Matt Yglesias writes about this shilling piece by Harold Ford and John Sununu for the telecom "grassroots organization" Broadband for America. Matt points out that the "op-ed" piece makes no sense.

I'm more interested in what the telecoms think they get out of subsidizing Ford and Sununu. It's one thing to use them as conduits to pay make contributions to Congress folk. But to "shift public opinion?" Harold Ford? John Sununu? You gotta be kidding me.

An efficient market would have ended this gravy train for the likes of Ford and Sununu, who can't persuade anyone of anything. Here's my suggestion to the telecoms to help their bottom line - stop throwing your money away on the likes of Harold Ford and John Sununu.

Speaking for me only

It's about time. Adam Liptak of the New York Times reports the Supreme Court will revisit eyewitness identifications for the first time in 34 years. Mistaken eyewitness identification is the leading cause of wrongful convictions:

Of the first 250 DNA exonerations, 190 involved eyewitnesses who were wrong, as documented in “Convicting the Innocent,” a recent book by Brandon L. Garrett, a law professor at the University of Virginia.

Many of those witnesses were as certain as they were wrong. “There is absolutely no question in my mind,” said one. Another was “120 percent” sure. A third said, “That is one face I will never forget.” A fourth allowed for a glimmer of doubt: “This is the man, or it is his twin brother.”

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As Dominique Strauss-Kahn's supporters plan his return to France and French politics, and Reuters' reports that officials in France believe Tristane Bannon's charges are unlikely to result in a criminal case, Nafassitou Diallo's lawyers are expected to make a last-ditch effort today or tomorrow for a special prosecutor to take over the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case. It has no chance of succeeding.

Mr. Thompson’s motion will almost certainly fail, legal experts said, because under the law his client has no authority to ask for Mr. Vance’s office to be replaced by a special prosecutor. “It’s what we call an A.O.D.: an act of desperation,” said Stephen Gillers, a professor at New York University Law School. “She may benefit from a successful prosecution, but she has no legal interest in the prosecution.”

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What Glenn Said.

Open Thread.

As the Wall St. Journal says, the feds' ramped up use of forfeitures is snaring the property of the innocent as well as the guilty.

It's an issue both the right and the left agree on:

The expansion of forfeiture powers is part of a broader growth in recent decades of the federal justice system that has seen hundreds of new criminal laws passed. Some critics have dubbed the pattern as the overcriminalization of American life. The forfeiture system has opponents across the political spectrum, including representatives of groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union on the left and the Heritage Foundation on the right. They argue it represents a widening threat to innocent people.

As David Smith, author of the leading text book on forfeiture law, says:

"We are paying assistant U.S. attorneys to carry out the theft of property from often the most defenseless citizens," given that people sometimes have limited resources to fight a seizure after their assets are taken, says David Smith, a former Justice Department forfeiture official and now a forfeiture lawyer in Alexandria, Va.

This needs a lot more attention. The money does not just go to crime victims. In drug cases, for example, there are no financial victims. Very rarely do you see a restitution order in a drug case. The Government just gets to keep the funds -- or share them with local law enforcement. It's such a racket.

Mother Jones has partnered with the University of California-Berkeley's Investigative Reporting Program and compiled a fascinating report on the FBI's use of informants in the war on terror. The crucial question:

The FBI has built a massive network of spies to prevent another domestic attack. But are they busting terrorist plots—or leading them?

The number of informants has dramatically increased since 9/11:

The bureau now maintains a roster of 15,000 spies, some paid as much as $100,000 per case, many of them tasked with infiltrating Muslim communities in the United States.

They aren't just ratting out their partners in crime, they are setting them up.

The bureau's answer has been a strategy known variously as "preemption," "prevention," and "disruption"—identifying and neutralizing potential lone wolves before they move toward action. To that end, FBI agents and informants target not just active jihadists, but tens of thousands of law-abiding people, seeking to identify those disgruntled few who might participate in a plot given the means and the opportunity. And then, in case after case, the government provides the plot, the means, and the opportunity.

Really a good series and well worth reading.

Statues are being pulled down in Tripoli:

Rebels surged into the Libyan capital Sunday night, meeting little resistance from troops loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi and setting off raucous street celebrations by residents hailing the end of his 42 years in power.

Congratulations to the Libyan people. Good luck with the future of your country.

There is a strain of defense of President Obama that truly baffles me -- I call it the "Presidents don't matter" defense. Matt Yglesias trots out perhaps the weirdest version of it yet:

Why Is Abortion Legal?

For the endless presidential power debate, I wonder how it is people think that abortion is still legal in the United States of America. Is its availability severely curtailed? Sure. Has the core holding of Roe v. Wade been substantially eroded? Obviously. Has illegal terrorist violence reduced the practical availability of abortions beyond what’s been done through the political process? Clearly. But still, we have over 800,000 abortions per year in the United States and we have over 200 abortions per 1,000 live births, each and every one of them legal. That’s despite Ronald Reagan and the big GOP gains in the 1980 election. It’s despite twelve years of Republican control of the White House. [. . .] My working hypothesis is that we have hundreds of thousands of legal abortions every year in the United States because major policy shifts are difficult to undertake.

I liked this post by Kevin Drum on persuasion:

My own experience, which I think is fairly generalizable, is that within the course of a single conversation hardly anybody ever changes their mind — including me. Arguing is a dominance game, and in a face-to-face confrontation over anything of significance (virtual or otherwise) we hairless apes will go to considerable lengths to avoid conceding dominance. So if we find ourselves on the losing end of a confrontation, we end up simply switching to new arguments, trying to redefine the terms of debate, cherry picking our evidence a little differently, burrowing down into ever more trivial subarguments, or reverting to mockery and then walking away. In other words, pretty much anything other than actually conceding that someone else is right and that our worldview might need to be updated.

That's lawyering. Kevin extrapolates to discussing politics - "arguments will start to sink in maybe a day or a week later when the emotional charge has worn off. You'll probably never know that you've successfully persuaded your adversary, since it's a gradual change that happens offstage and is rarely acknowledged (dominance games again), but it happens. [. . .] Thus politics." I disagree with that - that's political punditry. In politics, a large swath of the electorate has no commitment to a particular belief - if they do have a commitment, it is to jersey color. If there is, it is jersey color commitment. Generally, folks will agree with whoever does best for them- the old "are you better off now" question. Most people don't think about policy, and process even less, than pundits think.

Open Thread.

The New York Times reports the lawyer for the accuser in the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case got a letter inviting his client to a meeting at the DA's office Monday, one day before the DA will announce in court whether he is dropping charges against DSK.

Kenneth Thompson, the lawyer, predicts charges will be dropped. Why? From the terse tone of the letter, and because:

“If they were not going to dismiss the charges,” Mr. Thompson added on Saturday, “there would be no need to meet with her. They would just go to court the next day to say, ‘We’re going to proceed with the case.’ ”

Then there's this statement in the letter: [More...]

I just got back from the Farmers Market. Not too many things are worth getting up early on a Saturday, but the produce at the market is so far superior, I didn't mind at all.

Why is Kim Kardashian's wedding getting so much coverage? Does the media think she's the American equivalent of Princess Kate? I certainly don't and could care less.

Manhattan DA Cy Vance is expected to announce Tuesday whether he'll dismiss charges against Dominique Strauss-Kahn. The latest: The DA is asking the accuser's lawyer for documents regarding settlement dicussions with Strauss-Kahn's lawyers in June. There are reports he offered to have the accuser stop cooperating with authorities if a settlement was reached. The private settlement discussions, held in mid-June, were reported by the New York Times on July 27. [More...]

The Government has filed its brief in support of a retrial of baseball giant Roger Clemens (available here.) They say their "inadvertent mistake" of failing to redact their trial exhibit of Congressman Cumming's testimony restating Laura Pettitte's statement about her husband's comments to her about a conversation with Clemens was not done for the purpose of goading the defense to request a mistrial.

They also claim they thought the trial was going well. As support, they include a blog post and a news article. I wonder if either author was in the courtroom for the trial.

Not explained: Why the prosecutor didn't stop the playing of the tape the minute he realized Laura Pettitte's statement was on it. All the Government says is, well, the defense didn't either. Considering the judge had just ruled days before Laura Pettitte's statements were inadmissible, the prosecutor should have stopped it immediately, knowing he was introducing banned material.

Also not addressed: The defense claim that they had repeatedly asked for the revised tape exhibits and the Government kept putting it off. [More...]