We had a feeling that we wouldn't like Don Nickles' stand on criminal justice and civil liberties issues, so we took a look at his voting record. Here's what we found.

On Crime and Drugs:

Voted YES on increasing penalties for drug offenses.
Voted YES on spending international development funds on drug control.
Voted NO on $1.15 billion per year to continue the COPS program. (May 1999)
Voted YES on limiting death penalty appeals. (Apr 1996)
Voted NO on mandatory prison terms for crimes involving firearms. (May 1994)
Voted YES on more penalties for gun & drug violations.
Voted YES on rejecting racial statistics in death penalty appeals. (May 1994)

He is a strong opponent of abortion.

Voted YES on maintaining ban on Military Base Abortions.
Voted YES on banning partial birth abortions.
Voted YES on disallowing overseas military abortions.

Here is his civil rights voting record:

Voted YES on loosening restrictions on cell phone wiretapping
Voted NO on expanding hate crimes to include sexual orientation.
Voted NO on setting aside 10% of highway funds for minorities & women.
Voted YES on ending special funding for minority & women-owned business.
Voted YES on prohibiting same-sex marriage.
Voted NO on prohibiting job discrimination by sexual orientation.
Voted YES on Amendment to prohibit flag burning.
Voted YES on banning affirmative action hiring with federal funds.

His environmental voting record is here.

His record on gun control is here. His immigration record is here.

And as we suspected, his record is not much different than that of his now-nemesis, Trent Lott. To be fair, it's not much different than McConnell's or Frist's either.

Today is the deadline in Attorney General John Ashcroft's controversial immigrant fingerprinting and tracking program. The American Civil Liberties Union "has called on the Justice Department to rethink the plan - which the ACLU says is full of holes - and advised immigrants to seek counsel before registering."

The program requires many citizens of five predominantly Arab or Muslim countries - Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Syria - to be fingerprinted at designated Immigration and Naturalization Service offices or face deportation.

"By January 10, 2003, citizens of 13 additional countries - Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Eritrea, Lebanon, Morocco, North Korea, Oman, Qatar, Somalia, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen - must also submit to registration. "

"Failure to register could lead to arrest and deportation of otherwise lawful visitors, according to the INS. Adding to the anxiety, some Arab and Muslim visitors with pending immigration petitions were detained when they came in to be fingerprinted."

"By all accounts, the INS’s problems are actually stemming from a surplus of information, not insufficient investigatory powers, the ACLU said. For instance, the INS failed to process more than 200,000 change of address forms, which are piling up in an abandoned limestone mine outside Kansas City, MO that doubles as the largest underground records facility in the world, putting hundreds of thousands at risk of wrongful arrest and deportation."

"This program appears to be a thinly veiled effort to trigger massive and discriminatory deportations of certain immigrants whose only mistake will be to fail to register because they are confused and afraid, not because they have violated any existing immigration law or pose any threat to the United States," said Lucas Guttentag, Director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project."

Mike Males, a senior researcher for the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, and sociology professor at UC Santa Cruz takes sharp issue with what he says is police hyperbole over the juvenile crime rate. In Forget the 'Youth Menace': Crime, It Turns Out, Is a Grown-Up Business, Males points out:

"Meanwhile, felony arrests of California teens plunged from 148,000 in 1980 to 106,000 in 2001, topping national declines. Yet, because crime authorities rigidly insist that adults "age out of their crime-prone years" by 30, the graying of America's criminals has gone mostly unnoticed. In 2000, the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention finally broke the official silence: "Juvenile superpredators are more myth than reality," it declared. "The age group with the greatest increase in violent crime arrest rates is persons in their 30s and 40s."

"The middle-aged crime scourge is devastating. Prisons across the United States, especially in California, overflow with aging addicts, burglars, embezzlers and domestic abusers. California -- which spent $1.3 billion in 2001 caging inmates older than 40 -- and the rest of the nation remain woefully unprepared to manage mushrooming numbers of older convicts whose health costs may be staggering."

"Advocates of tougher sentences and cutbacks in prison rehabilitation services failed to anticipate today's murder and violence surge, as tens of thousands ofes are released every year without drug treatment or job prospects."

"Nevertheless, crime and law enforcement authorities continue to repeat the same alarmism that teenagers, particularly dark-skinned ones, augur more crime. Yes, blaming unpopular demographic groups is routine, wins funding and shields policymakers from accountability for ineffective strategies. But crime authorities' elevation of anti-youth prejudice over science and their warping of data to fit ideological ends remain a disservice to California and the nation that can only be termed criminal."

Justice Without Borders is one of a series of articles in the Los Angeles Times about Palestinians and Israelis who defy divisions.

Today's article is about the emergence of a group of Israeli attorneys specializing in human rights. Many of their clients are Palestinians, and they rarely win in court.

"For three decades, Leah Tzemel, an Israeli Jew, has been representing Palestinians in Israeli courts. The people she defends have ranged from terror suspects to refugees to the hapless and sometimes unwitting families of murdering militants."

"Her work and her extreme-left politics make Tzemel one of the most despised women in Israel. She has been accused of treason, physically attacked, and called a "Palestinian-loving whore."

"Despite it all, she continues to fight what is essentially a losing battle, and, in her view, defends the fundamental rights of even those her nation considers the enemy. Tzemel, 57, was the pioneer. Today, an entire cadre of Israeli attorneys has emerged to specialize in human rights and represent Palestinians. Human rights work has gained a modicum of prestige and respect, they say."

"I used to be the 'lawyer of Satan.' Now I'm a 'human rights defender,' " Tzemel said. She didn't change, she says, Israel did....

"Despite their strong beliefs, Tzemel, Sfard and other like-minded attorneys sometimes wonder whether they are doing more harm than good. Are they accomplices of a system that grants the appearance of justice without truly making it available? Are they allowing Israeli society to pay lip service to respect for human rights?"

"I love this place, and I still feel I make a difference, a very small one," Tzemel said. But at some point, she said, the mere act of going to court will be misleading and futile, and create a false sense of fair play. At that point, I will not do this anymore," she said.

There's lots more to the story, and it's quite interesting. (Note, the LA Times requires free registration).

Al Gore announced on 60 minutes tonight that he will not run for President in 2004. You can read the transcript here.

"Gore made his announcement tonight in an interview with CBS's "60 Minutes," saying, "I personally have the energy and drive and ambition to make another campaign but I don't think that it's the right thing for me to do."

Conn. Senator Joe Lieberman, Gore's vice presidential running mate in 2002, has said he is likely to run if Gore declines. Mass. Senator John Kerry and Vermont Governor Howard Dean have also thrown their hats in the ring.

"Senate Democratic Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.), House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) and Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) are actively exploring whether to run."

That's a pretty crowded playing field and it's still early. We'd like to see a more left-leaning Democratic candidate with some libertarian sensibilities get on board. We wish we could think of one.

Update: Katharine Seelye in the New York Times examines Gore's Saturday Night Live Appearance, just one day before his announcement he won't run, looking for signs. What she finds is that Gore is now comfortable with himself and his decision and yes, the signs were there in the show.

Here's more on the wide-open nomination race and who's likely to join the fray.

Politics in the Zeros reports first-hand on the anti-war march in Hollywood yesterday.

Republican Oklahoma Senator Don Nickles, a fiscal and social conservative, became the first to stab Trent Lott in the back today, going on television to say others could do the job of leading Republicans in the Senate better than Lott because Lott has become too weakened.

What a transparent grab for power. Nickles has made it clear that he wanted Lott's job, even before Lott made his racially insensitive comments.

"Lott, however, maintains wide, but not very deep, support and might benefit from the perception that Nickles is trying to exploit the situation for his own political gain."

"Lott has no plans to step down, an aide said, and believes Nickles is exploiting the controversy for his own political gain. The two men have had frosty relations for years, and Nickles considered running against Lott earlier this year. Nickles didn't have the votes, so he brokered a deal with Lott to chair the Budget Committee in the next Congress."

"Senate Republican Conference Chairman Rick Santorum (Pa.) told NBC's "Meet the Press" Lott should remain party leader, and several other GOP senators are rising to Lott's defense. But the future looks bleak for Lott. Senior White House officials say Bush will not defend Lott from a challenge."

Among the possible replacements: Nickles, Rick Santorum (Pa), Sen. Mitch McConnell (Ky.) Chuck Hagel (Neb.) and incoming Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard G. Lugar (Ind.). And maybe Bill Frist (TN).

"Senator Lott knows that he's weakened," McConnell said on ABC's "This Week." "He knows he made a bad mistake. But he's apologized, as I said, on four different occasions. I think we ought to accept the apology and move on."

Here's more on the ouster issue from an earlier Washington Post article today.

The Houston Chronicle reports today that the war on drugs nets small-time offenders.

"Texas' war on drugs punishes few major importers and dealers but imprisons thousands caught with less than a sugar packet full of cocaine or other illegal drugs."

"The battle rages most fiercely in Harris County. Of the 58,000 drug convictions won by local prosecutors over the past five years, 77 percent involved less than a gram of a drug, according to district court data analyzed by the Houston Chronicle. Harris County sent 35,000 of these small-time offenders to jail or prison."

"The numbers suggest that these men and women are collateral damage in the war on drugs, arrested because they were easy targets rather than objects of a grand strategy. The impact is felt most harshly in black neighborhoods."

Death Penalty foes gathered today in Chicago "to draw attention to flaws in the administration of capital punishment and encourage one of the anti-death penalty movement's darlings, Gov. George Ryan."

"Ryan, who in 2000 imposed a moratorium on executions in Illinois, is considering the clemency petitions of more than 140 death row inmates. Forty former death row inmates from around the country spoke briefly about their cases at the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University's law school. Two of the inmates read a letter asking Ryan to grant clemency to all 160 prisoners on death row in Illinois."

"Center director Lawrence Marshall also asked for a blanket clemency, saying Ryan "holds the fate of 160 men and women in his hands." "How do we tell the mother of a death row inmate that we have to kill your son even though we know the system is wrong ... to bring closure to other people?" Marshall asked."

Ryan leaves office in a month. Retired judges have written him , asking him to grant clemency to any death row inmate impacted by the unfair system in Illinois. Families of the victims want him to deny clemency.

We doubt Ryan will grant blanket clemency to all on Death Row, as he has said he will not. Instead, he has said he will take a hard look at each case individually. We would prefer a blanket commutation. As the New York Times opined a few months ago:

"Governor Ryan, who has made fairness in administering the death penalty a hallmark of his governorship, will end his tenure on a high note if he takes one last stand for justice and issues a blanket commutation."

We hope he at least takes the retired judges' advice, and commutes the death sentence to one of life without for any death row prisoner who didn't get a fair trial or sentencing hearing, is retarded, was a juvenile at the time of the offense, was a minor player in the offense, or may be factually innocent of the crime.

Ryan has faced political pressure on the issue before and has always chosen to stand up for what he knows is right. We don't expect any less of him this time.

Nick Bergamo, a college student in LA got a DUI. He gave a blood test, and the results came out at twice the legal limit. But Bergamo knew he hadn't been driving under the influence. He got a lawyer, not just any law firm, but that of Lawrence Taylor, one of the foremost DUI gurus in the country. Turns out, the LAPD botched the test by mixing up his blood sample with someone else's. The case got dismissed.

So if you get a DUI in LA this holiday season, or really, anywhere, make sure your lawyer re-tests the sample.

"With the stakes so high, Bergamo's parents sought out the law offices of Lawrence Taylor, a firm that deals exclusively with DUI cases. Lawyers in that firm automatically retest blood samples tested by the police."

"Taylor, who has written books on the subject of DUIs, said test results from police labs are often unreliable. Sometimes the equipment is not calibrated correctly, he said, or sometimes police put too much or too little of a blood preservative in the sample, which can affect results."

"I'm not a real big fan of crime labs and their criminalists. They're clueless. But most attorneys know less, and that's why they can get by," said Taylor.

"In Bergamo's case, the test results from the LAPD showed that the blood alcohol level in the sample was 0.148. When Taylor's lab performed the test, the results were 0.13. For Bergamo, even the retested results seemed impossible. His attorney then conducted a blood-typing test to determine whether it was Bergamo's blood. That test failed to exclude him as a possible donor."

"The young man, however, was insistent that a mistake had been made. A DNA test was his last hope to prove it. His parents agreed to pay the additional expense of such a test, which runs about $1,200."

"The results finally cleared Bergamo. A judge earlier this month dismissed the case and made a factual finding of innocence on his behalf."

"Since the dismissal, word of Bergamo's case has spread among local defense attorneys in court hallways and legal chat rooms on the Internet."

"DUI practitioners dealing with blood analysis should be aware that crime labs continue to fail in their chain-of-custody record keeping," Taylor warned other lawyers in a recent e-mail message. "And the LAPD apparently remains a prime culprit."

We're spreading the word even further. Thanks to Ann Salisbury of Two Tears in a Bucket for sending us the link to the article.

There will be DUI checkpoints and lots of arrests this holiday season. If you want to brush up on the law and defenses relative to Driving under the Influence, check out our sister site CrimeLynx which has a section devoted to drunk driving defense here.

We rarely defend DUI cases, so please don't take this as a solicitation for our legal services. This is merely a public service announcement.

President Bush has set his sights on changing the ideological balance on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, the most influential appeals court in the nation.

Bush plans to add two judges to the court in the next few months. Vacancies have existed for years, but the Republicans precluded Clinton from making appointments claiming there wasn't enough of a workload to justify more judges.

Now that the Republicans have control of the Senate, they are abandoning that position, and Bush is going to nominate the 12th and 13 judges to the Court.

"The nominations, together with those of two conservative Washington lawyers chosen by the White House last year, give Bush an opportunity to tilt the ideological balance of a court that is surpassed in influence only by the Supreme Court."

"The last two seats on the D.C. Circuit have been empty -- one of them for more than a decade -- because Senate Republicans repeatedly through the 1990s blocked efforts by President Bill Clinton to fill them by contending that the judges would be a waste of taxpayers' money."

"A White House official said Bush considers filling those seats to be part of a revised selection method the president announced this fall to try to accelerate the placement of judges on the federal bench."

This is totally disingenous. Why doesn't he come out and tell the truth, that he's in power and so is his party, and he's going to use that power to overload the federal courts in this country with ultra-conservatives who will be on the bench for the rest of their lifetimes, perhaps 30 years or more, and the rest of us just have to eat it. And that he intends for this to be his legacy.

Read your copies of the Constitution now. Five years from now, although the words may be the same, they most likely won't mean the same thing.

The Dec. 23 issue of U.S. News and World Reports takes a look at LA Police Chief Bill Bratton and the job ahead of him. The article notes how well his policies worked in New York and asks whether the same policies will work in LA or whether his script will read differently in the City of Angels?

In other Bratton news, the Chief is considering hiring ABC's John Miller--not as a public relations spokesman which many expected, but as an advisor on homeland security.

We spoke with Miller at Bratton's swearing in late October about whether he'd leave 20/20 to work with Bratton again, and he said, "I'm always up for an adventure."

"As a newsman, he is best-known for a 1998 interview in which Osama bin Laden threatened to launch attacks on U.S. civilians. A high level source at ABC News, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed that Miller was considering an offer to join the LAPD. "We know that John has spoken with the chief about the job and we have given him our blessing," the source said."

Bratton and Miller make a good combo and we bet its a done deal with just the details being ironed out.