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.

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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.

Update: 100 million votes cast and in an upset, Kris Allen wins. His first comment: "Adam deserves it." He sounds almost bummed. Adam is smiling and very congratulatory. Congratulations, Kris. To Adam: You'll still be the biggest star of the show.

Final thought: Homophobic Christians took over the American Idol ballotbox, just like they're trying to do in real life. It's at least a plausible explanation considering 100 million votes but the lowest ratings ever for last night’s finale. Who’s voting besides the viewers and why? The Washington Post says you can expect these questions to be batted around the water cooler tomorrow.

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The two-hour finale has just begun. I thought it was just the pre-teen, text-message obsessed crowd that might create an upset on American Idol tonight, resulting in Kris Allen beating Adam Lambert. But, there may be a religious factor and he may pick up a big chunk of the Danny Gokey vote: [More...]

Via NPR:

What began a few years ago as a stopgap solution has become de facto public policy. For sex offenders with few resources who want to stay in Miami, there's just one option: an encampment of tents and shacks on the Julia Tuttle Causeway.

...State prison officials and probation officers are not happy about the situation under the bridge. They believe it is leading sex offenders to stop registering with the state and go underground.

Remember when?

Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House counsel, intervened directly with Justice Department lawyers in 2002 to obtain a legal ruling on the extent of the president's authority to permit extreme interrogation practices in the name of national security, current and former administration officials said Tuesday [January 4, 2005].

It turns out Gonzo was approving torture months before the Bybee memo was produced:

Have at it.

Update (TL): Thanks, TChris for all your posting today. I just got back from a very long and painful session at the dentist and am not quite up to blogging yet. BTD is still at his conference but I think he returns tomorrow.

As courts and commentators have attempted to define the boundaries of the president's authority to detain 9/11-related "terrorists" (for lack of a better term, the phrase "enemy combatants" having been jettisoned by the Obama administration), they have been vexed by the difficulty of applying "law of war" principles to a "war" that is waged by organizations or individuals rather than nations. The power to detain soldiers captured on the battlefield during a war between nations is well established, but does that power extend to civilian members of a terrorist organization like al Qaida?

Lawyers for Guantanamo detainees have argued that the president may detain indefinitely only those individuals who directly participated in hostile actions against the United States -- persons the law of war would regard as "unlawful combatants." Yesterday, a federal judge rejected that argument while taking a more limited view of the president's detention authority than the Bush and Obama administrations have urged.

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The FBI substantially increased its reliance on national security letters last year.

FISA-court authorizations for national security and counter-terrorism wiretaps dropped last year by almost 300, a new Justice Department report to Congress shows. But the FBI’s use of “national security letters” to get information on Americans without a court order increased dramatically, from 16,804 in 2007 to 24,744 in 2008.

National security letters permit the government to demand records from banks, telephone companies, internet service providers, and other businesses without seeking court approval. [more ...]

Senate Democrats yesterday followed the lead of House Democrats who last week refused the president's request for $80 million to fund the closing of Guantanamo. According to Sen. Harry Reid:

"Democrats under no circumstances will move forward without a comprehensive, responsible plan from the president. We will never allow terrorists to be released into the United States."

Has Reid decided, without the benefit of trials, that the 240 involuntary residents of Guantanamo are all terrorists? [more ...]

Via the AP: Proseuctors withhled evidence in a Delaware murder case and as a result, the defendant goes free. How did it happen?

The murder case against a man charged in a shooting two years ago at Delaware State University that left one student dead and another injured will be dismissed because prosecutors withheld key evidence, a judge ruled Tuesday.

Loyer Braden, 20, of East Orange, N.J., had been charged with second-degree murder, assault and other crimes after a September 2007 campus shooting that killed 17-year-old Shalita Middleton of Washington, D.C. Braden's mother says her son works for a water quality testing company and is taking real estate classes.

James Liguori, a pal of TalkLeft, is Braden's attorney. [More....]