The Miami Herald is running a series critical of confessions obtained by police in murder cases. The story contends that 38 murder confessions have been thrown out since 1990. (via the Guardroom).

Press Release of the Wisconsin Green Party received from Pete Karas of the Progressive Racine Blog:

The Wisconsin Green Party today joined the Wisconsin American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in calling for the dismissal of all citations issued by the City of Racine at the November 2, 2002 Uptown Theatre Group's Haunted House Party. In addition, the Wisconsin Green Party also supports the local Green Party of Kenosha and Racine in their call for an independent investigation into the event.

According to media reports, the Racine police were notified by the United States Customs Office that the fundraiser, intended to raise funds to restore the historic Uptown Theater, was to be a "rave party", defined as a party known for a mix of electronic music and recreational drugs, including Ecstasy. Purportedly acting on this tip, the Racine police raided and shut down the fundraiser, arresting three people on drug charges.

The police also issued 441 attendees of the annual fundraiser citations for "being patrons or keepers of a disorderly house." Among the hundreds in attendance, only three were found to be in possession of illegal drugs. Each citation carries a penalty of $968. The City of Racine has since offered to reduce these fines to $100 and changed the charge to 'Disorderly Conduct'. A handful of the accused have accepted this offer; however, the vast majority of those ticketed have pleaded not guilty and demanded a jury trial. The Wisconsin ACLU has agreed to provide legal representation for all involved.

Jessica Thill, of the Wisconsin Green Party, today announced, "Reducing the fines and asking the accused to plead guilty to a lesser 'crime' ignores the fact that the Racine Police Department has violated the First Amendment rights of more than 400 citizens. The right to peaceably assemble is guaranteed to all of us, whether we listen to electronic music or conservative talk radio."

Thill then noted that a similar police action in Houston, Texas this August pompted public outcry that has since resulted in several police officer suspensions, two criminal indictments, and millions of dollars of lawsuits against the city of Houston.

"Simply put: the City of Racine needs to admit that they were in the wrong, and immediately dismiss these citations," said Pete Karas, a Green Party Member and Aldermanic candidate for Racine's ninth district. "In addition to the obvious civil rights violations, the cost to the taxpayers of almost 400 jury trials and the potential costs of civil lawsuits, if pursued, would be exorbitant. Instead of repeating the mistakes made in Houston earlier this year, we could be spending that money on legitimate efforts to sincerely address civil rights violations and drug abuse in our community."

The Wisconsin Green Party is also urging the City of Racine to appoint an independent special counsel to investigate the actions of the Racine Police Department and other City Officials in the handling of this event. This would hopefully help to prevent further violations in the future.

Here is the statement of the Green Party of Kenosha/Racine.

"The last defendant in the Central Park jogger case remaining in jail will spend Christmas as a free man after a judge on Monday resentenced him to a lesser term on a drug conviction. Raymond Santana had served his sentence for the 1989 park attack when he was arrested on a drug charge in 1998. Because he was a prior felon, he was sentenced to 3 1/2 years to seven years in prison."

LiberalOasis has an excellent wrap-up of concerns about Bill Frist that neither the Democrats nor talk show hosts addressed on the Sunday news shows yesterday.

Don't miss Lisa English of Ruminate This on the Black Hole of Guantanamo. The Toronto Star has even more.

Kevin over at Lean Left reports on the backlash against the Patriot Act.

Jeanne D'Arc of Body and Soul on charity drives: "The one donation to clothing drives that sends me round the bend is torn underwear. What kind of people think the poor are so desperate they'd wear someone else's old underwear? And are they sitting at home basking in the warm glow of their generosity?"

Sisyphyus Shrugged on the war on Iraq (quoting from a Palm Beach Post Editorial):

Real or imagined, however, the question matters. If you accept the notion that there is no such thing as a "good" war or a "bad" war, but that there can be a "right" war and a "wrong" war for a country to fight, the president has the obligation to show that a war is "right" enough for mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters to believe that if their loved one comes home in a box, the sacrifice will have been worth it.

Patrick and Theresa Nielsen-Hayden post some informative and revealing comments about the difference between those taking prescribed amphetamines and drug abusers in the comments section to our post on the USAF pilots who were directed to take amphetamines, did so, and ended up crashing and causing a fatality.

Via Sideshow, who we don't mention as often as we should, check out Blah 3's video on the year with Bush.

We've modified our blogrolls to separate out the strictly legal blogs and move the alternative news sites into their own space. We've also added a few blogs, including Sisyphus Shrugged, LawSites, and in our "other side" category, we've actually added a law enforcement blog, The Guardroom.

For left-oriented news, we like What Really Happened and Take Back the Media.

A new blog we really like is Randy Paul's Beautiful Horizons, about the cultures and politics of Latin America. It's just a few weeks old, so it's not on our blogroll yet, but we do highly recommend it--both for Randy's writing style and the content.

If you used to be on our blogroll and got deleted, it's probably an accident so send us an e-mail.

Vodkapundit sends us to Tim Blair's unique request for donations. While his pitch is not our style, we don't mind saying to our loyal and frequent readers that we gratefully accept tips. They make us feel good about the hours we spend reading, searching and writing. So if you think we're worth it, please hit either of the two tip links on the left. With Amazon you are anonymous, with Paypal we know who you are.

We may be one of the only people in the blogosphere not familiar with the content of the writings of Andrew Sullivan, but our hat is off to him for his pledge drive last week that earned him $80k. That's not a typo. We wonder how much came from Richard Mellon Scaife, though.

Via Sideshow we learn that Zal Yanovsky, guitarist of the Lovin' Spoonful has died at 58. As this glowing recap of his life proclaims, he "worked [a] lifetime of magic."

In his later life, Zal, who was once known as "the Jewish Ringo Starr" (see the picture in the article and you will know why), lived in Kingston, Canada where he and his wife restored an 1880's livery stable into a very popular restaurant, Chez Piggy, that became widely known both as a gathering place and for its food. The couple were awarded a historic restoration award for their work.

Zal died suddenly of a heart attack on his farm on Dec. 13. He left the Lovin' Spoonful in 1967, and with a large cash settlement, was able to pursue his other dreams. For those of you too young to remember, and we assume that's most of you, their big hit was "Do You Believe In Magic?" If we had to compare the group to another, it would most likely be the Mamas and Papas. The lead singer was John Sebastian, who is still alive, touring and playing jug band music.

Are you stuck for that last minute gift? Check out what the feds have to offer at FirstGov -- Shopping and Auctions.

Our favorite: The DEA Gift Shop. How about this?

An African-American ex-White House staffer says the GOP is in denial about its race problem. We agree, but it seems the staffer is in denial as well--about what it is the Republican party stands for. She asserts, astonishingly to us,

"In its soul, and in its history, the GOP is a party of moderates. We are at our core a party of abolitionists, suffragists, civil rights supporters and fighters for the individual liberty of all people."

The author begs the GOP to reach out more to Black professionals like herself--the black middle class. What about the less fortunate African-Americans, what does the GOP offer them? The GOP has offered a solitary, ill-advised response to crime for decades: Build more prisons and increase penalties. Does the staffer really think it is okay that compassion is extended only to successful, productive members of society. Where does that leave these African-Americans:

1.4 million African American men, or 13% of black men, are disenfranchised, a rate seven times the national average. Given current rates of incarceration, three in ten of the next generation of black men can expect to be disenfranchised at some point in their lifetime. In states that disenfranchise ex-offenders, as many as 40% of black men may permanently lose their right to vote.

Nearly one in seven (13.4%) black males aged 25-29 were in prison or jail in 2001, as were 1 in 24 (4.1%) Hispanic males and 1 in 55 (1.8%) white males in the same age group.

46% of prison inmates in 2001 were black and 16% were Hispanic.

Black males have a 29% chance of serving time in prison at some point in their lives; Hispanic males have a 16% chance; white males have a 4% chance.

(Sources: Bureau of Justice Statistics and The Sentencing Project)

As the ACLU reminds us:

The war on crime and drugs has disproportionately targeted people of color for arrest, prosecution and long, mandatory prison sentences so that today, one-third of all black men in their twenties are either behind bars, on probation or. Voting districts created to provide fair representation have been undermined by lawmakers and by the courts, and felony disenfranchisement laws have robbed hundreds of thousands of minorities of their right to vote. Segregation and discrimination in housing opportunity still exists, and a backlash against affirmative action in employment and education threatens to slam the door of opportunity in the faces of those who are most deserving. Anti-immigrant laws have stripped away basic civil rights for many of the nation’s ethnic minorities. We have come a long way since Jim Crow ruled the South, but deeply entrenched discrimination, subjugation, subordination, and racial violence are still with us and affect not only African-Americans, but Latinos, Asian Americans, American Indians, and Arab Americans as well."

Spare us the GOP "compassionate conservative" jingle.

Investigators in the sniper case report that all evidence points to juvenile John Lee Malvo as the triggerman in the shootings. They cannot link a single shot to John Muhammed.

This makes the case for a death sentence against Muhammed more problematic. The charge against Muhammed is in Prince William County and is a standard first degree murder count which requires the prosecution to prove Muhammed was the triggerman. And according to police, he wasn't.

Here's the evidence against 17 year old John Lee Malvo, according to investigators. (If this doesn't show the need for a gag order on the police in the case, we don't know what does:)

¶His own admissions to both Virginia shootings in which the men are being tried and to one in Maryland, made in conversations with Fairfax police detectives.

¶Hair linked by DNA to Mr. Malvo found in the trunk of the Caprice. A hole was carved in the trunk to create a sniper's nest.

¶A videotape recovered from a security camera near the Home Depot parking garage in Falls Church, Va., where Linda Franklin , an F.B.I. analyst, was killed on Oct 14. The videotape shows someone who appears to be Mr. Muhammad inside the driver's seat of the car.

¶Mr. Malvo's fingerprints found on a piece of paper near where investigators believe the shot was fired that wounded Iran Brown, 13, outside Benjamin Tasker Middle School in Bowie, Md., on Oct. 7.

¶Saliva found on a grape stem on the hill where investigators contend someone fired the shot that killed Conrad E. Johnson, a bus driver, in Aspen Hill, Md., on Oct 22.

There's much more to the article, so read the whole thing--not for the leaks by the police, but for the legal problems the prosecution may encounter as a result of Ashcroft's decision to file the case in the jurisdiction where he believed the pair were most likely to face execution.

It takes a lot to surprise us these days, but this news articles about the Air Force providing combat pilots with speed certainly did.

"Not only is the Air Force making the amphetamines widely available to combat pilots, it also has informed them they could be considered unfit to fly certain missions if they don't voluntarily take the amphetamines."

It's not that we object to the pilots taking speed. It's the unbelievable hypocrisy of the goverment which on the one hand puts people in jail for taking amphetamines without a legitimate medical prescription, and now it appears, with the other hand, dispenses the pills for no reason other than to increase alertness and stamina--which is not a recognized medical use for the drug.

Terminally ill cancer patients can't smoke pot to relieve unbearable pain, but pilots can (must?) take an upper to do their job? Give us a break.

Does the Air Force give the pilots Xanax after the mission to calm down?

We have some holiday and family stuff to attend to today, so we thought we'd throw the blog open to readers for the rest of the day (we'll be back tonight). Post what you want, start a discussion, argue or agree with each other, just don't kill each other. As my grandmother used to say, you catch more bees with honey than with vinegar.

Via Skippy, who's been on a John Aschroft tear recently, a link to Lott's a Racist but Ashcroft's Okay? by John Aravosis. Among the criticisms of Ashcroft--his relations with Bob Jones University, Council of Conservative Citizens, Pat Robertson, Reggie White, Southern Partisan Magazine and Gun Owners of America.

We do our own tear of Ashcroft almost weekly--our latest, a long one, is here.