Clown show this morning. A highlight:

More clowns this afternoon as the Secretary of State appears before the House Foreign Relations Committee.

Hilarity ensues here.

This is how Indonesia carries out its death penalty:

The death penalty is carried out in Indonesia by firing squad, normally in the middle of the night in a remote place, illuminated by flood lights. The public are not allowed to witness executions.

Members of the police force’s elite Brimob paramilitary brigade make up firing squads. They consist of 12 armed soldiers however only three of them actually have live rounds in their weapons – the rest have blanks. Nobody knows who has the live rounds and who has the blanks. This is to ease the conscience of the firing squad and so that no-one knows who fired the killer shot.

The condemned person is tied to a wooden cross or post and the spot of their heart is illuminated on a vest they wear to guide the firing squad. The prisoner can elect to wear a hood or not and can have a religious person present until the last moments.

113 people were sentenced to death in Indonesia in 2012. (This study says 114 are on death row.)At least 8 will be executed in 2013. 40 of those on death row are foreigners. 5 foreigners have been executed for drugs.). Some inmates have taken 7 minutes to die after being shot. They lay there screaming in pain, according to witnesses. [More..]

It is all the fashion these days to criticize the opinion in Roe v. Wade (and the companion case, Doe v. Bolton), which 40 years ago today guaranteed a women's constitutional right to privacy with regard to pregnancy.

While neanderthals like Andrew Sullivan label Roe the "the worst decision ever made by the Supreme Court" (Dred Scott? Plessy? Dagenhart? Korematsu? Bush v. Gore?), even intelligent individuals like Jack Balkin and the Yale Law School crowd have argued that Roe was poorly reasoned, if correctly decided.

I come here today to defend the opinion in Roe, which, while not the most articulate of opinions, still holds up as an exercise of reasoned judicial decision making. Read why I think so on the flip.

Even though Lindsay Sandiford cooperated with police, ratting out others (who may not have been involved), and even though prosecutors asked for a 15 year sentence, a court in Bali has sentenced 51 year old Sandiford to death for smuggling 5 kilos of cocaine in from Bangkok.

I told the whole sordid story here, including how Sandiford led police on a wild goose chase for 6 days trying to do a controlled delivery and lay the drugs off on someone. Her victims: a British couple with a 6 year old daughter. [More...]

Busy.

Open Thread.

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Today President Obama will be inaugurated for the second time (ceremonially to be sure, as he was formally inaugurated yesterday, January 20, as the Constitution requires.) Daily Kos Radio, with Netroots Radio, will be covering it.

Starting at 10:00 a.m., I will be offering an hour of thoughts on President Obama's challenges for his second term, the history of second inaugural addresses, from Lincoln to FDR to Clinton, and the "civil war" that the president will face at the outset of his second term (a civil war on our very philosophy of government.)

Please join us.

President Obama begins his second term.

The Ravens battle the Patriots for the AFC Championship.

500,000 people signed up yesterday for Mega. They have added a human rights counsel to their team. Already there are traffic issues with the site being difficult to access and slow upload times. That's because of the unprecedented demand. [More...]

Kim Dotcom and partners have launched the new Mega, a global Cloud file sharing system. Accounts are free up to 50 GB and encrypted. You can check it out here.

Today is launch date, and there are already 250,000 user registrations in just 2 hours.

It may be the most "lawyered-up" internet startup launch in history. And Mega lawyer Ira Rothken says in an interview with Ars Technica, anyone who comes after it has no case: [More...]

Lance Armstrong, Part 2. Thursday's interview didn't seem to resonate favorably with too many people. Did they even tune in again for Part II? I did. It was like a deja-vu of John Edwards admitting his affair (but denying paternity.)

It seems to me this interview is part of some legal-related master plan, as opposed to personal redemption or being able to compete again. I don't think it's just the Floyd Landis case, but I have no idea what else it might be. Some lawyers who have represented other athletes share their thoughts here.

Who besides Robert Luskin is on his legal team? Elliot Peters, of Keker and Van Nest, who has been in the news all week as the lawyer for Aaron Swartz. [More...]

Ray Nagin, the former mayor of New Orleans, has been indicted by a federal grand jury on corruption charges, including bribery, money laundering, wire fraud and filing false tax returns. The indictment is here.

Key players in the case are here.

In the George Zimmerman case, Mark O'Mara has requested a subpoena to ABC News for Matt Gutman's recordings of interviews with Witness #8, who Gutman refers to as "Dee Dee" (not her real name.) You can read the motion here.

Dee Dee is the witness who claims to have been on the phone with Trayvon Martin moments before his fatal encounter with George Zimmerman. Her existence was revealed on March 20, 2012 at a press conference called by Martin family lawyer Benjamin Crump, at which he played snippets of what she told Crump during an audio interview the night before. Gutman has said he has a recording of the interview and interviewed her several times that week.

Here is the backstory. (More here.) Diwataman has the videos of Gutman's and Crump's statements on Dee Dee.

TSA has ended its $5 million contract with OSI, which makes the Rapiscan Backscatter, one of two "people screening" machines using advanced imaging technology at airports.

OSI could not meet a deadline to come up with software that rendered the images generic. Instead, TSA will use machines by L3 Communications which produce generic passenger images. Here's the L3 page for the Provision II. L3 Communications announced a $245 million contract with TSA in November. Also in November, at a congressional hearing, allegations arose, which OSI denied, that it had falsified test results.[More...]