David Coleman Headly was sentenced today for his role in the Mumbai bombings and planned attack of a Danish newspaper. His plea agreement called for a life sentence, allowing him to avoid the death penalty.

He was sentenced today to 35 years, a reduced term, because of his cooperation with authorities. Even Patrick Fitzgerald showed up to argue for the lesser sentence.

Headley is 52. The Judge said today he hoped his sentence would keep Headley in prison for the rest of his life. (He will have to serve 85% of the 35 years, but he will get credit for the time he has spent in custody since his arrest in 2009.) [More...]

DOJ's Criminal Division Chief Lanny Breuer is reportedly stepping down although no formal announcement or departure date has been released. Main Justice writes:

Coincidentally, Breuer’s impending departure comes after “Frontline” broadcast a harshly critical report Tuesday night. The PBS program, entitled “The Untouchables,” was full of assertions that under Breuer the DOJ went after small fish in the mortgage-market abuses that nearly paralyzed the country’s financial system, while the big fish swam free.

If you missed The Untouchables, check it out here. The transcript is here. [More...]

Busy afternoon, here's an open thread, all topics welcome.

Google has issued a transparency report detailing requests by law enforcement for user data. For the first time, the report includes a breakdown of the types of legal process used to compel companies to hand over user data.

Requests for user data are up 70% from 2009.
For the last 6 months of 2012:

• 68 percent of the requests were made through subpoenas. (That is all that is required to obtain user-identifying information)
• 22 percent were through ECPA search warrants. "These are, generally speaking, orders issued by judges under ECPA, based on a demonstration of “probable cause” to believe that certain information related to a crime is presently in the place to be searched."
• The remaining 10 percent were mostly court orders issued under ECPA by judges or other processes that are difficult to categorize.

[More...]

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...]