Regulations.gov is a new U.S. Government web site where you can find, review, and submit comments on Federal documents that are open for comment and published in the Federal Register.

The site also has a variety of links to agencies' regulatory information pages, Executive Orders, OMB policy directives, and rule tracking information, as well as a gateway to Federal Register publications on GPO Access, including the daily Federal Register, the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) and e-CFR, a new online edition of the CFR updated daily.

(thanks to Miami criminal defense lawyer Neal Sonnett for the link)

A Christian activist chosen by the Bush administration for an AIDS advisory panel withdrew his name under pressure Thursday after criticism of his characterization of the disease as the "gay plague."

Good riddance to Jerry Thacker. But what does this say about the Administration that nominated him in the first place? HHS Director Tommy Thompson's excuse is pitiful:

Thompson said he had never met Thacker and was not familiar with his views until very recently. "When you have this many appointments to make, some controversial ones are going to get through."

Just think-- this team is in charge of judicial nominations, possibly including the next Supreme Court Justice---it makes us cringe.

If you'll be watching the Superbowl, you may want to keep your channel clicker nearby.

"The Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) today announced the launch of two new sets of advertisements, premiering during the Super Bowl and pre-game show, designed to further educate Americans about the risks of drug use. Two of the ads aimed at teens are a response to research showing that American youth want to be provided with the facts about marijuana. A second pair of ads will follow up on the groundbreaking spots linking drugs, terror and violence that were released during last year's Super Bowl. The ads are part of the ONDCP's National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign, which is designed to help America's youth reject illicit drugs."

In the "We Can't Believe He Said That" department.....

"This campaign is designed to show teens some of the ways that using marijuana can cripple a young person's future," said John Walters, Director of National Drug Control Policy.

And don't forget to bring Kleenex if you'll be watching:

"Pregnancy Test" focuses on teen pregnancy and highlights the fact that marijuana can seriously impair judgment and lead to risk-taking that has serious long-term negative consequences. "Roadside Memorial" highlights the tragic consequences of drug-impaired driving.

Another set of ads links drug use to terrorism. "Part of a continuing effort to inspire national dialogue about the connection between drugs, terror and violence, the spot illustrates the sobering point that drug use has social consequences far beyond those that affect the individual user and his or her family. The ads challenge potential drug purchasers to examine the wider implications of their actions." Here's the website for the ad campaign.

We much prefer this marijuana ad campaign.

ArchPundit writes a nice tribute to "Dick Cunningham: Attorney for the Damned." Cunningham was another hero in the fight against the death penalty, who recently met a tragic fate. He was stabbed to death by his mentally ill son.

The Chicago Tribune recently wrote about Cunningham--in eleven installments. The Prologue and first installment are here.

A snippet from the prologue:

Cunningham walked through a world of hurt, a world where killers raped and stabbed and set people on fire; where the killers themselves had often suffered, getting beaten or abandoned or shot.

He walked some of our criminal justice system's darkest halls -- through police stations where suspects are tortured and courts where judges don't care and prisons where inmates are executed in front of witnesses who sit in a room where the floor slopes from back to front so that any vomit will flow toward a drain and can be easily hosed away.

He offered lessons on living and dying to men on Death Row. Don't leave this world with your middle finger extended, he told one man about to be executed. Don't give them that to remember you by. To others, he said, paint, read, write, learn, hope. Live a life that is worth saving, a life that will be missed.

Earlier this month we wrote about a new U.S. Bureau of Prisons policy implemented at the behest of Attorney General Ashcroft. The effect of the new policy, according to Ashcroftwould be that white collar offenders with short sentences would no longer be able to go directly to a half-way house. They would have to serve their sentence in a federal prison. For the past decade, the BOP has been allowing such offenders to go directly to a halfway house.

"In a December memorandum to Kathleen Hawk Sawyer, the director of the Bureau of Prisons, Mr. Ashcroft said that the practice violated federal sentencing laws that require imprisonment and that it offered favorable treatment to white-collar criminals. Based on his memorandum, a new policy was instituted, which is available <a href="The new policy is available here. It provides, "When an offender has received a sentence of imprisonment, the Bureau of Prisons does not have general authority, either upon the recommendation of the sentencing judge or otherwise, to place such an offender in community confinement at the outset of his sentence or to transfer him from prison to community confinement at any time BOP chooses during the course of his sentence."

Only, it's not the white collar offenders, e.g., low-level Enron types, who are being forced out of the halfway houses and back into prison facilities.

Philadelphia criminal defense lawyer and post-conviction/appeal specialist Peter Goldberger, writes in to say:

The new policy is not only a legal sham but more important is a political stunt -- and a cruel one at that. No big shot white collar defendant gets direct Community Corrections (CCC) designation, either because the guidelines come out too high from the dollars of loss or because of "central inmate monitoring" triggered by notoriety of the case. Direct CCC designations are mostly little nobody cases, borderline in terms of being worth prosecuting in the first place, who were then on the tipping point between some prison and straight probation, They go to CCC so they can work and make money for restitution and family support. Many are single parents (mostly mothers) whose ability to work while serving time allows the kids to stay with a family member who otherwise couldn't afford it, rather than go into foster care or adoption. The idea that the present system is not punitive enough on the lowest-level offenders is ridiculous.

What's more, defense lawyers have been filing challenges to the new policy in federal courts around the country --and winning. Several judges around the country have granted defense requests for temporary injunctions preventing the offenders from being moved out of the halfway houses.

The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) is providing assistance to lawyers and updates on the challenges here.

The Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Orrin Hatch of Utah, has scheduled a hearing for Circuit Court of Appeals nominee Jeffrey Sutton for Wednesday, Jan. 29, at 9:30 a.m. Scores of disability rights groups and other organizations are actively opposing the Sutton nomination. The American Association for the Physically Disabled ( AAPD) encourages you to fax letters of opposition to the Senate Judiciary Committee at 202-228-0861. See their website for a sample letter to write.

We wrote about this last week here, when we received a similar action alert from the ADA Watch.

Thomas Breen was a Chicago prosecutor in the 1970's. He prosecuted and won first degree murder convictions of two men who allegedly had killed a nine year old girl.

Breen is now leading the charge to vacate the men's convictions and obtain their release from jail:

I would rather [this case] come back 25 years later and find out I'm dead wrong than those guys spend one more day in jail," he said in an interview. "I don't see anything wrong with correcting your errors when the errors are shown. "If these guys didn't do it--and all the evidence seems to indicate we are dead wrong--then it's devastating."

Larry Marshall, director of the Center or Wrongful Convictions at Norwestern University, whom Breen turned to when he began having doubts about the men's guilt long after the trial, said of Breen:

"Did Tom make a mistake in this case?" Marshall asked. "It certainly appears so now . . . But one way you measure a person's humanity is by how someone remedies mistakes. And by that measure, Tom's actions in this case are heroic." "It's about as noble a thing," Marshall added, "as I can imagine."

We agree. Breen deserves a Champion of Justice award. We hope more prosecutors follow his example. DNA testing, urged by Breen and asked for by Marshall, proved the men were not the culprits.

Now, Breen is struggling to reconcile his actions at the 1977 trial with the results of the DNA tests.

"I'm avoiding thinking about this," he said. "When I begin to think that I caused two innocent people--" His voice trailed off as he was unable to finish the sentence. He pressed his hands to his face momentarily, then looked up.

"There are no words to describe what's been done to an innocent person who has been incarcerated," he said. "I want to believe somehow that we were right, but to do that I'd have to be mentally and intellectually dishonest.

"The only thing I can say that I did good was that I brought this up to somebody who could maybe fix it."

In addition to being a hero, we'd call Breen a true mensch.

From the National Conference of State Legislatures:

The certainty provided by DNA technology has prompted legislators in 25 states to pass laws to allow DNA testing after a conviction, under certain conditions.

Laws vary as to which offenders are allowed post-conviction testing, who pays for the test and whether evidence susceptible to DNA testing must be preserved.

Delaware, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Texas and Virginia allow those convicted of any crime to request DNA testing. Arizona limits petitions to those convicted of felonies, as do California, Louisiana, Michigan, Oklahoma and Utah. Some states, including Missouri, Nebraska and Washington, restrict testing to those presently incarcerated or in the custody of the state's department of corrections. And still other states, such as Indiana, Maryland, Oregon and Tennessee, limit testing to those convicted of certain felonies. Connecticut's law allows the use of newly discovered DNA evidence as a basis for obtaining a new trial.

Not all measures mention who pays for the testing. The majority of states that address cost allow the court to order the petitioner to pay for the DNA test. Exceptions, including the ability to pay and whether the petitioner is incarcerated, can shift the cost to the state.

These measures depend upon the quality and availability of forensic evidence, making preservation and storage of DNA evidence an issue before legislatures, as well. Arizona, Indiana, Tennessee and Utah require that evidence be preserved while the post-conviction proceeding is pending. Laws in Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Virginia and Washington require that evidence be retained for a certain time. California, Michigan, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Texas require evidence be kept during the entire incarceration period. Florida, Texas and Virginia retain evidence in capital cases until the sentence has been executed.

Legislation also is addressing standards for storage and what evidence must be preserved. Under a Virginia bill passed this year, evidence must be preserved under standards set by the Department of Criminal Justice Services. The measure also allows preserving samples of the evidence if storage of the entire amount is impractical and bans appeals when testing is denied. North Carolina and Oklahoma also permit representative samples. Other states allow destruction of evidence after the defendant has been notified.

The power of DNA to exonerate has captured the attention of Congress, as well. An Innocence Protection Act has been introduced in both houses, and would require states, in order to receive federal money from the DNA Analysis Backlog Elimination Grant to certify that DNA tests are available to individuals convicted of certain crimes and that evidence has been preserved.

We need Congress to pass the Innocence Protection Act. Contact your Congresspersons and Senators now. With over 265 bipartisan sponsors in Congress, the bill is being held hostage by a few Republicans, most notably Utah Senator Orrin Hatch. Let Hatch and your elected officials know this is an issue of importance to you. Help get this act passed.

A 31-year-old Chicago man who was eligible for the death penalty -- and could have been the first person sentenced to Death Row after former Gov. George Ryan's mass clemency decree -- instead was sentenced today to life in prison for his role in the deaths of two Chicago men.

Authorites are calling the fire that gutted Presidential candidate Al Sharpton's offices today "suspicious."

Today in The Guardian, playwright Harold Pinter published a poem about America's intended military confrontation with Iraq. Instapundit says he agrees with blogger Chris Bertram that it is "scraping the bottom of the barrel."

Here's the poem:
Wednesday January 22, 2003
The Guardian

Here they go again,
The Yanks in their armoured parade
Chanting their ballads of joy
As they gallop across the big world
Praising America's God.
The gutters are clogged with the dead
The ones who couldn't join in
The others refusing to sing
The ones who are losing their voice
The ones who've forgotten the tune.

The riders have whips which cut.
Your head rolls onto the sand
Your head is a pool in the dirt
Your head is a stain in the dust
Your eyes have gone out and your nose
Sniffs only the pong of the dead
And all the dead air is alive
With the smell of America's God.

© Harold Pinter, January 2003

We'll admit, we didn't care much for the imagery in the poem. But we knew if anyone would defend the poem it would be TalkLeft's sister, who is the Bibliographical Editor of The Pinter Review and has published a book and otherwise written extensively about him. So we asked her what she thought. She sent us to a message board on Pinter where she had posted her detailed response earlier this morning. Her post is in response to a poster who had written (in response to yet another poster,)

"Please feel free to hit that highway, both you and the idiot Pinter (what the hell is "sniff only the pong of the dead"). Those of us who are left will do what has to be done. I won't bother to argue with either of you, might as well argue with bricks.

Here is her reply:

The word "pong" (British usage) means odor. The word appears in The Dumb Waiter (regarding the possibly unchanged bed sheets/linens) and relates to The Caretaker, where Aston complains about Davies' "stinking" the place out. I think it also is used in The Dwarfs (novel and play).

I just saw the poem "God Bless America" today too. I think it is another one of Harold Pinter's powerful indictments of the hypocrisy of the current (and past) American "Administration."

It continues his critique of American political and military policies and practices exposed in his poems "Partners," "American Football," "Death," "After Lunch," and in other recent poetry, speeches, essays, and letters to newspapers, and in the dramatic works The New World Order, One for the Road, Mountain Language, Party Time, and Press Conference.

I think that "God Bless America" merits rereading from the perspective of those who are not citizens of the United States and who are urgently opposed to an America-led war on Iraq as well as from the perspective of those who are citizens of the United States and feel equally appalled by President Bush's drive toward "conducting" this war. The poem also addresses past actions by the United States and their dire consequences.

The "head" alluded to repeatedly in the last verse paragraph recalls the horrific image that Harold Pinter has described of the child's head literally blown off by an American bomb in the Serbian marketplace in Nis.

There is a documentary film about that war:

"The documentary traces how crucial mistakes by the West]particularly Germany and the US[ led to the violent breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991, culminating in the devastating NATO bombing campaign of 1999. "Yugoslavia: The Avoidable War" traces the role of Western intelligence agencies in arming separatist groups in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. The film also examines media manipulation by the warring sides which helped shaped policies which prolonged the war."

Will we in the years to come be lamenting "The War in Iraq: The Avoidable War?" Better to avoid it now than to be sorry about not having done so later--if we are all still here to be able to lament.

In my own view, there is much more danger of a nuclear catastrophe resulting from engaging in a war on Iraq (which will polarize even more terrorist groups who may actually have access to nuclear and chemical weapons of mass destruction) than there is from a nuclear catastrophe resulting from dealing with Iraq's breaches of UN resolutions by other means. The US is not alone in the world now; it is part of the United Nations. I think that it needs to act accordingly. Otherwise, it may very well be alone--or not anywhere, as all of us will be too--no matter where we live--we'll all be dead, as Pinter's poem implies.

Susan Hollis Merritt, Ph.D.
Bibliographical Editor
The Pinter Review

[edited jan. 26]

The new documentary film Mad Dog Prosecutors has been selected for the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival to be held April 2 through April 12, 2003 in New York City. The film will be featured at the opening evening's gala event at Madison Square Garden and will have individual screenings throughout the following week.

Executive Producer Michael Zinn said, "We are so pleased that our timely film has been recognized during a period of erosion of constitutional safeguards and rapid changes in our legal system. We sincerely hope Mad Dog Prosecutors will become one of the most important legal documentaries of our time."