I thought yesterday was a slow news day. Today looks even worse.

If you find something interesting to write about, here's an open thread for you, all topics welcome.

I think some of the song lyrics on Spinner's recent compilation of The 20 Worst Lyrics Ever aren't so bad. The reader's choices are better, although I would have elevated their number 10 to number 1:

"Having my baby
What a lovely way of saying
That you're thinking of me"

Or maybe she's saying, "You did this to me you SOB." (By the way, Mr. Anka, "having our baby" would have been a bit less self-centered.)

This is an open thread.

A Los Angeles Times editorial makes this dubious observation:

The distrust and anger toward the police felt by many African Americans, spotlighted by the recent controversy over the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., is partly the result of blatantly discriminatory laws such as the crack disparity.

The crack disparity is the fault of Congress, not the police. Still, the editorial correctly observes that Congress enacted crack cocaine penalties that, in practice if not intent, are blatantly discriminatory. More to the point, federal crack penalties are nonsensical and just plain unfair. That's why TalkLeft has often made the point that Congress should remedy the problem -- and that's why TalkLeft agrees with the editorial that a bill working its way through Congress to do just that should be given a high priority.

TalkLeft told Timothy Cole's sad story in this post. Cole was convicted of a rape he didn't commit on the strength of a mistaken eyewitness identification. The rapist, Jerry Wayne Johnson, confessed nine years after Cole went to prison. The Texas judges who heard about it ignored the confession. Cole died in prison 13 years into his sentence. He was posthumously exonerated on the basis of DNA evidence.

As that post noted, the district attorney who convicted Cole didn't seem terribly remorseful. That isn't true of Michelle Mallin, the rape victim who was victimized once by Johnson and a second time by the criminal justice system that staked its entire case on her identification while ignoring evidence that a serial rapist was still on the loose. She spent years in counseling after the rape, and she's back in counseling now, having learned that her testimony sent the wrong man to prison.

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• A jury orders a former college kid to pay $675k for downloading and sharing 30 songs.

• A federal judge in PA has rejected the plea agreement for the former judges who engaged in a kickback scheme that sent juveniles to private detention facilities.

• ICE sued over "house calls" -- by a Border agent whose house was one of those mistakenly raided.

What are you finding of interest today? this is an open thread, all topics welcome.

I'm racing the clock to get three more suppression motions filed by the midnight deadline.

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

Update 8/1: Our thoughts and best wishes go out to Sen. Chris Dodd who announced last night he has prostate cancer. It's in the early stage, he expects a full recovery and still intends to seek re-election.

Via Peter Daou and Media Matters, the Washington Post brings it:

Lighten up! Just good clean fun.

Speaking for me only

Comments closed.

Update 8/1: I'm glad to see that Law Prof Ellen Podgor, who specializes in White Collar Crime and really knows her stuff, agrees with me that this is a very technical opinion. She also comments:

What concerns me is the level of economic and mathematical skills needed by counsel and the courts to handle these cases. Clearly experts exist who understand the figures being presented, and have the ability to offer their schooled explanations to the court. But counsel and the court still need more than a basic understanding of economics to properly represent and sentence someone accused of insider trading.

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Original Post 7/31

The Tenth Circuit today reversed the 72 month sentence imposed on former Qwest CEO Joe Nacchio for his insider trading conviction, holding the trial court had improperly calculated his sentencing guidelines. The matter will now go back to the trial court for re-sentencing. The opinion is here.

The eagle flies on a Friday, if you have a job that is.

This is an Open Thread.

I thought it quite good. I especially liked this part:

Sergeant Crowley and I, through an accident of time and place, have been cast together, inextricably, as characters – as metaphors, really – in a thousand narratives about race over which he and I have absolutely no control. Narratives about race are as old as the founding of this great Republic itself, but these new ones have unfolded precisely when Americans signaled to the world our country’s great progress by overcoming centuries of habit and fear, and electing an African American as President. It is incumbent upon Sergeant Crowley and me to utilize the great opportunity that fate has given us to foster greater sympathy among the American public for the daily perils of policing on the one hand, and for the genuine fears of racial profiling on the other hand.

Speaking for me only

Atrios:

YAAAY!

Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic activity, fell at a 1 percent annual rate in the April through June quarter, the Commerce Department said.

Oh, wait...

That compares with a 6.4 percent pace of decline in the first quarter, a revision from an earlier estimate of a 5.5 percent rate of decline.

Don't worry. Be Happy.

Speaking for me only

Jeralyn told the story of Rolando Cruz way back in 2002. Cruz, Alejandro Hernandez and another man were charged with raping and murdering a 10-year-old girl who was abducted from her home in Naperville, Illinois in 1983. Cruz and Hernandez were convicted and sentenced to death in 1985. (The jury hung as to the third man and he was never recharged.)

All three men were innocent. The crime was actually committed by Brian Dugan, who went on to murder a 27-year-old woman in 1984 and a 7-year-old girl in 1985. If the police hadn't been so busy fabricating evidence against Cruz and his co-defendants, they might have apprehended Dugan before he committed those later crimes and Cruz would have been spared the 11 years he spent on death row.

Even worse, police and prosecutors knew in late 1985 that Dugan was the killer because he offered to confess to the 1983 murder during plea negotiations concerning the two subsequent homicides. They chose not to believe Dugan because he said he committed the crime alone -- a fact that made the death sentences imposed on Cruz and Hernandez rather inconvenient for the prosecutors who obtained them. [more ...]