Happy New Year's Eve morning!

We are now in college bowl season in earnest. I was saved from complete disaster yesterday by a garbage time back door cover by Oklahoma.

Today will be better. The picks: UCLA +3 over Illinois (2 units), Texas A&M -10 over Northwestern (12 units), Vanderbilt -1½ over Cincinnati (2 units), Utah +3 over Ga Tech (2 units), Auburn -3 over Virginia (2 units.)

Have a great day.

Open Thread.

The Big Lebowski: Are you surprised at my tears, sir?
The Dude: [Smoking a joint] Dude, f--in' A!
The Big Lebowski: Strong men also cry... strong men also cry.

It's that time of year when everyone is doing best of and worst of lists for 2011. Since I haven't found any on the year's most interesting criminal cases and issues that match what I found most interesting, I've prepared my own lists for TalkLeft. (Heads-up: "Most Interesting" is not the same as "Most Important". I will leave "Most Important" lists to others.)

First the court cases, then the cases that didn't make it to court, and then the top issues of the year. (With a few more categories thrown.)

The number one most interesting case of the year is easy: Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Full lists below: [More...]

End of year swampage plus deadlines.

Here are some bowl picks: Tulsa -1½ over BYU (5 units), Iowa State -1 over Rutgers (5 units), Mississippi State -7 over Wake Forest (3 units), Oklahoma -14 over Iowa (4 units.)

BTW, the Okla State line has moved from 3 1/2 to 4 1/2. It'll be 6 by game time. Make your investment early if you like Okla State, as I do (best bet in a long time imo.)

Open thread.

This video featuring Hillary Clinton,produced a few weeks ago by the State Department, is yet another example of the differences between a Republican and Democrat Administration. Can you imagine it coming from a Secretary of State appointed by Romney or Gingrich?

The media's obsessive focus on Iowa is beyond annoying. Who cares which Republican wins? What matters is keeping a Democrat in the White House and gaining enough of a Democratic majority in Congress to reduce the need to compromise and capitulate. Whether it's civil liberties, Medicare or the war on drugs, Republicans are always worse. They really don't deserve the attention they have been getting lately.

President Obama's re-election campaign released this video today, outlining five ways for Obama to win 270 electoral votes in 2012.

While the 9th Circuit upheld the consitittuionality of telecom immunity for warrantless wiretapping in one case today, in another case, it ruled a complaint against the NSA and Government officials for conducting "a communications dragnet of ordinary citizens" can proceed. The case is Jewell vs. NSA, and the opinion is here.

The complaint by plaintiff Carolyn Jewell and others (the case is a potential class action) alleges that the NSA attached surveillance devices to AT&T's network, diverting communications into "SG3 Secure Rooms" at AT&T facilities around the country, creating "an unprecedented suspicionless general search" throughout the AT&T network. The suit alleged the NSA and other government defendants performed or aided and abetted the scheme. (AT&T was not sued in the case.)

The district court had dismissed the case holding the plaintiffs didn't have standing to challenge the scheme, but the 9th Circuit disagreed and reversed. [More...]

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals today upheld the constitutionality of FISA's grant of immunity to telecom companies assisting the Government in terrorism investigations. The opinion is here.

The statute is § 802 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (“FISA”), 50 U.S.C. § 1885a, known as the FISA Amendments Act of 2008.

The complaints were filed in the wake of news reports in December 2005 that President Bush had issued an order permitting the NSA to conduct warrantless eavesdropping. Under a program known as the Terrorist Surveillance Program (“TSP”), the NSA “had obtained the cooperation of telecommunications companies to tap into a significant portion of the companies’ telephone and e-mail traffic, both domestic
and international.”

[More...]

Here are the personal residences of the top Republican candidates. Better photo viewing here.

House with the most mirrors: Newt Gingrich.

In 2008, the media did a similar feature on the homes of Democratic candidates.

Lots of end of year stuff to take care of. Here's an open thread, all topics welcome.

From Wired: The year intellectual property trumped civil liberties.

Update: ICE launches a hotline and new form for detained individuals "to ensure that individuals being held by state or local law enforcement on immigration detainers are properly notified about their potential removal from the country and are made aware of their rights."

... detained individuals can call if they believe they may be U.S. citizens or victims of a crime. The hotline will be staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week by ICE personnel at the Law Enforcement Support Center. Translation services will be available in several languages from 7 a.m. until midnight (Eastern) seven days a week. ICE personnel will collect information from the individual and refer it to the relevant ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) Field Office for immediate action.

The new form, available here, instructs law enforcement they may not hold a detainee more than 48 hours after the individual would have otherwise been released.

On December 14, the Suffolk District Attorney issued a subpoena to Twitter for information related to Occupy Boston and some members of Anonymous. The ACLU moved to quash on First Amendment grounds. Today, the judge upheld the subpoena.

Twitter released the subpoena to the account holders of those named, @p0isAn0n @OccupyBoston #BostonPD #d0xcak3, who in turn posted it online. You can read it here. The subpoena also sought “IP address logs for account creation and for the period December 8, 2011 to December 13, 2011."

In this pastebin press release, an Anonymous member or supporter posted the reasons the subpoena was invalid.

More here.

It's good that Twitter provided the subpoena to the affected account holders. It's bad that a judge has upheld a subpoena for a hashtag. The ACLU has said it may appeal.

The Colorado Department of Revenue joined the short list of two other states asking the DEA to reclassify marijuana as a Schedule II controlled substance. Marijuana is currently a Schedule I controlled substance, a classification reserved for substances deemed to have no medicinal value or a high potential for abuse. From the DEA website:

Substances in this schedule have a high potential for abuse, have no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, and there is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision. Some examples of substances listed in schedule I are: heroin, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), marijuana (cannabis), peyote, methaqualone, and 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (“ecstasy”).

State law required the Director to write the letter. House Bill 1284, the 2010 law with regulations for medical marijuana, specifies the duties of the state licensing authority. It includes this provision:

"The state licensing authority shall....

....In recognition of the potential medicinal value of medical marijuana, make a request by January 1, 2012, to the federal Drug Enforcement Administration to consider rescheduling, for pharmaceutical purposes, medical marijuana from a schedule I controlled substance to a schedule II controlled substance.

[More....]