As women here do most mornings, Madelena Ngalya left the village around 9 a.m. one recent day and walked alone along a path through the jungle to her farm. The 56-year-old widow had been planting there for about an hour when she saw a soldier at the edge of the field. He walked toward her. "I started trembling when I saw him," she said. "I felt unable to cry, even to scream. I said, 'My son, how are you?'" The soldier asked whether she was by herself. "I said, 'I'm alone here,' she said. "He said, 'If you cry, we have many soldiers in the jungle, and when others hear you cry, they will come to you, too.' My body was like dead. Then he did what he wanted to do."

More . . .

The AP factchecks Sarah Palin's claim that the proposed health care reform bill would create death panels by depriving seniors of life-sustaining treatment.

Palin's claim:

Federal bureaucrats would play God, ruling on whether ailing seniors are worth enough to society to deserve life-sustaining medical care. Palin and other critics are wrong.

So, it's not true. It's another Sarah Palin lie. Either she's not intelligent enough to understand the plain English of the bill or, like Supreme Court opinions, she hasn't read it....or she's just an opportunist out for headlines that will mobilize the right-wing. Take your pick. I'll choose all three.

Washington State is re-thinking its three-strikes laws, particularly for non-violent offenders. Gov. Chris Gregoire was the first Governor in the country to grant clemency to a three-striker earlier this year, and has since added two more to the list.

Fifteen years after voters and legislatures across the country began embracing the three-strikes concept, many states apply those laws more sparingly. Prosecutors and judges often use the discretion provided them to avoid charging a defendant whose past consists of minor robberies or assault convictions with a third-strike offense. Now Washington is taking the extra step of reviewing the cases of some nonviolent three-strikes prisoners and moving to release those, like Dozier, who probably would not face such a severe punishment today.

The Sentencing Project recently released a report on the growing number of inmates serving life sentences. 140,000, or 1 in 11 inmates, are serving life in federal and state prisons. The racial disparity is glaring:[More...]

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed an award of $14 million to former death row inmate John Thompson for prosecutorial misconduct. The court was evenly divided, which means the lower court's verdict is affirmed.

Judge Edward Prado, who wrote the court's order to uphold the $14 million verdict, said that the appellate court must give deference to the jury's verdict. He added that the Thompson verdict will not subject other cities to "widespread liability" because it is such an extraordinary case.

"The dissent is merely quibbling with the jury's factual findings," wrote Prado. "This oversteps our bounds as an appellate court. The dissent presents nothing more than a skewed version of the facts in favor of the District Attorney's Office...these factual disputes were for the jury to resolve."

Here's what caused the verdict. [More...]

The U.S. is changing policy in the war against Afghan drug traffickers. A new report to be released this week by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee says the U.S. will now keep a list of wanted Afghan drug traffickers with ties to the Taliban and hunt them down with orders to capture or kill them.

Fifty Afghans believed to be drug traffickers with ties to the Taliban have been placed on a Pentagon target list to be captured or killed, reflecting a major shift in American counternarcotics strategy in Afghanistan, according to a Congressional study to be released this week.

...United States military commanders have told Congress that they are convinced that the policy is legal under the military’s rules of engagement and international law. They also said the move is an essential part of their new plan to disrupt the flow of drug money that is helping finance the Taliban insurgency.

No trial? Just shoot to kill? Wow. [More..]

President Obama today defended U.S. funding of the war on drugs in Mexico. He "brushed aside" reports by human rights organizations of widespread torture and abuse, echoing the refrain by Mexico's President that the drug traffickers bigger human rights violators.

[H]uman rights advocates and Mexico’s human rights commission have documented numerous complaints of torture, rape, beatings and arbitrary detentions since Mr. Calderón dispatched more than 45,000 soldiers to take on traffickers.

...Repeating a line used often by President Felipe Calderón of Mexico, Mr. Obama labeled the drug traffickers causing so much violence in both Mexico and the United States as the biggest violators of human rights.

Whatever happened to "two wrongs don't make a right?"

Looks like we're all busy at work today. What I'm reading:

• Obama launches a new website for health care reform -- Reality Check. Here's the part on Medicare.

• Border Corruption Probe: Agents taking bribes from smugglers.

  In the past 10 months, 20 agents from Customs and Border Protection alone have been charged with a corruption-related crime. At that pace, the organization will set a new record for in-house corruption.

• Multiple rape claimsin Iran against prison guards by both male and female detained protesters.

  Senior police and judiciary officials acknowledged over the weekend that opposition detainees have been abused in prison and called for those responsible to be punished, apparently in an effort to calm public outrage over the mistreatment and death of prisoners.

Here's an open thread for you, all topics welcome.

For the first time in 34 years, Manhattan will elect a new District Attorney. For decades, the office has been run by District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, who at 90, is stepping down. There are three Democrats competing to replace him in a primary that will be held September 15. With no Republicans running, the winner of the primary will get the job. The candidates are: Richard Aborn, Cyrus Vance and Leslie Crocker Snyder, each of whom worked as prosecutors in Morgenthau’s office for varying periods of time.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office is huge. It prosecutes 100,000 cases a year. It employs 500 Assistant District Attorneys and 700 staff members. [More...]

It's been 40 years since the summer of '69. The year of Charles Manson and the Sharon Tate/LaBianca Murders.

The summer of Woodstock: Check out The Woodstock Memories Project, a gallery of photos, memories, news articles and more by the Poughkeepsie Journal and Footnote.com. Some previously unreleased performances are here.

A few more favorites below:

I'm headed out for the day. Here's an open thread for those of you online. All topics welcome, please be nice.

Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-CO), a first-term Congressman I like very much, held a townhall meeting on health care today outside a King Soopers grocery store in Brighton, CO, which is about 1/2 hour northeast of Denver.

Some of the signs these protesters carry are just nuts. Like, "Jesus is My Single Payer" and "Seniors, Get Your Death Pill here" (photos from Complete Colorado, whose coverage of the event is here.)

To his credit, Rep. Perlmutter actually sat down and listened to folks discuss health care.

Mike Ditto (Progress Now, former online communications director for Mark Udall and many others and former TalkLeft webmaster) had his car vandalized . His twitter feed of the event is here. You Tube video of damage here -- they got almost every panel of the car. Photo's below:

Netroots Nation kicks off August 13 in Pittsburgh, PA. If you are thinking of going, here's another reason: They just announced that Former President Bill Clinton will there opening night.

Why have a Netroots Nation with no elections on the immediate horizon? As they say, to make sure we get the change we voted for, and to assist progressives with grass-roots efforts as the focus changes from electoral politics to governance.

If you'd like to go, you can sign up here.