We were driving home from court in the mountains yesterday and had the chance to catch Trent Lott's news conference live and listen to the analysis on PBS's All Things Considered. We were interested in the Republican reaction to his statements, as that will be what determines his fate. Bill Kristol, a conservative and Editor of the Weekly Standard and EJ Dionne from the Washington Post were the guest commentators. Here's some of what they said (from the transcript, available on Lexis):

"In the studio with us now to talk more about both Henry Kissinger resigning and Trent Lott not resigning are Bill Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, and E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post. Let's start first with the news conference Senator Lott held this afternoon in Mississippi.

Bill Kristol, we heard Trent Lott apologize yet again for his remarks about Strom Thurmond. Will it be enough to allow him to keep his job?

Mr. BILL KRISTOL (The Weekly Standard): I'm not sure. It really depends on whether his colleagues want him to be majority leader, to be Republican leader of the Senate for the next two years. Again, no one has really called on him to resign as senator from Mississippi. Lott, I think, is alighting the differences between resigning as senator and serving as Republican leader. My sense from talking to Republicans on the Hill is they would prefer to have another leader. My sense from talking to people in the White House is that they would prefer to have someone else of the 51 Republican senators be the Republican leader for the next couple of years. The question is: Will the White House push Lott hard? Will the White House help encourage another Republican senator to stand forward and offer himself as an alternative to Lott, or at least another Republican senator to step forward and say, 'Senator Lott must go.'

Mr. E.J. DIONNE (The Washington Post; The Brookings Institution): Well, first of all, Bill is right. This is all in the hands of the Republican Party and, indeed, to a large degree this has been driven by criticism from Republicans. I think the strongest group in favor of Lott remaining are Democrats, who would like to have him around as leader for a couple of years after all of this.

In my conversations today, you know, Republicans were talking about what a great leader somebody like Bill Frist of Tennessee might make. There are Republicans who are very partisan toward Don Nickles. The problem is none of these people can be the people who push Trent Lott out. And there's a real question of whether there are senators who will take the chance of being the first to push him out and then having a coup fail. You can never try to kill the king unless you succeed, in the old expression.

We found an excellent left-leaning, free news aggregator called The President Evil News Portal. You can select your publications from a great variety of choices, in the U.S. and abroad, and it will return the current news headlines, most with descriptions of the articles, all on one page. It even includes TalkLeft's blog postings as an option.

Other news aggregators we like are What Really Happened and re-broadcaster Take Back the Media.

And of course we want to mention TalkLeft's own newsfeed which we create manually and update at least once a day. It's on the left hand side of the TalkLeft home page.

Dwight Meredith is taking nominations for the "Koufax Award" for best left of center blogging in various categories. Check out Body and Soul's nominations, they are top notch. And we'd say that even if we weren't on Jeanne's list.

From LA Weekly, The Terror War on Drugs.

Sad personal stories, but people should know about them. For more on efforts to change the irrational, ill-advised, unjust, discriminatory drug law penalties in the U.S., take a visit over to FAMM (Families Against Mandatory Minimums) and acquaint yourself with their terrific work.

Pass the word on the good news this week: The Michigan Legislature has repealed that state's draconian mandatory minimum drug sentences:

"A bipartisan majority of the Michigan Senate today passed a historic package of three sentencing reform bills – HB 5394 (H-3), HB 5395 (H-2) and HB 6510 (H-1) – that eliminate most of the state’s Draconian mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses. Governor John Engler is expected to sign the bills"

Here is FAMM's fact sheet on the Michigan laws.

The International Herald Tribune last week featured an article and poll on the rising anti-American tide as demonstated by a survey of global citizens' attitudes to themselves and the world. The poll was conducted by the non-partisan Pew research center in Washington.

"Despite an initial outpouring of public sympathy for America following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, discontent with the United States has grown around the world over the past two years. Images of the U.S. have been tarnished in all types of nations: among longtime NATO allies, in developing countries, in Eastern Europe and, most dramatically, in Muslim societies."

"Since 2000, favorability ratings for the U.S. have fallen in 19 of the 27 countries where trend benchmarks are available. While criticism of America is on the rise, however, a reserve of goodwill toward the United States still remains. The Pew Global Attitudes survey finds that the U.S. and its citizens continue to be rated positively by majorities in 35 of the 42 countries in which the question was asked. True dislike, if not hatred, of America is concentrated in the Muslim nations of the Middle East and in Central Asia, today’s areas of greatest conflict."

"The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States drew widespread sympathy abroad. But as the survey shows, that sympathy has dwindled in the publics of several countries, testing even the support of traditional allies. Huge majorities in France and Germany, as well as Russia, oppose the use of force to depose President Saddam Hussein of Iraq."

"Even as Washington has inaugurated a global campaign to improve its image in Muslim countries in hopes of eroding support for terrorism, the poll found substantial support in many Muslim countries for the notion that violence is justifiable in defense of Islam."

"Madeleine Albright, the former U.S. secretary of state, called that result ‘‘absolutely stunning’’ and ‘‘very difficult to absorb.’’ Albright, who chairs the Pew Global Attitudes Project, said that ‘‘clearly, an awful lot of work needs to be done for us to understand Islam, and for Muslim nations to understand what we’re about.’’

"The notion of justifiable violence found the lowest level of support among the Muslims of Tanzania, Turkey and Uzbekistan, all below 20 percent."

South Africa has agreed to extradite former SLA member and long time South Africa resident and teacher James Kilgore to the U.S. to answer to charges of murder and bank robbery pending in California. Kilgore has been a fugitive for some 27 years.

Four of the other charged former SLA (Symbionese Liberation Army) members, including Sara Jane Olson, formerly Kathleen Soliah, pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of second-degree murder in the bank-robbery case. The plea bargain avoided possible sentences of life in prison, if they were convicted at trial.They will be sentenced in February and are expected to receive six to eight year prison terms.

"The same deal was offered to Kilgore, 55, who admitted his true identity and did not resist arrest. His lawyer, Michael Evans, said last month Kilgore had agreed to a plea bargain on the murder and robbery charges."

A spokesperson for Justice Minister Penuell Maduna said the deal was a key factor in agreeing to the extradition.

Update on our post about an Oregon judge invalidating a gargage search under the Oregon state constitution: (from the comments section of the post):

"Knowing this particular officer, and as a Medically Retired Officer from the same Bureau, I am very glad that Judge Maurer made the correct decision in this case."

"What wasn't printed in this article, nor in any others was the fact that the police actually "stole" her garbage can from her own property, NOT from the public right of way. The Drugs and Vice Officers that testified during the pre-trial motion hearing not only contradicted each other, but they contradicted themselves!"

"All of the drug tests came back negative. The DNA tests conducted on the "snort" straws proved that Hoesly's DNA was NOT on the straws."

"It's amazing that they can actually obtain a search warrant based on someone's unsubstantiated word, and an illegal garbage pull (of which anyone, including the police, could have planted objects inside)."

The blog is "Statutory Construction Zone" focusing on recent federal statutory-construction cases. Currently, it covers the Supreme Court, D.C. Circuit, Federal Circuit, Second Circuit, and Fourth Circuit. Each installment includes case summaries, quotations from statutory construction treatises, a law review article recommendation, and a pre-1789 English common law trivia question.

Author-Lawyer Gary O'Connor's goal for the blog is to allow people to keep up with current federal statutory-construction case law (what statutes are being construed, which arguments judges are accepting or using, etc.). Gary says that as far as he knows, there are no similar web sites or regular columns in legal publications focusing on current federal statutory-construction cases.

We hope Gary soon adds the circuits where there is a new Bush appointee sitting --like the Tenth Circuit where Michael McConnell is on board--so we can all track their views on statutory construction.

Thanks, Gary for the valuable addition to the legal blogosphere.

Good reading Saturday:

The Selective Conscience by New York Times op-ed columnist Bill Keller.

"Why, aside from their roots in the Vietnam antiwar movement, are human rights activists not more open to the idea that America can use its unmatched muscle for good? In large part because Republican administrations — in truth, Democratic ones as well — have paid human rights little more than lip service, and little even of that."

"The Bush administration's enthusiasm for human rights would be more believable if it were less selectively applied...."

"Finally, promoting freedom abroad will ring a little false as long as the administration is so often, so instinctively, scornful of freedom at home. The automatic recourse to preventive lockup, the lack of confidence in the criminal justice system, the casual regard for privacy and presumption of innocence, the obsessive secrecy — you don't have to be a libertarian to wonder how dearly this administration cherishes the values it promises to export."

The Death of Operation Tips by Nat Hentoff, Village Voice

Reflecting on how little media coverage there was of the provision in the Homeland Security Act that killed Operation Tips.

"Section 880. Prohibition of the Terrorism Information and Prevention System—Any and all activities of the Federal Government to implement the proposed component program of the Citizen Corps known as Operation TIPS (Terrorism Information and Prevention System) are hereby prohibited." (Emphasis added.)

Apparently, Dick Armey was successful in having Tips removed from the House version of the Homeland Security Bill, but Sen. Joseph Leiberman refused Sen. Patrick Leahy's request to remove it from the Senate version. After the bill was passed, Leahy issued this statement, which Hentoff says was ignored by the media:

"I am pleased the bill, in section 880, forbids the creation of Operation TIPS." Leahy noted that originally, the Justice Department had described the operation as "giving millions of American truckers, letter carriers, train conductors, ship captains, utility employees, and others a formal way to report suspicious . . . activity." Or, as the department's Web site put it, "potentially terrorist-related activity."

"If it hadn't been for Dick Armey, Operation TIPS would be well under way. Before the Senate passed the House version of the Homeland Security Bill, I called John Ashcroft's office and asked when the attorney general would honor Armey's principled removal of Operation TIPS from the House bill. I was told cheerily by an Ashcroft spokeswoman that "Operation TIPS is still a law, and we're going right ahead with it."

"Recently, a source inside the Justice Department told me that—contrary to what I originally wrote in this column—Operation TIPS not only wasn't Ashcroft's idea, but he was uncomfortable with the project. Being a team player, he never criticized this national-spying-corps plan publicly."

Hentoff then goes on to praise Ashcroft's prior history as a privacy protector, something we reported on here, although to us, it did not indicate that Ashcroft used to be a civil libertarian so much as he had done a politically expedient flip-flop.

In any event, Hentoff is now justifiably focused on Poindexter and the Total Information Awareness Program.

"Meanwhile, as described by Robert O'Harrow Jr. in the November 12 Washington Post, the emblem in Admiral Poindexter's Total Information Awareness office is a variation on the great seal of the United States: "An eye looms over a pyramid and appears to scan the world. The motto reads: Scientia Est Potentia, or 'knowledge is power.' "

Here are some reactions to Sen. Trent Lott's Apology today.

"In a direct affront to the federal government, the Santa Cruz City Council voted unanimously this week to deputize Mike and Valerie Corral, co-founders of the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana, and authorized them under city law to cultivate, distribute and possess marijuana for medicinal purposes."

"We're just trying to give them a little bit more support and legitimacy," Vice Mayor Scott Kennedy said Thursday. "We don't support drug trafficking. We don't support marijuana. But we do support what they're doing for the terminally ill and terribly suffering."

"Kennedy said the Corrals stand apart from other medical marijuana providers in Santa Cruz because their program has taken greater pains to cater only to the very ill who come bearing recommendations from doctors."

"They're very conscientious, very impressive in terms of their integrity," he said. "They enjoy a high level of confidence, both in the medical and law enforcement community, which can't be said about any of the other medical marijuana distributors."

"But city officials worry most about the patients, Kennedy said, and the possibility that they would be stripped of needed medicinal relief if the dispensary were shut down."

For more about the raid on the Corral's dispensary, go here, here and here.

The Colorado Supreme Court will allow ABC to eavesdrop on Colorado trials.

"The Colorado Supreme Court has granted ABC News unprecedented media access to the workings of Colorado criminal trials, including jury deliberations."

"In the next few months, ABC's "State v." program hopes to begin filming as many as six Colorado criminal cases that will be aired up to a year after juries return their verdicts. "State v." is a television program that offers a behind- the-scenes look at actual criminal cases from trial preparation through the final verdict."

"The state high court has given "State v." permission to go behind the scenes and film testimony, jury reaction, jury deliberations, and discussions of trial strategy by prosecutors and defense attorneys."

All participants appear very excited about this idea--except for Colorado's Public Defender, David Kaplan, who says his office will not participate.

"My bottom line to them was that I did not see the potential benefit to our representation from allowing them to do it. And my gut reaction is if there is a potential to compromise our effective representation, then the rule should be, 'Don't go there,"' Kaplan said.

"He is concerned about the attorney-client privilege that exists between his lawyers and the accused. Lawyers need a relationship with clients and witnesses that maximizes candor and decreases awkwardness, he said."

Admittedly, we haven't seen the predecessor shows, filmed in Arizona, which even Kaplan praises, but we aren't keen on the idea. We laid out our concerns last week on a similar proposal by Frontline to film an entire trial, including jury deliberations, in a capital case in Texas.

The Colorado project will require assent by the defendant as well as his or her lawyer. In addition, prosecutors, victims, jurors and judges will have to agree. We understand why the Court is in favor of it-- for public education purposes--but like Kaplan, we fail to see the benefit to the defense--particularly of allowing camera access to private attorney-client conversations and strategy sessions.

Update: This editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle, To Peer Inside the Jury Room, also opposes cameras in the jury room. And don't miss this poignant commentary by a former juror who says cameras in the jury room during the deliberations in his case would have prevented the jury's guilty verdict.