Stage 17 of the Tour de France is being contested in the French Alps and features 6 mountain climbs. While most of the attention is on the battle for the yellow jersey, where Alberto Contador will be attacked by Andy Schleck's team Saxo Bank, a lot of attention will be focused on Lanterne Rouge "leader" Kenny Van Hummel. Can he survive 6 mountain climbs?

Here is more on the Lanterne Rouge Tradition.

This is an Open Thread.

Colorado has had a medical marijuana law, passed by voters as an amendment to the state constitution, since 2000. Recently, someone got the idea to have the Colorado State Board of Health try and limit dispensaries from supplying more than five patients.

Monday, there was a hearing. 500 activists, from police officers who support medical marijuana to those in wheelchairs and Iraq vets with PTSD, showed up to try and defeat the proposal. It worked.

For starters, they motivated off their couches and packed the Tivoli Student Union on the Auraria campus to protest a proposal to limit medical marijuana providers to five patients each. The audience was made up of persons in wheelchairs and crutches, reefer-promoting police officers, AIDS and cancer patients, and a woman who described herself as a “pro-life Republican mother.”

[More...]

Jackson Browne prevailed over John McCain in his lawsuit for McCain's use of "Running on Empty" during his presidential campaign. They settled, the amount wasn't disclosed and McCain apologized.

Funny, that of all the songs McCain could have chosen, he picked the one that most resembled his own campaign.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

The Washington Post and Associated Press report they have received an independent investigator's report into whether Sarah Palin violated ethics laws by seeking money from the Alaska Trust Fund to pay her legal bills:

The report obtained by The Associated Press says Palin is securing unwarranted benefits and receiving improper gifts through the Alaska Fund Trust, set up by supporters.

An investigator for the state Personnel Board says in his July 14 report that there is probable cause to believe Palin used or attempted to use her official position for personal gain because she authorized the creation of the trust as the ''official'' legal defense fund.

Palin responds "''There is no final report. The Investigator is still confidentially reviewing this matter. " The investigator responds, "[H]is report was final. [More...]

Two things I already knew: Sen. Jeff Sessions is a danger as the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate's Hate Crimes bill is ill-conceived legislation.

Things I now know: It's worse than I thought. The ACLU reports the Senate yesterday approved an Amendment by Jeff Sessions expanding the use of the death penalty for hate crimes. (Why not just life plus cancer as a penalty while he's at it?)

From the ACLU and then an action alert to get this removed.

The U.S. Senate yesterday passed an amendment extending the death penalty for certain hate crimes. The amendment, sponsored by Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), was added to the hate crimes amendment to the Defense authorization bill that passed last Thursday. In a letter sent to Senators, the American Civil Liberties Union urged lawmakers to oppose this misguided and wrong expansion of the federal death penalty.

Lawyers working. Your turn.

This is an Open Thread.

Agnes Lawless was rear-ended while driving in northeast Philadelphia. Fortunately, the car that collided with hers was traveling slowly and did little damage. Unfortunately, the driver (who left without stopping) immediately drove to the police department, where he apparently told his father, Officer Alberto Lopez Sr., that it was Lawless who caused the collision. Officer Lopez, accompanied by his son, drove around in his patrol car until they spotted Lawless' car at a convenience store.

Lawless was standing at the counter of the store, at Comly Road and Roosevelt Boulevard, smiling and chatting with the clerk, when she was grabbed from behind and violently pushed back with a police officer's gun in her face.

"He hit me with his left hand, and he had his gun in his right hand," Lawless said. "He pushed his gun into the left side of my neck. It caused a scrape-type bruise on my neck." After a chaotic struggle, Lawless was arrested and charged with assaulting the officer.

Lawless spent the night in jail. [more ...]

For several months, a police supervisor in Portsmouth, New Hampshire used a bugging device to listen to civilian employees in the police records office as they conversed with each other and with visitors. The device was apparently installed to help supervisors investigate complaints about the employees' rudeness when interacting with the public. Although a sign in the police department warns visitors that their conversations in the lobby might be recorded, no notice was given to the employees that a recording device had been installed inside their office.

Why police supervisors thought it was necessary to eavesdrop instead of telling the employees that they were being recorded is unclear. Perhaps it was simply their nature to seek to "catch the bad guys" who violated work rules rather than giving the employees information that would probably have prevented the violations. [more ...]

Great version that made the rounds of Facebook last night, thanks to Larisa at At Largely. Perfect intro to "Weeds" and "Nurse Jackie" which have new episodes tonight. (And yes, the Bachelorette is on, but it's a rewind episode called the "Men Tell All" with only the early rejected guys, none of the final four and I already wrote about it here.)

What are you watching, or not, tonight? This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

President Obama asked his task force to provide a roadmap to closing Guantanamo by today. They didn't. The report has been delayed until the fall . Michael Isikoff reports:

The task force, set up on Obama's second day in office, was charged with preparing a report to the president by Tuesday, July 21, outlining a long-term detention plan for detainees captured in counterterrorism operations after Sept. 11. But continued debate within the task force over the legal basis for holding detainees who are not charged with any crimes—and where to house them once they are moved from Guantánamo—has forced the task force to postpone its report by a "few months," a senior administration official told NEWSWEEK.

The ACLU's response is here. Also being delayed: the task force report on interrogations of "high value detainees."

President Obama held an invitation-only telephone conference with bloggers today urging them to keep the pressure on Congress regarding his health care plan.

It is important just to keep the pressure on members of Congress because what happens is there is a default position of inertia here in Washington," the president said during an invitation-only conference call. "And pushing against that, making sure that people feel that the desperation that ordinary families are feeling all across the country, every single day, when they are worrying about whether they can pay their premiums or not... People have to feel that in a visceral way. And you guys can help deliver that better than just about anybody."

He even took questions: [More...]

Bob Somerby wrote for rubes on Saturday about the Sotomayor hearings. Somerby wrote:

On Thursday morning, [Sen. Kyl] asked Sotomayor, again and again, to identify the precedents which compelled her decision in the Ricci case, or which would have compelled the full Second Circuit if it had addressed the matter. We’re not legal eagles here, and we’re willing to be corrected or further informed. . . . For ourselves, we don’t have a strong view on the Ricci case; we’d love to see better analysis. . . . Bottom line: Pseudo-liberals simply love to name-call southern whites. . . .

(Emphasis supplied.) Bob is writing for his rubes here. Funny how he could not find any "pseudo-liberal" analysis of Ricci. His research on the point was as good as the Media's on "Al Gore invented the Internet." Hey Bob! Here is just one analysis that could have answered your questions on Ricci. More on Somerby playing to his rubes tomorrow. This (PDF) might help Bob also.

This is an Open Thread.