Daily Kos reports that John McCain will run for a 4th term from Arizona. Disappointing, Kos says, because the seat might have gone to a Democrat otherwise.

Peter Rothberg over at Salon reports on a spate of new anti-war songs.

We'll be interested to learn how many of tonight's Grammy winners refer to the war.

Louis Fisher, author of "American Constitutional Law" (5th edition, 2003), writes in an op-ed in today's Los Angeles Times, Who's Minding the Courts on Rights?

Times of war and emergency jeopardize civil liberties. Ironically, it is precisely at such moments, when we most need independent judges to check executive abuse, that judicial safeguards are weakest. Protections must therefore come from outside the courts. That has been the pattern in the past, and it appears, thus far, to be the record after the Sept. 11 terror attacks on New York and the Pentagon. Whatever moxie exists in the courts is likely to come from district judges or circuit courts, which are then typically reversed on appeal.

Fisher reviews the cases of Hamdi, Padilla, John Walker Lindh and others, and reminds us, protecting our civil rights ultimately is the responsibility of the citizenry...and the press.

Writing for the New York University Law Review in 1962, Earl Warren, then-chief justice of the United States, warned that courts are unreliable in time of war or emergency, and that "other agencies of government must bear the primary responsibility for determining whether specific actions they are taking are consonant with our Constitution." In a democracy, "it is still the Legislature and the elected executive who have the primary responsibility for fashioning and executing policy consistent with the Constitution." Moreover, "the day-to-day job of upholding the Constitution really lies elsewhere. It rests, realistically, on the shoulders of every citizen," Warren said.

Or in the words of Sixth Circuit Judge Damon Keith in the case holding deportation proceedings must be open to the public,

"In our democracy, based on checks and balances, neither the Bill of Rights nor the judiciary can second-guess government's choices. The only safeguard on this extraordinary governmental power is the public, deputizing the press as the guardian of their liberty."

Judge Damon's warning in that case, you may recall, was "Democracies die behind closed doors." Fisher has a new book out this spring, "Nazi Saboteurs on Trial: A Military Tribunal and American Law". We hope he puts to rest the Government's contention that In Re Quirin serves as precedent for the current round of detentions without counsel and access to the courts.

What is it with Texas? While the rest of the country is rethinking the death penalty and Illinois has emptied Death Row, Texas is proceeding at a record pace.

Eight of the nation's first 10 executions in 2003--including six in January--were carried out in the Huntsville prison unit commonly called The Walls. Nearly half of the next two dozen scheduled executions also will be in Texas. By the end of March, Texas should record its 300th execution--more than one-third of all those in the country since the mid-1970s, when the death penalty was reinstated in the United States after a brief Supreme Court-imposed hiatus.

Aside from the excessive number of executions in Texas, the state's death penalty system is rife with other miscarriages of justice. Here's a few:

A Tribune investigation of the death penalty in Texas in June 2000 found that the system repeatedly was compromised by the use of unreliable evidence, incompetent defense attorneys and an appeals system that often fails to remedy injustices.

This year--as Texas moves toward possibly breaking its record of 40 executions in a year, set in 2000--the cases involving those put to death by the state have raised troubling issues.

One man's state appeal was presided over by a judge who had been a prosecutor and done research for prosecutors at the man's original trial, according to defense attorneys.

Another prisoner had no federal review of his case because his lawyer filed his appeal five days after a key deadline. Consequently, the prisoner forfeited that critical stage of review, although the mistake was his attorney's, not his.

Another inmate was executed even though the jurors who convicted him later signed a statement in which they requested that he be allowed DNA testing before his execution.

Other inmates claimed that their attorneys were incompetent or inexperienced or that the inmates suffered from brain damage--issues that might have been grounds for relief from an appeals court.

Among those calling for a moratorium on the Texas death penalty this week was the League of Women Voters of Texas.

The pressure will mount in Texas, the same way it did in Illinois. We need a nationwide moratorium now. This will be an issue in the 2004 elections, we promise.

Here are some Bills of interest to us that have been recently introduced in Congress

S 402 (Feingold, D-WI), to abolish the death penalty under federal law, to Judiciary. S2457, CR 2/13/03.

S 407 (DeWine, R-OH), to provide loan forgiveness for attorneys who represent low-income families or individuals involved in the family or domestic relations court systems, to Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. S2457, CR 2/13/03.

S 399 (Campbell, R-CO), to authorize grants for the establishment of quasi-judicial campus drug courts at colleges and universities modeled after state drug court programs, to Judiciary. S2457, CR 2/13/03.

S 390 (Levin, D-MI), to provide retroactive effect to a sentencing safety valve provision, to Judiciary. S2456, CR 2/13/03.

Sex offenders as young as 12 can be ordered to register as ``sexual predators'' for the rest of their lives, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled.

The Ilinois legislature should revise this law. Juvenile offenders can be rehabilitated. As one of the dissenting judges said,"''The Legislature surely did not intend consequences so inconsistent with reason, logic and common sense."

You can read the opinion here.

More opposition to Patriot Act II, this time coming from the Minneapolis Star Tribune editorial.

"Patriot Act II" offers everything an aspiring autocrat might wish for: It would expand government's spying power and curb judicial checks -- permitting 15-day wiretaps without court approval in a "time of emergency." It would expand aw-enforcers' power to secretly arrest and indefinitely detain anyone thought to be linked to a suspected terror group. It would tighten the Freedom of Information Act to keep the public from discovering whom the government has arrested and why.

Most troubling, perhaps, is a provision that would strip American citizenship from anyone who supports political groups of which the executive branch disapproves. That could mean expatriation for any citizen who makes a contribution to a charity that the Justice Department decides is subversive -- even if the gift was otherwise legal and made in good faith.

We need to keep spreading the word about this rights-abusive bill so that when the Bush Administration tries to sneak it past Congress, they'll be ready to spot it, understand the issues and resoundingly reject it.

"Federal prosecutors inflated their success in terrorism-related convictions last year by wrongly classifying almost half of them, the General Accounting Office has found."

"Over all, 132 of 288 convictions reported as international or domestic terrorism or terrorism-related hoaxes were found by investigators to have been wrongly classified as such for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, the accounting office, the investigative arm of Congress, found...."

"The accounting office said the inaccuracies hampered Congress's "ability to accurately assess terrorism-related performance outcomes of the U.S. criminal justice system," information that would be crucial to such Congressional endeavors as approving the department's budget requests"

Update: You can access the full report here.

We've never been to St. Petersberg, Florida, but they sure do seem to have some enlightened citizens there. Check out these Friday letters to the editor on capital punishment.

Letters to the Editors
Bush should fix errors revealed in Holton case

Re: Private attorneys will speed justice in capital cases, letter, Feb. 18.

In his letter in the St. Petersburg Times, Gov. Jeb Bush "rebuts" assertions that Rudolph Holton was exonerated. The governor's implication, of course, is the tired refrain we hear every time someone is freed after being unconstitutionally convicted: Another inmate has just gotten off on a technicality.

Apparently the governor wishes us to retreat from the primary principle upon which our justice system was founded: innocent until proven guilty. If the governor believed in this principle -- and was committed to it and to actual justice rather than paying it lip service -- he would display the integrity demanded by the high position he holds and admit that unconscionable errors were made in Holton's case, and have been in others. He would then act vigorously to prevent such occurrences in the future.

The bottom line is that if the state has insufficient evidence to convict Rudolph Holton, then he is presumptively no more guilty of murder than is Gov. Bush. As someone who knows Mr. Holton, and (though not assigned to his case) is acquainted with the facts of the case, I can tell you that in addition to being innocent in accordance with the principles and ethics this country was founded upon, Rudy is actually, totally, factually innocent.

The governor's response has been to "consider" proposing an investigation into why it took 16 years for crucial evidence to be located and for recanted testimony to be produced. The real question is: Why did the state withhold crucial evidence from the defense and present perjured testimony in the first place? If the answer is that the state thought that it had the right man, our justice system is in serious trouble. If it is something else, we should all be very worried.

The fact that the governor is either unfamiliar with the details of Rudy's case (and chooses to speak authoritatively anyway), or intentionally misrepresents them by implying Rudy "got off," shows that his real priorities lie elsewhere. In his letter, the governor states, "Justice is denied to everyone when cases are mired in our courts for decades." True. But why does that invariably lead to executing people faster, rather than fixing problems that allow people like Rudy to end up on death row in the first place? And why do we never hear the governor remarking on the horrible injustice of an innocent man spending 16 years on death row? Is the injustice greater when an innocent man is freed after 16 years of being "mired in our courts," or if the wrong man is executed in five years -- as Rudy surely would have been under the governor's "streamlined" justice system?

Can private attorneys adequately defend the more than 375 people on Florida's death row? This is a question for honest, open debate, something impossible when the highest officer in our state cannot acknowledge crucial realities to the people of Florida, who rely on him for integrity, concern and forthrightness.
-- Marc Levi, investigator, Capital Collateral Counsel, Northern Region, Tallahassee (I write this as a citizen of Florida and not a spokesperson for CCC-NR.)

Here is some of the Dateline transcript of its interview with Ed Rosenthal, considered a "hero" by the jurors who convicted him--jurors who are very angry that they didn't hear all the evidence in the case. Dateline reports, "Over the years “Dateline” has interviewed many juries, but what these jurors had to say was truly remarkable."

In California, Rosenthal is garnering strong support from a group not generally associated with publicly taking a strong critical stand on drug laws. Don't miss Marijuana Mitzvah .

The Los Angeles City Council voted 9 to 4 today to approve a resolution opposing unilateral war in Iraq

"Elected leaders of the nation's second-largest city on Friday approved a resolution opposing a unilateral war against Iraq and urging the Bush administration to exhaust all diplomatic options before committing military forces."

The City Council voted 9-4 for the resolution after backers gave impassioned speeches that were cheered by hundreds of peace activists who packed the council chamber. Mayor James Hahn signed the resolution, making it the city's official position on Iraq.

"I hope people understand we're not a bunch of crazy politicians trying to dictate federal policy," said Councilman Ed Reyes, who voted for the resolution. "We are echoing the sentiments of people who are hurting. Where do we begin to matter in the priority of our federal dollars?"

What's so bad about Attorney General John Ashcroft ? This Baltimore Sun editorial today, calling for his retirement from Government, lays it out as clear, concisely and convincingly as anything we've read to date. Please, read the whole thing. Here's some:

PLENTY OF John Ashcroft's former Senate colleagues had misgivings when George W. Bush nominated him to be attorney general.

They knew him to be more ideological than intellectual, more judgmental than judicious, and altogether more small-minded than what might be hoped for in a candidate for the top domestic Cabinet post.

Yet Mr. Ashcroft has not merely lived up to his colleagues' expectations during his first two years in office, he has wildly exceeded them, as documented in a recent profile by The Sun's Michael Hill.

He is the nation's chief law enforcement officer, but seems intent on bending both the law and the Constitution to his will.

He has run roughshod over his own federal prosecutors, directing them to seek the death penalty in specific cases rather than use their own discretion.

He has ignored his promise not to impose his religious views on others by seeking to overturn the assisted suicide law in Oregon and by prosecuting Californians who participate in a state program authorizing the medical use of marijuana.

Worst of all, he has taken advantage of the fearful American climate in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks to chip mightily away at American freedoms.

He bullied Congress into passing the so-called USA Patriot Act, which makes it easier to wiretap conversations and track Internet activity of private citizens and to detain potential suspects or witnesses.

Congress balked at another Ashcroft program that encouraged Americans to spy on one another. But now he's coming back asking for the power to make secret arrests, strip citizenship from those with certain political associations and further invade the privacy of Americans.

He all but charges treason against those who raise civil liberty concerns. Such critics give "ammunition to America's enemies and pause to America's friends" and "erode our national unity and diminish our resolve," Mr. Ashcroft said. He contended that complaints about his heavy-handed investigative methods are designed to "scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty."

But he's the one who is truly scary.... Now it's time to retire Mr. Ashcroft from government, as Missouri voters intended.