Andrew Northrup wins today's "priceless award" for his post over at The Poor Man on the 2004 Republican ticket of Bush and Cheney, and so much more.

Congressional Quarterly and C-Span are reporting today that Missouri Reps. Richard Gephardt and William Clay have written President Bush urging him to renominate Ronnie White of Missouri for a seat of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals. White, an African-American, was nominated by Clinton and rejected in a party-line vote in 1999, primarily because of then-Missouri Senator John Ashcroft's opposition. Ashcroft crusaded against White because of a few of his dissents in death penalty cases. You can read about Ashcroft's sabotaging of White's nomination here.

The debate has just begun. And we have just begun to fight. Activists around the world on Sunday applauded the move by the governor of Illinois to spare death row prisoners from execution and urged President Bush to follow his lead by abolishing the death penalty.

Death penalty foes view Governor Ryan's decision as a chance for more change.

Governor Ryan is the third Governor to clear death row during his term in office--New Mexico and Arkansas governors have done the same thing. We need a moratorium in every state, and on the imposition of the federal death penalty as well.

We need a national review commission to study the innocence cases and find ways to prevent the re-occurrance of these injustices.

We need funding and training for adequate capital defense lawyers.

We need the Innocence Protection Act to pass Congress and to be introduced in every state.

All police interrogations must be videotaped.

We must stop the execution of the mentally ill and of offenders who were under 18 at the time of their crimes.

"Among those executed in the U.S. last year were a mentally ill man, inmates who had been deprived of legal rights and three under 18 at the time of their crimes -- the only three child offenders known to have been judicially executed anywhere in 2002....The United States and Japan are the only industrialized democracies in which the death penalty is still used."

There are many more reforms needed. Until they are all implemented, we need to stop the executions. The chance is just too great that we are going to execute an innocent person, if we haven't already.

Vengeance is not justice.

A new Knights Ridder News Service poll shows that the majority of Americans oppose a unilateral war with Iraq:

With U.S. troops mustering in the Persian Gulf and the nation on the cusp of war with Iraq, Americans in overwhelming numbers oppose unilateral U.S. military action, a national poll conducted last week for Knight Ridder newspapers found.

Many survey respondents said President Bush has not effectively explained why military action might be required. Nearly one in five said they still do not believe that Iraq poses a serious threat to the United States.

A robust majority of Americans -- 83 percent -- would support going to war if the United Nations backed the action. But support for war dwindles rapidly without U.N. approval.

Fewer than half of the respondents said they would support an attack on Iraq if the United States were joined by only one or two key allies. And 59 percent said they would be opposed to an attack if the United States decided to go it alone -- a switch that presents the Bush administration with a political and diplomatic quandary.

Perhaps this accounts for the huge numbers of anti-war activists planning to descend on Washington next weekend to protest the war. At least 100,000 are expected to participate. As one of the movement's leaders said, "The most important thing politically for us is to shatter the false myth of consensus . . ."

Update: 12/27/04: Erik Aude arrives home from Pakistan. 12/21: Erik Aude is released from jail.

Original Post:

A 21 year old California actor, Erik Anthony Aude, who had a bit part in "Hey Dude, Where's My Car," has been sentenced to seven years in a Pakistani prison for smuggling opium. He could have been sentenced to death.

Aude's mother said he was "duped by a man he met at a Burbank gym into thinking he was importing leather goods." She called the sentence as good as a death sentence.

Pakistan is not a member of the Prisoner Transfer Treaty Program so Aude can't even do his time in a U.S. jail. Ouch.

[link via The Guardroom]

Go read Jeanne D'Arc of Body and Soul on her thoughtful, heart-ful, and hopeful reaction to Governor Ryan's clemency speech yesterday. She begins,

I didn't see or hear Governor Ryan's speech yesterday, but reading the transcript, I'm sorry I missed it. It's an extraordinary speech, demonstrating that when you're doing the right thing, the simplest and most straightforward language carries enormous weight. Reading through, I wondered, how many politicians ever ask themselves Ryan's simple questions -- Is that fair? Is that right? Those questions would make a better plaque than "The buck stops here" to put on the desk in the Oval Office.

and she takes off from there.

Nathan Newman and Atrios bring us the news that the Department of Justice, under Ashcroft, is hiring law grads based upon ideological (read: right-leaning and conservative) views. Here's Nathan:

The Justice Department has killed civil service hiring of new employees in favor of political appointees screening all new employees for ideological purity.

The focus of the most recent controversy is the "Honors Program" which hires recent law graduates for the Justice Department. The results have been dramatic:

A half-dozen school placement officers said they had noticed a marked shift to the right in the political makeup of students who were approached for interviews this year.

At Columbia University Law School, for example, the head of the campus Federalist Society chapter set a school record by winning interviews at five separate Justice Department divisions, according to public interest law dean Ellen Chapnick. The Federalist Society is a conservative legal group whose membership includes some of the Justice Department's top officials.

Now, it may well be that liberals are less interested in joining a Justice Department of John Ashcroft, but historically both liberals and conservatives have joined the day-to-day enforcement programs of the federal government precisely because they have a reputation for NOT being politicized, except on the more obvious high-profile political hot potatos.

But as with the rest of the federal government, the Bush administration is trying to turn the whole civil service into one massive spoils system rewarding conservative cronies and proteges.

One of the problems with this is that its hard to get rid of civil service employees. For example, the U.S. Attorney's job is a political appointment. When a Republican is elected President following a Democratic Administration (as happened in 2002,) the U.S. Attorneys lose their jobs. But the Assistant U.S. Attorneys under them don't lose their jobs, due to civil service protections.

So doesn't this mean that these recent law-grads with conservative, right-wing ideological bents, can stay in their positions as long as they want, even if and long after the Democrats come back into power. We think so. These Ashcroft appointees can't be fired so long as they are doing their job.

This should get be getting wider attention in the media. Help spread the word.

(Source: Adapted from DUI Gulag.com)

Our blogosphere friend Damn Foreigner sent us this article, MADD: Premier Should Resign and it has us seeing red. In our opinion, MADD has moved into dangerous territory and needs to be reigned in. Or, since that's unlikely, ridiculed.

MADD is calling for the resignation of British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell. Why? Because a few days ago, Campbell, in Hawaii on vacation, was pulled over by police as he was returning from dinner with friends and charged with alcohol impaired driving. Campbell does not intend to contest the charge and issued an apology after his arrest.

Why should MADD call for the resignation of a public official who committed a minor transgression in his personal life, on his own time and in another country? Who made them the arbiter of personal conduct by a public official? Sure, they have a right to call for whatever they want, but in oppposition, we should be making fun of them, not debating them. Arguing won't do any good--they are out of control. We believe their true agenda is prohibition, on moral grounds. They are far outside the field people associate them with--safety on the public highways.

According to DUI Gulag, here is a brief history of MADD and what they've become:

Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) was founded by a group of California women in 1980 after a 13 year old girl was killed by a hit-and-run driver. The driver was a chronic alcoholic who also happened to be a chronic drunk driver. The MADD founders were outraged by what they perceived to be a lenient sentence handed down by the California judge as part of a plea bargain in the criminal case that arose from the fatal accident. Since that time MADD has developed into one of the largest and most powerful political action/advocacy organizations in the U.S.

MADD’s activities were originally geared towards legitimate educational and victim support oriented functions. MADD’s political focus was geared towards removing chronic/alcoholic drunk drivers from the nation’s highways. Responsible social drinkers who drove home after a wedding or after good conversation with friends at the neighborhood pub were not targets of MADD’s efforts. To the extent that MADD has worked to support victims and to educate the public about legitimate chronic alcoholic/drunk driving issues it should be commended. Unfortunately, in recent years the national MADD organization and most of it’s local chapters have been taken over by ultra-conservative, anti-alcohol extremists who have adopted a political agenda that threatens the second coming of Prohibition.

Instead of focusing on ways to remove the chronic/alcoholic drunk driver from our highways, MADD’s primary focus is upon "drivers who have had something to drink.....

MADD’s modus operandi is to use generalizations, misstatements, scapegoating, distortions of the truth and victimization propaganda to force the federal and state governments to pass increasingly irrational and draconian DUI laws. MADD seeks to clone itself onto local governments (in much the same manner as did the National Socialist Party in Germany during the years following World War I ) by entering into government/private sector "partnerships"; by having it’s propaganda displayed in government buildings; by having it’s logo attached to government vehicles and police uniforms; by giving awards and political support to judges and other public officials who are either afraid of, or who support, their agenda; and by working to require citizens who have been criminalized for DUI to attend mandatory MADD propaganda seminars as a condition of probation.

If MADD’s political agenda is ever fulfilled, no person in the U.S. will be able to drive home after drinking a couple of beers at a ball game or after enjoying wine with a meal at a restaurant without violating the law, risking arrest and being subjected to unlimited civil liability. If MADD’s attempts to criminalize low BAC drivers really saved lives it would be one thing. However, all available valid government data indicates that it does not. Even the principal founder of MADD has left the organization, citing a lack of focus on the real public safety issue, that of getting high BAC chronic/alcoholic drunk drivers off the road.

For information about MADD's tax-exempt status, go here.

Update: The ridiculing has begun, in the Comics. [link via the Drezner blog]

Update #2: Nathan Newman disagrees with us. Here's our reply to him--

"Sorry, Nathan but on this one we respectfully disagree--the man was on vacation, in another country, driving home from dinner with friends. No accident, no one hurt. You'd have a point if his drunk driving arrest occurred after a business lunch or on the way to a government meeting. But in vacation on Hawaii?

Don't you think MADD would do much better to go after the FBI agent in Florida who killed two brothers in 1999 driving very drunk and on the wrong side of the road--last week he just got 90 days for the drunk driving arrests, being acquitted of manslaughter. He's even out on appeal bond, after serving one day in jail.

We think that's where MADD belongs and should stay - not calling for the resignation of a vacationing politician.

It is better that 5, 10, 20, or 100 guilty men go free than for one innocent man to be put to death. This prinicple is embodied in the presumption of innocence. In 1895, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a decision in the case Coffin v. United States, 156 U.S. 432; 15 S. Ct. 394, traced the presumption of innocence, past England, Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, and, at least according to Greenleaf, to Deuteronomy. [also, Alexander Volokh wrote a law review article on the issue, available free here.]

The Coffin case stands for the proposition that at the request of a defendant, a court must not only instruct on the prosecution's burden of proof--that a defendant cannot be convicted unless the government has proven his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt--but also must instruct on the presumption of innocence--by informing the jury that a defendant is presumed innocent. The Court stated,

The principle that there is a presumption of innocence in favor of the accused is the undoubted law, axiomatic and elementary, and its enforcement lies at the foundation of the administration of our criminal law.

In tracing the presumption of innocence, the Court goes on to state:

It is stated as unquestioned in the text-books, and has been referred to as a matter of course in the decisions of this court and in the courts of the several States. See Taylor on Evidence, vol. 1, c. 5, 126, 127; Wills on Circumstantial Evidence, c. 5, 91; Best on Presumptions, part 2, c. 1, 63, 64; c. 3, 31-58; Greenleaf on Evidence, part 5, § § 29, &c.; 11 Criminal Law Magazine, 3; Wharton on Evidence, § 1244; Phillips on Evidence, Cowen & Hill's Notes, vol. 2, p. 289; Lilienthal v. United States, 97 U.S. 237; Hopt v. Utah, 120 U.S. 430; Commonwealth v. Webster, 5 Cush. 295, 320; State v. Bartlett, 43 N.H. 224; Alexander v. People, 96 Illinois, 96; People v. Fairchild, 48 Michigan, 31; People v. Millard, 53 Michigan, 63; Commonwealth v. Whittaker, 131 Mass. 224; Blake v. State, 3 Tex. App. 581; Wharton v. State, 73 Alabama, 366; State v. Tibbetts, 35 Maine, 81; Moorer v. State, 44 Alabama, 15.

We recommend reading People For the American Way's editiorial memorandum on the case against Judge Charles Pickering's confirmation to the Court of Appeals. [link via Atrios, who as we predicted, would be covering this issue with as much gusto as he did the case against Trent Lott.]

John Carroll has some Tips for Preventing a Dem Wimp-Out in today's Madison Capital Times.

The 108th Congress sworn in this week is the most conservative since the 1929 Congress that helped Herbert Hoover guide the United States into the Great Depression. I hope history will not repeat itself - even if the Bush camp's economic policies appear to have been borrowed from the most discredited of the old Republican playbooks. Opposing this administration's wrong-minded policies would be easy - and effective - if the Democratic Party had anything akin to a coherent set of progressive values. But, as the 107th Congress illustrated, the Democrats have a hard time being coherent or progressive - let alone effective.

Among his tips for Democrats seeking to reverse the Administration's policies is this one:

Challenge more than just judicial appointments: Bush will probably nominate at least one new Supreme Court justice in 2003, and the fight against that nominee is likely to be a defining moment. But congressional Democrats make a mistake when they limit nomination challenges to the judicial sphere.

Bush is packing federal positions with extremists on everything from abortion rights to environmental protection, and well-chosen battles to block nominees offer opportunities not just to block bad picks but to highlight bad policies. Bush's treasury secretary pick, CSX Corp. CEO John Snow, was just guaranteed a pension of $2.4 million a year for life, yet the administration wants to undermine pension regulations so corporations can reduce payments to retirees by as much as 50 percent. Why not oppose Snow unless he pledges to protect pensions for all Americans?

Confirmation hearings for Snow, a supposed critic of corporate wrongdoing, also provide a terrific opportunity to revisit the corporate corruption scandals that Democrats failed to exploit as an issue in 2002.

George W. Bush has governed for two years without opposition. As the 108th Congress convenes, Democrats must either mount an effective challenge to him, or they will find themselves in an even worse position when the 109th convenes.

Don't miss reading the Washington Post's editorial today Just Repeal It . Virginia has the strictest limitation in the nation on inmates' rights to bring innocence claims before the Courts--claims must be brought within 21 days of conviction.

The Virginia Supreme Court proposed a change in the rule to correct this inequity. But the matter got tossed to the legislature, where the Crime Commission, headed by Rep. Kenneth Stolle of Virginia Beach, has proposed a bill to increase the time limit to a measly 90 days while further study is conducted. The Post correctly states:

The 21-day rule is one of the truly irrational aspects of the commonwealth's criminal justice system. Under its terms, even indisputable evidence of innocence is off limits. After a conviction becomes final, Virginia law simply doesn't care whether it was accurate or not. The General Assembly recently created a narrow exception for biological evidence, but that only raises the broader question of why other compelling evidence of innocence should remain beyond review. To its credit, the Virginia Supreme Court has been troubled by the 21-day rule, and it recently proposed an amendment that would allow courts to consider non-biological evidence after conviction in certain cases as well.

Sen. Kenneth W. Stolle (R-Virginia Beach), who heads the [Crime] commission, has introduced "place-holder" legislation that would relax the rule slightly while the legislature studies the issue. But his place-holder legislation is hardly better than no change at all. And there is no guarantee either that the legislature's final product will be as constructive as the court's proposed rule, or even that inertia will not render the temporary measure permanent.

Mr. Stolle's bill would, if enacted, turn the 21-day rule into a 90-day rule. But in major cases in which Virginia convicts have turned out to be innocent, the critical evidence has never surfaced during the 69 extra days this proposal would allow. Rather, evidence of innocence generally comes to light years later. The fundamental problem is in any rule that, after any arbitrary period of time, keeps imprisoned an innocent person who can prove his innocence. Mr. Stolle says he is willing to be flexible about the interim measure. And if the General Assembly wants to tackle this problem, its involvement is certainly welcome. But it would be a great shame if legislators blocked the Supreme Court's proposal and then dithered or produced no meaningful change.

We have written about this before, here. Thanks to PG for bringing it to our attention today in our comments section.