."

Nathson Fields, one of the inmates quoted in the article, had his death penalty conviction reversed because his trial judge took bribes, for which he was sent to prison. One of the bribes was from Fields' co-defendant. The States Attorney promised a prompt re-trial ( or really a first trial as reviewing judge said) but has done everything he can to drag it out. (Thanks to Rev. Mr.George W. Brooks, Director of Advocacy, Kolbe House for the Fields update.)

Why aren't Ashcroft's federal prosecutors all over this, charging federal civil rights offenses against the offending Sheriffs? Oh, we forgot, they're out busting bong sellers and re-directing websites.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the U.S. Department of Justice has threatened to criminally prosecute "California's top firearms official over the state's continued use of a federal databank to hunt down illegal gun users."

"The threat marks a significant escalation in the war between California law enforcement and U.S. officials over gun control and background checks. State officials said that until John Ashcroft became U.S. attorney general in 2001, California's use of the databank was not questioned."

We have to say, we don't want cops using the databank either. Guess we're siding with Ashcroft on this one.

"Lawyers for convicted medical marijuana grower Ed Rosenthal say he is entitled to a new trial because two jurors in the case received outside legal advice that compromised their ability to make an impartial judgment."

The FBI has acknowleged using a Cessna airplane flying over Indiana to monitor residents and businesses it believes might have a terrorist connection.

An airplane that raised questions in this college town is being used by the FBI to monitor people who might have terrorist connections, agency officials acknowledged.

The FBI denied knowledge of the plane earlier this week after aviation officials disclosed that the aircraft was conducting law enforcement surveillance....

Agent Thomas V. Fuentes said the FBI issued the denial because a reporter asked if the airplane is doing electronic surveillance, which it is not. Fuentes and agent James H. Davis said the FBI is not aware of any threat to Bloomington or the state, but is watching many foreign nationals.

Besides individuals, they said, the aircraft is monitoring vehicles and businesses particularly those open late at night from which faxes or e-mails can be sent.

Residents in this city of 69,000 have seen the white, single-engine Cessna 182 at least since Feb. 19 making passes overhead about noon, in the late evening and after midnight.

Just think, we're not even at war yet. We shudder to think what's in store for non-citizens (make that all of us ) once it begins.

Gary Hart has signed onto a statement by a bipartisan group of former Senators opposing war in Iraq.

The group of former senators includes Former United States Senators George McGovern of South Dakota, John Culver of Iowa, Paul Simon of Illinois, Adlai Stevenson III of Illinois, Fred Harris of Oklahoma, Dale Bumpers of Arkansas, Charles Mac Mathias of Maryland, Bill Hathaway of Maine, John Tunney of California, Gary Hart of Colorado, Howard Metzenbaum of Ohio, and James Abourezk of South Dakota.

It's a great statement, go read the whole thing.

Gary Hart was on CNN's Crossfire last night, showing once again he is clearly capable of leading the country. Here's the transcript. His last speech before deciding is Tuesday in Los Angeles. Details here. Send him an email and tell him to run-- info@garyhartnews.com.