The Tour de France rides into Paris today. Pretty pictures. Sunday Talk shows will be all Gates I imagine. Not tempting me to start watching them again.

This is an Open Thread.

Jon Entine writes this about federal prosecutors:

We rarely think about the sheer magnitude of power in the hands of government attorneys. They have a fundamental responsibility not to win cases but to ensure justice. It is as much their duty to refrain from improper methods to produce a wrongful conviction as it is to use every legitimate means possible to bring about a just one. But that's not always what happens. Often, government prosecutors have no intention of going to trial. They have perfected a more powerful tactic: exploiting the threat of business losses and manipulating the media to force capitulation.

[more ...]

Marcy Wheeler at Empty Wheel dissects the article in Time Magazine about the waning days of Bush and Cheney, as it relates to the Scooter Libby non-pardon. Cheney pleaded and cajoled for his buddy, Bush didn't want to give him any more breaks than the sentence commutation he had already ordered.

But the fight over the pardon was also a prelude to the difficult questions about justice and national security inherited by the Obama Administration: How closely should the nation examine the actions of government officials who took steps — legal or possibly illegal — to defend the nation's security during the war on terrorism? The Libby investigation, which began nearly six years ago, went to the heart of whether the Bush Administration misled the public in making its case to invade Iraq. But other Bush-era policies are still coming under legal scrutiny. [More...]

Three New Jersey Mayors, two Assemblyman and five rabbis were arrested this week following a two year federal corruption and money laundering investigation.

A two-year corruption and international money-laundering investigation stretching from the Jersey Shore to Brooklyn to Israel and Switzerland culminated in charges against 44 people on Thursday, including three New Jersey mayors, two state assemblymen and five rabbis, the authorities said.

Happy birthday to Mick Jagger, who turns 66 tommorrow, July 26. "What a drag is it getting old."

He sure doesn't look 66 to me. [More...]

It's probably an overstatement to assert that "every year, thousands of upstanding, responsible Americans run afoul of some incomprehensible federal law and end up serving time in federal prison," but the key underlying point of this article is sound:

Congress needs to begin fixing the damage it has done by starting to restore a more reasonable, limited and just federal criminal law.

Unfortunately, the article comes to the right conclusion for the wrong reasons. [more ...]

Remember the Buffalo/Lackawanna Six? It's now coming out that Dick Cheney urged former President Bush to ignore the Posse Comitatus Act and send the military into Buffalo to make the arrests. Bush ended up rejecting the idea.

A decision to dispatch troops into the streets to make arrests has few precedents in American history, as both the Constitution and subsequent laws restrict the military from being used to conduct domestic raids and seize property.

The Fourth Amendment bans “unreasonable” searches and seizures without probable cause. And the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 generally prohibits the military from acting in a law enforcement capacity.

What did Cheney use as support for his view that the military could be used for a law enforcement operation if national security was involved? A 2001 Justice Department memo co-authored by John Yoo and directed to then White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales. [More...]

President Obama has a Border Czar named Alan Bersin. His official title is "special representative for border affairs." In an interview with the Associated Press , he discusses the increased number of border agents along the Canadian border to fight the war on drugs.

The U.S. Border Patrol has tripled the number of agents along the 5,500-mile border in recent years, with hundreds more soon to be deployed. Unmanned U.S. surveillance aircraft are being tested for use over the frontier, and video surveillance towers are going up around Buffalo and Detroit. Multi-agency, binational law enforcement teams operate in 15 regions from coast to coast.

...."Technology necessarily will play a more important role," he said. "You'll want more extensive use of surveillance systems, coupled with communications channels. And partnerships become a very important part of the strategy - federal, state, local and cross-border."

[More...]

President Obama telephoned both his pal Professor Henry Louis Gates and the cop who arrested him and all are going to share a beer at the White House and make nice.

Alberto Contador will win the Tour de France. Andy Schleck will be second. Lance Armstrong third. The peloton rides into Paris tomorrow with the final stage ending with 8 laps around the Champs-Elysees.

Rickey Henderson enters the Hall of Fame tomorrow. Here is a quote that gives you the flavor of Rickey:

Henderson says he has one regret -- that he didn't retire sooner. "You got to wait five years to go into the Hall of Fame,'' he said. "If I would have thought about it, and just went on and got them five years up early, then I'd been a little younger. Then I could have came back after I went into the Hall of Fame, but I waited too long."

He was my favorite ballplayer.

This is an Open Thread.

In the Tour de France, today is Mont Ventoux day. You can watch it online here.

This is an Open Thread.

I turned on 20/20 which is doing a special on the truth about oil and they started with quips of Sarah Palin and "drill baby drill." But it's a serious documentary narrated by Charles Gibson.

I've been gone all day and am just catching up. Anything good happen?

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.