This shows just how dangerous the radical right can be to all of us, not just their extremist followers. From Christian Leaders' Remarks Against Islam Spark Backlash "

"A recent series of disparaging remarks about Islam by the Rev. Jerry Falwell and other evangelical Christian leaders have sparked riots in India, helped religious parties win elections in Pakistan and undermined public sympathy in Islamic countries for the U.S. war on terrorism, experts said yesterday."

"Falwell apologized over the weekend for calling Muhammad, the founder of Islam, a "terrorist" in an interview broadcast Sept. 30 by the CBS News program "60 Minutes." "I sincerely apologize that certain statements of mine . . . were hurtful to the feelings of many Muslims. I intended no disrespect to any sincere, law-abiding Muslim," the Southern Baptist minister said."

"But the damage was done, according to academic specialists. "Jerry Falwell makes a statement, he pleases his constituents, then he says he's sorry and apparently thinks that's the end of it," said Akbar Ahmed, chairman of Islamic studies at American University. "What Americans don't realize is that remarks like this are flashed all over the Muslim world, and they are doing very serious damage to U.S. interests."

Falwell has become an embarassing national liability. We encourage everyone to change channels when his face comes on the screen. Without ratings, there'd be no reason to put him on the news. If the media stopped supplying him with a soapbox, his rantings would be limited to his own website, would receive far less attention and be much less dangerous. We cringe at the thought that people in other countries think he speaks for us.

Hamster has the latest on the Winona Ryder trial and the absurd amount of resources the DA's office is allocating to it:

"The case is also unprecedented for the sheer amount of resources devoted to a theft charge against a defendant with no criminal history. In the three months before a June court date, the DA's office had one attorney who handled nothing other than preparation for a preliminary hearing on a shoplifting case. To put this in perspective, a typical deputy DA handles 20-30 cases per day, or anywhere from 1,200-1,800 cases in the same time span that that one attorney spent preparing solely for a single pre-trial hearing."

"There are now upwards of eight lawyers working full-time in the frenzied few weeks leading up to next week's trial — a little less than one attorney for every item they allege she stole. It's not like the DA's office doesn't have other important cases to prosecute, either. In fact, the lead deputy DA assigned to Ryder's case is trying to postpone a murder trial so she can fulfill her duties prosecuting a shoplifting charge. "

For us, this answers the question is Ms. Ryder being treated differently because she is a celebrity, with a resounding yes.

The New York Times today reports that New Jersey Republican senatorial candidate Douglas Forrester is on the defensive about some newspaper articles he wrote over a decade ago when he was an unpaid columnist for the now defunct West Windsor-Plainsboro Chronicle, "opposing drunken-driving checkpoints, criticizing New Jersey's ban on assault weapons and saying that Atlantic City had "the subtle beauty of a streetwalker."

We think this is much ado about nothing, and could increase support for him. For example, we don't support roadside sobriety checkpoints either. Other than Mothers Against Drunk Driving and cops, we don't know why anyone would.

It might be helpful to Lautenberg if Forrester said he opposed drunk driving arrests, but he didn't: he said he opposes the random stopping of vehicles at a predetermined checkpoint without reasonable grounds to believe the driver of the car being stopped has done anything wrong.

The assault weapons ban opposition might have been important, only it's value is diminished by the fact that Forrester now says he supports the ban.

And if we were Lautenberg, we wouldn't brag about writing the law that used federal transportation funds to encourage states to raise the drinking age from 18 to 21. If the age of 18 renders one old enough to go to war, it's also old enough to drink. New Jersey has lots of voters between the ages of 18 and 21.

We hope Lautenberg wins, but we don't think negative campaigning over non-issues and old positions that may be supported rather than opposed by a lot of voters is the way to do it.

Independent party candidate Tom Golisano, running for Governor of New York, is taking to the airwaves to condem the draconian Rockefeller laws. Golisano will call today for the laws' repeal and begin broadcasting commercials "that accuse Gov. George E. Pataki of offering a Rockefeller plan that is "not real reform."

Golisano's right. Pataki made a campaign promise last time around to reform the Rockefeller drug laws. He hasn't kept it.

Roger Stone, Golisano's campaign manager said today: "Tom Golisano is the most conservative candidate in this race, and he is acknowledging that the Rockefeller laws are harsh, ineffective and expensive," Mr. Stone said, noting that more than $700 million is spent yearly to incarcerate drug offenders. "We are hopeful that his position will give others now the cover they need to get these laws repealed."

For more on the Rockefeller drug laws and Pataki's earlier promises, go here and here.

As expected, Ira Einhorn testified at his murder trial today and denied killing his girlfriend Holly in 1977. Einhorn testfied for four hours and faces cross-examination tomorrow.

"Former hippie guru Ira Einhorn, who once described himself as a planetary enzyme, took the witness stand at his murder trial on Monday to deny killing his girlfriend Holly Maddux in a fit of rage 25 years ago."

"In a packed Philadelphia courtroom, a smiling but sometimes nervous-looking Einhorn told jurors that his stormy romance with the 30-year-old Bryn Mawr graduate never reached full flower because of his rampant appetite for other women.
"I think we loved each other very much. But we had a very difficult time creating the context in which our love could flower," said the counter-culture leader who helped launch the annual Earth Day observance in 1970."

A not-so-well-known fact: Ira's first defense attorney following his arrest in 1979 was Arlen Specter, who is currently a Republican Senator from Pennsylvania.

The New York Times reports that Illinois has moved to the center of the death penalty debate. "The national debate over the death penalty returns to the stage here, with an unprecedented set of clemency hearings for nearly all 158 prisoners on Illinois' death row scheduled to begin Tuesday."

"Experts on false confessions, torture, mental retardation and witness identification are being flown in from California, New Mexico and Texas. Some 300 lawyers have prepared briefs."

"On trial are not just the people convicted of the murders, but the criminal justice system itself. Beyond the question of guilt or innocence, of course, is the question of proportionality and fairness of the sentencing process," said Rob Warden, director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University, which is helping coordinate the petitions for clemency. "Isn't it better that we let 10 absolutely guilty men who committed horrible crimes spend the rest of their lives in prison, rather than risk one, a single execution of an innocent person?"

This week the issue of a felon's right to bear arms moves to the Supreme Court.. The justices will hear arguments on whether a felon's right to bear arms can be restored by a federal judge.

Update: We linked to an incorrect url earlier today, it's now fixed. Thanks to Howard Bashman of How Appealing for calling it to our attention.

According to Newsday, the reinvestigation into the Central Park Jogger case is complete and the paper has seen the confidential report on the inquiry.

"After more than six months re-investigating the Central Park jogger case, authorities have turned up no new evidence to contradict a serial rapist's claim that he alone committed the crime for which five teens served years in prison."

"In fact, a confidential police report obtained by Newsday concludes that "All forensic evidence used at trial ... [to convict the five] has now been determined to be useless."

The report concludes "a hair found on her clothes and originally thought to be from one of the defendants, has been identified as Reyes' hair. The report says a pubic hair from Reyes was found on the jogger's sock."

"Authorities have not found anything linking Reyes to the bands of youths marauding in Central Park that night, interviews indicate. And nothing solid suggests Reyes, then 18, came upon the jogger before or after she was attacked by the five teens, who were convicted largely by their own incriminating statements."

"Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau said Saturday he has not made up his mind about whether he will consent to overturn the 1990 guilty verdicts, as defense attorneys have requested."

"But if claims continue to hold up, he would go along with the defense motion to vacate," said Morgenthau spokeswoman Barbara Thompson."

"We've tried to locate every single witness," said Morgenthau, who has devoted two prosecutors and two investigators full-time to the case since May, reviewing 15,000 pages of records, scouring physical evidence and checking everyone who has come to visit Reyes in prison. "Nothing, so far."

The hair and blood evidence that was linked to one of the five convicted youths and the jogger turned out not to have been from either.

We may never know all the details of the jogger's brutal assault and rape that evening, but it's become very clear these five youths did not get fair trials and deserve to have their convictions overturned.

There is a terrific profile of our pal Rikki Klieman, Court TV anchor and wife of LA's new police commisoner William Bratton, in today's LA Times called Counsel to the cop: She fits the profile.

"A pit-bull litigator in Boston before her television career, Klieman first started making headlines as a prosecutor, then as a criminal defense lawyer with the large silk-stocking law firm Choate, Hall & Stewart, and ultimately in her own firm, Klieman, Lyons, Schindler & Gross. No longer a partner, she remains "of counsel," practicing solely in an advisory capacity."

"In 1983, Time magazine named her one of the nation's five best women attorneys, all of them talented trial lawyers: "As a group, they are less like the stereotype of their sex than the stereotype of their job: they are fiercely intelligent, tough-minded, intensely competitive, self-assured individualists who relish the fray."

"Warm, friendly, down-to-earth, Klieman nevertheless brings a formidable intellect and terrific recall to her show, which dissects both sides of big trials, the prosecution and the defense. She's also ended up in film. "In my work at Court TV, my greatest fun, besides what I do, has been acting," she says. "I played myself in 'Cable Guy' with Jim Carrey. I played a reporter in 'A Civil Action' with John Travolta. I most recently played a lawyer in '15 Minutes' with Robert De Niro."

"While a trial lawyer, she says, she worked "10 1/2 days out of every week," at a high cost. "Many women in my generation, who were in college during the '60s, of course, during the feminist revolution, were driven to put success above our personal lives. There are many women who have sacrificed solid, loving relationships, marriages, children, and their physical and psychological health," Klieman says. "My life was geared as a successful lawyer."

"Success required sacrifices: two failed marriages. No children. Health problems...She's now writing a cautionary autobiography, "The Price of the Prize," with Peter Knobler, who also worked on Bratton's book "Turnaround: "How America's Top Cop Reversed the Crime Epidemic." It's due out in the spring."

We predict a best-seller.

Political Parrhesia led us to this well-reasoned op-ed by Steve Chapman in Sunday's Chicago Tribune about the new report on polygraphs concluding that they are unreliable and shouldn't be used by employers. Chapman states that because polygraphs lie, they shouldn't be used in criminal investigations.

"The same fallibility that renders these machines unusable for employee monitoring makes them dangerous for criminal investigations as well. Police and prosecutors regard polygraph results as the closest thing to a dead-bang certainty. But that faith lacks any foundation. "Almost a century of research in scientific psychology and physiology provides little basis for the expectation that a polygraph test could have extremely high accuracy," concluded the panel."

"And there is no reason to think better technology will help. People simply don't respond in a clear and predictable way to questions about what they may have done wrong. The "inherent ambiguity of the physiological measures used in the polygraph suggest that further investments in improving polygraph technique and interpretation will bring only modest improvements in accuracy," said the report. Polygraphs are a crude instrument that can't be refined."

"The consequences of a misleading polygraph exam are bad enough in the employment arena, where someone can lose a job or not be hired. But they're much worse for criminal suspects, who can be locked away or even put to death because their pulse rate rose too much in a stressful situation."

Ira Einhorn will take the witness stand Monday in his murder trial. He is expected to testify "that the CIA killed his girlfriend Holly Maddux and framed him for the murder because of his research into ``psychic warfare.''

His lawyer said, "He has a humongous job; the circumstantial evidence in this case is extremely damaging. It ultimately rises or falls upon Ira's testimony."

Some lesser known facts about Ira: "Even in the years before he fled the United States, Einhorn had an interest in the paranormal, and counted spoon-bending illusionist Uri Geller among his friends."

"He became known in hippie culture by organizing ``be-ins,'' was involved in the city's first Earth Day in 1970 and ran for mayor as a "planetary enzyme -- catalyst for change.''

While the Supreme Court is contemplating reconsidering its position on allowing execution of offenders who commit murder as juveniles, Florida may edit its death penalty law in a fashion that would lower the age for which juvenile offenders can be exeucted from 17 to 16.

"This is because United States Supreme Court rulings upholding the death penalty for 16-year-olds would take precedence over a 1998 ruling by the Florida Supreme Court that declared capital punishment unconstitutional for people under 17."

"Passage of this amendment would restore the death penalty in Florida for 16-year-old offenders," said Stephen Harper, coordinator of the Juvenile Death Penalty Initiative, a coalition seeking to eliminate the death penalty for juveniles. "We see that as a major step back given how other states are dealing with this issue and given how the international community has all but eliminated the death penalty for offenders under 18."

"These critics say voters would have no way of knowing the implications of the change for juvenile offenders from reading the amendment, which makes no mention of it."

We're putting the word out and hope other sites will too.