James Gandolfini, forever loved as Tony Soprano, died today at age 51 while on vacation in Rome. The cause of death has not been released, but the LA Times reports he may have suffered a heart attack or a stroke. [Added: The Daily News reports he suffered a massive heart attack.)

What a shock, and how sad. Our condolences to his family and friends.

It's hard to find time to work, follow the Zimmerman trial, and read the news and blog on other topics. Since I have to choose, I'm giving up on "blogging on other topics" for the day.

Here's an open thread, all topics welcome.

Voir Dire of 40 prospective jurors is underway. The jurors, identified only by number, and whose faces are shielded from the cameras, are being questioned as a group.

In the first round, the questioning was limited to exposure to pre-trial publicity and whether sequestration would be a hardship. In this round, the juror's opinions and experiences on a variety of topics relevant to the case will be explored.

The goal during jury selection, from a defense standpoint, is to try to identify the most dangerous or biased jurors, not the best jurors. It is more a process of de-selection. [More...]

Round 1 of jury selection in the George Zimmerman case has concluded with 40 potential jurors passing for cause on the issue of pre-trial publicity.

They are: B12 B29 B76 B7 B35 B37 B51 B86 E6 E40 E44 E73 M75 B61 B72 E22 E13 E28 K80 K95 P67 G14 G29 G47 G63 G66 G81 H6 H7 H18 H29 H35 H81 H69 H86 I5 I19 I24 I33 I44

The defense accepted the group, but Mark O'Mara made it clear he had objected to some but was overruled.

Round 2 begins tomorrow. 30 jurors will be questioned in a group. This will include all other topics. Court will break tomorrow at 3:45 to get ready for the state's rebuttal witness (Tom Owen) in the Frye hearing on whether to admit the testimony of the state's voice/speaker identification experts.

Big immigration news day: The Supreme Court strikes down Arizona's law requiring additional proof of citizenship for voter registration, and ICE raids and seizes 14 East Coast 7-Eleven stores .

On the Supreme Court Case, the court held

The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 trumps Arizona’s Proposition 200. The federal law “precludes Arizona from requiring a federal form applicant to submit information beyond that required by the form itself,” Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the majority.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

The Guardian disclosed more information from Edward Snowden today. The U.S. and U.K. spied on their allies at the G-20 summit in 2009, by intercepting telephone lines and email.

Foreign politicians and officials who took part in two G20 summit meetings in London in 2009 had their computers monitored and their phone calls intercepted on the instructions of their British government hosts, according to documents seen by the Guardian. Some delegates were tricked into using internet cafes which had been set up by British intelligence agencies to read their email traffic.

The judge in the Aurora Theater shooting case of James Holmes wrote in an order yesterday that 3,500 prospective jurors may be called for his trial. The order, which grants the defense request for a questionnaire to be submitted to jurors in advance of trial, is here.

He noted that the Prosecution had not yet responded to the request, but even if they did and opposed it, he'd use a questionnaire anyway. [More...]

Dick Cheney came out of the woodwork today to defend warrantless NSA surveillance.

The former No. 2 in the Bush administration defended the NSA's ability to monitor phone and email data, and labeled as a "traitor" the analyst who has admitted to having leaked details about the classified program.

He's concerned Edward Snowden will become a Chinese spy. Same old Cheney. Defending our rights under the Constitution was never his strong suit.

I've been writing the next "chapter" of what I call the "DEA's Most Excellent African Adventures" for days but keep getting pulled in by databases I run across while trying to connect more dots. Some I've used for a while, but others are new to me.

If you are interested in world wide drug busts and seizures, here are a few that can suck up a weekend of reading time (they are updated daily and you can set your own search terms):

• InfoPig (cocaine, drugs, seizures)
• Global Drug Interdiction Map (scroll down for running list of busts)

For free federal and many state court decisions, check out CourtListener. It's an academic, open source project with more than 800,000 opinions, with internal hyperlinks to other cases. It's searchable by keywords, names, dates and court. In addition to all federal circuit opinions, here is the list of other federal and state court opinions that are included. It's updated daily. [More....]

The Government has agreed to let Facebook and other web companies publish some details about the number of surveillance requests it has received.

Facebook has already posted their numbers. For the last six months of 2012, it received between 9,000 and 10,000 requests for user data pertaining to 18,000 to 19,000 of user accounts. This includes requests from all government entities in the U.S. (local, state, and federal, and including criminal and national security-related requests)

Here is Facebook's statement on the release. What's allowed to be disclosed: [More...]

TalkLeft turns 11 years old today. Wow. The time has just flown by. I wonder if I would have began this endeavor if I knew then I would be writing every day for the next 11 years.

While it's only natural that we ebb and flow, we still work really hard at keeping you up to date with the latest news on politics, crime, and injustice, tracking down actual court and legislative documents so you can read them yourselves -- and making sure the conversation stays civil by weeding out the blog-cloggers and drive-bys who try to hijack or dominate the discussion or insult our commenters. [More...]

The Judge in the George Zimmerman trial just announced the jury will be sequestered. She said the parties have stipulated the trial will last 2 to 4 weeks.

You can watch a live feed of proceedings here.