The ACLU has put out a travel alert for Arizona in advance of July 4th, warning of racial profiling stops and arrests.

American Civil Liberties Union affiliates in Arizona, New Mexico and 26 other states put out the warnings in advance of the Fourth of July weekend. The Arizona chapter has received reports that law enforcement officers are already targeting some people even though the law doesn't take effect until July 29, its executive director said. The alerts are designed to teach people about their rights if police stop and question them.

Check out the ACLU alert here. [More...]

The U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama announced today that Joran Van der Sloot has been indicted on extortion and wire fraud charges.

According to the indictment, van der Sloot caused Beth Holloway to wire $15,000 from her bank in Birmingham to his account at a bank in the Netherlands. The indictment also charges that he caused her to wire $10,000 to lawyer John Q. Kelly in New York so that Kelly could later carry that money to Aruba and deliver it to van der Sloot in person. The indictment identifies Kelly as an advisor and legal representative of Beth Holloway who served as her intermediary with van der Sloot.

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Molly Haggerty, the woman accusing Al Gore of sexual misconduct during a massage in 2006, has agreed to be publicly identified. She tells more of her story to the National Enquirer. The Enquirer claims she has new evidence and is now demanding a full police investigation.

Oddly, the Oregonian, while reporting on her enhanced version to the Enquirer, which reveals her identity and shows her holding up a pair of pants, continues not to print her name .

I think this story died last week when it was reported Ms. Haggerty wanted large amounts of money for her story. Yet, in her taped statement, you hear her telling the police investigator she's not doing this for money, she's not interested in money and she just wants justice for women. Her credibility is shot. Continued interest level in this story: zero. Time to put it to bed.

Andrew Breitbart is offering 100k for the Journolist archives. Not sure why. Joe Klein is revealing them:

[Jeff] Goldberg's work is quite the opposite: rigorously reported, beautifully written and fiercely honest. [. . . Glenn] Greenwald, locked in the sterile prison of his ideology, is completely incompetent to understand. And now, Greenwald--who, so far as I can tell, only regards the United States as a force for evil in the world [. . .]

Save your 100 grand Breitbart, Joe Klein will reveal all for free.

To get the joke, read this and this.

Greenwald responds here. No word yet from the Journolisters on this spat. Presumably, private e-mails are flying. Also presumably, not 400 at a time.

Speaking for me only

Federer in some trouble against Berdych at Wimbledon. Djokivic through to the semis. Murray and Rafa Nadal (vs. Soderling) still to play.

Open Thread.

Seeing their brilliant strategy of attacking Thurgood Marshall shockingly not find a resonant audience, the Right has trotted out a new line of attack. It seems that when Elena Kagan was in the Clinton White House, she provided some wording advice on how to state their view on a late term abortion procedure to the American College of Obstetricians and Gyncecologists (ACOG). This, it appears, is scandalous behavior. It will be interesting to see if the GOP Senators pick up this point, and whether any of the GOP's witnesses are asked if they submitted their statements for review by the GOP staff of the Judiciary Committee.

In any event, when you get to the actual allegation, it is nonexistent. Here's the description at NRO by a conservative DC lawyer who worked in the Bush Justice Department of Kagan's horrible sin:

It always amazes me that people care what politicians "really" want. Kevin Drum writes:

I never expected to like everything [Obama] did. The reason I'm schizophrenic [about Obama] is that it's almost impossible to get a handle on what he really wants. Did he want a bigger stimulus bill but compromised down because $800 billion was all he could get? Or did he not really want more than that in the first place? Ditto for the public option. Ditto for DADT, which he had to be pushed into supporting this year. And ditto again on financial reform, which is worth passing only because of numerous amendments to the original bill. On all of these issues and more, I don't feel like I ever knew what Obama's real position was. There's a big difference between compromising because politics is what it is and you have no choice, and compromising because the more centrist position is the one you genuinely hold. But Obama never gives me a good sense of which it is with him.

(Emphasis supplied.) Actually, there is no difference between compromising because of perceived political constraints or because you prefer the compromised position. The outcome is the same. It is the insatiable desire, that I simply do not understand, to believe a politician agrees with you on policy, even if he does nothing that actually enacts the policies you prefer. [More...]

When I had a spare moment today, I watched the Spain-Portugal World Cup game (Spain won 1-0.) So I watched none of the Kagan confirmation hearings. I just read this report on the hearings:

Under questioning by the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, Ms. Kagan said she thought it would be inappropriate for her to talk about how she might rule on pending cases or cases “that might come before the court in the future” — or to answer questions that were “veiled” efforts to get at such issues. Moreover, she said, she also now believed that “it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to talk about past cases” by essentially grading Supreme Court precedents, because those issues, too, might someday come again before the court.

Some Republicans seemed willing to give Ms. Kagan a pass on her retreat from her 1995 standard about how open and specific nominees should be about their legal views. “I really don’t have any major disagreement with where she’s drawn the line,” Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, said during a break.

I'll read the transcript to see, but if I were a Senator, I would not accept the position Kagan has taken. I would vote No on bringing the nomination to the floor until the nominee answered the questions. But it seems clear that I am in the minority on this point.

Speaking for me only

World Cup - Penalty kick shootout to finish Paraguay-Japan. Spain faces Portugal this afternoon.

Open Thread.

Senator Russ Feingold has refused to sign on to the FinReg conference compromise and Susan Collins has pulled the ball away yet again. Maria Cantwell, who voted against FinReg before, has not stated her position yet.

I want to take a look at Feingold's position for a moment and consider whether he is engaged in political bargaining and whether his use of the filibuster procedure is a good idea. (For background, see my previous writing on political bargaining.) Feingold said:

As I have indicated for some time now, my test for the financial regulatory reform bill is whether it will prevent another crisis. The conference committee’s proposal fails that test and for that reason I will not vote to advance it. During debate on the bill, I supported several efforts to break up ‘too big to fail’ Wall Street banks and restore the proven safeguards established after the Great Depression separating Main Street banks from big Wall Street firms, among other issues. Unfortunately, these crucial reforms were rejected. While there are some positive provisions in the final measure, the lack of strong reforms is clear confirmation that Wall Street lobbyists and their allies in Washington continue to wield significant influence on the process.

Is this bargaining or a position? If it is bargaining, it is late in the day for this. What does Feingold want and what would be the process for getting it in? Let's discuss this on the flip.

A clever headline from the WaPo - Kagan may get confirmed, but Thurgood Marshall can forget it:

"Justice Marshall's judicial philosophy," said Sen. Jon Kyl (Ariz.), the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, "is not what I would consider to be mainstream." Kyl -- the lone member of the panel in shirtsleeves for the big event -- was ready for a scrap. Marshall "might be the epitome of a results-oriented judge," he said.

[More...]

El Comercio Peru reports that Joran van der Sloot has a mysterious visitor at Miguel Castro Castro prison:

He is visited by a foreign woman in the Castro Castro prison twice a week. According to prison authorities revealed maximum security to local media, the mysterious visitor takes canned food and groceries, allegedly on behalf of the Netherlands citizen mother, Anita van der Sloot.

According to the press , the swarthy-skinned woman has been seen visiting the confessed murderer of Stephany Flores during the last week. Police officers have come to examine in detail the food that leads to murder suspect.

This is an open thread for all topics related to Joran Van der Sloot.