Alvin Wyman Walker, PhD, PD, PC, a clinical psychologist/psychotherapist with a PhD in Personality/Social Psychology/Cultural Anthropology and the equivalent of a second PhD in Clinical Psychology, applies his skills and insights into G.W. Bush in "Shrub" Bush's Pathological Focus On Saddam Hussein in the new issue of The Black Commentator.

Walker shares his insights into Bush's reactions both to the death penalty and his obsession with Iraq and Saddam. Lots of oedipal stuff. A fun read.

In Illiniois, a defense team is in place to fight the death penalty at the trial level one case at a time.

These are trial lawyers working under the State appellate defender's office. Instead of fighting in the legislature or expressing moral opposition to the death penalty, they are working through the courts to ensure that everyone charged with a capital crime gets a fair trial--and hopefully a deal from the prosecution for life in prison vs. death.

The team is headed by Stephen L. Richards, deputy state appellate defender. Richards said his group's victories were usually unsung. Many result from tough, behind-the-scenes bargaining.

Many of the state's prosecutors are angry that Ryan emptied death row. Some have vowed to fill it back up. But Richards asserted, "They're going to have to come through us."

He spoke by phone from Rockford, Ill., where he is a defense attorney in the first death penalty trial since Ryan issued his commutation orders.

Richards said a defendant who faces strong evidence of guilt sometimes agrees to accept life in prison if the prosecutor agrees not to seek execution. But first, everyone involved - prosecutor, defendant, judge, defendant's relatives, even the victim's family - needs to agree it is the best solution.

"You save his life, and you save the state the time and expense of a trial," Richards said. It also prevents appeals and postconviction proceedings.

Thanks to PJack, one of Atrios's readers, TalkLeft is now available in PDA form so you can read us on your palm pilots or pocket pc's. Here is the link, which you can also find on the right side of TalkLeft, right above our XML feed.

If you are a Live Journal user, Carpeicthus made us an RSS feed so you can put us on your "friend's list" and be notified when we update. Here's the link.

Many thanks to both PJack and Carpeicthus. PJack has made a page of PDA links for a variety of left-oriented sites, you can access them all on one page, here. Carpeicthus has also made live journal "my friends" pages for Atrios, Matt Yglesisas and Daily Kos, which you can access on his friends' list, here.

Law Prof. Eric Muller of IsThatLegal? is posting hard copies of the documents surrounding FDR’s decision to intern the Japanese-Americans during World War II. Just in case there was any question whether Coble was wrong, despite his continuing defiance, Muller’s blog and Orcinus (Dave Neiwert) are Information Central on the issue.

This Modern World has more.

What Liberal Media? by Eric Alterman

Buy the Book Today!

Read the 13 page Introduction now and visit the website.

Update: Eric was on MSNBC Sunday afternoon for a few short segments and had to deal with three right wingers opposing him. Yet Chris Matthews has scheduled Bernard Goldberg, whose book on bias in the media came out over a year ago, by himself for a full hour. We need to do an email campaign to get Eric on the air with equal time. We got these contacts from Atrios, go ahead, send them an e-mail. Here's a convenient cut and paste into your email:

hardball@msnbc.com, Booktv@c-span.org, totn@npr.org, tmshow@umich.edu, onthemedia@wnyc.org, waitwait@npr.org, atc@npr.org, brianlehrershow@wnyc.org, nyandco@wnyc.org

Or, individually, contact Chris Matthews at hardball@msnbc.com and politely suggest he have Eric Alterman on his show.

Contact Charlie Rose and politely suggest he have Eric Alterman on the show.

Contact C-Span's book notes (Booktv@c-span.org) and politely say how nice it would be to have Eric Alterman on the show.

Neal Conan at Talk of the Nation (totn@npr.org) and politely say how nice it would be to have Eric Alterman on the show.

Diane Rehm at the Diane Rehm show and politely say how nice it would be to have Eric Alterman on the show.

Click and Clack at Car Talk and politely say how nice it would be to have Eric Alterman on the show.

Todd Mundt at the Todd Mundt show and politely say how nice it would be to have Eric Alterman on.

On the Media (onthemedia@wnyc.org) and politely say how nice it would be to have Eric Alterman on.

Contact the Connection and politely say how nice it would be to have Eric Alterman on.

Contact Wait Wait Don't Tell Me (waitwait@npr.org) and politely say how nice it would be to have Eric Alterman on.

Contact Michael Feldman from Whaddya Know and politely say how nice it would be to have Eric Alterman on.

Contact All Things Considered (atc@npr.org )and politely say how nice it would be to have Eric Alterman on.

UPDATE: Skip whichever of the above is also known as Fresh Air, Eric's already scheduled there.

Colin Powell likely was mistaken when he labelled a shabby military compound in Iraq a 'poison factory' , says a British reporter who just visited the compound.

In the Sunday London Observer, Luke Harding reports from the terrorist camp in northern Iraq named by Colin Powell as a centre of the al-Qaeda international network.

If Colin Powell were to visit the shabby military compound at the foot of a large snow-covered mountain, he might be in for an unpleasant surprise. The US Secretary of State last week confidently described the compound in north-eastern Iraq - run by an Islamic terrorist group Ansar al-Islam - as a 'terrorist chemicals and poisons factory.' Yesterday, however, it emerged that the terrorist factory was nothing of the kind - more a dilapidated collection of concrete outbuildings at the foot of a grassy sloping hill. Behind the barbed wire, and a courtyard strewn with broken rocket parts, are a few empty concrete houses. There is a bakery. There is no sign of chemical weapons anywhere - only the smell of paraffin and vegetable ghee used for cooking.

Harding acknowledges there was a sophisticated television studio and computers in the compound and that the group is a violent bunch, having killed more than 800 opposition Kurdish fighters and failing in an assassination attempt of the Prime Minister of a neighboring town.

Giving Powell the benefit of the doubt, perhaps the camp has been dismantled since he received his information. On the other hand, maybe he purposefully was fed disinformation. Either way, it doesn't strike us as either a "smoking gun" or even reliable evidence that this outdated, out of the way compound poses any great threat to America.

[comments now closed]

Don't miss the two part series in the St. Petersburg Times titled The Innocence Defense:

A little over two weeks ago, Rudolph Holton walked away from death row. This is why he spent 16 years there: Tampa police never pursued a suspect accused of raping the murder victim. A jailhouse snitch said Holton confessed, though later he said he made it up to get a break in his own case. The prosecutor told the jury a hair found on the victim was Holton's, but he couldn't prove it. The judge refused to wait for a key defense witness. To set Holton free, it would take a lawyer who was too young and too reckless to know what she was up against.

Women with children under 18 represent the fastest growing prison population, and their absence leaves kids maternally incarcerated. It's not only the moms who are sentenced.

Mark Katz, speechwriter and humorist, was a member of the Dukakis presidential campaign's rapid-response team. In the Week in Review section of today's New York Times, he writes a letter to Dukakis, urging him to run again.

Since Mr. Katz is a humorist, and there's plenty of humor in his piece, we don't know if he's serious or not, but it's an interesting read. It also makes us hope even more that Gary Hart decides to run.

We're heartened to see a North Carolina newspaper refusing to let Howard Coble off the hook for his recent remarks about Japanese internment camps. Same for its criticism of another U.S. Representative from North Carolina who joins the bigotry remark circle, read on.

After endorsing white supremacy lost Sen. Trent Lott the majority leader's post, one would think everyone in Congress would have gotten the memo: racially insensitive remarks are verboten. Not so, apparently.

Two U.S. representatives from North Carolina have made unthinking comments in the last week, but rather than apologize, have tried to wriggle out of them. Surely, Lott proved that was a losing strategy.

Example No. 1: Rep. Howard Coble, who wisely rebuffed a radio program caller's suggestion that Arab Americans be detained to prevent terrorism -- only to undercut himself by expressing support for Japanese internment during World War II. His idea that forced imprisonment was for Japanese Americans' own good is particularly odious and paternalistic. "We were at war," he said. "They (Japanese Americans) were an endangered species. For many of these Japanese Americans, it wasn't safe for them to be on the street."

Then Coble kept talking and totally negated his earlier disavowal of Arab internment: "Some (Japanese Americans) probably were intent on doing harm to us, just as some of these Arab Americans are probably intent on doing harm to us."

Exhibit No. 2: Rep. Sue Myrick, who confided in a speech that she had been driving, worried, around the country for decades fueled by suspicions about Arab and Arab-looking convenience store owners.

"You know, and this can be misconstrued, but honest to goodness (husband) Ed and I for years, for 20 years, have been saying, 'You know, look at who runs all the convenience stores across the country.' Every little town you go into, you know?"

We know. Myrick, Coble and their aides have backpedaled furiously in a desperate attempt at damage control - but that excuses neither their thoughtless utterances nor the narrow and cruel ideas behind them.

The Sunday New York Times Magazine has a long, long profile of Aicha el-Wafi, the mother of Zacarias Moussaoui. Some highlights:

A divorced 56-year-old born in Morocco, el-Wafi has lived in France for close to 40 years. Having spent two and a half decades working for France Telecom, she now lives in a comfortable home, complete with deck, grill, sea view and a dog named Tango. One of her sons has admitted in court to being a member of Al Qaeda and will be tried for conspiracy in the Sept. 11 attacks. The other has written a tell-all condemning her for what he recalls as her unloving, harsh ways. It's unclear who has disappointed her more.

She also has a daughter, Nadia.

Zacaria's sister Nadia in the former neighborhood nightclub that barred Arabs. Nadia, who draws Stars of David on herself because "in my heart, I am Jewish," said he would be happy to see that the club had been destroyed.

El Wafi has been working closely with Moussaoui's court appointed lawyers, "helping them document the family's troubled history and trace Moussaoui's path during the years since he left the family." This will be important work in the death penalty phase of the trial, which for the defense, is all about mitigation. It seems they will have something to work with:

Aicha El-Wafi married in Morocco at 14 and moved, with her husband and two babies, to France five years later. By the time she was 22, she had four children, the youngest being Zacarias. After 10 years of making excuses about her children's bruises, as well as her own, she finally managed to leave her husband, putting the kids in an orphanage for a year while she stayed in a shelter. She worked a series of menial jobs -- in a factory, as a seamstress -- before starting work as a cleaning woman for France Telecom. She may have been sweeping floors, but she had secured that particularly prized French status of fonctionnaire, a government employee, with superior benefits, virtually guaranteed employment and reliable housing. "

While Rumsfeld was in Munich to promote war, his German family relatives were busy telling a newspaper they want nothing to do with him or his war. [link via Buzzflash]

The Rumsfelds of Weyhe-Sudweyhe, an unremarkable red-brick suburb of Bremen, were once proud of their long-lost cousin, America's secretary of state for defence - but no longer.

Like many Germans, they are appalled by Donald Rumsfeld's hawkish attitude to military action against Saddam Hussein.

"We think it is dreadful that Donald Rumsfeld is out there pushing for a war against Iraq," Karin Cecere (nee Rumsfeld), 59, said from her two-up, two-down home last week. "We are embarrassed to be related to him," she told The Telegraph.

Margarete Rumsfeld, her 85-year-old mother, was equally dismissive: "We don't have much to do with him anymore. Nowadays he's just the American defence secretary to us, but for God's sake, he'd better not start a war," she added.

The family used to welcome Rumsfeld with open arms when he came to visit. Not any more. Germany, in particular, is putting up a stink about Bush and Rumsfeld's war plans.

More than 60 per cent of Germans oppose a war and the US defence secretary has become a hate figure for the country's peace movement. His desire to topple Saddam by force is at odds with the Social Democrat-led government of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, which is directly opposed to war in Iraq.

We can't wait for the inevitable political cartoons to come out of Europe portraying us all as cowboys in a rodeo throwing a lasso around the rest of the world. Yee-Haw.