Jane over at Daily Rant Daily Rant just took Wild Monk's "cool test" about her opinions on Iraq and the U.S. Jane, a liberal, came out at 51 which is "center right" and scored a 9 for rationality.

We just went over and took the test. We scored 52, also "center right". We learned that the 0 - 100 scale measures "pro-U.S." attitudes or "anti-U.S. attitudes". So Jane and I are just barely into the "pro-U.S. attitudes" category.

We scored a 10 on rationality, the highest possible score. We haven't figured out what we are rational about. Go take the test, it's short and fun, and maybe one of you can figure out what the "rationality" part means and let us know.

A hunger strike by six detained immigrants in a New Jersey jail is entering its second week. The men want to be able to hug their children during visits. If they were transferred to another jail in New Jersey, that could happen--but authorities refuse to transfer them.

"I'm going to keep going until I'm dead or I see my daughter," vowed Saleh Hamza, a Lebanese man whose daughter was born after he was arrested 13 months ago on immigration charges."

These men are not being held for criminal violations. They are in jail for visa and immigration violations in the wake of Sept. 11.

One of the men, a Palestinian, is raising a different issue. He is objecting to his continued detention. He was arrested for not obeying a deportation order. But he is stateless--there is no place for the Government to send him, so they keep him in jail. Despite the fact that in 2001 the U.S. Supreme Court held in Zadvydas v. Davis that the INS cannot indefinitely detain individuals who have been ordered deported, but cannot be removed in the foreseeable future.

Elian Gonzale's father was elected to the Cuban Parliament. He was one 609 Communist Party candidates who ran unopposed. All were elected--voter turnout was 97%. Critics call the election a farce.

Sometime you might just want to sue a corporation. Your lawsuit (Complaint) has to be served on the corporation's registered agent. These are on file in the Secretary of State's office where they incorporated. It can be a time consuming process sometimes.

To make it easier, we are providing a link we learned about today from LawSites, the blog of legal tech author/lawyer Robert Ambrogi. Go here, and you can find out the name and address of a corporation's registered agent. The list is provided by Maryland attorney Terry Berger.

Most states provide the information for free. Here's Terry's breakdown:

"42 states have free web access to find a corporation's resident agent.

4 states charge to get this information online (IN, MN, NE, and OK). Of those 4 states, 3 offer the info free by phone (IN, MN, and NE). Minnesota is the first state in the country to start charging to get this information online where it was previously free. (To get the information free, you now need to tie up an employee.)

Only 1 state in the entire country, NJ, charges to get this public information, even by phone. (New Jersey advised me that you can avoid their fee if you fly/drive to downtown Trenton, pay for parking, then go to the State Office Building.)

3 states (NH, OK, and SD) and DC have free online searches in the works and anticipate having free online search capability soon.

Only 1 state (DE) has no plans at all to offer online search functions for resident agent information.

Puerto Rico has not responded to numerous requests for information."

We also came across The Shout today, a law blog by cyberlawyer Jennifer Granick, who directs the public interest law and technology clinic at Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society. There, her work focuses on the interaction of free speech, privacy, computer security, law and technology. Jennifer is very well known within the hacker community, having represented (among many others) Kevin Poulsen and alleged eBay hacker Jerome Heckencamp, who, notoriously, fired her.

We criticized Donald Rumsfeld last week for his remarks about Vietnam Draftees. A reader in our comments section to the post has informed us that Rumsfeld has issued a further statement about his remarks, on the Department of Defense website. Since we believe that everyone deserves a defense, we are reprinting some of his remarks.

"...my statement was not eloquent. A few columnists and others, though, have suggested that those words were intended to mean that draftees added no value to the military. That is not true. I did not say they added no value while they were serving. They added great value. I was commenting on the loss of that value when they left the service. I certainly had no intention of saying what has been reported, or of leaving that impression. Hundreds of thousands of military draftees served over years with great distinction and valor - many being wounded and still others killed.

The last thing I would want to do would be to disparage the service of those draftees. I always have had the highest respect for their service, and I offer my full apology to any veteran who misinterpreted my remarks when I said them, or who may have read any of the articles or columns that have attempted to take my words and suggest they were disparaging.

The intent of my comments was to reflect a view I have held for some time: that we should lengthen tours of duty and careers for our all-volunteer forces, so that these highly trained men and women in uniform can serve in specific assignments longer, and also not be forced to leave the service when they are at the peak of their skills and knowledge.

It is painful for anyone, and certainly a public servant whose words are carried far and wide, to have a comment so unfortunately misinterpreted.

It is particularly troubling for me that there are truly outstanding men and women in uniform or their families -- past and present -- who may believe that the Secretary of Defense would say or mean what some have written. I did not. I would not.

I hope this deeply felt statement reaches those who have served those who are serving, and their families.

"In a speech delivered at the National Press Club today, Sen. Edward Kennedy took a hard anti-war stance. "I continue to be convinced that this is the wrong war at the wrong time. The threat from Iraq is not imminent, and it will distract America from the two more immediate threats to our security -- the clear and present danger of terrorism and the crisis with North Korea."

"Kennedy, who voted against the Senate resolution in October authorizing the President to take military action against Iraq, said the inspectors need more time. "If our goal is disarmament, we are likely to accomplish more by inspections than by war."

Go on over to CNN and answer today's poll question, who's right, Bush or Kennedy. (Thanks to Jim Capozzola of Rittenhouse for the link)

Results as of 5:30 p.m.: President Bush 26% 1589 votes, Sen. Edward Kennedy, 74% 4594 votes , Total: 6183 votes

USA Today reporters Tom Squitieri and Dave Moniz wrote today that front line troops in the military are disproportionately white, not black , according to military statistics.

The American troops likeliest to fight and die in a war against Iraq are disproportionately white, not black, military statistics show -- contradicting a belief widely held since the early days of the Vietnam War.

''If anybody should be complaining about battlefield deaths, it is poor, rural whites,'' says Charles Moskos, a military sociologist at Northwestern University in Illinois.

In a little-publicized trend, black recruits have gravitated toward non-combat jobs that provide marketable skills for post-military careers, while white soldiers are over-represented in front-line combat forces.

Blacks make up 12 percent of the population, and 20% of the military. But they make up less than 5% of the high-risk postions, such as army commandos and navy and air force fighter pilots.

Among the possible reasons given for the disparate numbers are "lingering racism in some quarters of the military and a tendency among black recruits to choose jobs that help them find work in the civilian sector."

"A federal appeals court dismissed hundreds of lawsuits Tuesday brought by World War II prisoners of war who alleged they were enslaved by Japanese and German companies."

"The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld lower court rulings that said treaties signed by the United States barred prisoners from seeking restitution from companies accused of forcing them to work in mines, dig roads and perform other duties more than 50 years ago."

Eric Alterman of MSNBC's Altercation is off to Brussels this afternoon. We'll be guest-hosting Altercation once again this Friday, which is a Slacker Friday edition. As Eric mentions in today's column, please send any responses to what he has written this week to us at Alterlinks@aol.com. Charles Pierce will be hosting Altercation tomorrow and Eric Boehlert will do Thursday.

The website for Eric's new book, What Liberal Media is up and running. You can pre-order the book there, it should be hitting the bookstore's shelves very soon. We haven't read it yet, Instapundit got an advance copy, but not us. Still, we can't wait to read it. You can also read about it and buy it here.

From the New York Times:

Four of the seven Democrats who have already joined the presidential race or are likely to do so have longstanding views supporting the death penalty and have not changed their positions because of the circumstances in Illinois. Along with Mr. Lieberman, the group includes Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, Senator Bob Graham of Florida and Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri. Of the seven, only the Rev. Al Sharpton opposes the death penalty, as he has done for years. Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts supports it in the case of convicted terrorists, and Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont, supports it for murderers of children or police officers.

We predict at least a few, if not more, will join the call for a moratorium during their campaigns--Al Gore should have in his campaign but didn't. Either did Ralph Nader. It's not about support or opposition to the death penalty. It's about restoring fairness and justice in our criminal justice system, as well as protecting the lives of innocent people.

Via Tapped, we find Newsweek's Jonathan Alter, who we agree is not particularly liberal on criminal justice issues, explaining why former Illinois Governor George Ryan granted blanket clemency to the state's death row inmates, in Machinery of Mercy. Alter jumped on the bandwagon of the innocence movement several years ago, providing it with additional welcome exposure.

Here's the point he makes we'd like to echo:

Is Illinois’ criminal justice system somehow worse than that of Texas or Virginia or the three dozen other states that impose capital punishment? Does Illinois rely more than other jurisdictions on questionable testimony, false confessions, withheld DNA testing and other abuses? No. Illinois simply has more aggressive journalists (at The Chicago Tribune) and activists (at Northwestern’s Center on Wrongful Convictions) than elsewhere. I’ve been watching this story unfold for a decade. Believe me, if reporters and law schools in other states got cracking, they would find their own capital punishment systems just as rotten.

This is why we need Innocence Projects at law schools in every state--along with journalism students. It's happening, and when the details emerge from other states, the system should grind to a halt. We need a moratorium on the death penalty--at least until it can be applied fairly, accurately and in a non-discriminatory manner. Illinois Senator Richard Durbin, a supporter of the death death penalty, has come out in favor of a moratorium because of problems with its fairness:

"I think Governor Ryan has set the stage for an honest debate about creating safeguards in the legal process," he said last week. "Because of inequity and injustices involved in the court system, we need to take a serious national look at death penalty reform, and until we can get that debate under way I support a moratorium."

The Office of Legal Counsel memorandum underlying the Bureau of Prison's recent policy changes regarding the use of Community Corrections Centers can be found here.

This mostly affects white collar offenders, as we reported here and here.