Fax your senators and tell them to filibuster against the Estrada confirmation. The form is here, courtesy of People for the American Way.

[links via Smythes World]

Received from NORML for those who want to keep track of or lobby their elected officials on marijuana legislation:

This has been one of the busiest years for marijuana related legislative activity in recent memory. After only one month, medical marijuana, decriminalization and industrial hemp bills have been introduced in ten states, and NORML has information that legislation will soon be introduced in at least five additional states. To keep track of all marijuana related legislation, please visit here.

To make it easy for constituents to write their legislators, NORML has created pre-written letters that visitors to our website can send free of charge to their legislators. It is crucial that concerned citizens contact their elected officials, as far too often legislators justify their lack of support for marijuana legislation by saying that their constituents do not support it.

In order to maximize the number of people who have access to these letters,
NORML has created customized webstickers, complete with marijuana leaves and the NORML logo, for all of our affiliates and supporters to feature on their websites. Website visitors can enter their zip codes directly into the websticker and they will be instantly appraised of any pending marijuana related legislation in their state legislature or Congress. For those of you who wish to take a more conservative approach, we also have webstickers emblazoned with images of flags and monuments.

An Illinois State's Attorney has sued to overturn some of the clemencies granted by former Governor George Ryan.

We think it's a bogus move, and columnist Eric Zorn tells you why in today's Chicago Tribune.

Chicago Mayor Richard Daley can afford Soldier's Field and other expensive projects, but he says Chicago can't afford justice. We expect more from the mayor under whose watch police-tortured confessions occurred.

An ordinance was introduced before the Chicago City Council Wednesday to require videotaping of interrogation, the best means of detecting and preventing false and coerced confession. "They would be sealed, preserved for at least 10 years and made available only when needed for trial, for "evidentiary purposes," or upon request by the suspect."

Alderman Richard Burke pointed out,

...Chicago can no longer afford not to videotape interrogations and that the courts or the Legislature could impose it. In the meantime, suspects who claim their confessions were coerced will sue the city and win multimillion-dollar settlements. That could make the cost of setting up one or more interview rooms in all six police areas--at a cost of $25,000 per room--then training officers to run and staff the equipment seem small, the alderman said."

Here's one of our prior posts explaining why videotaping interrogations, contrary to Daley's claims, would further both justice and police investigations .

The New York Times has a third article today on Ashcroft's demand for the death penalty against the advice of his local prosecutors.

Attorney General John Ashcroft has ordered United States attorneys in New York and Connecticut to seek the death penalty for a dozen defendants in cases in which prosecutors had recommended against or did not ask for capital punishment, according to lawyers who follow the issue. Those are nearly half of all the cases nationwide in which Mr. Ashcroft has rejected prosecutors' recommendations in a death penalty case....

Mr. Ashcroft's aggressive approach in the New York region was criticized yesterday by lawyers who said the best way to eliminate geographic disparities in capital punishment was not to increase its use but to reduce it. No federal court jury in New York City has yet returned a verdict for the death penalty since the revised federal capital punishment laws were passed more than a decade ago.

"They want to set a consistent national standard for these cases," said David A. Ruhnke, who represents a defendant in the new Manhattan case, "but the standards they're using are the standards used by Texas district attorneys running for re-election."

We've been particularly interested in this controversy because one of the cases is in Denver (as of this writing no decision by Ashcroft has been announced). Here is our post from last week on the controversy.

Former prosecutors and defense lawyers interviewed by the Times explain here why Ashcroft's interference threatens the independence of prosecutors and could lead to the undermining of the entire system. The federal system is based on cooperation deals--on defendants ratting off their associates in exchange for promises of leniency by prosecutors. Its the only way to get out from under the draconian sentencing guidelines, particularly in drug cases. And now it's turning out that the prosecutors can't deliver because the Almighty has come down and said at the last minute and in his infinite wisdom, "Deal's off. That one dies." This will be the death-knell for cooperation agreements. What defendant is going to take a deal knowing that the Prosecutor who's offering it to him may not be able to live up to it?

On the one hand, there's nothing we'd like to see fail more than the morally bankrupt system of purchased testimony that has become the very foundation of the federal criminal justice system. On the other hand, we are far more distrurbed that this Attorney General is being allowed to run amuck and make life or death decisions all by himself, against the advice of his career prosecutors. And that at a time it has become abundantly, if not crystal clear, that the death penalty system in this country is broken, he elects to put more people to death. Someone needs to tell him two wrongs don't make it right.

The American Historical Association met in Chicago in January. Historians from more than forty colleges and universities agreed to form a new national network, " Historians Against the War." A committee was appointed to draft the following statement, which has been circulated for other historians to sign.

We historians call for a halt to the march towards war against Iraq. We are deeply concerned about the needless destruction of human life, the undermining of constitutional government in the U.S., the egregious curtailment of civil liberties and human rights at home and abroad, and the obstruction of world peace for the indefinite future.

Nearly 1500 historians of all sorts have signed the HAW statement, and a press release on the statement has been widely distributed.

They are forming their own contingencies to march on Feb. 15 - 16 as part of the United for Peace protests. If you are a historian, or even if you aren't, go check them out. This is great grass roots stuff.

As expected, convicted "Shoe-bomber" Richard Reid has arrived at the Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado to begin serving his life sentence. Here is some information about Supermax, officially called the United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility ( ADX ) in Florence:

Inmates call it the Alcatraz of the Rockies. Advocates call it unfortunate but necessary, given an increasingly violent prison population. Critics call it a concept that didn't work in 19th-century America and is in danger of overuse now. In the arid, remote high desert, the triangular, two-story, high-tech ADX is almost invisible, as are its 417 male inmates. Many spend 23 of every 24 hours double-locked in an 8-by-12-foot cell behind a steel door and barred grate. Some spend the day's remaining hour alone as well, exercising in a small concrete recreation area and subjected to strip searches upon leaving and re-entering their cells. Except for the guards, there is no direct human contact.

Here is some more, from this article on a classroom website:

Unparalled in America, it is the only prison specifically designed to keep every occupant in near-total solitary confinement, rarely allowing inmates to see other prisoners.

....The ADX has a three-year program that keeps inmates in their cells 23 hours a day for the first year, then gradually ``socializes'' them with other inmates and staff. In their last year, prisoners can be out of their cells from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. and eat meals in a shared dining room, rather than having food shoved through a slot in their steel cell door.

...The average sentence is 36 years....

It is spent, typically, in a 12-by-7- foot cell. Beds, desks and stools are made of poured concrete. Toilets have a valve that shuts off the water if an inmate tries to flood his cell by stopping it up. Sinks have no taps, just buttons -- inmates used to unscrew the taps and use the plumbing parts as shanks.

A 42-inch window, 4 inches wide, looks out on a one-man concrete recreation yard, which prisoners with good behavior can eventually use.

The ADX goes to great lengths to bring everything into the cells -- books, food, television -- so that inmates never need to leave. A 12- inch black-and-white TV in each cell shows closed-circuit classes in psychology, education, anger management, parenting and literacy. Religious services of numerous denominations are piped in from a small chapel, where prison officials display for the videocamera the religious objects appropriate for a given faith.

Haney, the Santa Cruz psychologist who has testified as an expert witness in cases involving supermax confinement, said the effect of isolation in places like Florence is dramatic. Prisoners ``become extremely depressed and lethargic -- sleeping, lying on their bunks, staring at the ceiling, declining to go out and exercise,'' he said. They begin to lose memory, can't concentrate and suffer severe panic attacks, he said, or become uncontrollably enraged over insignificant things.

Here's an article about prisoner abuse by guards at the Florence Supermax.

Here's an analysis of Supermax prisons by Human Rights Watch

Here's the link to the Campaign to End Control Unit Prisons

Here's how the Bureau of Prisons describes supermax prisons.

Here are some of the more infamous inmates ADX Florence has housed:

Foreign Policy In Focus, has a Global Affairs Commentary by Phyllis Bennis, Powell's Dubious Case for War.

Daily Kos wasn't buying it either, see his post, Powell's 'Adlai' Moment.

Republican Congressman Howard Coble of North Carolina said on a radio show yesterday that the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II was appropriate.

Coble is the chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security.

He said, among other things, ''We were at war. They (Japanese-Americans) were an endangered species. For many of these Japanese-Americans, it wasn't safe for them to be on the street.''

Update: Don't miss Orcinus ( Journalist David Neiwert) on the prospect of Arab-American or Muslim-American internment camps and on Congressman Howard Coble's remarks on the Japanese WWII internment camps. Look for his article on the Japanese camps and the Korematsu decision to appear any day in Salon. We've already read it and it's terrific.

[comments now closed]

Ward Harkavy in the Village Voice did some numbers crunching and came up with some statistics for casualties in the Iraq War, as compared to previous wars.

Here's some of them:

Number of American soldiers poised for attack at the borders of Iraq: 100,000

Number of Iraqis and Americans who, doctors say, might die in the next war: 48,000 to 260,000

Number of additional deaths expected from the civil war within Iraq following an invasion: 20,000

Number of additional deaths expected from "post-war adverse health effects": 200,000

Number of total deaths if nuclear weapons are used: 3,900,000

[link via Cursor]

The World Court today ordered the United States to stay the executions of three Mexican nationals on death row due to Vienna Convention violations.

"Mexico argues that U.S. authorities systematically breached its rights and those of its nationals under the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, which obliges local authorities to inform an arrested person without delay of his right to speak to consular officials from his country."

Mexico sought the stay for 51 of its citizens on death row in the U.S. The court granted a stay for the three with close execution dates, who might not still be around by the time the Court decides the case on its merits.

The World Court is formally known as the International Court of Justice. It is a U.N. court that is used to resolve disputes among nations. It does not have enforcement power over it's rulings, and the United States has disregarded its decisions in the past.

Bump and update:
Received this today from our friends at the Marijuana Policy Project:

Please visit us for news coverage. And, more importantly, please use this Web page to fax a pre-written letter to your three members of Congress. The whole process of typing in your address and selecting a pre-written letter takes less than two minutes. We here at the Marijuana Policy Project are trying to build on the momentum from California and New York to persuade dozens of members of Congress to introduce legislation to remove the "gag" that the government is placing on medical marijuana defendants in federal court. But our lobbying efforts will not be successful if members of Congress do not hear from their constituents. Would you please visit our action page today?

If there's anyone reading who isn't already familiar with Ed Rosenthal and his conviction for pot cultivation last week, start here, then go here, or do a google search. Also, Green-Aid continues to have the most comprehensive coverage, including daily trial reports, beginning here and working backwards.

Update: Here is NORML's Action Page from which you can send a letter about medical marijuana to your elected officials as well.