Gary Hart's response to Bush's State of the Union Address:

The President is still either unable or unwilling to provide concrete evidence of current Iraqi involvement in terrorism sufficient to justify possible substantial loss of American lives in a war in Iraq. He also is unable or unwilling to provide assurance to the American people that our homeland is sufficiently secure from terrorist attacks before such a war is initiated. As our Council on Foreign Relations Task Force Report of October 25 documented, America is still unprepared and still at risk. We should not go to war until America is prepared to defend itself at home from terrorist attacks that the Central Intelligence Agency has said will most probably occur when we go to war in the Middle East.

The New York Times details Gary Hart's back door campaign:

By next month, Mr. Hart intends to have spoken on national security, foreign policy, the economy and civic engagement. Call it a back-door campaign: He drops into the nascent contest for a harmless cup of coffee and then, before you know it, is sitting down at the dining room table in debates with everyone else in the field.

Gary returns from England this weekend. He has not yet decided whether to run. He is concentrating on getting his positions on issues out in the public domain.

February 10 he'll be speaking in San Francisco, details will be available at Gary Hart News.com - Calendar.

John Walker Lindh, known as the "American Taliban", has been transferred to Victorville, a medium security federal prison in the California desert, east of LA , to serve his 20 year sentence. There is an adjacent minimum security camp for female offenders. It has a lot of vocational and educational programs. The cells hold two prisoners. There is a law library and a leisure library.

Don't miss Instapundit Glenn Reynolds and Dave Kopel in Feel Like Dancing? over at NRO today on Tom Daschle's sneaky attempt to pass the anti-Rave Act--by calling it the Crack House Statute Amendments and burying it in a terrorism bill called "Justice Enhancement and Domestic Security Act of 2003" (S. 22). Here's a taste:

The Daschle bill extends the federal "crackhouse law" — which makes it illegal to maintain a building for purposes of drug consumption — to cover musical performances and other events of a temporary nature, and to make liable even those who make their premises available at no charge. The idea is to make the promoters of musical events liable for drug consumption at those events — even when the consumption is entirely incidental, and has nothing to do with any action by the promoters. The legislation is, in effect, an admission of failure by the Drug Enforcement Agency: Unable to control drug use, it's looking to force concert promoters and theaters to do it, on pain of imprisonment.

The potential prison term: Up to 20 years.

We've also written about this in detail here.

P.S. We're behind on our news update on the left side of TalkLeft, we'll get to it this afternoon. And if you're watching the "Shoe-bomber" sentencing today at 2pm EST, we hope you will watch it on Fox News--we'll be there.

48 year old Sal Magluta was wronged last week when he was sentenced to 205 years in federal prison for murders a jury found he did not commit.

Criminal defense lawyers Milton Hirsch and David Marcus explain why in this op-ed article in today's Miami Herald.

Miami's last cocaine cowboy rode into the sunset last week.

Salvador Magluta, considered one of Miami's most notorious narcotics dealers, was prosecuted in federal court for having witnesses murdered and for laundering millions of dollars in drug proceeds. A federal judge then punished Magluta with a 205-year sentence. Magluta, 48, will live in prison till the day he dies.

But Magluta was never convicted of the homicides for which he was sentenced. A jury of his peers found Magluta not guilty of the murders, and guilty only of the nonviolent money-laundering charges -- crimes that carry a maximum sentence of 20 years. The jury's verdict notwithstanding, the judge decided that Magluta was responsible for the homicides and sentenced him accordingly.

In a watershed 1997 opinion, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that federal judges, in imposing sentence, may ignore jury verdicts of acquittal and determine whether defendants have done wrong. The Herald applauded the punishment, and the new U.S. attorney claimed that such a sentence sends a message about justice. It does indeed: The message is that prosecutors can lose and still win, that a jury no longer stands between an accused American and a life sentence.....

We couldn't have said it any better ourselves.

The sentencing for "shoe-bomber" Richard Reid, who intended to blow up an American Airlines commecial flight in December, 2001 by lighting a match to an explosive in his shoe, is set for tomorrow at 2pm EST.

The range of his sentence will be between sixty years and life. We doubt anyone will be suprised if he gets life. It's very possible his lawyers may not ask for less. Reid will likely serve his time at Admax (the Supermax prison) in Florence, Colorado.

We think this case shows that our criminal justice system is well equipped to handle terror cases. There is no need to keep the suspects in military custody, cut off from lawyers --or to try them in military tribunals. Reid pleaded guilty to all counts and received no promises of leniency or other sentence concessions. This is a case we don't have a lot of complaints about. Reid had excellent counsel and a U.S. District Court Judge.

True, his conditions of confinement were a little too strict for our First Amendment sensibilities (denying him a radio, for example, and only allowing him censored copies of Time Magazine), but all in all, this case shows how adaptable our criminal justice system can be.

We'll be providing legal analysis of the proceedings live on Fox News Channel, between 2 and 3.

Press Release Just In from AdaWatch:

The National Coalition for Disability Rights (NCDR) is an alliance of more than 500 national, state, and local disability organizations joined to protect and strengthen the civil rights of people with disabilities. NCDR's ADA Watch has united hundreds of organizations and thousands of individuals in opposition to the confirmation of Jeffrey Sutton to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals and has organized opposition events in Washington, DC and in Columbus, Ohio.

NCDR's president, Jim Ward explains: "Sutton's career has been highlighted by aggressive -- and often successful -- efforts to dismantle federal disability rights and civil rights protections. He has actively worked to weaken Federal protections for people with disabilities, minorities, seniors, women victims of violence, Medicaid recipients and others. Sutton -- like too many of the Bush judicial nominees -- has targeted the New Deal, the Great Society, Medicaid, the ADA, Olmstead, and the authority of a democratically elected Congress to legislate remedies when petitioned by American citizens."

Thursday, January 30: Disability Rights supporters will attend the official Executive Session of the Senate Judiciary Committee at 9:30 AM in Dirksen Senate Office Building, Room 226. This will be followed by ADA Watch's "People's Hearing," in Dirksen 138 at 1:30 PM, to examine the impact of Mr. Sutton's activism on people with disabilities. Individuals from Sutton's home-state of Ohio will share their stories and illustrate the threats of Federalism to real people.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) has surpassed California and Texas as the largest prison system in the United States, holding 164,011 prisoners as of November 7, according to recent Bureau of Prison population reports.

In 2000, BOP announced it would be building several new facilities a year in the coming years. In 2001, BOP received $883 million for new facilities. For 2002, the Bush administration "proposed spending one billion dollars for BOP construction and $31 million for INS detention construction ....The new generation of facilities cost an average of $110 million to build and can house 1,200 prisoners each."

The New York Times, in an editorial today, calls Miguel Estrada, one of Bush's judicial picks who is scheduled to be voted on today in the Senate, An Unacceptable Nominee

The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to vote tomorrow on Miguel Estrada, a nominee to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Mr. Estrada comes with a scant paper trail but a reputation for taking extreme positions on important legal questions. He stonewalled when he was asked at his confirmation hearings last fall to address concerns about his views. Given these concerns, and given the thinness of the record he and his sponsors in the administration have chosen to make available, the Senate should vote to reject his nomination."

There's more, we recommend you read it--and fax your Senator today.

The Federal Government is demanding that high schools provide them with names of students, to be used for military recruitment. Schools are worried.

Under the No Child Left Behind Act, which was passed more than a year ago, schools face new requirements on testing and the hiring of teachers. But many school districts are only now coming to terms with a little-noticed provision in the law dealing with military recruiters. That provision requires schools that receive federal aid to give military recruiters the names, addresses, and phone number of high school juniors and seniors, and to provide military recruiters with the same access to students as employers and college recruiters get. There is an exception, though. Students and parents must be given an opportunity to request that the information be withheld."

So spread the word, you have a right to refuse.

Paul Rubens, aka Peewee Herman, is charged with a misdemeanor count of possession of child pornography in California. His lawyer, Blair Berk, has filed a motion seeking dismissal of the charges.

Attorney Blair Berk confirmed that the motion, filed Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court, said the sexually provocative images found in his home were made years before California deemed child pornography ownership illegal.

Sexually explicit images of children made up a very small portion of a "vast" vintage porn, kitsch and erotica collection owned by Reubens, who is best known for entertaining young TV viewers as the nerdy man-child Pee-Wee Herman, the motion said. The images -- in a book, a film and 24 magazines -- were "produced decades before [child pornography] possession was ever proscribed," the motion said.

Some of the images were produced at the turn of the 20th century, the motion said. In addition, a statute of limitations had expired before Reubens was charged, it said."

A big thanks to Hamster for leading us to Death Behind Bars , about the death of Charlene Marquez, a 39 year old female inmate, and how it highlights the need for more drug-treatment programs.

"Her death highlights two serious problems, critics say. The first is the ease with which illegal drugs are smuggled into prison. It's a common problem across the country, one corrections personnel nationwide struggle to resolve. But the second has a more local flavor: Colorado's failure to fund drug-treatment programs adequately inside and outside the prison system. And it's a problem that is about to grow worse, as the state Legislature makes significant budget cuts in human-services programs in light of the state's economic woes .

Colorado currently ranks dead last in state dollars spent in drug treatment. (The state is officially listed as 49th because Georgia state officials neglected to turn data in on time. However, had Georgia turned information in on time, Colorado would rank 50th.)

Research shows that for every $100 Colorado spends on the consequences of drug and alcohol abuse, only 6 cents are spent on treatment programs, says Janet Wood, director of the Alcohol and Drug Abuse division of the Colorado Department of Human Services.

That investment is about to drop as state budget problems, exacerbated by a sluggish economy, have resulted in budget cuts in drug-treatment programs, both in the prison system and outside.

According to Allison Morgan, spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Corrections, 75% of inmates have some kind of drug or alcohol problem.

Research shows that most women in prison are victims of substantial physical and/or sexual abuse and have deep-seated emotional needs, Morgan says. DOC research shows that women who do have drug and alcohol problems typically need higher levels of treatment than male prisoners.

But there's another issue as well.

But some say prison is not conducive to recovery from addiction and that institutional drug-treatment programs face significant obstacles to success.

"Prison is not a therapeutic environment," said Christie Donner, co-coordinator of the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, a project of the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center.... Donner says less than half of prisoners who need help with drug and alcohol problems receive it. Most receive it shortly before their release date, after they've already become hardened from exposure to prison culture. "People get warehoused for years, and when they get close to being released is when they're eligible for treatment," she said. "This notion that everyone who needs treatment gets it is not the truth. It's a very small percentage that are actually offered treatment.....

"The City Council has barred police and other city workers from asking about the immigration status of people they deal with. The ordinance, which was approved 9 to 0 Monday, makes two exceptions. One is for anyone police have "reasonable suspicion" to believe was once deported and has committed a felony. The other allows police to assist federal agents as required by law."

"Backers said it was the first local ordinance of its kind to be adopted since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. However, many cities have similar laws dating from before the terrorist attacks, said Robert Okin, deputy district director of the Immigration and Naturalization Service."