Russia has responded to the U.S. issuing a list of sanctioned Russians yesterday by putting out its own list of U.S. officials engaged in human rights violations.

The list includes Bush torture memo author John Yoo and Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, David Addington, and some Guantanamo officials. I wonder why they left Dick Cheney off the list.

Russia's list also includes Preet Bharara, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, who prosecuted Viktor Bout and pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko (African drug sting case.) [more...]

In a strongly worded 71 page opinion, a three judge panel from the Eastern District of California has threatened California Governor Jerry Brown with contempt for failing to come up with a plan to reduce California's prison population. The court has given Brown and the state numerous chances. The Supreme Court denied Brown's appeal and he still refuses to comply.

The April 5 opinion is here. The docket with links to other court orders is here. [More...]

Guards at Guantanamo this morning conducted a pre-dawn raid of Camp 6, the communal housing block where most of the inmates are on a hunger strike. The purpose was to move the hunger-striking inmates to maximum security cells.

The detainees fought back. According to Guantanamo officials:

“Some detainees resisted with improvised weapons, and in response, four less-than-lethal rounds were fired,” according to a statement issued by the prison camps at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba. “There were no serious injuries to guards or detainees.”

....“In order to reestablish proper observation, the guards entered the Camp 6 communal living spaces to transition detainees into single cells, remove obstructions to cameras, windows and partitions, and to assess the medical condition of each detainee,” the prison said.

Yesterday, Guantanamo's prison camp Commander was replaced. [More...]

It's a jail day for me, here's an open thread for you, all topics welcome.

In the "More dollars Down the Drain" department: Here's a summary of the 2014 Homeland Security Budget.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) – $10.4 billion

This funding will provide for 21,370 Border Patrol agents and 21,775 CBP officers – maintaining the largest personnel totals in history.

The bill also provides $324 million for border security fencing, infrastructure, and technology.

[More...]

A military commissions judge at Guantanamo has delayed proceedings in the case of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri for two months due to the discovery by an IT team that 540,000 private defense emails were made available to the prosecution.

The mishandling of the e-mails was detected when IT specialists were conducting a search of the government’s computer system on behalf of prosecutors in a particular case. When they did so, they came across not only the e-mails they were seeking but also e-mails between defense lawyers.

[More...]

Busy day. Here's an open thread, all topics welcome.

One year ago today George Zimmerman was arrested and charged with second degree murder for the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.

Today, Zimmerman's brother posted a letter to the public from his mother on his Twitter feed. You can read it here.

The 5th District Court of Appeals has ordered the state to file a response to Zimmerman's petition for writ of cert to overturn the trial court judge's refusal to allow the defense to depose Martin family lawyer Benjamin Crump. The response is due April 28. It also granted the defense 10 days to file a reply to the state's response.

The case against Zimmerman began with this affidavit for his arrest. As many, including me, said at the time: Affidavit: Fail. [More...]

Gun control legislation is on the agenda for the Senate tomorrow. Here's an opposing view from a 15 year old.

Today President Obama released his 2014 proposed budget for the Department of Justice. It's very disappointing. It includes:

• $8.6 billion, a 4.3 percent increase over the 2012 enacted level, for Federal prisons and detention facilities. These funds are provided to continue activation of newly completed or acquired prisons, and to provide additional
  contract beds to address growth by alleviating
  crowding in low security facilities and systemwide.

Translation: We're spending to build new prisons and give more money to private prisons, but when it comes to reducing prison time for non-violent offenders, that remains, according to the budget, "an option to be explored."

• $2.6 billion for drug enforcement and organized crime targeting programs. This funding includes an increase of $3 million for the International Organized Crime Center to help further implement strategies to combat major drug trafficking organizations and transnational organized crime syndicates.

[More...]

Saeed al-Shehri (also spelled al-Shihri) the second in command of AQAP in Yemen is not dead. He released a tape today critical of Saudi Arabia. This is the third time he's been declared dead and later surfaced, alive and well. (The first time was in 2009 and the second time was in 2012.) The former Guantanamo detainee, refugee from the Saudi reconciliation program, and co-founder of AQAP, seems to have as many lives as Ilyas Kashmiri.

What I really want to know is what happened to young Yousef, al-Shehri's stepson, whose father has been trying to find him since 2009. It reads like a soap opera, kind of like a terrorist version of Elian Gonzales. [More....]

The ACLU sent an FOIA request to the IRS to determine if it has changed its policy (in effect as late as 2009) about reading emails. The IRS believed that a warrant wasn't necessary.

Based on the response to its request, and reading between the lines, the ACLU is not convinced the IRS has changed its position. [More...]