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.

Legal experts say Attorney General John Ashcroft's Death Penalty Edict could backfire:

Forcing United States attorneys to seek the death penalty could result in unwanted ripple effects, such as more frequent acquittals... There is also a risk that jurors who believe that a defendant does not warrant capital punishment could vote to acquit him on capital charges, or that judges who think the government has overreached could try to undermine prosecutors' cases, several former prosecutors said.

"The judge can take it out on you with all sorts of discretionary rulings," said Jamie Orenstein, a federal prosecutor in Brooklyn in the 1990's and a member in 2000 of the committee that reviewed death penalty cases for Attorney General Janet Reno.

"It's the exhibit that the judge doesn't admit," Mr. Orenstein said. "It's the objection to the prosecution's testimony that the judge sustains. It's the juror with qualms about the death penalty who the judge allows onto the jury."

The Washington Post reports today that Bush's budget hurts the poor.

The $2.23 trillion budget that Bush proposed to Congress last week would loosen federal standards and hand states vast new authority, if they want it, over housing subsidies, unemployment benefits, health insurance, and a preschool program for children from disadvantaged families, which is known as Head Start.

It would also make outright cuts in some poverty programs, such as a reduction by a fourth in the amount the government devoted last year to "community services" grants for dispossessed neighborhoods.

At the same time, the president is seeking nearly $1.5 trillion in tax cuts that would largely benefit the wealthy while potentially squeezing social spending for years to come.

These are not the same positions Bush endorsed when running for President. These are a continuation of Reagan "trickle down" economics--with a new label--"circular economics". Apparently, Bush has even more in store for us.

The president has not even publicly acknowledged this year's most dramatic tax proposal -- a plan to establish new savings accounts that would allow families to shield tens of thousands of dollars a year from all capital gains, interest and dividend taxation.... ...Policy analysts across the ideological spectrum say that the changes imbedded in Bush's budget, if adopted, would be virtually unrivaled in scale and scope. "Just the sheer volume of proposals . . . across an array of low-income programs . . . is breathtaking," said Mark Greenberg, policy director of the Center for Law and Social Policy, a nonprofit group that specializes in family and welfare issues.

To get around suggestions that he is cutting federal dollars from the budget for social programs, Bush has decided to merely transfer responsibility for running the programs to the states. Analysts say this is unwise:

"Offering state block grants in the middle of the most severe state fiscal crisis we've seen in a long time -- with little or no new federal aid -- almost guarantees that states will either fail to take up the option or that they will use the money in inappropriate ways," Isabel V. Sawhill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said at a gathering of policy analysts held to assess the budget.

Bush's changes for Medicaid are sounding some of the loudest alarm bells among policy analysts and Democrats. After that come his changes to the school lunch program.

Barry Sackin, a vice president of the American School Food Service Association, said that he, too, thinks only eligible students should receive free meals, but that some of the methods the administration is contemplating would cause "collateral damage," mistakenly denying help to children who should get it.

Maureen Dowd is great in Desert Spring, Sprung, up now on the New York Times website. It's hard to pick just a few paragraphs to quote, but these should do:

The orange alert made me wonder again why the Bush administration has spent the last year and a half hyping the Iraqi menace instead of singlemindedly hunting Al Qaeda.

Mr. Bush's presidency came into focus when he made his bullhorn vow to get "the people who knocked these buildings down." But we're not getting the creeps who knocked the buildings down. We're getting the creeps whose address we know....

Once they scratch their Saddam itch, maybe the Bush team can zero in on the terrorists who have put us on code orange, and the North Koreans who have put us on nuclear notice.

IsThatLegal? says they have come up with the goods to make Coble apologize. Tonight and tomorrow, Prof. Muller is posting scanned copies of original documents that show the Japanese were not put into internment camps for their own benefit. The document he has up tonight is a memorandum dated February 12, 1942, from Attorney General Francis Biddle to Secretary of War Henry Stimson.

Prof. Muller points out that the memo clearly says the Japanese issue is a military one. Had it been for protection of the Japanese, he says, the Department of Justice or another law enforcement group would have had responsibility for oversight.

There's more, go over and have a look.

If you are in the San Francisco area this week, Gary Hart will be speaking at these events:

February 10, 2003:
"Principled Engagement: America's Role in the World of the 21st Century"
World Affairs Council and the Council on Foreign Relations

Registration Begins at 5:00 PM, Program is from 6–7:00 PM

Grand Ballroom, Omni Hotel
500 California
San Francisco, CA

More details here.

February 11, 2003:
"Principled Engagement: A New Foreign Policy Framework"
The International Law Society and the American Constitution Society

1:00–2:00PM

Stanford Law School
Room 290
Stanford, CA

More details here.

UPI Senior News Analyst Martin Sieff asks in his latest commentary, Is Bush competent? As to his ability to run the nation, Sieff answers with a resounding "no."

You know it's all going downhill after Sieff says, "Consider, the president inherited a United States blessed with peace, prosperity, a booming stock market and a healthy annual budget surplus. It now has none of those things."

Go read the whole thing.

Robert Ambroggi, a lawyer in Rockport, MA, Legal Tech Writer and author of the book, " The Essential Guide to the Best (and Worst) Legal Sites on the Web," has written not one, but three columns on law blogs in recent months for Law Technology News. Find out what you're missing.

The Year's Most Laudable Web Site Launches (November, 2002)

Many Blawgs Provide Practical Information (December, 2002)

Lawyers as Pundits by Way of the Web (January, 2003)

Ambroggi also has own blog, LawSites, that tracks new and intriguing Web sites for lawyers.