The Denver Nuggets have a big game tonight. I'll be out for a while, so here's an open thread for any discussions you might want to start.

The Kentucky jury that convicted Steven Green of the Mahmudiya rape and murders, hung today on the death penalty, which means Green will be sentenced to life without parole.

All topics welcome.

Reading about a federal indictment of several Muslim men accused of plotting to bomb a synagogue in the Bronx I couldn't help but be reminded of terror plots past: the plot to bomb the Sears Tower; the plot to
attack Fort Dix; the plot to destroy the 34th Street subway station in Manhattan.

What do these indictments have in common? Well, they all involve defendants who allegedly chose huge targets that would take a very skilled and organized terrorist to take down. Yet in each and every case the defendants in question were far from organized and, more disturbingly, did not remotely have the means to pull the plots in question off. Perhaps worst of all, in most cases the defendants did not even initiate the terror plots--the plots were hatched by informants. [More...]

Update: DOJ press release and Indictment available here.

This is quite a story. Paul Bergrin, a former Assistant U.S. Attorney in New Jersey (whose father was a police officer) has spent the past several years defending gang members and drug dealers. He pleaded guilty to running an escort service. Apparently, he was also under federal investigation.

Now he's got much bigger troubles. A federal grand jury in New Jersey has indicted him for racketeering and ordering the murders of two snitches who planned to testify against his clients. The charges also include witness tampering and mortgage fraud.

"The conduct alleged is simply shocking," said Ralph Marra, the acting New Jersey U.S. attorney. "A licensed lawyer, a former prosecutor, essentially became one of the criminals he represents."

Bergrin, a one-time lieutenant to self-proclaimed "King of All Pimps" Jason Itzler, had a government informant gunned down in an attempt to derail a federal case against one of his drug-dealer clients, prosecutors say.

In the second murder attempt, [More...]

Federal Seventh Circuit Appeals Court Judge Diane Wood (appointed in 1995 by President Clinton) is rumored to be on the short list of candidates for appointment to the Supreme Court by President Obama. Wood, in contrast to appeals court Sonia Sotomayor, has received a favorable review from TNR's Jeff Rosen (ironically, Rosen objected to her elevation to the 7th Circuit.) But Wood's views on constitutional interpretation are likely to be attacked by extreme conservative legal commentators. This 2004 talk at NYU (via SCOTUSblog) is likely to be the focal point of attack. A key snippet:

It is time . . . to end the long-standing and unproductive methodological debate over “originalism” versus “dynamism” or “evolution” and focus instead on how, as a substantive matter, we should interpret the Constitution in the twenty-first century, and what it has to say on questions unimaginable to our eighteenth-century Framers.

Fighting words for the the extreme right wing legal community. More . .

Abduwali Muse, the young, 5'2" Somali pirate, was indicted by a federal grand jury this week. The charges include piracy and violence against maritime navigation. (Indictment available here (pdf.) Bloomberg reports that if convicted, he faces mandatory life in prison. Today, he pleaded not guilty.

Mr. Muse is not faring well at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown Manhattan. He's being held in isolation and his lawyers have asked for medical aid. They say he's only been allowed a one minute phone call to his mother in Somalia. He requires surgery on his hand and has another undisclosed medical condition. According to one of his lawyers: [More...]

You will be shocked -- shocked, I tell you -- to learn that there are prostitutes in New York City. Perhaps as many as sixteen.

New York's crusading Attorney General, Andrew Cuomo, used the indictment of seven people who allegedly operated a prostitution ring in Queens as an opportunity to grandstand against the villainous Craigslist, which until recently hosted an "erotic services" category. Cuomo purports to be outraged that the prostitution ring used Craigslist as its exclusive advertising outlet.

Mr. Cuomo’s statement said, “Until Craigslist gets serious about putting real protections in place, it will continue to be an environment where criminal operations thrive with impunity.”

Right. As opposed to the Yellow Pages, the "adult" classified section of The Village Voice, and a plethora of websites. Even About.com offers a helpful guide to NYC escorts. So why pick on Craigslist? [more ...]

So that he could keep saying this:

We decided to confront the regimes that sponsored terrorists . . . We turned special attention to regimes that had the capacity to build weapons of mass destruction, and might transfer such weapons to terrorists. . . .

We had the training camps of Afghanistan, and dictators like Saddam Hussein with known ties to Mideast terrorists.

(Emphasis supplied.) Cheney approved of torture not because it helped to combat terrorism - it not only does not work, it foments terrorism - he approves of it because it allowed him to foment the Iraq Debacle. Funny how the Iraq Debacle was not mentioned in his speech today.

Speaking for me only

The speech:

Text of the President's speech here More . . .

Bumped: Today the House Judiciary Committee (Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security)is holding a hearing on the disparity between crack and powder cocaine sentences.

Members of Congress will receive a petition with 21,000 signatures calling for an end to the disparity. The hearing is called “Unfairness in Federal Cocaine Sentencing: Is it Time to Crack the 100 to 1 Disparity?"

Among the witnesses is a former U.S. Attorney, Veronica Coleman-Davis (Tennessee). From her written testimony:

“After more than 20 years, multiple studies debunking the myths, recommendations from the United States Sentencing Commission, and at least two generations of families and children torn by the systemic imposition of imprisonment for one -100th the amount of cocaine than their white counterparts, it is surely not only good policy but also good politics to correct this injustice,”

The pending bills addressing the disparity are:[More...]

President Obama told human rights activists today he's considering preventive detention for suspected terrorists for whom there is insufficient evidence to charge with a crime.

Translation: Just like Bush. Lock 'em up indefinitely without bringing criminal charges. A disturbing but emerging pattern: Every time Obama takes a step forward, he moves two steps back.

And now for some good news:

The Obama White House on Wednesday undid a Bush administration policy that used federal health and safety regulations to limit the ability of injured consumers to sue companies in state courts.

This will irritate the Chamber of Commerce types who have no interest in "states' rights" when those rights include a consumer's right to sue businesses under state law. Business interests persuaded the Bush administration (and have often persuaded federal courts) that state law should be preempted by federal law to spare businesses the burden of complying with 50 different standards of liability. Of course, businesses aren't forced to do business in 50 different states, and it hardly seems unfair that they be subjected to the laws of those states in which they choose to do business.

[more ...]

A little bit of progress. President Obama will announce tomorrow that one of the Guantanamo detainees will be transferred to New York for trial in U.S. District Court:

Ahmed Ghailani, suspected of taking part in al Qaeda plots to bomb U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania among other crimes, would be the first former detainee at the detention center to face trial in the United States.

They tried and convicted Jose Padilla in federal criminal court. While he was held at a miltary brig rather than Gitmo, it's been done before and can and should be done again when criminal charges are warranted. We need to keep public pressure on the President. It seems to be having an effect.