Andrew Cuomo has withdrawn from the democratic primary race for Governor of New York. The Democratic candidate facing incumbent Republican Governor George Pataki in November will be Carl McCall. Here's the lowdown.

TalkLeft is interested in this race because of Pataki's empty promise to revise the draconian Rockefeller mandatory minimum drug laws in that state.

Cuomo did a noble deed by dropping out once he assessed he would not win without launching an acrimonious campaign against McCall, the likely outcome of which would have been Pataki's reelection in November.

Our most recent prior posts on the NY drug laws are here , here and here.

And while you're in a clicking mood, don't forget Mothers of the Disappeared--those whose children are serving these appallingly long sentences.

Two pregnant Colorado inmates lost their babies allegedly due to poor medical care in the state prison system. Federal lawsuits are pending. David Lane, the lawyer for one of the women, calls the situation "a national scandal."

The female prison population is increasing. So is the number of pregnant inmates. Medical care for them has not been rising at the same rate.

The horror stories of the two women are described in detail in the article. While prison authorities maintain they are "proud" of the level of care they provide, we wonder how they can say that with a straight face.

The state has already paid $50,000. to one of the women and fired the nurse-practitioner who treated her. The state prison's chief doctor had this to say about her care in his official report: "I feel that the care rendered this patient was below any minimal level of competency."

The fired nurse-practitioner changed her name and is still working in nursing, currently at a nursing home. Her lawyer defends her actions.

Suing the prisons is no easy task. In one of the cases, where the inmate suffered a still birth due to the allegedly incompetent (some would say criminal) care received, David Lane has had to ask federal Judge John Kane "to declare unconstitutional a 1996 federal law, the Prison Litigation Reform Act, that changed what prisoners can sue over."

"It says if a prisoner wants to file a civil rights lawsuit under the Eighth Amendment (which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment), there must be some physical injury," Lane said. "They can psychologically torture any prisoner they want to."

"I mean," Lane said, "not having trained staff on duty when you have inmates going into labor? Come on."

We agree. And Judge Kane, no stranger to prison reform issues, may just be the Judge to do so.

Nat Hentoff calls for Attorney General John Ashcroft's resignation in General Ashcroft's Detention Camps

"Now more Americans are also going to be dispossessed of every fundamental legal right in our system of justice and put into camps. Jonathan Turley reports that Justice Department aides to General Ashcroft "have indicated that a 'high-level committee' will recommend which citizens are to be stripped of their constitutional rights and sent to Ashcroft's new camps."

We gave our views on this topic a few weeks ago when Instapundit questioned Professor Turley's column by writing:

"I'm opposed to the imprisonment of American citizens without trial. Unlike the imprisonment of foreign citizens, it is almost certain to have a deeply corrupting effect on American politics. But Turley's hype does a disservice."

"As I mentioned in my original post on Turley's piece, bogus rumors of government prison camps have been around for decades. If this stuff is hyped when it's not true, what will people say if it ever becomes true? I'll tell you what they'll say: 'There goes Turley, crying wolf again.'"

Maybe Turley and Hentoff aren't seeing Instapundit's wolf --but it seems to us Hentoff is not far off the mark and we should all be on the alert for a wolf in sheep's clothing.

American Lawyer today profiles law professor and weblogger extraordinaire Glenn Reynolds, known to bloggers everywhere as Instapundit.

There has been a lot of postive commentary about the Sixth Circuit's decision last week to open deportation hearings over the Government's objections. The case is Detroit Free Press v. John Ashcroft, and you can read the full opinion here.

Here are a two quotes from the opinion:

"By the simple assertion of "national security," the Government seeks a process where it may, without review, designate certain classes of cases as "special interest cases" and, behind closed doors, adjudicate the merits of these cases to deprive non-citizens of their fundamental liberty interests. This, we simply may not countenance. A government operating in the shadow of secrecy stands in complete opposition to the society envisioned by the Framers of our Constitution. "[F]ully aware of both the need to defend a new nation and the abuses of the English and Colonia governments, [the Framers of the First Amendment] sought to give this new society strength and security by providing that freedom of speech, press, religion, and assembly should not be abridged." See New York Times, 403 U.S. at 719 (Black, J., concurring).

The opinion concludes with:

"The public's interests are best served by open proceedings. A true democracy is one that operates on faith - faith that government officials are forthcoming and honest, and faith that informed citizens will arrive at logical conclusions. This is a vital reciprocity that America should not discard in these troubling times. Without question, the events of September 11, 2001, left an indelible mark on our nation, but we as a people are united in the wake of the destruction to demonstrate to the world that we are a country deeply committed to preserving the rights and freedoms guaranteed by our democracy. Today, we reflect our commitment to those democratic values by ensuring that our government is held accountable to the people and that First Amendment rights are not impermissibly compromised. Open proceedings, with a vigorous and scrutinizing press, serve to ensure the durability of our democracy."

New York Times columnist Bob Herbert comments persuasively on the decision in Secrecy is Our Enemy.

Cassio Furtado reports at length on the current and historic overseas role of the FBI in the Sunday Philadephia Inquirer. See, FBI Finds the Going is Tough Overseas.

Furtado says that FBI agents' "lack of skills and uncooperative nations hamper the agency as global demands on it have grown."

"In an effort to attack terrorism, drug trafficking, organized crime and other threats at their roots, an unprecedented number of FBI agents now are working overseas."

"But the bureau's effectiveness is limited by a shortage of agents with language skills and foreign expertise, and by relationships with foreign governments that range from reluctant cooperation to outright obstruction. And some of its activities raise concerns among civil-liberties groups."

Furtado uses Saudi Arabia's and Yemen's non-assistance in the FBI investigations into the 1996 Khobar Towers and 2000 USS Cole bombings as prime examples.

He also reports on the concerns of civil liberties organizations:

"Because the bureau sometimes obtains information from interrogations that violate U.S. legal standards, human-rights groups say the FBI has been complicit in human-rights violations. Critics contend that in Pakistan, for example, agents have participated in raids and tolerated detentions that breach U.S. norms."

That concerns us as well.

Furtado reports that there are currently FBI agents based in 44 countries and operating in 52.

"The FBI's critics say its agents often are culturally hidebound. "They operate in the Middle East like they're in New Jersey, and that doesn't work," said a senior U.S. official who has worked with them, who spoke on condition of anonymity."

"Today, the FBI looks harder for internationalists. Nonetheless, it "never has enough agents or linguists who speak... critical languages" such as Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Farsi or Vietnamese, an official from the investigative services division, David Alba, told a Senate oversight subcommittee in 2000."

"The FBI appears to have been most effective in Kenya, Tanzania and Pakistan - all countries where English is widely spoken. " After discussing how cooperative efforts between the FBI were fruitful during the Daniel Pearl murder investigation and in apprehending Ramsey Yousef, Furtado notes:

"U.S.-Pakistani cooperation has been troubled, however, by reports that FBI agents have received intelligence from interrogations in which Pakistani questioners used torture, and have joined raids in which those captured have disappeared without a trace into the Pakistani detention system."

"Although the United States signed the 1984 United Nations Convention Against Torture, which bans participation or complicity in the torture of prisoners or other forms of mistreatment, it would be nearly impossible to hold the United States liable for the actions of its partners in the war on terrorism."

Apparently, some U.S. officials see no problem here. Amnesty International disagrees.

"Amnesty International's 2002 human-rights report says police forces use torture in 18 of the 44 countries where the FBI has offices."

"Government officials should be very clear in condemning this," Amnesty official Vienna Colucci said. "Otherwise it sends a signal that they support it."

We agree with Amnesty. But we also wonder what is taking the FBI so long to hire and train new multi-lingual agents. Surely there is a pool of young men and women in this country with these skills. We'd bet large numbers of them have applied. We wonder how many of their applications are being held up in red tape and why it takes so long for applications to be approved. Does anyone have a good answer?

This being Labor Day, we want to take a moment and praise some blogs whose authors labor long and hard at creating informative, interesting and original material and whose work we not only read regularly but look forward to reading.

We also want to thank these blogs for their praise for TalkLeft. Many of them write on some of the same topics we do--and often agree with our point of view (and vice-versa.)

First up come the incredibly industrious and prolific Instapundit, also known as Law Professor Glenn Reynolds, and the up-to-the minute Eric Alterman of Altercation. We especially appreciate the variety of topics they write about--you never know what the topic is going to be but it always turns out to be a good one. Through their frequent mentions of TalkLeft, we have been able to reach so many more of you than we would have on our own.

The same goes for Cursor, Rittenhouse Review, Hamster, Atrios/Eschaton and Howard Bashman's How Appealing.

We also can't say enough good things about MaxSpeak, Skippy the Bush Kangaroo (and his post about TalkLeft), Ruminate This (her post about Talkleft), Mattew Yglesias, Let It Begin Here , The Poor Man (and his praise for TalkLeft), Cooped Up , Lean Left and Jason Rylander. And although no one could ever call him a liberal, we appreciate Stephen Greene of Vodkapundit and his early support of TalkLeft, and would remind him that we are still waiting to buy him and his bride Melissa a drink on their next trip to Denver (all of 60 miles from his home in Colorado Springs.)

And for the blog most important to our very existence, we want to thank Daily Kos, who not only is an original thinker and excellent writer as is evident from his famously astute and oft-quoted blog, but who also contributed so many hours of his valuable time re-designing TalkLeft.

Now we are going to take a few hours off. Please, go read these folks. If you haven't already, you don't know what you're missing.

As to last week's conviction and 20 year sentence imposed on Michael Skakel for the murder of Martha Moxley that occurred in 1975 when they were both 15, we previously told you we have been following and commenting on the case for the past four years, ever since the investigation was reopened with Michael Skakel as the chief suspect.

"We attended a day of the trial and we know the defense attorney Mickey Sherman well. He did a great job at trial. The media on the whole predicted an acquittal because there was little physical or forensic evidence, no dna, no witnesses to the crime. And there were plenty of other suspects. So what went wrong?"

The answer could, and undoubtedly will, fill a book. But it is not one that we will write, even though we regularly discussed the case with the defense team , read the pleadings and familiarized ourselves with the evidence. The trial is over, Michael is in jail awaiting the outcome of his future appeals.

We have our doubts that there is anything to be gained now by re-iterating that the evidence in the case came from an unreliable, dead drug addict who waited 20 years before coming forward with his story about Michael having told him he could get away with murder because he was a Kennedy, and then came forward to the media, not the police, and then who acknowledged at a pre-trial hearing he was high on heroin at the time of his grand jury testimony, that his memory wasn't trustworthy and who was dead of a drug overdose by the time of trial so he wasn't able to be cross-examined (while his prior testimony was orally read to the jury by the lawyers role-playing the parts of questioner and witness as the transcript of his testimony was rolled on the giant overhead screen like it was a movie--really, we were there that day).... from a former suspect (the tutor) who had been granted immunity...and from other similarly unreliable witnesses whose testimony of purported confessions was disputed by other witnesses....

Or from our repeating the evidence the jury didn't hear...like that former long-time suspect and brother Tommy also changed his story years after the murder in his discussions with Skakel-family private investigators to say that the night Martha was killed he and Martha had been mutually masturbating on the ground under the tree her body was found ...see the many news articles on the topic by Newsday writer Len Leavitt who broke the story years ago...still available on Lexis (search the database "news two years and beyond")...or read other articles referencing same currently on Court TV....

Or even from again pointing to the strong support for the defense contention that this jury did not decide the case based on the evidence presented and refuted, but on their sympathy for Dorothy Moxley (whom we agree is one classy and admirable woman, although we think she is mistaken in her belief as to who murdered her daughter) and on their dislike for the well-known Skakel/Kennedy families. Not to mention the overwhelming pre-trial publicity in Connecticut largely resulting from the recent publication of books by celebrity novelist Dominick Dunne, himself the father of a slain daughter, and former O.J. cop Mark Fuhrman, proclaiming Skakel to be the murderer.

The appeals process will play out. Skakel should never have been tried in adult court --the law in effect in 1975 precluded same--and his trial and conviction are contrary to the five year statute of limitations in effect at that time.

Skakel was a troubled kid. He had an alibi. The prosecution never proved the time of death. They didn't even try, instead opting for a range of between 9:30 pm and the middle of the night. Expert defense testimony, coming from experts originally hired by the prosecution, established the time of death around 9:30 pm--when Michael was at his cousin's house. Witness testimony was presented about unusually excessive and prolonged dog barking also occurring at this time. Defense witnesses testified to Michael's alibi. Michael's taped statement in his own voice in which he denied committing the murder was played to the jury.

Yet, despite the paltry lack of credible evidence and the lack of any physical, forensic or DNA evidence linking Michael to the murder, the jury convicted.

Bottom line: Mickey Sherman tried a great case. Juries are unpredictable. And Michael Skakel may be a victim of the still unsolved murder as well.

There is a really good column today in the Des Moines Register by Rekha Basu entitled Americans forget some lessons in freedoms, rights.

Here is some of it, but we think you should read the whole thing.

"Security - the feeling that nothing could touch us - is one assumption we've had to unlearn since last Sept. 11.

But from the Bush administration's war on terrorism we're also learning that the rights and freedoms we took for granted in America - due process, equal treatment, free speech, probable cause - were not absolute.

The response to Sept. 11 has reinforced the country's racial and ethnic fault lines, as immigrants came under new scrutiny, sometimes just because of their different names and appearances.

The attacks showed how vulnerable our buildings and economy were to terrorist attacks. Now the response to those attacks is showing how vulnerable our democracy is when we allow people to be held without charges, homes to be searched without probable cause, neighbors to be turned into informants.

From Columbine to Oklahoma City, this country has known different kinds of terrorism but didn't respond by casting suspicion on entire demographic groups.

Because it didn't affect them, most Americans have stayed silent about infringements on the rights of ethnic minorities. But the changes spilled over into areas of everyone's lives. The USA Patriot Act, passed by Congress and signed in October, gave 40 federal agencies sweeping powers to eavesdrop on phone conversations, intercept e-mail, and get access to medical, financial and even library records. Warrants to be used on Americans are approved in secret by judges in a court created to target foreign powers. Probable cause that a crime was committed is no longer necessary. The FBI can also monitor political and religious meetings. The Terrorism Information and Prevention System would have citizens report suspicions about each other, and businesses and lawyers could be required to report any "'suspicious activity" involving clients."

Basu references other laws passed that civil libertarians and immigrant-rights groups attribute to Sept. 11. "After previous unsuccessful attempts, official English was signed into law. And a new state driver's license was instituted for noncitizens, stamped "Nonrenewable - documentation required."

She argues that the press has been "cowed into submission by government secrecy and self-censorship."

Are we going to get to the point where there's no turning back? Where our liberties and rights are gone forever?

Last week we wrote about Ohio Public Defender Beth Lewis who has been held in contempt for refusing to divulge a deceased client's confidences.

Thanks again to NACDL media director Dan Dodson for working overtime this holiday Sunday and directing us to an editorial today in the Dayton Daily News that disagrees with the Court and prosecutors and argues that Ms. Lewis is duty-bound to protect the privilege.

"Nor do the prosecutors contend that lawyers are free to pass on private information even when a client has passed away. (In fact, they can be punished for doing so.)"

"Rather, prosecutors rely on a little-known law that's rarely invoked--never before in the context of a criminal case. It says an attorney may testify if a client is deceased and the surviving spouse consents."

"But the rule wasn't written to require that client confidences be laid bare on the say-so of a spouse, especially one who was estranged from his wife. Rather, it was designed for use in probate-related matters, and its purpose is to permit a lawyer to speak when it serves a client's interest."

"Nothing in the statute gives courts the power to compel such testimony. And the reason the laws on attorney-client confidentiality are so strict is that the justice system simply couldn't function if clients couldn't talk honestly with their lawyers and lawyers could renege on promises of secrecy because they have information that could lead to a crime being solved."

"The apparent abduction of Erica Baker is an unspeakable tragedy. And to many grief-stricken people it's tempting to ignore the law in pursuit of finding out what happened. The law allows exceptions when danger threatens, but that's not what's claimed here."

"The court should free Beth Lewis."

Columnist Paul Roberts takes the Justice Department to task over its treatment of Dr. Steven Hatfill in A person of interest published in today's Washington Times.

But what is up with his gratuitous slam of feminists, gays and minorities?

"Today the media is even less likely to protest prosecutorial abuse of civil rights. Only members of victim groups can turn to the media for help. As recent best sellers by media insiders make clear, feminists, minorities and homosexuals now dominate the American media. Most are indebted to government-enforced quotas for their jobs, and they view white heterosexual males, such as Dr. Hatfill, as members of a hegemonic "oppressor class." Why should they help one of their oppressors defend his rights? "

Thumbs down to this column. We hope his email box fills up with protests.

(and thanks to NACDL Media Affairs Director Dan Dodson for sending the column to us)

Thanks to Skippy for pointing out that TalkLeft is listed in the political blog section of the Guardian Weblog Page.

And congrats to his great blog Skippy the Bush Kangaroo for receiving a place in the Guardian's "world wide blog" section.