Received today from the National Coalition for Disability Rights:

A coalition of more than 400 national, state, and local disability organizations is opposing Jeffrey Sutton, President Bush’s controversial pick to fill a lifetime seat on the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals. As the Senate Majority leadership today announced Sutton’s hearing date of January 29th, opposition events in Washington and around the nation were also being scheduled.

Advocates will leave Sutton’s home state of Ohio on January 29th and join disability rights supporters from around the nation in Washington on January 30th . The event at the U.S. Capitol is being coordinated by the National Coalition for Disability Rights as part of the organization’s ADA Watch program.  Sutton is being opposed by hundreds of disability organizations because of a history of activism to roll back disability rights laws including the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), as well as federal protections regarding Age Discrimination, Violence Against Women, and the rights of Medicaid recipients.  (See ADA Watchfor a list of organizations and more info.) 

Jim Ward, NCDR’s president stated today: “As the nation celebrates the life and legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr., whose words and actions have been a model for the disability rights movement, it is deeply troubling that the U.S. Senate will be considering a nominee – an attorney who has spent most of his career rolling back disability and civil rights protections – for a lifetime seat on the Federal Court.” Ward continued, “With strong ties to the Federalist Society and its extreme State’s Rights agenda, Sutton actively fought to weaken the rights of state employees to seek redress for discrimination under the ADA.  He fought to strip Medicaid beneficiaries of their legal rights to sue for services. He even fought on the wrong side of the historic Olmstead decision, arguing that unnecessarily keeping people with disabilities in institutions was not a form of discrimination.  The Senate must reject this activist nominee and the President should pick nominees whose records indicate a willingness to uphold Congress’ authority to invoke the ADA – the national mandate for the elimination of discrimination against people with disabilities.”

 

Jay Caruso over at The Daily Rant explains how to post URL's in the comments. It's important, because as Jay says, when you just type the url, it messes up the column spacing of our blogs and we have to go in and rebuild all the entries not just the one you commented on. TalkLeft has 1900 + entries and it takes a while to rebuild them all, and time is a precious commodity around here. (We had to do this last night so we're very sensitive to it).

Jay lays out the instructions very nicely.

The Horse takes on Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post for his "smarmy column" on John Kerry (link Via Hamster)

All of MWO is great today--they hit everything from Affirmative Action to Korea to whether ABC censured booing of "Poppy Bush" when he delivered a taped message at the American Music Awards ceremony Monday night.

We are off to Court for the afternoon, we hope you will check in here anyway and also visit the sites on the right. And today is Slacker Friday over at Altercation, always a must-read for us.

"President Bush will nominate the government's chief criminal prosecutor, Michael Chertoff, to a federal appeals court that handles cases for New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania and the Virgin Islands, a lawmaker says."

"Chertoff was the U.S. attorney for New Jersey and an attorney in private practice before Bush brought him to Washington as head of the Justice
Department's criminal division. The White House notified Sen. Jon Corzine, D-N.J., on Wednesday that Bush would nominate Chertoff to the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals. "

South Knox Bubba is good today on Bush's proposals for admissions at Michigan:

"Isn't it funny how Bush interprets the 14th Amendment one way to get himself "elected" and another way to fight affirmative action? The 14th Amendment sure seems to be a versatile tool."

"... For God's sake don't attack Bush's race relations point man, John Ashcroft, on his record or you'll set race relations back another fifty years. Quid pro quo, you know. Besides, everything is fine in his home state, with college admissions of blacks at 6.5% in a state where the black population is 11.2%. And only about 45% of prison inmates are black."

Tapped has a thoughtful, well-reasoned analysis as well:

"But intellectual consistency requires that if you oppose affirmative action for one group (in this case, minorities), then you should also oppose affirmative action for all groups, including de facto affirmative action for rich whites -- aka legacy preferences in college admissions. You simply can't deploy the rhetoric of pure meritocracy -- as conservatives routinely do and as Bush did yesterday -- to rail against affirmative action, and then turn around and say it's OK for colleges to ignore these meritocratic imperatives when it comes to the children of alumni."

Law Professor Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) devotes his new MSNBC blog today to the demise of the Rave arrests in Racine Wisconsin. He includes some very informative links--including our's to the new anti-Rave bill introduced as part of Tom Daschle's Homeland Security Bill, S. 22, in the new Congress. The time to begin opposing this bill to your congresspersons, loudly, is now.

And check out the police chief's comments :

Racine Police Chief Dave Spenner spoke to his officers about the citations being dropped Thursday and released a statement to the public.

"The safety of this community is paramount in the eyes of city of Racine police officers," Spenner said. "I am disappointed we did not have the opportunity to present this case in court in front of Municipal Judge Weber, but will support the decision made by the city attorney.

"This situation does not slow police resolve to keep this community free of illegal drug use, and we will continue to faithfully discharge the responsibilities we have. It is our mission to keep neighborhoods safe and not expose one person to the risks of another's impaired judgment or driving ability."

(from our friend Pete Karas over at Progressive Racine Blog who is running for a seat on the Racine City Council--we hope he makes it)

Well, it seems that despite the new coziness allowed by the Patriot Act and the secret FISA Review Court opinion between the Department of Justice (prosecutors) and the CIA/Pentagon (intelligence and military agents), things are not going too swimmingly in the terror trials. Take the case of James Ujaama-- he's the Denver native who supposedly helped an Al Qaeda honcho set up a website, sold some computers to them and "scouted" for a terror training camp in Bly, Oregon. [full details, here.]

He's been indicted in Seattle on charges including the ubiquitous "supplying material aid to terrorists" charge and is awaiting trial, in jail of course. Now it seems the Pentagon has refused to allow the Department of Justice to call three witnesses in its custody at Ujaama's trial.

As federal prosecutors in Seattle prepare their case against American terrorism suspect James Ujaama, their access to three key witnesses is being denied — by other federal officials.

The Justice Department and the Pentagon are in a tense standoff over the use of so-called "enemy combatants" who are in the custody of the Department of Defense at bases in Cuba, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Prosecutors want to be able to use some detainees as witnesses in terror-related criminal cases filed in U.S. courts — including the cases against Ujaama, the former Seattle man charged with conspiring to support al-Qaida terrorists, and Zacarias Moussaoui, the French citizen suspected as the "20th hijacker" in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the only man charged in the U.S. in connection with that terrorism.

But military officials are refusing to give the federal attorneys access to the detainees....

The U.S. Attorney's Office in Seattle asserts that the impasse is jeopardizing Ujaama's prosecution.

We understood (although we disagreed) when the Pentagon fought to prevent Zacarias Moussaoui from interviewing or calling witnesses in the custody of the military--for example, alleged "enemy combatant" Ramzi Binalshibh (aka bin al Shibh) (former roomate of Mohammed Attah) --but what's going on here that one agency of the Federal Government can't share with another agency?

The Judge has told the prosecutors that the two agencies will have to "figure it out." She is not likely to grant the Government a continuance of Ujaama's June trial date. So what happens then? Without witnesses, the case is dismissed, right? We doubt it, but still, it's an interesting development and one that bears watching.

Thanks to Al-Muhajabah's Islamic Blogs for her track-back ping that led us to the Seattle Times article.

You can find more from us on Moussaoui and Binalshibh, and the Administration's conflicting positions here.

Some of our prior posts on Ujaama, are here, here, and here.

In Leaving Death Row Is Blessing and Curse, New York Times Reporter Jodi Willgren explains that "for some of the fomerly condemned prisoners in Illinois, a sentence of life in prison is an unappealing alternative to life on death row." They're leaving their family of firends, their guards who made sure they took their medicine and exercised, their own cells.

It is not that Danny Edwards wants to die, per se, it is just that he does not want to leave death row.

The guards here know about his heart condition and make sure Mr. Edwards exercises daily, regardless of weather. His 8-by-13-foot cell with the metal bed frame is not much, but at least it is his alone. The condemned share a bond, "like one big family," Mr. Edwards said — a family about to be broken up. And without a looming execution, he could lose his free appellate lawyer, who he still hopes will win him a new trial.

"I'm not thrilled about spending the rest of my life in prison — who would be?" Mr. Edwards, 46, said this morning in an interview at Pontiac Correctional Center, where officials have begun dismantling death row.

Mr. Edwards is one of about 20 condemned inmates who did not file petitions for clemency but nonetheless were included when Gov. George Ryan issued a blanket commutation of the state's death sentences. Mr. Edwards had even written to Mr. Ryan, urging him not to spare his life.

In other words, not all of the prisoners on death row want the life sentences handed them by Governor Ryan's clemency decision last week.

Reaction on the row here at Pontiac, 100 miles southwest of Chicago, was some clapping and a "Thank God" or two, Mr. Edwards said. In the days since, the formerly condemned have fretted over being split up and sent to Menard Correctional Center in the far south of the state, adjusting to bunk beds and to sharing a cell.

"I'm not looking forward to group showers," Mr. Edwards said. "The down side is I'm going to have a cellie. The good part is I'm going to have a little job."

Already, Mr. Edwards and the others are being treated differently, allowed to meet visitors without their hands cuffed to their waists. Mr. Edwards celebrated the new freedom throughout an hourlong conversation, waving his arms, slapping the table, pointing fingers.

"I can't wait until my mom comes and I can give her a big hug," he said. "I haven't hugged my mom in 15 years."

The Washington Post has a similar article, Off Illinois Death Row, To A Rougher Place, that explains:

The convicted murderers whose sentences were commuted last weekend are no longer facing death, but for many of them, day-to-day life will be much rougher, and possibly more violent, according to people familiar with conditions in the state's prisons.

Isolated from each other and from the general prison population, Illinois's death row inmates have led a life at once more restricted, but also more physically secure, settled and sedate than that of thousands of other maximum-security prisoners.

On death row they have been confined behind bars 23 hours a day, deprived of work and educational programs and shackled hand and foot when ushered to meet visitors.

But they also have their own cells, meals delivered by guards, and reasonably good access to art supplies, reading material and telephones. Many are ministered to regularly by an array of churches, religious groups and organizations opposed to the death penalty. And virtually all enjoy the comfort of knowing that prison enemies cannot easily knife, beat, rape or intimidate them. Much of that will now be lost as they face life terms without in overcrowded, hellishly hot prisons.

"There is a kind of security in death row which is uncommon," Nordgaard said. "I mean, they'll have their lives, but those new lives are in a maximum-security prison, which I wouldn't want to be in for 24 hours, to tell you the truth."

....In recent days, Fairchild said, prison authorities have doubled the number of psychiatrists and psychologists on duty in death row; they are on the alert for mood swings and to prevent suicides.

Fairchild said he expected some death row inmates, fearing for their lives once they are integrated into the general prison population, to seek protective custody. He also said all of them would undergo an orientation to prepare for life in the general prison population, much as brand-new prisoners do.

So its mixed emotions for some of the inmates. Still, we think Governor Ryan did the right thing by commuting all the sentences, including those of the inmates who would rather die now.

Either way, these inmates are coming out of prison in a box. Their's is still a death sentence, it's just a question of when.

Is Charlie Rangel correct that a disproportionate number of our soldiers are black and poor? Not according to UPI, which crunches the numbers and finds it isn't so.

Contrary to popular belief, blacks have not died in combat in disproportionate numbers, even in Vietnam. Two leading military sociologists, Charles Moskos of Northwestern and John Sibley Butler of the University of Texas, researched this carefully for their 1996 book "All We Can Be: Black Leadership and Racial Integration the Army Way."

They reported, "Black fatalities amounted to 12.1 percent of all Americans killed in Southeast Asia -- a figure proportional to the number of blacks in the U.S. population at the time and slightly lower than the proportion of blacks in the Army at the close of the war."

In recent decades, blacks have tended to gravitate away from combat jobs. In arguing against Rangel's bill, the Department of Defense noted, "Blacks today account for 21 percent of the enlisted force, but make up only 15 percent of combat arms (e.g., infantry, armor, artillery)."

African-Americans make up about 13 percent of young adults, so they are still somewhat over-represented in combat positions....

Interestingly, the military today seems to attract pugnacious whites and pragmatic blacks. Analysts have suggested that more young white men see the infantry as a way, in the words of one, to "play Rambo" from age 18 to 22, then go to college using military tuition benefits. In contrast, blacks often view the military as either a long-term career in itself, or as a way to get practical training for a civilian white-collar career.

Are soldiers the products of particularly poor families? In general, the enlisted ranks come from neither the top nor the bottom of society, but from working and middle class backgrounds. Very few enlistees appear to be the scions of the wealthy. (Some officers are from rich families, however; but a larger proportion of officers are the sons and daughters of officers.) ....

In fact, on a number of measures, African-American enlistees tend to stand well above the black average and very close to, or above, the mean for white enlistees. The celebrated high degree of racial equality and amity found in the military, especially in the Army, would appear to benefit from the similar backgrounds that black and white soldiers bring to the Army.

Not only do black and white soldiers come from households of almost equal income, but their educational attainments are virtually identical. In 1994, 99 percent of black and 97 percent of white Army enlisted personnel were high school graduates, figures above the national average.

We suspect that the racial disparities came into play when there was a draft, because the affluent and connected got deferments or went into the National Guard. For the past 30 years, we've had a volunteer army, and "90 percent of black Army enlistees had their degrees, versus only about 40 percent of whites. After the large pay raises of the early 1980s, the Army was able to recruit a better-educated group of youth, so the black advantage narrowed as both groups' graduations rates approached 100 percent."

The article has lots more data, so go read the whole thing, and then come back and tell us what you think.

Here's Toby's Political Diary, 'Let it Begin Here', with a layman's view of what we might be reading in the national news in the not too distant future, based upon the Bush Administration's "unbridled" exercise of what it perceives to be its rightful executive power. We won't spoil it, as it's quite creative (and, to us, conceivable) but we will quote Toby's conclusion:

It is probably a cliché, but rights and freedoms atrophy and die unless they are strongly defended and supported. Look what is happening to affirmative action, which came into being through the civil rights movement to remedy vicious legalized discrimination, but is now dying. We have leaders who represent a throwback to a militaristic, southern aristocracy, with contempt for democratic and egalitarian values. If we don't want to live on the plantation, we had better call in the Union cavalry.

Back to the court martial trial of the American Air Force pilots who accidentally bombed Canadians last year in Afganistan while taking speed pills(dexedrine) to combat fatigue: An Air Force physician took the stand today and defended the pilots' use of speed.

An Air Force physician sang the praises on Thursday of amphetamines used by two U.S. fighter pilots who bombed a Canadian infantry unit in Afghanistan, saying fatigue, not ``speed,'' kills. Col. Pete Demitry of the Air Force Surgeon General's office told reporters that Dexedrine, which the Air Force provides for pilots making long flights, was a life saver, not a dangerous drug that distorts judgment as attorneys for pilots William Umbach and Harry Schmidt have argued.

Ok, it's not a dangerous drug that distorts judgment. It increases alertness. It prevents fatigue. So why can't everyone else have it without risking a jail sentence?

Seems to us, what's good for the goose....

The Electronic Privacy Information Center and other civil liberties groups have sent a letter to Congress calling for a prohibition on further development of the controversial Total Information Awareness (TIA) project.

Also on EPIC, this seven page letter to Attorney General Ashcroft--written by three Senators-- asking for detailed information on current "data-mining" operations, including information on practices and policies at the Department of Justice and DOJ's involvement in TIA.