In a major escalation of the increasingly bitter partisan fight over Bush's judgeship choices, Democrats announced they had enough votes to block an immediate vote on nomination of the conservative Hispanic attorney to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. While stopping short of saying they would kill the nomination, they said they would filibuster -- or delay a vote -- until Estrada more fully answers questions about his legal views and the Bush administration provides memoranda he wrote while he worked in the office of the solicitor general in the Justice Department.Update: Lupe just posted her perplexity with the Democratic opposition to Estrada in our comments section. She'd like to see a hispanic on the Court and doesn't get it. Here is our response:
Lupe, thank you for asking. Here are some of the reasons we don't want Estrada.
A lot of hispanic groups oppose Estrada. Go here and read their opposition letters and memorandum of reasons. The groups include the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF); Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund (PRLDEF); and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC).
A technique called "brain fingerprinting," which seeks to probe whether a suspect has specific knowledge of a crime, could become a powerful weapon in national security, its inventor believes.Let's hope this one bites the dust quickly.Lawrence Farwell, a Harvard-educated neuroscientist who founded Brain Fingerprinting Laboratories Inc. 12 years ago and runs the company from a small town in southern Iowa, believes the technique could emerge as the next big thing in law enforcement and intelligence.
"From a scientific perspective, we can definitively say that brain fingerprinting could have substantial benefits in identifying terrorists or in exonerating people accused of being terrorists," Farwell said.
But first the controversial technique, which has had some success, must overcome the skepticism of some experts who are reluctant to embrace it."
"It's pure snake oil. There's no evidence you can determine evil intent or anything else from brain fingerprinting. It's the 21st century version of the lie detector test, which also doesn't work very well," said Barry Steinhardt, who directs a technology program for the American Civil Liberties Union. A General Accounting Office report in 2001 found that CIA, FBI, Department of Defense and Secret Service officials did not at this stage foresee using brain fingerprinting because of the expertise needed to employ the technique and because it would likely be of limited usefulness....Independent scientists contacted by the GAO investigators raised various objections to brain fingerprinting and said it needed more work into issues such as how memory was affected by drugs and alcohol, mental illness and extreme anxiety during crime situations.Limited usefulness? How about limited reliability? How about not being able to pass the Daubert criteria for admission into evidence in court (although, one Iowa court apparently admitted it in a murder case)? Then there's this:
Still, William Iacono, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Minnesota, said he was confident that brain fingerprinting would eventually establish itself for many applications, including the investigation of carefully planned premeditated crimes.Frightening stuff for use in crime-solving. At least, "just like lie detector tests, the technique requires the cooperation of the subject. A suspect could simply refuse to cooperate by closing his eyes and refusing to watch the prompts flashed on the screen before him."
Farrell says the technique may have use in Alzheimer's research. He wants to explore it's ability to detect and monitor the onset of the disease. That we would endorse.
Hart says Iraq invasion will increase terror attack risk / Ex-senator may be fashioning political comebackThe full text of the speech is here.Sounding increasingly like a presidential candidate, former U.S. Democratic Sen. Gary Hart warned Monday in San Francisco that Americans should "get prepared" for more terrorist attacks if the U.S. goes to war against Iraq.
"We're going to kick open a hornet's nest, and we are not prepared in this country," Hart told about 200 people at a joint gathering of the Council on Foreign Relations and the World Affairs Council. "When we engage in a military conflict in the Middle East, the threats to this country will skyrocket."
Hart's speech, intending to present an alternative to the Bush administration on foreign policy, particularly regarding Iraq, is one of a quartet of such "major policy addresses" he will deliver nationally to measure support for a run at the presidency. At a press conference, Hart -- who wrote a report on terrorism that predicted domestic attacks two years before Sept. 11, 2001 -- said he would announce his intentions in the spring.
We're listening to Eric Alterman right now on the Mike Rosen radio show in Denver, station 850 AM. (Thanks to Walter in Denver for the alert)
Eric will be on O'Reilly's The Factor tonight.
Update: Calpundit's just completed interview with Eric is up.
On Tuesday, February 4, 2003, Congressman Howard Coble (R-North Carolina) expressly justified on public radio our country's exclusion, removal, and detention of 120,000 Japanese-Americans during World War II in light of concerns for national security.Congressman Coble has recently been named Chair of the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security, and his refusal to recognize the racist basis of the Japanese internment encourages and perpetuates backwards thought to direct current policy towards Arab-Americans and other minority groups.
Don't let the Congressman get away with perpetuating hate! Go to http://removecoble.yellowworld.org/ and demand that he step down from his Subcommittee Chair position!
Don't miss Georgetown law professor Jonathan Turley's latest on Ashcroft's mishandling of the Moussaoui case. We don't always agree with Turley, but on Moussaoui, we've been on the same page since the case began. We even like his title and subtitle: Sanity and Justice Slipping Away: Ashcroft rolls over legal rights to pursue a demented terror suspect.
Here's a sample, but go read the whole thing:Lacking any meaningful evidence linking Moussaoui to the 9/11 plot, the government wrote an indictment that reads like a bad dime-store novel, describing shadowy figures and loosely imputing their actions to Moussaoui. A central character in this criminal novelette is alleged 9/11 mastermind Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who figures so prominently in the indictment that the government named him an unindicted co-conspirator.To access all of our Moussaoui posts in one place, go here.That made Bin al-Shibh a material witness in the case, but the Justice Department was not concerned about his being called to confirm these facts because Bin al-Shibh was at large and believed to be possibly dead. That changed last September when a very much alive Bin al-Shibh was arrested in Pakistan.
Under interrogation, Bin al-Shibh has reportedly given the CIA some valuable information, but also one highly unwelcome tidbit: Al Qaeda thinks Moussaoui is as crazy as we do.
Bin al-Shibh reportedly stated that he did send money to Moussaoui as a type of terrorist retainer. However, he also stated that no one trusted the unhinged Moussaoui for such an important mission and that Moussaoui was never made part of the 9/11 conspiracy.
Such evidence might prove Moussaoui was part of a terrorist group and even secure a lengthy sentence. But Ashcroft doesn't want to convict some terrorist wannabe with the dubious distinction of flunking out of suicide bomber school. He wants to execute the 20th hijacker and give Americans a sense of retribution for 9/11.
American military power must be used judiciously and prudently, even more so now that we are the dominant military power on earth by several orders of magnitude. We now spend more each year on our military establishment than at least the next five major powers, including China, Russia, a the U.K., combined.....Our forces must be used primarily to protect our legitimate security interests and those of our allies. When they are used, certain standards must be clearly stated and met. We must define our political and military objectives, and our political goals must be tangible, obtainable, and stated in concrete terms. The American people must support the use of our forces in any sustained military operation and must be fully cognizant of the proposed levels of military force and the potential costs, including in human lives. Our military forces should be committed only after diplomatic, political, and other means of conflict resolution have been exhausted and after local forces are determined to be insufficient to resolve the conflict. We must be clear on how we intend to achieve our objective and what strategies, tactics, and doctrines we mean to employ. And command structures must be clearly defined and our plan of operation must be simple and achievable in its execution. ....
We should not hide our policies from our own people or from the world at large. In the long run, and increasingly in the short run, there are few if any secrets. Our policies must withstand the therapy of sunlight. In almost every case, except the most important security secrets, if we are afraid to disclose our practices or intentions, it usually means we will be ashamed of them when they are ultimately exposed.....
We should not behave differently to others, including the most humble nations, than we would have them behave towards us. Our dealings must not only be transparent, they must also be fair and just. This is true all the more so since we now stand constantly examined in the court of international opinion and we do not have the excuse of combating communism to rationalize our misdeeds. Even our resistance to terrorism must not become a new excuse to shortcut our principles, bully our neighbors and allies, and act as the new empire-builders....
The American Bar Association, America's largest legal group, on Monday overwhelmingly opposed a Bush administration anti-terrorism measure that bars U.S. citizens jailed as enemy combatants from consulting defense lawyers.
"The American Bar Association's policy-making body voted 368-76 to approve a proposal backing the right of U.S. citizens held as enemy combatants to have access to lawyers and judicial review of their status. It also urged the U.S. Congress to establish clear standards and procedures for the designation of enemy combatants and their treatment."
"Neal Sonnett, a Miami defense lawyer who heads the association's task force on the treatment of enemy combatants, said that while every lawyer in the room wanted to work with the administration to fight terror, "we just cannot lose our Constitution in the process. It is an issue of defending liberty and pursuing justice."
More information about the resolution is available in this AP article. You can read the text of the resolution and Task Force Report here.
"The war on terror involves Saddam Hussein because of the nature of Saddam Hussein, the history of Saddam Hussein and his willingness to terrorize himself." -- Grand Rapids, Mich., Jan. 29."
The article also has a lot about Republican concerns with John Edwards --they're striking out at him first, which is interesting because Edwards is running fourth in the polls, behind Lieberman, Kerry and Gephardt.
Good riddance to the celebrity recordings in New York City taxis. They were almost as awful as the Dell commericials.
Antiwar demonstrators may not march past the United Nations complex on Saturday, or anywhere else in Manhattan, a federal judge ruled yesterday. Agreeing with the city that a large, moving rally of 100,000 people or more raised serious security risks, the judge said the organizers would have to settle for a stationary rally five blocks north of the complex. In refusing to grant a parade permit, the city did not violate the demonstrators' First Amendment rights, the judge, Barbara S. Jones of Federal District Court in Manhattan, wrote in her opinion rejecting their request for a preliminary injunction. She said that their free-speech rights were adequately protected by the city's counteroffer of a rally for 10,000 people at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, at 47th Street, with overflow space as far north on First Avenue as needed.
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