Via Raw Story, a liberal activist group has filed complaints with the state bars in the District of Columbia, New York, California, Texas and Pennsylvania, seeking disbarment of 12 lawyers who served in Bush Administration and were involved in defending torture policies. The lawyers are:

[F]ormer White House Legal Counsel attorneys John Yoo, Jay Bybee and Stephen Bradbury; former Attorney Generals Alberto Gonzales, John Ashcroft and Michael Mukasey; former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff; former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney David Addington, Alice Fisher, William Haynes II, Douglas Feith and Timothy Flanigan

The complaints are available at DisbarTortureLawyers.

After 9/11, 762 people, were arrested in New York, most on immigration charges. Of them, 184 were subjected to extremely harsh, conditions while being held at MDC's SuperMax Special Housing Unit (SHU). Some, including, Javaid Iqbal, a Pakistani who pleaded guilty and subsequently was returned to Pakistan, sued then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI Chief Robert Mueller and other officials for discrimination.

The Supreme Court rejected his suit today, but stressed it was because his complaint didn't set forth sufficient facts against Ashcroft and Mueller to establish discrimination. It made no determination as to the other named officials who allegedly mistreated Iqbal and others while in custody.

The opinion is here (pdf). Snippets below: [More...]

Joel Hilliker's objection to judicial empathy is apocalyptic:

The court becomes a charity organization rather than a dispenser of justice. The rule of law is destroyed. The rules are written in sand. We are left at the mercy of the whims of the judge.

Anarchy! The end of civilization! Snakes on the plane!

Empathy, Hilliker argues, is inconsistent with impartiality, and judicial impartiality is commanded by the Bible, the only law book that counts. Sen. Orrin Hatch embraces the argument that there is no place for empathy in the heart of an impartial judge while Andrea Lafferty warns that President Barack Hussein Obama isn't looking for ordinary empathy but for "liberal" empathy "for the poor, minorities and gays." In an effort "to build the conservative movement and identify the troops," conservatives are branding empathy as the force that empowers their once-reliable nemesis, the activist judge. [more ...]

During the last three decades, whenever tough-on-crime conservatives would read stories about an execution delayed for years by legal challenges, we would hear their familiar complaints about frivolous appeals and abuses of the writ and how litigious inmates waste everybody's time when they should just get on with dying. Sometimes the complaints motivated tough-on-fairness laws that limited an inmate's opportunity to seek review of a conviction or sentence.

In tough economic times, voters are learning a fiscal truth: tough-on-crime policies are tough on budgets. These days, when a newspaper reports that California may spend $5 million more to keep inmate Michael Ray Burgener on death row than it would have spent if he'd been sentenced to life without parole, the tired rhetoric of tough-on-crimers is less relevant to voters than the budgetary impact of being smart-on-crime. Even in states that are less dysfunctional than California, a death sentence costs up to $2 million more than a life sentence. That's one reason why three states have repealed the death penalty in the last five years, and why calls to replace it with a less costly alternative are increasingly heard in other states.

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No TV for me tonight except the season finale of Desperate Housewives. But, finally, it's in the 80's here and we've got our Colorado sunshine back again. I've had the stereo on instead of the TV all afternoon, KBCO has been playing great music. (And you can now get an iTunes HD app for them.)

The TL kid and I are going to grill some thick steaks for dinner, with corn on the cob, salad (arugula, cucumber and strawberries, avocado and mozzarella) and fresh asparagus. And a nice bottle of red wine.

So, you're on your own. This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

2d Update (TChris): The explanation: Dowd didn't read Marshall's post but heard the line from a friend who failed to attribute it to Marshall. This explanation requires you to believe: (1) Dowd's memory captured the once-heard sentence word-for-word (save for one edit), and (2a) the friend also recited the sentence perfectly from memory, or (2b) the friend read the sentence (or more of the post) to Dowd without telling Dowd that she was reading from a blog. Either way, Dowd admits to using someone else's language without attribution. If it's a gift from a friend, why tell? All better now?

Update: The NY Times just changed MoDo's column to credit Josh Marshall for the paragraph. It adds the note: "An earlier version of this column failed to attribute a paragraph about the timeline for prisoner abuse to Josh Marshall’s blog at Talking Points Memo. "

About that Maureen Dowd column BTD wrote about earlier, via Daily Kos, check this out:

Maureen Dowd, Pulitizer Prize winner. Today. New York Times:

More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when the Bush crowd was looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq.

Josh Marshall. Blogger. Last Thursday. Talking Points Memo:

More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when we were looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq.

Any bets on what Dowd or the Times will have for an explanation? An intern ghosting her column?

If you're a criminal defense lawyer, come join us in Aspen June 6 to 8 for the annual NORML Legal Seminar on defending drug cases. You'll get 15 CLE credits and have a great time. (The video is one I made of the 2006 seminar.) Here's the agenda.

My topic this year: "High Hopes and Modest Expectations: Drug Law Reform under President Obama and a Democratic Congress." [More...]

The New York Times in an editorial today takes President Obama to task for his flip-flops on the release of torture photos and reinstatement of military tribunals.

It was particularly distressing to hear Mr. Obama echo Mr. Bush by saying that releasing the pictures would not add “to our understanding of what was carried out in the past by a small number of individuals.” This was not the fault of a few individuals. It was widespread, and systemic, the result of policies set at the highest levels of the Bush administration.

Mr. Obama was elected in part because of his promises to correct these lawless policies. He must create clear rules to deal with prisoners. And there must be a full accounting of what went so horribly wrong and how. Otherwise, Mr. Obama risks turning Mr. Bush’s mistakes into his own or, in the case of the photographs, turning Mr. Bush’s cover-up into his own. More important, he risks missing the chance to make sure the misdeeds and horrors of the Bush years are never repeated.

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Update: Here's the text of President Obama's speech.

The crazies are out in force today at Notre Dame to protest President Obama's delivery of the commencement address and receipt of an honorary degree.

Some sanity abounds.

Memo to protesters: If you really are pro-life, and believe that killing is wrong, how about starting with protests against the death penalty?

Maureen Dowd:

More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when the Bush crowd was looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq.

I used to agree with President Obama, that it was better to keep moving and focus on our myriad problems than wallow in the darkness of the past. But now I want a full accounting. I want to know every awful act committed in the name of self-defense and patriotism. Even if it only makes one ambitious congresswoman pay more attention in some future briefing about some future secret technique that is “uniquely” designed to protect us, it will be worth it.

(Emphasis supplied.)

Howie Klein at Crooks and Liars has a Nanci Griffith song up tonight, so I thought I'd put up my favorite song of her's -- "This Heart." It's spirited and uplifting.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

BTD is on his way to a conference where he'll be for the next several days. I'm hoping commenters will fill in for him in the open threads.

What's on your agenda this weekend? I'm going to finish reading Eric Boehlert's Bloggers on the Bus. It's fun to read a book with quotes by people you know. It's also filled with details about bloggers' backgrounds I was unaware of.

If you're looking for a good read, here it is:

Bloggers on the Bus traces the online events that rocked the campaign trail and reveals the untold stories of the internet activists who made them all possible. In the tradition of Timothy Crouse's classic, The Boys on the Bus, Bloggers on the Bus investigates the cutting edge of liberal politics to reveal the stories and scandals at its very heart.

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