There's a nice profile of Donna Newman, court-appointed lawyer for Jose Padilla, in the New York Times, Speaking for Terror Suspect, and for the Constitution.

We heard Donna speak in November at the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers' board meeting in San Francisco. We don't think she'll lose either.

For a good and concise summary of the issues involved, check out this article in the Philadelphia Inquirer. (Thanks to Jim Capozzola of Rittenhouse for sending it to us.)

The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that Arkansas can force a prisoner on death row to take antipsychotic medication to make him sane enough to execute . In the majority opinion, Judge Roger L. Wollman wrote:

"Eligibility for execution is the only unwanted consequence of the medication."

...Judge Gerald W. Heaney, in dissent, ... would have allowed Mr. Singleton to be medicated without fear of execution.

"I believe," he wrote, "that to execute a man who is severely deranged without treatment, and arguably incompetent when treated, is the pinnacle of what Justice Marshall called `the barbarity of exacting mindless vengeance.' " Judge Heaney added that the majority's holding presented doctors with an impossible ethical choice.

The "only" unwanted consequence? Can any other consequence, good or bad, matter after that?

We won't be posting until later tonight. We're going to debating the Michael Jackson brouhaha on Hannity & Colmes around 9:45 EST. We'll be defending Michael. How sleezy of whoever leaked the deposition transcripts of his long ago lawsuit. Depositions aren't evidence unless they are admitted at trial--in most places, depositions aren't even filed with the Court. They are tools for discovery, not public documents. Sean, no doubt, won't agree.

Update: Gloria Allred just said on O'Reilly the transcript was filed with the court.

Densho, the Japanese American Legacy Project, sponsored a program on civil liberties yesterday in Seattle. The speakers, mostly elderly Japanese, detailed their experiences of their WWII detention and seemed to agree that civil rights are teetering anew as they did in WWII.

The stories told by the elderly Japanese Americans and the young Syrian woman were remarkably similar: the shock of suddenly being viewed with suspicion by friends and neighbors, the bewilderment of being torn from homes and locked up, the anger with a government that promised to protect freedoms.

It happened to people of Japanese descent after Pearl Harbor. It's happening to Arab Americans and other Muslims since Sept. 11, 2001. But this time, Americans of many races are speaking out against the erosion of liberty in the name of security.

"We will not let history repeat itself," said Dale Minami, lead attorney in a lawsuit in the early 1980s that successfully challenged the federal government's claim that incarceration of 110,000 Japanese Americans was justified during wartime.

Densho chronicles the experiences of people imprisoned in camps across the Western U.S. in the 1940s, and yesterday's program began with films of several local residents relating a sense of loss and disillusionment still fresh after five decades.

They were followed by Nadin Hamoui, 21, a Syrian college student from Seattle. She tearfully recounted how 15 federal agents stormed her family's Lynnwood home last February as part of a post-Sept. 11 crackdown on Arab nationals living illegally in the U.S. In the chaos of the raid, Hamoui ran in to one of the agents in the hallway. "He pulled his gun and put it right in the middle of my forehead," she told the crowd of nearly 500 people.

There's lots more, go and read the whole thing.

For more on the protest of the detainees, and on those calling for Ashcroft's removal, see our prior post here.

From The Smoking Gun

Hey, dude, you're getting a cell!

Benjamin Curtis, the 22-year old actor who portrays "Steven," the Dell Guy, in those bothersome computer commercials, was arrested late last night (2/9) on a marijuana possession charge, The Smoking Gun has learned.

According to cops, Curtis was holding a "small bag of marijuana" when he was popped on Manhattan's Lower East Side (at Ludlow and Rivington for you Gothamites). Curtis is currently being held in Central Booking and is scheduled to be arraigned later today in Manhattan Criminal Court.

Curtis, who lives in lower Manhattan, was charged with criminal possession of marijuana, a misdemeanor. Bonnie Shumofsky, the actor's agent, said she was unaware of her client's bust when contacted this morning by TSG. (1 page)

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.