From Howard Bashman at How Appealing today:

"And, just when I've finally come to accept that my law firm uses Internet filtering software that makes it impossible for me to receive any emails that contain foul language, my firm's version of Websense decides to block my access to the blog TalkLeft. Hmm, what's up with that!"

We have no idea, and while the anti-authoritarian in us is tempted to be flattered, we'd rather Howard was able to read us--and link to us--considering how huge his readership has become. Plus, we can't remember ever using a four letter word or other foul language on TalkLeft.

After months of hard work, Daily Kos' new blog, Political State Report made its debut today. It has state-level political reports directly from the trenches, with volunteers from each state offering their time as a state coordinator/reporter. What an effort-- but what a great result--go read and comment and keep it active. Congratulations, Kos...and thanks for adding this valuable service to the internet.

PLA has announced the winners of the first annual Koufax Awards for liberal blogging excellence. TalkLeft is the proud recipient of the award for "Best Single Issue Blog." Thank you to all who voted for us--it feels great to be recognized for our efforts.

Voting in our category resulted in a close race between us and three excellent blogs we read every day: Daily Kos (our good friend as well as the designer of TalkLeft's blog and our guru on all things technical) and MY DD are unsurpassed when it comes to election coverage; and Ignatz, is a terrific law-and-politics blog written by Alabama labor lawyer Sam Heldman.

Our congrats to the other winners, including Atrios (best blog and best writing series), Jim Cappozola of Rittenhouse Review (best single entry), Jeanne of Body and Soul (best writing) and Alas a Blog (best design).

Thanks to Skippy, for his several congratulatory posts to us-- he was nominated for both best humorous blog and best special effects.

We're proud just to be in the company of the other nominees and winners. And we agree with the award host (Dwight of PLA) and others that many great blogs also warranted nomination --such as Lisa English of Ruminate This; Avedon Carol of Sideshow and Liberal Oasis, to name just a few.

Update: Next up are the Bloggie Awards. Nominations Due by January 12--and there are prizes and a real winners' ceremony in Austin, Texas on March 9.

We received this joint press release today from the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty ( NCADP) and Mississippians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty :

Ron Chris Foster could become the seventh consecutive African American juvenile offender to be executed if his death sentence is carried out as scheduled on Jan. 8 by the state of Mississippi.
The last six juvenile offenders executed all have been African American. Although African Americans are disproportionately represented on death rows overall, the racial disparity among juvenile offenders on death row is even more pronounced -- two thirds of the approximately 80 juvenile offenders on death row throughout the United States are people of color.

"Mississippi needs to stop and study how race affects its criminal justice system in general and its death penalty convictions in particular," said Ken McGill, executive director of Mississipians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. "The crime for which Chris was convicted was bad. However, given the circumstances of the crime, it is difficult to imagine that a white person would have received a death sentence."

Foster was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of George Shelton, a convenience store clerk, in Lowndes County. Although 17-year-old Foster had told a friend he planned to rob the store, he did not take a weapon with him when he did so. Shelton was shot with his own gun after the two struggled.

Steven W. Hawkins, executive director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, said Foster never should have been tried for a capital offense. "He did not have a weapon with him, and there is absolutely no reason to believe he intended to kill anyone," Hawkins said. "In addition, the very fact of his youth and his background dramatically lessen his culpability."

McGill and Hawkins called upon Mississippi Gov. Ronnie Musgrove to commute Foster's sentence. "This case cries out for commutation," McGill said. "The death penalty is supposed to be reserved for 'the worst of the worst' of crimes. This crime, while tragic, does not qualify."

Foster's execution, if allowed to proceed, could be the last in the United States involving a juvenile offender, Hawkins predicted. "We expect a number of states to move this year to ban the execution of juvenile offenders," he said. "Should that occur, it is more likely than ever before that the U.S. Supreme Court will agree to revisit this issue. The United States joins Iran and Congo as the only nations that currently execute juvenile offenders. It is time to halt this barbaric practice."

For more information on Ron Chris Foster, his crime and his life, including why clemency is appropriate, go here.

Here's how you can help: Please write Gov. Ronnie Musgrove and request a commutation of Foster’s sentence. Such executive action would not only encourage the U.S. Supreme Court to join the rest of the civilized world by banning juvenile executions in the future, it would also save this young man’s life. Click the "more" button for addresses and details:

An update on the case of the two U.S. pilots who released the bomb over Afganistan in April that killed four Canadian soldiers: A lawyer for one of them says the Air Force pressured the pilots to take amphetamines (called "go pills") that "may have impaired their judgment during the mission."

We commented at length on the case here.

Update Jan. 4 from the LA Times is here.

Law Professor Roger D. Groot, a staunch opponent of capital punishment has joined the defense team of accused juvenile sniper John Lee Malvo.

"Roger D. Groot, a law professor at Washington and Lee University, has been a thorn in the side of prosecutors and prison officials in Virginia for decades....Early in his career as a law professor at Washington and Lee University, he advocated for the rights of inmates and immigrant detainees."

He will be assisted by two students at the Virginia Capital Case Clearinghouse, a student-led legal-aid clinic at the law school.

Groot denounced the death penalty as "something that allows Americans to "destroy our own humanity." He said "I oppose the death penalty in all circumstances and I think it is counterproductive both morally and practically."

"Professor Groot said he became troubled early in his career by how the death penalty was carried out. "I came to understand," he said, "that the death penalty is almost random in terms of who is selected to be tried, depending on race, the views of the local prosecutor or an election campaign."

We can't believe the number of "liberals" touting Rangel's obscene proposal to invoke a mandatory draft as a means of avoiding a war in Iraq--the faulty premise being if you put the sons of the rich at risk, perhaps the rich will come to oppose the war.

With all due respect to our "liberal" friends, this is sophomoric and dangerous to the futures of tens of thousands of American youth. What right do they have to call for the interruption of the lives of these young men who have done nothing to them? Most of these so-called "liberals" are too young to remember Vietnam--too young to remember the agony that every male college student went through the night of the draft lottery--the scenes in virtually every living room of every dorm and apartment from Berkeley to Ann Arbor to Boston and in between--the anguished cries of disbelief and rushed exits from the room when someone's number was called--all for a war that no one wanted to fight and that history now confirms we shouldn't have ever entered--the thousands of dead youths, the thousands of mothers whose boys came home in a box. We're not exaggerating, we were there and we lived it-- the war, the draft and the lottery--two of those we took the LSATs with never made it to law school, their numbers came up high and off they went--hopefully to Canada, but certainly not to the lives they had dreamed of and worked so hard for. When we went to our 20th high school reunion in 1987, the party opened with a a simulcast of a radio show hosted by a well-known disc jockey of that era acknowledging our reunion and reading off the names of the dead from our high school class.

How crass and unfeeling for these "liberals" to wish such a fate on an 18 - 26 year old who has done nothing to deserve it. So what if their parents have money? Is that their fault? How does that devalue their accomplishments and dreams? If these so-called liberals believe the war should be opposed, let them get out in the streets and demonstrate, get their hands dirty, risk an arrest. How how dare they sit on their comfortable rear ends from the distance of a computer screen and call upon others to do what they would never do themselves--forfeit their freedom in the name of a soundbite.

Sorry, but this is despicable. And anything but liberal.

Update: Oliver Willis agrees with us and notes, "A government that compels one to die for a cause one may not believe in is not a free government, and if the government isn't free... it isn't American."

Two reasons why Instapundit is not a Republican.

Outgoing Illinois Governor George Ryan will be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. We're thrilled. For the other side and some major grumps about it, see Archpundit and Bloviator.

Ryan was nominated for his "crusade against what is clearly a racist and class-based death penalty system here in Illinois" by Francis Boyle, a professor of international law at the University of Illinois law school in Champaign. Since Illinois resumed capital punishment in 1977, 12 people have been executed and 13 other death sentences were overturned. In the 13 cases, evidence showed some of the defendants were innocent; in others, courts ruled that they received unfair trials. Ryan declared a moratorium in 2000 and appointed a commission to study the system, report on what went wrong and make recommendations to restore fairness to the system.

We agree with Boyle that the the "licenses-for-bribes scandal" in Ryan's former secretary of state's office is irrelevant. According to the Nobel Prize website, the prize is awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, "shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind." Law professors are among those who can submit nominations.

Boyle and others who favor Ryan as a Nobel Peace Prize candidate have organized a campaign, including a web site which details the national and international support for Ryan's nomination. For example, this comes from Sissel Egeland in Norway:

"The moratorium has inspired Americans to end the inhuman death penalty system and to join the rest of the world in the care for human rights and justice. A nomination of Governor Ryan for the Nobel Peace Prize will send an important message to the international society that the use of the death penalty shall now be ancient history and unite Europeans and courageous Americans to stand up for ethics and human rights in all international relations."

Professor Boyle noted in the news article above that the "Nobel Peace Prizes generally are given to send a message to a target audience," Boyle said. "We think that giving the Nobel Peace Prize to Governor Ryan would send a very strong message here to the United States of America that the death penalty has to go." We agree.

Regardless of your views about the death penalty, surely we can all agree that its imposition should be fair, just and accurate. It isn't. It isn't fair--it is often imposed in a racially disparate manner or after trials at which unreliable evidence such as false confessions and erroneous eyewitness evidence was presented or at which defendants were represented by grossly incompetent lawyers who failed to protect their rights and secure them a fair trial. It isn't just--we still allow the excecution of the mentally ill and juvenile offenders. It isn't accurate--Since 1973, when the death penalty was reinstated, and August of 2002, 102 inmates in 25 states have been exonerated and released from death row. The average time between being sentenced to death and exoneration has been 8 years.

Fixing the broken death penalty system in the United States (not just Illinois) requires a nationwide commitment. The Innocence Protection Act is a good beginning, but despite over 250 bipartisan sponsors in Congress, a few ultra-right wing Republicans are holding it hostage and refusing to allow its passage.

The findings of the Illinois commission on Capital Punishment, initiated by Governor Ryan in response to the glaring inaccuracies in that state's capital punishment system, provide a well-researched guide for reforms. You can read the report and its 85 proposed recommendations here. The Illinois state legislature has adopted none of the reforms. Blanket clemency is the only fair result. Don't blame the inmates, blame the legislature for refusing to fix a broken system that results in innocent people being sent to death row.

George Ryan is a courageous hero--those who cynically accuse him of grandstanding on the innocence issue to deflect from the license scandal occurring on his watch most likely never have heard him speak in person. We have. We believe his commitment to fixing the broken system in Illinois is genuine and heartfelt--it has altered his life and his beliefs. Remember, Ryan supports the death penalty. His crusade is to make it fairer in its application and to protect the innocent. We doubt Ryan will grant clemency (life sentences) to all on death row in Illinois. We think he should. But even if he only grants clemency to some, he will still have done more for humanity and more in spreading the message this year than anyone else.

For more on the work of the Illinois Commission, we recommend this article by one of its participants. For reasons why blanket clemency would be legally sound, read this letter written by 438 legal scholars.

As Rob Warden, Director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University said not long ago, "On trial are not just the people convicted of the murders, but the criminal justice system itself. Beyond the question of guilt or innocence, of course, is the question of proportionality and fairness of the sentencing process."

There will be a Press Conference at the Illinois State Capitol Press Room on Monday, January 6, 2003, at 1 P.M. to announce the Nobel Peace Prize Nomination and Campaign for Governor Ryan. Springfield is the Capital of the State of Illinois.

Don't miss A Look Back at 2003--a Tom Meyer cartoon too large to reprint here, sent to us by Pete Karas of the Progressive Racine Blog.

Wired News reports on the Year in Privacy: Citizens Lose:

"As we reach the end of 2002, the state of important liberties around the world appears to be degenerating rapidly, particularly in the area of privacy concerns."

"If one of Osama bin Laden's goals, as has been reported, was to trigger crackdowns against freedoms by Western governments, he got the ball rolling quite effectively on Sept. 11, 2001."

"The United States now imprisons its own citizens incommunicado, indefinitely and without lawyers or trials, for the duration of what we're told is an essentially permanent state of war."

"In the good old days of the iron curtain, we condemned other countries for such actions, calling them human rights violations. Now some of those same nations are our partners of convenience in the war on terror, and our own government has enthusiastically embraced our former adversaries' old tactics."

Link via Buzzflash

"The Spanish judge who has made a world name for himself fighting terrorism launched a stinging attack on Sunday against US President George W. Bush, saying his government was trampling on the rights of suspects."

"The Bush administration does not recognise the rights of terrorists to defend themselves and has made those rights all but disappear," Baltasar Garzon said in an interview with El Pais newspaper. Garzon, who has fought against Basque separatists in Spain and led international efforts to prosecute former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet for war crimes, said Bush had crushed personal liberties since the September 11 attacks."

"The fight against terrorism since September 11 has increased the risk of a false system of security being put in place to the detriment of freedoms and rights," he said. "The case of terrorists held in Guantanamo (the US base in Cuba), Afghanistan and Pakistan proves that security is trumping every other principle of justice or rights," Garzon said."

Link via Buzzflash.