The Denver Post reports on today's court hearing in the ballot counting case over the new House seat in Colorado, being fought over by Democrat Mike Feeley and Republican Bob Beauprez. Upshot: Feeley wants all the provisional ballots counted and the Judge may rule Wednesday.

Meanwhile, columnist Mike Littwin has a good synopsis of the ballot issues in the lawsuit:

"It's a two-part problem. You start with provisional ballots. These are ballots for people who, for one reason or another, couldn't use a regular ballot, usually because of a registration mix-up. And these ballots are put aside for later counting, which would be, say, now."

"Then you go to the newly formed 7th District, which is spread over three counties. In two counties - Adams and Arapahoe - they followed the state-advised procedure, which was to ask voters to check a box saying why they needed a provisional ballot."

"In Jefferson County, because it's Jefferson County, they went their own way - offering provisional voters a box-free, check-free ballot. No one knows why."

"Once she saw the discrepancy, Davidson ruled all eligible provisional ballots in check-free Jefferson County would be counted - because the voter shouldn't be penalized for the county's mistake. And she ruled that some unchecked ballots in Adams and Arapahoe would be discarded, because an unchecked ballot meant it was the voter's mistake."

"You can see the problem. So, it turns out, could the lawyers. Unlike Florida, this is not a recount. The provisional votes haven't been counted at all. Feeley is trying to get the rules straight before this turns into Florida. And he's trying to get it straight because he's 386 votes behind."

The Democratic-sought amendment to the Homeland Security Bill failed today, much to the delight of Republicans. The bill is now final and appears destined for passage, even in this still democratically-controlled Senate.

"The Senate voted 52-47 to reject an amendment that would have removed from the bill seven provisions that Democrats said were favors to friends of Republicans. The president and his key advisers actively lobbied wavering senators to defeat the amendment, saying its approval could doom passage of the bill this year."

According to Bush's plan, the new agency will combine 170,000 federal workers from 22 existing agencies. It will be " the biggest federal government reorganization since Harry Truman created the Defense Department in 1947."

The bill is H.R. 5005 and you can read the text of it here.The bill creates a new cabinet position to deal with terrorism. Most democrats supported the idea of a new agency, but objected to last minute additions that favored big business, such as one which granted immunity to pharmaceutical companies for side-effects caused by their vaccines.

Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., leading opponent of the legislation, said, "It's the Senate's last chance to show the American people that we are serious about placing some controls on this massive new bureaucracy."

Here is our post on how a last minute addition could bring life in prison to hackers.

We are also dismayed that the Total Information Awareness program (TIA), a creation of retired rear Admiral John Poindexter, is still in the bill. The program, invented by John Poindexter, a rear admiral with a less than sterling record, would create a huge national database of all our personal records, from banking to credit card purchases and more. Poindexter justifies the program as a national security enhancement. We call it an assault on civil liberties.

You can read about the protest letter sent by 30 civil rights organizations to the Senate this week here. A quote from the letter:

"TIA will collect and mine vast amounts of information on the American public, including telephone records, bank records, medical records, and educational and travel data. TIA also proposes to connect with a massive system of biometric identification. There are no systems of oversight or accountability contemplated in the TIA project. DARPA itself has resisted lawful requests for information about the program pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act."

"We urge you to act immediately to stop the development of this unconstitutional system of public surveillance."

U.S. to Target Drugged Drivers

"Expanding beyond efforts to improve highway safety by cracking down on drunken driving, federal officials said Tuesday they will target motorists who drive under the influence of illegal drugs."

"The campaign includes a series of public service announcements to warn motorists of the dangers of taking drugs and then driving, and a program to train police officers to identify motorists who drive under the influence of drugs."

Looks like it might be time to get a TIVO to block out commercials. If Ashcroft gets any busier on the drug front, we may not even have time to blog.

Bernard Webster served over twenty years for a rape he didn't commit.

Bernard Webster is the third person in Maryland and the 115th nationwide to have a conviction overturned by DNA evidence, according to the nonprofit Innocence Project in New York City.

"Webster was 19 when a 47-year-old teacher identified him as the man who broke into her home and raped her in 1982." The recent DNA testing pointed to another man, Daniel Powell, who was arrested for the crime as he walked to work this morning.

"Webster's lawyers said he wasn't entitled to compensation from the state for his time in prison, and he has no family, friends, job or home. He had been scheduled for release in February."

"Two Baltimore-area state senators have pledged that if neither the governor nor the governor-elect takes steps to compensate him, they will push for a bill that pays him for his time behind bars."

One more time, this is why we need Congress and every state to pass the Innocence Protection Act.

Daily Kos lists the pros and cons of each of the known Democratic contenders for the 2004 presidential race, and ranks them.

Votelaw has all the current news on the lawsuit brought by the Colorado Democratic party over the counting of ballots in the congressional race between Democrat Mike Feeley and Republican Bob Beauprez. The election is for a seat in the newly created 7th Judicial district in Colorado.

Ed of Votelaw also reports "The Washington Post headline, In Denver Recount, Reaching for a Precedent, incorrectly describes this as a "recount," when it is actually a first count of the provisional ballots. Provisional ballots are those cast by people who are not on the voter list in the precinct. They may cast a provisional ballot, which will be counted only when it is shown that they are eligible."

Feeley says different standards are being used to determine the validity of the provisional ballots in the various counties that make up the new 7th District. The election results were due out today but they will be delayed due to the lawsuit. A court hearing is scheduled for 1:30 pm this afternoon.

Found today over at Cursor

"Tom Petty vents in Rolling Stone about what's wrong with the music industry and why television is worse: "I think watching the TV news is bad for you. It is bad for your physical health and your mental health. The music business looks like innocent schoolboys compared to the TV business."

A new Czech study finds that marijuana use may ease Parkinson's Disease symptoms:

"Nearly half of Parkinson's disease patients who have tried marijuana say the drug helped relieve their symptoms, according to a survey of patients with the degenerative neurological disorder. Dr. Evzin Ruzicka, an attending neurologist at Charles University in Prague in the Czech Republic, reported the findings here at the Movement Disorders Society's Seventh International Congress of Parkinson's Disease and Movement Disorders. Ruzicka is also a consultant at the Prague Movement Disorders Center. "

"Daily marijuana users reported more improvement in their dyskinesias than those using it less often. The investigators speculated that the effect of cannabis on Parkinson's disease symptoms may be due to interaction among cannabis, certain brain receptors that respond to cannabis and endogenous cannabinoids or cannabis-like substances within the body."

A New York Times editorial today entitled A Green Light to Spy nicely makes the case against the FISA Appeals Court ruling allowing expanded wiretapping powers:

"The court's sessions are held in secret, and the government is the only party allowed to appear before it. The members of the court are hand-picked by Chief Justice William Rehnquist. Ignoring the diversity of views on the federal bench, he selected three judges appointed by President Ronald Reagan. The combination of one-sided arguments and one-sided judges hardly instills confidence in the court's decisions."

"More disturbing, though, is the court's substantive decision and the way the Justice Department is interpreting it. The decision gives the government a green light to remove the separation that has long existed between officials conducting surveillance on suspected foreign agents and criminal prosecutors investigating crimes. Attorney General John Ashcroft has announced that he intends to use it to sharply increase the number of domestic wiretaps, and that he will add lawyers at the F.B.I. and at federal prosecutors' offices around the country to hurry the process along."

"The Supreme Court should step in to restore the lower court's ruling, and Congress should redraft its statutes to clear up any confusion about what the law requires. One of the biggest challenges the nation faces is fighting foreign enemies without sacrificing civil liberties at home. Yesterday's ruling failed to rise to that challenge."

We also recommend The United States of Surveillance by the ACLU: "As of today the Attorney General can suspend the ordinary requirements of the Fourth Amendment in order to listen in on phone calls, read e-mails, and conduct secret searches of Americans' homes and offices."

The opinion, available here , is 54 pages long. Excerpts can be read here.

"The Justice Department argued before a federal appeals panel today that disclosing the names of hundreds of people arrested on immigration charges after the September 2001 attacks would help terrorists of Al Qaeda figure out how the government was conducting its antiterrorist campaign."

At issue was U.S. District Court Judge Gladys Kessler's ruling in August that "the minimum requirements of democracy obliged the government to disclose who it arrested." The lawsuit was brought by "a broad coalition of civil liberties groups challenging the government's refusal to release the names of those arrested for immigration violations as part of the terrorism investigation."

You can read Judge Kessler's 45 page opinion here.

Thirty civil rights groups today wrote an open letter to the Senate urging Senators Thomas Daschle (D-SD) and Trent Lott (R-MS) to amend the Homeland Security Act to stop further development of the Total Information Awareness (TIA) program.

The letter says, in part:

"According to DARPA's own documents, TIA will collect and mine vast amounts of information on the American public, including telephone records, bank records, medical records, and educational and travel data. TIA also proposes to connect with a massive system of biometric identification."

"There are no systems of oversight or accountability contemplated in the TIA project. DARPA itself has resisted lawful requests for information about the program pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act."

"Newspapers across the country have blasted the Department of Defense surveillance system. The New York Times said today that "Congress should shut down the program pending a thorough investigation." Earlier the Washington Post wrote, "the defense secretary should appoint an outside committee to oversee it before it proceeds."

For more, check out EPIC's Total Information Awareness Page.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has rejected a challenge by Guantanamo detainees filed months ago by a coalition of lawyers, professors and clergy on their behalf. The suit argued that the detainees' prolonged detention violated the due process clause of the U.S. Constitution.

The Court ruled the coalition of "needed to have a preexisting relationship with the detainees or show the prisoners had limited mental or physical capacity that rendered them unable to argue their own case."

The full text of the opininion is available here. A member of the coalition said today it may request a rehearing by the full 9th Circuit panel.