General Stanley McChrystal has informed the Army he is retiring from the military.

Hardly a surprise.

Gen. David Petraeus's confirmation hearing is tomorrow to replace McChrystal as the commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and the U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

Manuel Noriega's French money laundering trial opened today. He took the stand, and appeared feeble and weak. He's 76, and recently finished serving 17 years of a 20 year prison sentence in the U.S..

Noriega was charged in France in 1999 with illegally laundering cocaine profits. He was tried in absentia and sentenced to 10 years. This is a re-trial. He was extradited to France in April from the U.S.

Noriega, the Panamanian ruler from 1981 to 1989, has insisted that the money came from his brother's inheritance, his wife's personal fortune and payments by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The CIA considered him a valuable asset for years before he joined forces with drug traffickers and was implicated in the death of a political opponent.

[More...]

Former Chicago police Commander Jon Bruge has been convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice for lying about torturing suspects in jail.

A retired Chicago police commander suspected of using electric shocks, suffocation and mock executions to force suspects to confess was found guilty on Monday of lying about the brutality.

....Five of the dozens of African-American inmates who alleged they were tortured by Burge or his men testified they were subjected to being "bagged" with plastic typewriter covers placed over their faces, had guns stuck in their mouths, were held against hot radiators, or were given painful shocks from a homemade device.

The torture occurred so long ago that he wasn't tried for it. Still, he faces up to 45 years in prison. More details here. Our coverage of Bruge's indictment and the torture allegations is here, here and here.

Driving back from the jail, I was listening to CNN which was broadcasting Elena Kagan's opening remarks live. Without accompanying video to distract me, I was able to focus just on the content of her statement and her tone.

First, she is a really good speaker. She exuded a sense of calm. Second, there was a lot of emphasis on constitutional rights and equality of justice and on the need to be fair.

Third, she was deferential, promising to listen to Congress, the American people as they speak through the electoral process and their Representatives, and her fellow justices.

She doesn't seem to me to have an agenda. [More...]

The confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan have begun.

Dan Abrams tweets:

What a weird spectacle. Kagan has to sit there expressionless as Sessions insults her again and again.

Glenn Greenwald tweets:

I hope progressive legal groups will refrain from heaping praise on Kagan unless/until they learn a little about her judicial philosophy.

[More...]

BTD has noted the dissent of Justice Stevens in today's decision in McDonald v. Chicago (opinion here) which holds, finally, that the Second Amendment is applicable to the States.

The majority opinion was written by Justice Alito. (This is probably the first time I've ever agreed with him.)

It is clear that the Framers and ratifiers of the Fourteenth Amendment counted the right to keep and bear arms among those fundamental rights necessary to our system of ordered liberty. [More...]

The Supreme Court released its final decisions this morning. Among the most anticipated was McDonald v. Chicago (PDF), where the question presented was whether the Second Amendment applies to the States, via the incorporation doctrine. Justice Stevens' dissent includes a passage on the Constitution and the role of the Supreme Court that I believe will be remembered:

[T]he liberty safeguarded by the Fourteenth Amendment is not merely preservative in nature but rather is a“dynamic concept.” Stevens, The Bill of Rights: A Centuryof Progress, 59 U. Chi. L. Rev. 13, 38 (1972). Its dynamism provides a central means through which the Framers enabled the Constitution to “endure for ages to come,” McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, 415 (1819), a central example of how they “wisely spoke in general language and left to succeeding generations the task of applying that language to the unceasingly changing environment in which they would live,” Rehnquist, The Notion of a Living Constitution, 54 Tex. L. Rev. 693, 694(1976). “The task of giving concrete meaning to the term‘liberty,’” I have elsewhere explained at some length, “was a part of the work assigned to future generations.” Stevens, The Third Branch of Liberty, 41 U. Miami L. Rev.277, 291 (1986).21 The judge who would outsource the interpretation of “liberty” to historical sentiment has turned his back on a task the Constitution assigned to him and drained the document of its intended vitality.

(Emphasis supplied.) Speaking for me only.

World Cup and Wimbledon continue. Tour de France starts Saturday.

The Kagan hearings are scheduled to start today but I suspect it may be put off in light of the passing of Robert Byrd. UPDATE - Nope. The show goes on, confirmed by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Open Thread.

We are now, I fear, in the early stages of a third depression. It will probably look more like the Long Depression than the much more severe Great Depression. But the cost — to the world economy and, above all, to the millions of lives blighted by the absence of jobs — will nonetheless be immense.

And this third depression will be primarily a failure of policy. Around the world — most recently at last weekend’s deeply discouraging G-20 meeting — governments are obsessing about inflation when the real threat is deflation, preaching the need for belt-tightening when the real problem is inadequate spending.

[. . . This is] the victory of an orthodoxy that has little to do with rational analysis, whose main tenet is that imposing suffering on other people is how you show leadership in tough times. And who will pay the price for this triumph of orthodoxy? The answer is, tens of millions of unemployed workers, many of whom will go jobless for years, and some of whom will never work again.

(Emphasis supplied.)

Sen. Byrd has passed away:

Robert C. Byrd, who used his record tenure as a United States senator to fight for the primacy of the legislative branch of government and to build a modern West Virginia with vast amounts of federal money, died at about 3 a.m. Monday, his office said. He was 92. He had been in failing health for several years.

Mr. Byrd’s death comes as Senate Democrats are working to pass the final version of the financial overhaul bill and win other procedural battles in the week before the Independence Day recess. In the polarized atmosphere of Washington, President Obama’s agenda seemed to hinge on Mr. Byrd’s health. Earlier this year, in the final days of the health care debate, the ailing senator was pushed onto the Senate floor in his plaid wheelchair so he could cast his votes.

Mr. Byrd served 51 years in the Senate, longer than anyone in American history, and with his six years in the House, he was the longest-serving member of Congress. He held a number of Senate offices, including majority and minority leader and president pro tem.

Sen. Robert Byrd was hospitalized last week, and his office says he is in now "serious condition."

Sen. Byrd is 92 and the longest-serving member of Congress.

Confirmation hearings begin Monday for Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan.

Republican Senator Jeff Sessions is still talking about a filibuster. I think he's talking to himself.

Kagan will be quizzed by 12 Democrats and 7 Republicans. The AP has a guide here.

In other Supreme Court news, condolences to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose husband, lawyer and professor Martin Ginsburg, passed away today at 78, from complications related to metastatic cancer.