"On Monday, a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit will hear arguments over the legality of Yaser Hamdi's detention.Mr. Hamdi's case appears to be the first in modern American jurisprudence in which an American citizen has been indefinitely detained without charges and without access to a lawyer. As such, it is emerging as the test case for whether the courts, and possibly the United States Supreme Court, will allow such detentions."

Hady Hassan Omar was held without charges for 73 days in the wake of September 11. He is suing the Federal Government. .

"No one knows exactly how many young Muslim men were rounded up in the aftermath of 9/11. As of November of last year, when federal authorities stopped issuing information on the subject, the tally was 1,147. What is known is that thus far, of those initial 1,147 arrests, only 3 have resulted in terrorism-related indictments, and more than 400 people have been deported following lengthy internment periods and closed hearings. At issue is the key question lawmakers have been grappling with since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon: just how far can America go to protect itself, both at home and abroad?"

"...as time passes since the trauma of Sept. 11, the cost to individual rights is beginning to come into focus. David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor, argues that ''the policy of keeping people in jail until the F.B.I. clears them is essentially 'guilty until proven innocent.' Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, agrees. ''It's fundamentally un-American,'' he says. ''What's most troubling is that the American public is being kept in the dark about what is being done in the name of the war on terror.'' The A.C.L.U. has sued under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain the names of some of the detainees."

"In New York, a class-action suit filed in April on behalf of at least 87 detainees, separate from the A.C.L.U. suit, accuses the Justice Department of wholesale violations of the constitutional rights to which both American citizens and noncitizens in the United States are entitled. Several rulings by federal judges over the past few months indicate that the detainees could get a sympathetic hearing."

This is a long article in today's New York Times Magazine with an in-depth look at the issue, using the case of Omar as an example. It's well worth reading.

It's official. William Bratton is the Police Chief of Los Angeles. According to the Los Angeles Times, he comes in swinging:

"There's an enormous amount that can be done here, an enormous amount that needs to be done," Bratton said. Among his concerns: "The organizational chart currently makes no sense ....[It] looks like it was put together by three blind men.... The department is not strategically engaged in fighting crime.... We have 9,000 officers smiling and waving as they drive around in their cars." He said he expects to make "extraordinarily sweeping" changes."

Mayor James Hahn "said he supports the new chief's commitment to overhauling the Police Department and will let him make the changes he believes are necessary. "I have complete confidence in Bill Bratton," the mayor said."

A public swearing-in ceremony for Bratton, called the Changing of the Guard, will take place at 11 a.m. Monday on the training field at the Los Angeles Police Academy in Elysian Park.

We'll be there. And at the reception Monday evening. We're a little nervous about being around so many men in blue. Encountering even one or two anywhere besides a jail or courtroom is enough to rattle us, and the swearing in and reception will be filled with hundreds if not thousands. But we're going anyway.

[If you haven't been following our coverage of the LA Police Chief selection process, here's why: Bratton's wife, Court TV anchor and former criminal defense attorney Rikki Klieman, is our good pal and we like Bill.]

We'll report all noteworthy details here.

Ex-Sony Pictures Entertainment boss Peter Guber has been selected as a member of Winona Ryder's Jury. Sony oversaw production of three of her movies.

Ryder is charged with grand theft, burglary and vandalism, arising from her arrest for allegedly shoplifting approximately $6,000.00 in merchandise from the Saks Fifth Avenue store in Beverly Hills. She pleaded innocent and on Friday, the jury of six men and six women were selected. A programming development executive for an entertainment company and the husband of a Disney Co. executive are also on the jury. Neither the prosecution nor the defense exercised one of their challenges to them.

Ryder's attorney is Mark Geragos. Geragos did a great job for Susan McDougal (Whitewater case) and also represents Gary Condit. The trial is taking place in Beverly Hills. The judge told the jury they may not shop at or visit Saks until the trial is over.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune has built a comprehensive web page on the death of Paul Wellstone. It has everything, go take a look, it's pretty impressive.

Noelle Bush was released from jail Saturday and returned to the court-ordered treatment center.

Democratic Party officials are saying that Walter Mondale will step in and run for Sen. Paul Wellstone's senate seat.

Here's a recap of Saturday's anti-war protests :

"Tens of thousands of anti-war protesters circled the White House on Saturday after Jesse Jackson and other speakers denounced the Bush administration's Iraq policies and demanded a revolt at the ballot box to promote peace. The protest coincided with anti-war demonstrations from Augusta, Maine, to San Francisco and abroad from Rome and Berlin to Tokyo to San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Mexico City."

Protest organizers said 20,000 people showed up to protest in Washington and they stretched five blocks from the White House. Other media organizations have put the number between 80,000 and 100,000.

On the international scene, "In Berlin, an estimated 8,000 people, brandishing placards that declared "War on the imperialist war," converged on the downtown Alexanderplatz and marched past the German Foreign Ministry. Another 1,500 showed up in Frankfurt, 500 in Hamburg. Another 1,500 rain-soaked demonstrators gathered under umbrellas outside the U.S. Embassy in Copenhagen, Denmark. More than 1,000 marched in Stockholm, Sweden. "

My DD has the latest on the top 10 senate races that are still in play.

I updated Eric Alterman's Altercation today with a long post on Sen. Paul Wellstone called "Never Afraid to Stand Alone."

I saved my personal feelings for TalkLeft.

The loss was very difficult for me as I was in Minneapolis/Saint Paul Friday. At 1:00 p.m. I was at the old Commodore Hotel in Saint Paul speaking at a continuing legal education conference for Minnesota criminal defense lawyers. My topic was fighting for the unpopular defendant in the Post-9/11 world. I was half-way through when someone entered the room and took a seat in the back right section. I became of aware of a little buzz in the room and saw that the audience's attention had shifted from me at the front to that spot in the back. I wondered what was up and asked if something was wrong. A woman said, "Senator Wellstone and his wife and daughter and campaign staff were just killed in a small plane crash. He was on his way to a funeral."

I can say it was truly my worst moment in public speaking. After "Oh my God" (the triteness of which was magnified tenfold by my lavalier mike) I simply said "Do you want to stop?" and of course they did. After that there was stunned silence among the group, followed by crying and some sobbing.

We all left the room and gathered around the television. The hotel opened the bar. The rest of the day's conference was cancelled for these Minnesota lawyers, many of them sole practitioners and public defenders. Generally, although there are exceptions, criminal defense lawyers are a liberal group, more liberal than 99 out of 100 mainstream politicians. A senator like Paul Wellstone is a true hero to us and his loss is devastating. He was the most liberal person in the Senate, and there is no one who stands in his shoes to replace him. I am very sorry.

There is a lot of uncertainty about the Minnesota ballot. Right now, Senator Paul Wellstone is off the ballot but the Democratic Farm Labor Party may name a replacement candidate within the next seven days. As of Friday evening "party leaders remained silent about what they will do, leaving open the possibility of a posthumous Wellstone candidacy."

Minn. Attorney General Mike Hatch said Minnesota law has no provision allowing for the election of a deceased candidate. John Wodele, spokesman for Gov. Jesse Ventura, said the attorney general's interpretation of Minnesota's complex election law may not be accurate.

"Wodele said the governor's lawyers are reviewing different sections of law from the ones cited by Hatch. "However, we are far from any conclusion and will continue to do due diligence on the law," Wodele said."

Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer, a Republican who also serves as the state's chief election administrator, said the party could put Wellstone's name back on the ballot.

Other possible replacement candidates that may be considered are: "Wellstone's son, David, Democratic U.S. Reps. Martin Sabo and James Oberstar, Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Alan Page, former Secretary of State Joan Growe, former DFL gubernatorial candidate Mike Freeman, former U.S. Senate candidates Rebecca Yanisch and Mike Ciresi, former state Attorney General Hubert Humphrey III, State Auditor Judi Dutcher and [Attorney General Mike] Hatch."

Germany today asked President Bush to drop the death penalty charge against Zacarias Moussaoui. Interior Minister Otto Schily "suggested that the move might be the only way to end the dispute over Germany's failure to provide the United States with its intelligence files on the terror suspect."

"The principle is we can't provide information which would lead to the death penalty," Mr. Schily said. "We have to stick to our Constitution. You have to stick to your laws."

Both German and U.S. officials described Germany's intelligence file on Moussaoui as "extensive."

So what is more important, getting as much information as we can on Al Qaeda and the terrorists so we can learn how to better prevent future attacks, or insisting on the final retribution for Moussoui and being denied the information? What if Germany's information would help us discover the nature or location of the next attacks that the Government keeps telling us are going to occur? What do we lose by letting Moussaoui spend the rest of his days in virtual isolation in a maxium security federal penitentiary like Admax in Florence, Colorado rather than die quickly by lethal injection?

Our insistence on killing Moussaoui at the expense of receiving Germany's information seems to us like the proverbial cutting off our nose to spite our face. As we typed that, we wondered about the exact meaning of that expression. We looked it up, and here is the meaning we found: "It means harming oneself, perhaps much more than the person one is trying to hurt." The phrase fits perfectly.