While the unwise policy of trying and punishing juvenile offenders as if they were adults grew in popularity during the nation's "tough on crime" years, laws permitting waiver to adult court still require judges in most cases to make an individualized determination whether waiver is appropriate for a particular child charged with a particular crime. Texas law follows that pattern.

Before certifying a child, juvenile judges are supposed to hold a hearing and review evidence about the seriousness and nature of the offense, a child’s maturity and background, the likelihood of rehabilitation and the need for protection for the community, according to state law.

Those hearings are often time consuming and complex, as dueling experts (including social workers, psychologists, teachers and probation agents) provide the judge with the detailed information needed to make an informed waiver decision. Except in Harris County where, according to a Houston Chronicle investigation, judges routinely rubber-stamp waiver requests after holding 15 minute hearings. [more ...]

Two days after the City of New Haven, Connecticut agreed to issue identification cards to all city residents regardless of their citizenship or documentation, federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted early morning raids of New Haven homes that resulted in the arrests of 32 undocumented residents. ICE denies accusations made by city officials that it intended the raids to send a retaliatory message about its disapproval of the city's issuance of identity cards to undocumented workers. Whatever motivated the raids, it was clear to an immigration judge who presided over the deportation hearings of four arrestees that ICE agents "flagrantly violated" their Fourth Amendment rights by entering the homes without a warrant, without probable cause, and without consent.

[more ...]

Via Brian Beutler:

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) announced on the Senate floor today that the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor on July 13. . . .

This tracks with the time frame for the nomination hearings of now Chief Justice John Roberts. Leahy noted:

That agreement was reached before the Committee received the answers to the bipartisan questionnaire, and before the Committee had received any of the 75,000 pages of documents from his years working in Republican administrations. If 48 days were sufficient to prepare for that hearing, in accordance with our agreement and the initial schedule, it is certainly adequate time to prepare for the confirmation hearing for Judge Sotomayor.

As regular readers know, I fight a constant battle against the rehabilitation of Andrew Sullivan among progressives. Today Sullivan demonstrates again why I do this:

I must say that, to my mind, [Shelby] Steele has a point. It isn't the judicial rulings that trouble me so much as [Sotomayor's] non-judicial opinions and mindset. The constant, oppressive consciousness of her identity - racial and gender - and the harping on it so aggressively so often does strike me as a classic mode of victimology deeply entrenched in her generation.

(Emphasis supplied.) Andrew Sullivan has rightly obsessed on the discrimination faced by gays and lesbians in our society. It would never occur to me to describe his writings on gay rights as a "classic mode of victimology." To this day, Sullivan is unable to understand the issues of racism (his championing of "The Bell Curve" continues to this day) and sexism (his virulent sexism is exposed almost daily.) To him, concern about racism and sexism is "a classic mode of victimology." There is something wrong with him. UPDATE - Compare this Yglesias post about Victor Davis Hanson to what I write about Sully. The difference is no one, except me apparently, will write this way about Sully.

Speaking for me only

You can watch here.

My views here.

Jeralyn's views here.

Sen. Feingold's letter to President Obama on preventive detention here.

WaPo:

The Obama administration objected yesterday to the release of certain Bush-era documents that detail the videotaped interrogations of CIA detainees at secret prisons, arguing to a federal judge that doing so would endanger national security and benefit al-Qaeda's recruitment efforts.

. . . Although Panetta's statement is in keeping with his previous opposition to the disclosure of other information about the CIA's interrogation policies and practices during George W. Bush's presidency, it represents a new assertion by the Obama administration that the CIA should be allowed to keep such information secret. Bush's critics have long hoped that disclosure would pinpoint responsibility for actions they contend were abusive or illegal.

I guess that whole Brandeis sunshine/disinfectant thing is not operative in the Obama Administration. But pols are pols . . . See also Greenwald.

Speaking for me only

The FBI is understandably disinclined to reveal the details of ongoing criminal investigations, and the information it chooses to make public isn't always true. We therefore have no way to evaluate the legitimacy of the FBI's efforts to recruit Muslim informants to spy upon clerics and worshipers in mosques. Credible evidence that terrorists are using a mosque to shield their activities could justify the Bureau's infiltration effort, but how do we know that Muslims aren't targeted for undercover investigation simply because of their religion?

Robert Mueller's vague defense yesterday of the FBI's reliance on informants to gather information inside mosques when "there may be evidence or other information of criminal wrongdoings" did little to assure concerned Muslims that the FBI has a good reason when it decides to spy on them.

"It doesn't alleviate anything. It only continues to show the sheer arrogance demonstrated by the bureau in holding Muslim community members, clerics, mosques, as suspects," [executive of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California Shakeel] Syed said.

[more ...]

The inmates are opposed to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposal to consider selling San Quentin to earn money for the state.

They live two inmates to a 4-by-9-foot cell. And it's fine with them. Why? The opportunities for learning and rehabilitation.

One inmate says:

"Some places you go for punishment," said inmate John Taylor, a catcher for the prison baseball team, the San Quentin Giants. "Here, it's more rehabilitation. I just don't know why the governor would want to shut us down."

Taylor's job at the prison: cutting weeds. He says:

"This is the first place visitors see when they come in," he said. "We want it to look good."

[More...]

The oddest legal question of the day might be this: Does gardening in barely legal, scanty attire constitute a public nuisance?

The renters of a home in Boulder are upsetting their neighbors by gardening in a state of nature -- or at least as close as they can get without breaking the law. The nudist couple, Catharine and Robert Pierce, don thongs when they venture outside; Catharine adds pasties. Some of the neighbors complain that the Pierces can be seen by the children who attend a neighborhood school or play in nearby parks. The couple's landlord is threatening eviction for violating a lease term that prohibits nuisance behavior if the Pierces don't begin to dress "appropriately."

[more ...]

After 9/11, some overzealous protectors of the homeland's security began to suspect anyone who pointed a camera at a public building, a bridge, or a railroad yard of plotting a terrorist attack. One of the most unlikely terrorist suspects was 55-year-old Shirley Scheier, a fine arts professor at the University of Washington who was frisked, handcuffed, and aggressively interrogated while being detained in the back of a squad car for more than half an hour -- all because she took pictures of electrical power lines for use in an academic project.

With the ACLU's help, Scheier sued the City of Snohomish's police officers for violating her Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. The city's insurer argued that the officers entertained a reasonable suspicion that Scheier was up to no good because she left quickly after the electrical substation's security provider approached her (who wouldn't?) and because she had maps in her car (who doesn't?).

U.S. District Court Judge John Coughenour disagreed. [more ...]

So much TV tonight. Top billing in my book: Weeds, where the Season 5 opener is on Showtime. Last season, with the addition of the "Mexican Mafia", was the most intense and best yet.

But, that's not all we've got tonight. [More...]

Bwaahahahahahahahah! Rothenberg is boycotting Tweety because Tweety is too partisan for Democrats. Bwahahahaha!

Speaking for me only