We were offline when this guide to Gifts For Sexy Anarchists appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle.

It's for people who are angry about Bush, Aschroft, Cheney (Mr. and Mrs.) and the War in Iraq.

Some of our favorites on the list:

Possum-fur nipple warmers. "These actually exist. No one is quite sure why. Something to do with an overabundance of possum in New Zealand. Anything to do with exposed nipples and warming them in some remotely sexy way is sure to make heavily shellacked mannequin-faced Laura Bush titter and squeal and faint. Hand them out in the church parking lot!"

"A giant sparkly wall map of the world, with Iraq highlighted in bright bloody doomsday red, and little U.S. flags looming anywhere we have troops or we've set up a puppet government or we have land-raping oil concerns or anywhere we plan on bombing into submission real soon now even though they were our ally just last week. Hey, we're a rogue nation now. Strike first, rig a presidential election later."

"Adopt an Iraqi/Afghan citizen. Saddam hates them, the Taliban hates them, we've killed scores of them and plan on killing scores more. What better time to support these most innocent of sufferers, the deeply repressed and war torn and heavily sanctioned and completely forgotten? Hey, those millions of Iraqi children haven't had decent medical attention since the U.S. imposed sanctions. Thousands have died as a result. Send some Halliburton-brand bandages in Dick Cheney's name."

"A lovely "Evildoer" T-shirt or bumper sticker. Remember Geedubya calling everyone who doesn't believe in shopping malls and a war-hungry intolerant God and/or the new Lexus an evildoer, over and over again, last year? Reclaim this fine term, make the Feds look at you funny and fondle their manly weapons as you pass through airport security. Also available in baby-doll. Wear it in public and watch Ashcroft's lower lip tremble."

Haven't seen a gift you like yet? Try these...."Panties with a nice Christian message. Little Afghani antenna flags. Chocolate handcuffs. Wiccan cookbooks. The American-flag bikini wax" (as in waxed-in-the-shape of).

More on the tossing of the verdicts in the Central Park Jogger case:

"Michael Warren and Roger Wareham, lawyers for three of the men, spoke of justice denied for so long, justice granted yesterday, and demands of reparations. Civil suits would come, they said. They contend that the confessions were coerced by the police."

"We must first obtain justice on behalf of these young men, on behalf of their families who have been put through a terrible ordeal," Mr. Warren said. "Their youth was stolen from them, was snatched away from them, they were not able to enjoy the fruits of a childhood simply because they existed behind the cold prison bars for crimes they did not commit."

Where are the five unjustly convicted youths today?

"McCray is married, has three children and works in a factory; Richardson is a night watchman and goes to school; Salaam goes to school for computer science; Wise is looking for work; Santana is in prison for an unrelated crime."

The Judge did not mention false confessions or police interrogation procedures in his 21 page ruling. Rather, he wrote:

"It is virtually self-evident that the newly discovered evidence, specifically the confession of a self-admitted murderer and serial rapist, corroborated by physical evidence including scientific testing establishing that he was the sole source of DNA evidence ... would create the probability that had such evidence been received at trial, the verdict would have been more favorable to the defendants."

The courtroom was packed with supporters of the men who as teenagers had served seven to twelve years in prison for the crime. The five men did not appear in court, as they wanted to avoide the media.

The Marijuana Policy Project has called for the ouster of U.S. Drug Czar John Walters "for alleged 'illegal and dishonest activities' in campaigning against Nevada's marijuana ballot initiative."

The organization has filed a formal complaint against Walters under the federal Hatch Act charging that he broke the law by using his office to conduct a political campaign that was "absolutely a campaign of lies and distortions designed to frighten people."

The complaint, filed with the US Office of Special Counsel (OSC), accuses Walters of visiting several Nevada cities on October 10 and 11, 2002, and advocating for the defeat of a marijuana legalization initiative there during press briefings and television appearances.

The OSC is an independent agency set up to investigate whistle-blower complaints and alleged wrongdoing by administration officials. The ballot measure, which failed 61% to 39%, would have decriminalized possession of less than 3 ounces of marijuana by adults.

Officials found guilty of Hatch Act violations can be permanently removed from office or suspended for not less than 30 days, according to the OSC Web site.

Walter's spokesman says cabinet officials are exempt from the Hatch Act.

MPP has also filed a complaint with the Nevada Secretary of State (Elections division), that you can read here.

Rob Kampia, Director of MPP, makes no bones about the organizations goals. He told Reuters, "We want him out of the picture. We want him excommunicated from the federal government forever."

Kampia will be discussing MPP's war on the drug czar Friday night on The O'Reilly Factor.

We were just listening to the 10:00 news when they announced that the Boulder, Colorado District Attorneys' Office is re-opening the murder investigation into who killed JonBenet Ramsey. Mary Keenan, Boulder's elected DA will personally handle the investigation, along with one other deputy.

JonBenet was killed on December 26, 1996. If you've forgotten some of the details, you can get up to speed on either of our two sites chronicling the past investigation: The JonBenet Media UnLynch Mob Page and Crimes'R Us.com: The Legal Side of Crimes in the News.

Internet poster Jameson has an evidence primer in the case and an up-to-date forum for public discussion.

We'll update when we have an inclination of why, now, after six years the case is being reopened.

The Judge in the Sniper case has granted a defense request to gag the police in Fairfax, Virginia.

"Muhammad's lawyers sought the injunction against Fairfax County police and the FBI following a report last month in The Washington Post. The newspaper, citing anonymous sources, reported that Malvo, 17, had confessed to being the triggerman in some of the sniper shootings that terrorized metropolitan Washington during a three-week spree in October."

"The order prohibits police from disclosing the existence or contents of any confessions, any discussion about the reputation or criminal history of the suspects or of any prospective witnesses, and any opinions regarding evidence in the case. The order does not mention the FBI."

We suggested a gag order was necessary and explained why, here.

Governor George Ryan of Illinois has pardoned three wrongfully convicted inmates.

Rolando Cruz, a symbol of Illinois's deeply flawed death penalty system was one of those pardoned.

"Ryan made the announcement as he spoke before the University of Illinois College of Law on the state's death penalty system. Ryan has been considering commuting the death sentences of about 140 men currently on death row."

"I wish them well; they've been through hell," Ryan said as the crowd gave him a lengthy ovation."

"Two of the men pardoned, Cruz and Gary Gauger, had been on death row. They and the third man pardoned, Steven Linscott, had already been released after their convictions were thrown out. The pardons clear the men's names and allow them to seek compensation for their wrongful convictions from the Illinois Court of Claims."

Thank you, Governor Ryan. May your successor show as much courage and conviction as you have these past two years.

Eric Zorn has some excellent commentary on the issue in today's Chicago Tribune, including these comments about why the Governor should grant blanket pardons to all on death row:

"If you grant selective commutation, you will be saying, in effect, that a careful governor can go back over old cases and neatly separate those convicts who deserve the death penalty from those who don't. If you believe that, go ahead. But you'll be retroactively invalidating the moratorium and the work of your commission and will be saying instead that the death penalty system was never "broken" as you've maintained, it just needed one extra layer of review....Reducing a sentence to life-without-parole is a compromise with human frailty, not an act of mercy. No prisoner so sentenced has ever beend."

From Half the Sins of Mankind who correctly guessed that we are a fan (make that big fan) of Bob Dylan:

"Lott's comments are a product of forgetting the past; Pat Buchanan's phenomenally ignorant remark about Lott's being "lynched" also falls into this category. No one has ever made these people think about America's racial history. So they talk wistfully about the 1950s, which to them are all Mom and apple pie, not the unpunished murder of Emmett Till. In their minds, states' rights are about localized decision-making, not keeping people enslaved and disenfranchised. Actual lynchings are no part of their memories; lynching is just a metaphor to them."

I saw the morning papers but I could not bear to see The smiling brothers walkin' down the courthouse stairs.
For the jury found them innocent and the brothers they went free,
While Emmett's body floats the foam of a Jim Crow southern sea.
If you can't speak out against this kind of thing, a crime that's so unjust,
Your eyes are filled with dead men's dirt, your mind is filled with dust.
Your arms and legs they must be in shackles and chains, and your blood it must refuse to flow,
For you let this human race fall down so God-awful low!
This song is just a reminder to remind your fellow man
That this kind of thing still lives today in that ghost-robed Ku Klux Klan.
But if all of us folks that thinks alike, if we gave all we could give,
We could make this great land of ours a greater place to live. -- Bob Dylan, "The Death of Emmett Till," 1963.

"A judge dismissed the convictions Thursday of all five men who served years in prison for the 1989 rape and beating of a jogger in Central Park, a crime that exposed the city's racial tensions and made national headlines."

"The courtroom, filled with the family and friends of the defendants, burst into cheers and applause as state Justice Charles Tejada announced his ruling."

The police are angry. We're thrilled.

Prosecutors fumed as hundreds of low level felons were allowed to leave jails and prisons early as part of Gov. Paul Patton's plan to avert a $6 million deficit in the corrections budget.

``I feel wonderful, man,'' Kevin Ray Gibson, 26, told the Lexington Herald-Leader after his release four months early for burglary and trafficking in pain pills. ``I'm going to get out and get me a job. I got kids I need to take care of. I just need to get out and do right. It's a good Christmas present.''

Patton's ``conditional commutation'' covered 567 prisoners, all described as nonviolent offenders who, on average, were within 80 days of completing their sentences.

We had some major problems yesterday while our hosting company was upgrading itself to provide additional services--our newsfeed went down, we couldn't publish new entries and the comments and permalinks got messed up. All appears to be fixed. If you notice anything amiss, please send us an email.

It was terrible timing, as we were just named one of the top web sites of 2002 by Law Technology News, published at Law.com.

Professor Robert Slayton has a must-read op-ed piece in the Washington Post on what it meant when integration was a crime. The details of the laws that states enacted and the places they were implemented, are just shameful.

"Oklahoma required separate phone booths for white and black patrons. North Carolina and Florida not only segregated schoolchildren but insisted that their schoolbooks be segregated -- in Florida they even had to be stored in separate warehouses -- so that no white boys or girls could ever be contaminated by even the dream of racial contact. States enforced segregation in prisons and in homes for orphans, the deaf, the poor and -- my favorite -- the blind. People who could not even see color had to be separated by race."

"It was always clear, as well, that this was not just about physical separation but about keeping one group constantly ostracized, always humiliated. The Clarion-Ledger, Mississippi's leading paper, editorialized that, "If every negro" in the state "was a graduate of Harvard and had been elected class orator, he would not be as well fitted to exercise the rights of suffrage as the Anglo-Saxon farm laborer." In one small Delta community, the local postmaster made sure, before he boxed any mail for black residents, to mark out one word -- Mr., Miss or Mrs. -- so that no African American would ever be addressed by a title."

There's a lot more to the article, and Prof. Slayton's conclusion succinctly says it all:

"Running for president on a ticket of blind, absolute segregation was a nasty business in 1948; commenting favorably on that episode in 2002 should be unthinkable."

Some journalists ( Joe Conasen ) and bloggers ( Skippy ) are suggesting we turn our attention to Attorney General John Ashcroft after Trent Lott. The ACLU , the NACDL (National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers) and many other groups fought hard to defeat Ashcroft's confirmation. His 1998 interview with Southern Partisan Magazine was but one issue.

Here is the NACDL Press Release describing John Ashcroft's record prior to becoming Attorney General. These are the reasons the Board of Directors of NACDL opposed Ashcroft's confirmation:

"Ashcroft's unprincipled distortion of the record of an African-American judicial nominee, Judge Ronnie White; his ambush of White on the Senate floor, rather than questioning him in committee hearings; and his unjustified criticism of the same nominee's dissents in two death penalty cases;

his denouncing of federal funding for treatment of citizens who abuse drugs, in spite of its proven efficacy in reducing crime, and his proposal that persons convicted of even minor drug offenses be denied professional licenses;

his unswerving support of the death penalty and his opposition to a death penalty moratorium, despite mounting evidence of racial and geographic disparities in its application and the fact that innocent persons have been and continue to be condemned to death;

his staunch advocacy of mandatory minimum sentences;

his actions in opposition to keeping statistics on racial profiling;

his endorsement of the racially-divisive journal, Southern Partisan, and his expressed empathy for the Confederacy;

his effort at making crimes which are already punishable by states and localities into federal crimes, and at taking away traditional responsibilities of state and local law enforcement officials and conferring them, instead, on federal officials.

We did some research and came across some of the statements issued by Senators who opposed Ascroft's confirmation at the time of his hearings. We especially liked the press release issued on January 31, 2001 by Senator Carl Levin of Michigan as to why he would vote against Ashcroft's confirmation as Attorney General.

Sen. Levin presents the issue of Ashcroft's interview with Southern Partisan not just in terms of Ashcroft's words, but in terms of what those words mean, when considered in context of his other actions and inactions. The entire statement is part of the Congressional Record. It is also available on Lexis.

Levin gives four examples of Ascroft's divisive and impartial views, the first being "his position and his effort with respect to the nomination of Judge Ronnie White as a Federal District Judge for the Eastern District of Missouri." The third reason was his statements on drug offenders. In an effort to make this post shorter than War and Peace, we are only going to reprint Levin's second and fourth examples, and his concluding remarks:

"While Senator Ashcroft's rhetoric over the years reflects his zeal and determination, it has not reflected the same concern for fairness and impartiality. I have concluded that his record and rhetoric are so divisive and polarizing, that his nomination will not provide the necessary confidence all Americans are entitled to have in the fairness and impartiality required of the Department of Justice."

"Second is Senator Ashcroft's interview with Southern Partisan magazine, a publication which has been described as a "neo-confederate." Senator Ashcroft not only granted an interview to Southern Partisan magazine, he commended the magazine for helping to "set the record straight." He said "We've all got to stand up and speak- in this respect, or else we'll be taught that these people were giving their lives, subscribing their sacred fortunes and their honor to some perverted agenda."

"While in that interview Senator Ashcroft expressed support for Southern Partisan's message, he later said that he didn't know much about Southern Partisan and didn't know what it promoted. Fair enough. But since his interview, much has been said about the magazine in the media and at Senator Ashcroft's own confirmation hearing. Southern Partisan is described as a publication that defends slavery, white separatism, apartheid and David Duke" by a media watch group. in 1995, Southern Partisan offered its subscribers t-shirts celebrating the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. In the same year, an author, printed by the publication, alleged "there is no indication that slavery Contrary to Christian ethics" and in 1990, another article praised former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke as a "candidate concerned about affirmative' discrimination, welfare profligacy, the, taxation holocaust. a Populist spokesperson for a recapturing of the American ideal," In 1996, an article in the magazine alleged "slave owners ... did not have a practice of breaking up slave families. If anything, they encouraged strong slave families to farther the slaves' peace and happiness." And in 1991, another writer printed in the publication questioned, "Newly arrived in New York City, I puzzled, Where are the Americans?' I met only Italians, Jews, Puerto Ricans."

"l take Senator Ashcroft as his word that he did not know much about Southern Partisan magazine when he praised them for helping to "set the record straight." But where was the immediate disgust, horror and repudiation when he learned what he had inadvertently praised? And, after the inquiries of others, why didn't he make a prompt inquiry to satisfy himself that he had not inadvertently advanced the purpose of a racist publication? Even in his written responses to the Judiciary Committee, he said he only rejects the publication "if the allegations about (the] magazine are true."

"More than two years after his original interview, it appears that he never took it upon himself to inquire about the magazine's purpose. A person being considered for the office of Attorney General, the single most important person charged with enforcing our nation's civil rights law in a fair and just manner, should accept the obligation to make an inquiry if the American people are to have faith that their Attorney General will "build a single nation of justice...."

"A fourth example is Senator Ashcroft's opposition to James Hormel's nomination for Ambassador to Luxembourg. Senator Ashcroft stated in press accounts that he opposed Mr. Hormel's nomination because Mr. Hormel "actively supported the gay lifestyle." Senator Ashcroft also said a person's sexual orientation "is within what could be considered and what is eligible for consideration" with respect to the qualifications to serve as an Ambassador. To suggest that a person could not represent America's interests or should be judged professionally because of his sexual orientation is inappropriate and divisive. When pressed on this issue by the Ranking Member of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Ashcroft further responded in writing: "I did not believe Hormel would effectively represent the United States in Luxembourg, the most Roman Catholic country in all of Europe."

"To suggest that Luxembourg would not welcome Mr. Hormel's nomination is untrue. Luxembourg has outlawed discrimination based on sexual orientation and its government specifically said they would welcome James Hormel as Ambassador. And, most importantly, to fail to retract such contentious statements about a person, because of his sexual orientation, adds- further doubt that all our people, will have confidence that this nominee will strive to build that single nation of justice the President has called for. "

"In summary, I am deeply troubled by Senator Ashcroft's record of repeatedly divisive rhetoric and sometimes simply unfair personal attacks...Senator Ashcroft has frequently engaged in "us" versus "them" rhetoric. He frequently rejects moderation and has even criticized some members of his own party for engaging in what he characterizes as "deceptions" when they "preach pragmatism, champion conciliation (and) counsel compromise."

"Senator Ashcroft, in his confirmation hearings, in his written answers to the questions posed by a number of Senators, including myself, either reaffirmed some of his divisive statements, or simply never explained his extremely divisive language. His refusal to comment on some of the most troubling past statements leaves them standing as his current views. Senator Ashcroft's extremely divisive language and his approach to issues in terms of "us" versus "them" would not prevent me from voting for his confirmation for most positions in the cabinet. But more than any other cabinet member, the Attorney General, as the Chief Law Enforcement Officer of the United States, is charged with the responsibility of assuring that the Department of Justice's goal is equal justice under the law for all Americans. I will vote no on the nomination of John Ashcroft for Attorney General of the United States."

Clearly, it's too late to dethrone Ashcroft as Attorney General. Unlike Lott, he was not elected by the people but appointed by the President, to serve at the pleasure of the President. So what is our purpose in re-airing all of his dirty laundry now? These are our motives: to prevent him from being able to make a run for higher office in 2008; to reduce his chances of receiving a future cabinet post; to make him less desirable to corporate America as a future rainmaker; and most importantly, to implore journalists and the public to examine his statements and actions carefully and to protest loud and often when he steps over the line.