Do you have concerns about Ashcroft? You're not alone. Check out Ashcroft's Political Agenda by Michael Hill in the Baltimore Sun, in which critics of the attorney general wonder if his taking away of civil liberties goes beyond countering terrorism.

Where is the media reporting on the 220,000 casualties from the first Gulf War? Cursor points us to Stanley Heller's article in Media Monitors, titled The 220,00 Casualties No One Speaks About.

The major media will talk about holes in the Administration case on Iraq, weaknesses in the accusations about Halabja, and even occasionally an article about sufferings of Iraqi civilians. What they won't talk about is the huge number of U.S. casualties from our first Gulf War. In two articles in the Washington Post in mid-January David Brown said that 1600,000 Gulf War veterans may be in "less than optimal health since the war". He talked about "muscle aches" and "stress". He could not bring himself to mention the "D" word, as in "Disabled". The VA officially reports that 159,238 soldiers who were in the Gulf in 90'-91' are disabled. Of that number over 111,000 are 10% or more disabled. According to the report 8,000 Gulf War vets have died. The report that mentions all this came out in September, but I don't know of one U.S. newspaper that has mentioned it.

The scary thing is no one is talking about the contamination still present in the region, and more troops are being dispatched there as we write.

We’re led to believe that Gulf War casualties were minimal. At the close of the fighting in 1991 less than 800 were killed and wounded. But first a trickle and then a river of American soldiers have gotten sick. The enormous numbers of casualties is not confined to soldiers who fought in the Gulf War. The V.A. has awarded disability to another 60,000 soldiers who went into the Gulf countries after the war was over. These are considered "theater" veterans. 2,000 of Gulf War "theater" veterans have died. This is very alarming. It means that the Gulf area (Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia) is still highly contaminated. The chief suspect is DU, "depleted uranium".

After describing "depleted uranium," Mr. Heller closes with this:

DU isn't the only culprit suspected in Gulf War illnesses. There's also the PB pills that were supposed to ward off some effects of sarin gas. There's the anti-anthrax shots that soldiers were forced to take. These "medicines" that got many GI's sick immediately and are thought to be part of the toxic mix that disabled so many soldiers. Obsessed with a quick triumph and low body counts the U.S. military fought the Gulf War without calculating the long term effects on its soldiers of its hi-tech weapons and "miracle" pharmaceuticals. Now the politicians are again sending the troops in harms way. U.S. parents will be gambling that the military brass that failed so wretchedly in Desert Storm will this time protect the health of their sons and daughters. The odds are poor. If the war starts Iraqi soldiers and civilians will be the main casualties, but U.S. soldiers will likely also pay a steep price for "victory".

This whole article leaves us pretty speechless. Suffice it to say, we are one parent who's not about to take the gamble.

Via Hamster, we find this commentary on Patriot Act II by Anita Ramasastry. She says the sequel is even scarier than the original.

Patriot II, as drafted by the Attorney General and his staff, would begin to make TIA [the Total Information Awareness Project] the law.

For instance, under Patriot II, federal agents would not need a subpoena or obtain a court order to access our consumer credit reports. This provision would open the wedge for TIA to be implemented through a huge database. Our credit reports are repositories of a great deal of sensitive information - from our employment history to where we shop, borrow and transact.

To see the information, the feds would only have to certify that they will use the information "in connection with their duties to enforce federal law." Note that they would not have to certify that the person whose information was accessed was suspected of terrorism, or indeed, any other crime. And no one would be notified that their records had been accessed. When a commercial entity requests a consumer's credit report, a note is made in the consumer's file alerting him to this fact.

Patriot Act I was passed in haste, without adequate opportunity for review by Congress. It seems Ashcroft now is trying to pull the wool over Congress' eyes the same way--he sent a copy of his draft legislaiton to Speaker Hastert, but not to the members of Congress. Listen to Ms. Ramasastry when she says:

If the introduction of Patriot II in Congress coincides with the Iraq war, it may well be because the Administration has planned it that way, to take advantage of circumstances to ram the bill through both Houses quickly.

Even if Patriot II does end up being introduced in wartime, citizens and their representatives should fight this legislation tooth and nail, for it threatens to take even more of our liberties away. It is a wholesale assault on privacy, free speech, and freedom of information.

We've added a newsection to our blogroll called "Government Watchers"--click on Patriot Watch often-- he promises to stay on top of this new legislation. We'll do our best as well. You can find our Patriot Act critiques here.

The ABA has passed new guidelines for lawyers defending capital cases.

They cover the appointment and performance of lawyers. Defendants in capital cases should be represented by two or more qualified lawyers, augmented by an investigator, a mitigation specialist and, in some instances, an expert to help with jury selection, the guidelines state. At least one member of the team should be qualified to screen defendants for mental or psychological disorders or impairments.

Further, an ABA report issued along with the guidelines recommended that an independent agency -- not courts or elected officials -- appoint counsel in capital cases to ensure the integrity of the process. In the past, critics say, judges have appointed lawyers whose primary skill seemed to be processing cases rapidly rather than providing vigorous representation....

"Under these guidelines, a court would not be involved in selecting counsel for any phase of the proceedings. Moreover, courts -- when seeing inadequate performance -- are urged by the guidelines to take remedial action rather than sitting and defaulting the ignorant defendant's claims" because an inept lawyer has not raised issues in a timely fashion, he added.

The report accompanying the guidelines places emphasis on the importance of a mitigation specialist, who researches the client's background so the defense team is prepared to effectively argue for a life sentence in the event of conviction. Too often, defense lawyers "think they'll win and don't prepare mitigation testimony," said Eric M. Freedman, a Hofstra University law professor who edited the final draft of the guidelines.

The report notes that "mitigation specialists possess clinical and information-gathering skills that most lawyers simply do not have." Consequently, they can recognize how mental or neurological problems may have affected the defendant's actions.

The Guidelines also call for adequate pay for lawyers defending capital cases. The federal system pays $125.00 per hour in death cases, but most states lag woefully behind that amount.

It seems that as we get closer to the reality of war, commentators are ratcheting up the tone of their criticism. We like Gordon Arnaut's commentary on Saturday's peace marches, The People Have Spoken, Is Anybody Listening? If you oppose the war, we think you will appreciate it as well.

Update: Permanent link to article is now substituted for the original, per "Canadian Reader" in the comments section.

Businesses offering ways to cheat on drug tests are growing. Some of the more traditional products include

shampoos that promise to wash away any sign of drug use from hair follicles, as well as synthetic urine, urine additives and detoxifying drinks or tablets with such names as "Fast Flush" and "Clean Green."

But our all-time favorite has to be this this one:

And then there is the Whizzinator. Ads for it offer a $150 device that straps on and comes with its own prosthetic penis (in five different skin hues), dehydrated drug-free urine and heat pads designed to produce a realistically warm urine sample, even under observation.

But use at your peril. Nine states have made cheating on drug tests a crime.

Calpundit picks up on the False Memory experiments that Memory and Eyewitness Identification Diva Elizabeth Loftus disclosed yesterday during her presentation at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Denver. We wrote about this yesterday here, and quoted an AP article that has some additonal examples of experiments demonstrating the phenomenon.

We also mentioned we were going to attend the party for the science writers and would report back. It was really a lot of fun. We went with Elizabeth around 7 (we've been good pals since we worked together on the memory and eyewitness aspects in the McVeigh case) and stayed until midnite. It turned out to be a press party--one not for the writers of the scientific articles and journals, but for the international press who writes about them, i.e., journalists. At least a few hundred of them.

Most of the reporters we met were from Europe--many from Germany.

Not knowing too much about science, and it being the day after the massive anti-war protests here and in Europe, we decided to play journalist with them and query them about the war. At first they didn't want to render an opinion, protesting they were journalists and not supposed to take sides, but after a few drinks, most loosened up and we soon had the liveliest table in the huge room. (There was a dj, dance floor, non-stop mexican food and open bar.)

We sported a tiny black and white "peace" button on our lapel, that turned out to be a conversation opener. After getting "hems and haws" as a response when we first broached the subject, which we attributed to politeness, we pointed to our button. Without exception, once the writers knew that was our position, they lit up with smiles and started talking.

Suffice it to say that not one of those we spoke to wanted the U.S. to start this war, had a favorable opinion about Bush, or thought it would solve our terrorist problems. Many resented the U.S. forcing the world into war and said it was doing so by playing on past loyalties and debts. The Germans in particular said they were very grateful to the U.S. for getting rid of Hitler and helping their country out financially, but at some point the debt should be declared repaid and calling for them to join in the war on Iraq was over and above what they have to do in payback.

As for Elizabeth Loftus, she's doing great at her new home at UC Irvine--in our post yesterday, we struggled with characterizing her as a "diva" or a "guru" of memory and eyewitness identification, and ended up using "guru." We took a vote on which word suited her better at the table last night, and it was 10 to 0 with all ten, including Elizabeth, voting for Diva instead of guru. So from now on, we will refer to her as Diva.

Law Professor Glenn Reynolds says a school in Tennessee is violating the Establishment Clause of the U.S. and Tennessee Constitutions by requiring students to participate in Christian revival meetings during school hours.

For a school system to get this involved in promoting religious activity during school hours is to create an "establishment of religion" in violation of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Attorney General Ashcroft has made religious discrimination a priority for the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. It's time he has said, to end bigotry against people of faith. Unless Ashcroft only meant "people of Christian faith," this looks like a good case for an investigation.

We agree. We had a feeling when Ashcroft started his morning prayer breakfasts with his staff at the Justice Department, and Bush introduced his born-again Christianity into his speeches, that it wouldn't be long before they tried to sneak it into our secular institutions. Now we have Bush promising money for "faith based" drug programs and Ashcroft looking the other way when it comes to programs like the one in Tennessee. Christian fundamentalism cannot be allowed to become mainstream. Let's vote these guys out in 2004 and take back our Constitution.

It's gorgeous here in Denver today, too nice to sit at the computer or not take advantage of the holiday, so we're off to Boulder and will be back later this afternoon. In the meantime, we hope you will visit our friends listed in our blogrolls and browse through our weekend posts.

If you can spare a buck or too, we'd also welcome your hitting our honor box or paypal links. As we get more popular, the bandwidth costs increase. Many thanks to those of you who take us up on this.

Maurice Possley and Steve Mills, two of our favorite investigative journalists writing for the Chicago Tribune --often on plight of the the wrongly convicted--today examine the effect of wrongful convictions on the jurors who voted to convict in cases in which DNA exonerated the defendants after trials.

More than 25 years after Michael Evans and Paul Terry were sentenced to 200 to 400 years in prison, some jurors are struggling with DNA tests that suggest they may have wrongly convicted the teenagers of the murder and sexual assault of a 9-year-old girl.

"This has devastated me," said one former juror, a college professor who asked to remain anonymous. "It is crushing--25 years in prison for something they did not do? I would rather be dead."

With nearly 125 post-conviction DNA exonerations in the last two decades in the nation, the anguish expressed by jurors in the Evans and Terry case is becoming a more frequent phenomenon as more cases long considered solved are re-examined and more guilty verdicts are set aside.

The Innocence Project at the Cardozo School of Law, a non-profit legal clinic created by Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld in 1992, reports that 123 people have been exonerated by post-conviction DNA.

"The jurors who have the toughest time with exonerations are the ones who in their hearts suspected the defendants were innocent or that they were not given all the information about the case," Scheck said.

What justification can Orrin Hatch have for opposing the Innocence Protection Act that allows inmates to obtain DNA testing that was not available at their trials? We hope you will all write Congress and tell them to pass this bill. It's been languishing in Congress too long, held up by Hatch and a few of his cronies.

"Editors of the world's leading scientific journals announced Saturday they would delete details from published studies that might help terrorists make biological weapons. The editors, joined by several prominent scientists, said they would not censor scientific data or adopt a top-secret classification system similar to that used by the military and government intelligence agencies."

"But they said scientists working in the post-Sept. 11 world must face the dismaying paradox that many of their impressive breakthroughs can be used for sinister purposes....They unveiled their agreement at the national meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science" held in Denver this weekend.

If you read the article, you will see that these writers deal with some strange stuff--"from decoding the human genome to the cloning of Dolly the sheep .

Indeed, it has never been easier to tweak a microbe's genes to create a deadlier, drug-resistant superbug for a germ bomb or hijack aerosol technology meant for convenient spray vaccines to make anthrax spores float through the air. Journal editors said they were establishing their own expert panels to review papers that contain alarming information, and would work with the authors to make specific changes and "tone them down."

We'll be joining the science writers at their party this evening, we'll report any particularly noteworthy details when we get back.

Memory and Eyewitness Guru and Psychologist Elizabeth Loftus presented the preliminary results of recent false memory experiments today in Denver at the national meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The research demonstrates that police interrogators and people investigating sexual-abuse allegations must be careful not to plant suggestions into their subjects, said University of California-Irvine psychologist Elizabeth Loftus....

Loftus said some people may be so suggestible that they could be convinced they were responsible for crimes they didn't commit. In interviews, "much of what goes on -- unwittingly -- is contamination," she said.

The news media's power of suggestion also can leave a false impression, Loftus said. "During the Washington sniper attacks, everyone reported seeing a white van," she said. "Where did it come from? The whole country was seeing white vans."

One of Loftus' studies involved asking people about having hugged Bugs Bunny at Disneyland. Only Bugs Bunny is not a Disney character so it couldn't have happened.

In the Bugs Bunny study, Loftus talked with subjects about their childhoods and asked not only whether they saw someone dressed up as the character, but also whether they hugged his furry body and stroked his velvety ears. In subsequent interviews, 36 percent of the subjects recalled the cartoon rabbit.

In another study, Loftus suggested frog-kissing incidents that 15 percent of the group later recalled.

"It is sensory details that people use to distinguish their memories," said Loftus, who has conducted false memories experiments on 20,000 subjects over 25 years. "If you imbue the story with them, you'll disrupt this memory process. It's almost a recipe to get people to remember things that aren't true.

Another presenter was Harvard pychologist Richard McNally, who

tested 10 people who said they had been abducted, physically examined and sexually molested by space aliens.

Researchers tape-recorded the subjects talking about their memories. When the recordings were played back later, the purported abductees perspired and their heart rates jumped.

McNally said three of the 10 subjects showed physical reactions "at least as great" as people suffering post traumatic stress disorder from war, crime, rape and other violent incidents. "This underscores the power of emotional belief," McNally said.