We've been working today and unable to do our usual reporting and checking in with other blogs. So until we catch up in a few hours, here's the afternoon update:
Cartoonist Mark Fiore on Executions
By Recycling Pickering, Bush Resurrects Lott by Ruben Navarrette Jr., Seattle Times
(links via How Appealing)
Chicago City Council votes 46-1 to oppose war with Iraq
Sampling of this weekend's anti-war protests, Associated Press
The ACLU has a new report that says our privacy rights are being unjustly diminished and Big Brother is no longer a fiction.
The ACLU on the Rave Dismissals in Racine.
The defense team in the court-martial trial of the pilots who bombed Canadians in Afganistan, while taking "go pills" supplied by the Air Force to help them combat fatigue, blame communication errors for the mistake.
The Persecution of Pee-Wee Herman by Village Voice Columnist Richard Goldstein
And a bump to today's New York Times article on Law Professor Glenn Reyolds (Instapundit) and his new MSNBC weblog.
"Racine - Hundreds of young people who fought $968 citations for attending a rave party here won vindication in court Thursday morning when the city agreed to dismiss all of the pending tickets and to make refunds to the relatively few party-goers who had pleaded no contest and paid fines.
In addition, the city agreed to:
Not again use its "inmate of a disorderly house" ordinance for writing citations at such gatherings.
Work with the Common Council to revise the ordinance.
Train police officers so that citations will not be issued as they were at the Nov. 2 party.
Expunge the record of each person so that no record of the citations will exist.
In exchange, the Milwaukee-based American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin, which negotiated the settlement, agreed not to bring a class-action civil rights lawsuit against the city."
Thanks again to our great source on this topic, Pete Karas at the Progressive Racine--he's got more, so go read him.
The Judge in the case of detained "dirty bomb" suspect Jose Padilla blasted Government lawyers yesterday for creating more obstacles to Padilla's lawyers' ability to meet with him.
The Government has contended that Padilla is an "enemy combatant" and not entitled to meet with counsel. Padilla's lawyers contend he is not a terrorist and has no information to provide the Government.
On December 4, Judge Michael Mukasey ordered the Government to allow Padilla to meet with his lawyers. He ruled that Padilla had the right to bring a habeas corpus petition to challenge his detention. The challenge will be limited to the issues of whether the Government had some evidence to support its finding that Padilla was an enemy combatant, and whether events subsequent to his detention rendered that evidence irrelevant.
Despite the Court's Order, the Government still has not allowed Padilla to meet with his counsel. At the hearing today, the Government said allowing such a meeting would jeopardize national security. The Judge didn't buy it and neither do we.
We don't see how allowing Mr. Padilla to meet with his lawyers and have a hearing on the legality of his continued detention is a threat to national security. On the other hand, keeping Padilla in indefinite detention without charges, without access to counsel and without an opportunity to be heard is a threat to the Bill of Rights and the civil liberties of all Americans.
The matter was continued until January 29.
Three cheers for Senator Russ Feingold.
Business Week reports that there is growing opposition on the Hill to the Pentagon's proposed Total Information Awareness Program. Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) plans to introduce legislation today to prevent TIA from being implemented, until Congress has had sufficient time to study the datamining issues.
"If fully implemented, TIA would link databases from sources such as credit card companies, medical insurers and motor vehicle departments for police convenience in hopes of snaring terrorists. It's funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)."
The program would track consumer purchases, such as "sudden and large cash withdrawals, one-way air or rail travel, rental car transactions and purchases of firearms, chemicals or agents that could be used to produce biological or chemical weapons. It would also combine consumer information with visa records, passports, arrest records or reports of suspicious activity given to law enforcement or intelligence services."
The latest strategy will involve pooling hundreds of officers from across the department, including detectives from homicide and narcotics units, to form gang-busting teams. They will receive help from probation and officers, prosecutors and school district officials. The teams will also work with agents from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. In addition, the LAPD is trying to engage members of churches and neighborhood groups to join the effort -- and to dispel the years of mistrust and rancor felt by many in the black and Hispanic neighborhoods whose residents describe the LAPD as an invading army.This is a major restructuring of the Los Angeles Police Department. It's certainly due, as far as we're concerned. At a news conference, Chief Bratton said,
The department should shoulder blame for the city's soaring murder rate because of poor management and deployment of police officers, low morale, rogue officers, and timidity and disengagement that made anti-gang efforts ineffective.How bad is it in LA? Here are some numbers. 658 homicides, mostly centered in south and east Los Angeles, home to many of the city's poorer black and hispanic residents. 432 gangs with an estimated 52,000 gang members."We got out of the business of going after gangs," Bratton said at a news conference in South Los Angeles, the neighborhood that has experienced the most violence. For example, he said, the former anti-gang squads did not work on the weekend and did not pursue drug cases.
"This department has been on the bench," Bratton said. "We've been totally out of the game when it comes to dealing with crime."
In some families, gang membership is generational, from grandfather to father to son. Most of the active members are in their teens and early twenties, after which time they are either incarcerated, retired or dead. Many gang members pursue lives of "opportunistic" crime, but they are not highly organized, like drug cartels or the Mafia. Many of the killings are reportedly over issues such as "respect" and the control of a block or corner.
In a bid for more funds, Bratton and Mayor James Hahn will go to Washington next week to meet with FBI Director Robert Mueller and Homeland Security Chief Tom Ridge.
We commend Bratton's efforts to involve the community in his policing. We know he is cognizant of the tension between enforcing the law and respecting constitutional and civil rights. He's an innovative law enforcement agent. But the residents of Los Angeles have good reasons to fear the LAPD--years worth of them. We hope Bratton can earn their trust, as we see that as a critical pre-requisite to any success in restoring sanity and some semblance of order to the streets of LA.
For James Capazzola of Rittenhouse Review, one of the finest writers anywhere, please go read his exquisite tribute to his good friend Richard Silbert, who recently passed away, way too many years too soon.
You knew it was only a matter of time before conservative/libertarian (depending on the issue) Bob Barr, former Congressman, surfaced on a cable news network with a paying job. True, back in August, we thought it would be Fox. But Atrios informs us it is going to be CNN.
Now that he's out of the House, his reputation as the " worst drug warrior in Congress" no longer scares us. We've always appreciated his civil liberties positions--as does the ACLU, which put him on the payroll after his primary defeat.
Bob Barr, "contributer" to CNN and "consultant" to the ACLU. Not bad for an incumbent who lost a primary.
Where he gets the time, we have no idea. In addition to law school teaching and the publishing obligations that go along with tenure, in addition to updating Instapundit almost all day long, and in between producing music, writing a TechNews column and a FoxNews column, and parenting and spousing, our pied piper of blogging, Glenn Reynolds, now has a new weblog called Glenn Reynolds. com at MSNBC. Its focus is Technology, Culture, Politics and Law.
Glenn's blog debuted tonight, so go give it a read. Tonight's episode features business decisions that result in dumb lawsuits and techno music. You can read what Glenn has to say about the new blog on Kausfiles.
Oh, and don't forget to check out the recommended links on GlennReynolds.com--we're very proud to be included.
Update: The New York Times profiles Reynolds as Instapundit here.
Asked by Winfrey if they felt free, one of the four, Leroy Orange, said: "I feel physically free, but mentally, spiritually I don't care for the accusations that this man (Ryan) did the wrong thing. In spite of the statistics, it appears as if people are saying, `Some are innocent but kill them all and we'll get the right one.'"
In today's Virginia-Pilot on line, an informative article addressing the issue "Are cybercops setting up high-tech entrapments for fantasizing adults? Or are they members of new-age vice squads, patrolling a virtual red-light district where predators roam 24/7?"
"Civil libertarians worry that the government is not only entrapping otherwise law-abiding citizens but also invading the minds and computers of people who have little or no intention of acting on their private fantasies."
We're on the side of the civil libertarians and were quoted in the article, written by reporter Jon Frank:Jeralyn Merritt, a spokesman for the Washington-based National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said the government should not invade personal computers. ``If the person never left their living room and never intended to, but merely was engaging in fantasy and role playing on the Internet, should that be a crime?'' Merritt said. "
The defendant in the case was found guilty of proposing indecent liberties with a minor and faces up to a ten year sentence. His criminal conduct consisted of insta-messaging with a person he thought was a 15 year old in a chat room, but who turned out to be a 44 year old male agent.
"Close to 1,000 cases are prosecuted annually in the United States, Kerr said. Most of them, he said, end up in federal court, where penalties are stiffer and interstate crimes are more easily prosecuted. Because these investigations tend to be conducted by police officers working solely in cyberspace, state lines are insignificant, Kerr said. Perpetrators may be far away from the investigators who catch them."
According to Frank's article, the two issues raised most often on appeal are that since the investigator is an adult, there has been no crime committed. This has been almost "universally rejected."
The second issue -- entrapment -- has been marginally more successful.
A law professor, Orin Kerr, states that ``As long as the cops remain passive targets, I am not too worried'' about civil rights being trampled." Of course, we had a different take on it:But Merritt of the defense lawyers group said electronic entrapments threaten basic liberties. ``The job of law enforcement is to police crimes, not to patrol private thoughts,'' she said. ``The places one visits on the Internet in the privacy of his own home should be protected. We need to avoid a `one click and you're guilty' standard of justice.''
[one note: we are an Officer of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. Our extremely talented and capable Media Affairs Director is Dan Dodson, dodson@nacdl.org, or 202-872-8600 × 228]
This is quite a horror story of being seriously maltreated by cops. We are reprinting it in the hopes that someone in a position of authority or the media will take note, investigate and publicize. Thanks to Democratic Underground for sending the link.
"A federal judge in Atlanta has imposed a one-year prison sentence on a former intelligence analyst charged with stealing government information and leaking it to a London newspaper.
The U.S. Attorney said, "We have to send that message to everybody within the justice system." Duffey's prosecution of Randel is in line with a report by U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft's interagency, anti-leak task force, which last year recommended that government administrators use laws already on the books to identify and punish employees who leak information."
Very interesting article.
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