I just realized we haven't had an open thread since Monday. Here's one, all topics welcome.

During today's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Department of Justice Oversight, Attorney General Eric Holder defended the prosecution of Aaron Swartz. He said prosecutors offered him a three month sentence and later said they would seek six months. He said the charges carried a potential of 35 years in prison.

What about the overcharging? Any prosecutor can overcharge and then offer you a deal to what you should have been charged with in the first place. What kind of deal is that?

Holder said DOJ has examined the matter and determined the prosecutors acted appropriately. Their examination included talking to the prosecutors. Did they talk to defense counsel? [More...]

Attorney General Eric Holder will testify this morning at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on DOJ oversight. Many expect him to discuss DOJ's response to Colorado and Washington's recently passed marijuana legalization laws.

I doubt the objections to the laws raised yesterday by former DEA officials will sway him. When they wrote him in September 2012, before the elecion, asking him to publicly take a stand against the laws there was no response. There was silence. Here is their latest letter. The organization on the letterhead, Save Our Society From Drugs, is political action committee. [More...]

(Video by Diwata Man.) A hearing was held in the George Zimmerman case Tuesday. You can watch the hearing here (part 1, begins at 11:45 in) and here (part 2.) The post-hearing press-conference is here.

The first significant motion to be heard was the defense request for a subpoena to obtain the hospital records of Witness 8, Trayvon Martin's 19 year old phone friend. (Starts at 13:40 into part 1.) The defense advised the court the subpoena was no longer necessary as the state told them yesterday the records did not exist. Witness 8 had lied when she told Trayvon Martin's parents' lawyers and the state prosecutor (the latter under oath) she could not attend Trayvon Martin's wake on Friday, March 2, 2012, because she had gone to the hospital where she spent the night. More on this at the end. [More...]

Cancer:

President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela died Tuesday afternoon after a long battle with cancer, the government announced, leaving behind a bitterly divided nation in the grip of a political crisis that grew more acute as he languished for weeks, silent and out of sight in hospitals in Havana and Caracas.

Ryan Lizza writes:

[T]the fact that Barack Obama now so appreciates the limits of his office and his lack of Jedi powers is rich with irony. As I’ve written about before, the premise of Obamaism— from his famous convention speech in 2004, through his primary challenge to Hillary Clinton, in 2008, right up until the later half of his first term—was that Obama was a politician uniquely suited to transform American politics by breaking through the polarization in Washington and bringing the two parties together.

[More . . .]

Busy Monday.

There's a good column in the Aspen Daily News about the conclusion of the "geriatric cocaine dealers" cases. They ended with the conviction last week of the only defendant who went to trial.

The convictions of the local dealers aren’t a victory by any stretch of the imagination. It’s a loss for their families, our community and the country, and proves the insanity of the system we have set up. Throwing 60-year-olds in prison for making money in a capitalistic society accomplishes zero. Cocaine is still available in Aspen. Nothing has changed. Meet the new boss; same as the old boss.

[More...]

The New Yorker has a new article about Aaron Swartz, mostly consisting of quotes from his family and friends. It's very sad.

Aaron's former girlfriend, Quinn Norton, has an article in the Atlantic, "Life Inside the Aaron Swartz Investigation" about her experience as "a reluctant witness" in the Government's case against Swartz. The Atlantic's editors have written this post about her article. [More....]

I'm spending today getting acquainted with my new iMac. Since syncing has always been a problem for me -- I always end up erasing something I want to save or with outdated versions of my contacts or with hundreds of duplicates of songs in my iTunes folder, I'm going very slowly.

Here's an open thread, all topics welcome.

Due to the sequester, doctors face a 2% cut in Medicare reimbursements:

The bottom line is that doctors who treat Medicare beneficiaries will only be reimbursed 98 cents on every dollar for a vast array of services. Reimbursement for low-income beneficiaries is exempt.

...The cuts could make it harder for patients to get care, [AMA President Jeremy] Lazarus added. "One in five Medicare patients already is facing difficulties in finding a doctor to take them. If you cut their pay, this access problem will only get worse."

[More...]

Some thought it would never happen. Others thought it was inevitable. Regardless, the time is upon us. Federal judges are turning to drug courts and even deferred prosecutions in drug cases, a policy that has met with good success rates in state court, with the agreement of DOJ.

Leading the charge is U.S. District court judge Jack Gleeson in Brooklyn.

Federal judges have instituted programs in California, Connecticut, Illinois, New Hampshire, New York, South Carolina, Virginia, and Washington. About 400 defendants have been involved nationwide.

Judge Gleeson issued this 35 page order about the benefits of the program in comparison to our draconian sentencing laws. [More...]

Thanks to Wired for publishing the full version of the new issue of Inspire, the magazine of al-Qaeda Arab Peninsula (the rest of the media and the corporate terror-monitoring sites either just refer to it or want you to buy a subscription to access it.)

Apparently, the U.S. has made air travel so problematic, AQAP is recommending alternative ways to terrorize those in the U.S. [more...]