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.

[More...]

I wasn't going to watch "Farrah's Story" last night, but then I did, all two hours of it. It made for a fitful night's sleep and every time I woke up I was thinking about it and how horrible and tragic and hopeless her situation is.

I wasn't going to write about it but this review in the New York Times made me angry. The comments by readers are across the board. [More...]

I've been reading the pleadings filed in the Military Commission trials of the "9/11 co-conspirators." Rulings on several of the motions are also available. Two that made a lot of sense to me are the Motion to Dismiss for Lack of Jurisdiction (Bill of Attainder) and Motion to Dismiss for Lack of Jurisdiction (Absence of Armed Conflict).

The motions and responses concerning Ramzi Binalshibh's competency are also interesting.

The two themes that run through the prosecution's pleadings are: (1) Trial by military commission does not entitle the accused to protections of the Bill of Rights, only to rights authorized by the Military Commissions Act, and (2) the length to which the DOD will go to prevent anything coming up as to what may have happened while the detainees were held and interrogated in CIA black sites overseas. [More...]

Stuart Taylor writes:

Obama has repeatedly stressed the "empathy" criterion . . . Meanwhile, conservative senators and legal experts and some centrists have criticized it as a thinly veiled rationale for seeking justices who will bend the law to benefit favored classes of people.

(Emphasis supplied.) "Centrists" like Taylor and Jeffrey Rosen he means ("centrists" who believe Roberts and Alito are "moderates.") But back in the real legal world, this is what "centrist" Supreme Court Justices have written, via Prof Darren Hutchinson: [More...]

If anyone knows the paces of a q and a by prosecutors and/or a grand jury by now, it's Karl Rove, who with four such appearances under his belt, never got indicted in PlameGate.

Today's interview on the U.S. Attorneys' firing was probably a piece of cake for him. He and his very able lawyer, Bob Luskin, were seen laughing it up as they were about to enter the building.

I doubt after hours of being prepped by Luskin, there was any question Rove couldn't answer either ambiguously but truthfully or with a clever dodge. [More...]

An Only in America story:

A total of 43 children were directly and indirectly shocked by electric stun guns during simultaneous ''Take Your Sons and Daughters to Work Day'' events gone wrong at three state prisons, according to new information provided Friday by the Florida Department of Corrections. Also, a group of kids was exposed to tear gas during a demonstration at another lockup.

Three prison guards have been fired, two have resigned and 16 more employees -- from corrections officers to a warden -- will be disciplined due to the incidents that unfolded April 23, said DOC Secretary Walt McNeil. An investigation is ongoing.

Hat tip to Southern District of Florida blog.

Raw Story reports the torture photos the Obama Administration reversed course on releasing this week include photos released by the Australian news in 2006. Raw Story, as well as TalkLeft, published them then. (I've reprinted some several times since then.)

So if the world has already seen them, and a federal appeals court has upheld a trial court's order to produce them to the ACLU, what's Obama's justification?

The ACLU tells President Obama that reviving the military commissions is like putting lipstick on a pig:

"These military commissions are inherently illegitimate, unconstitutional and incapable of delivering outcomes we can trust. Tweaking the rules of these failed tribunals so that they provide ‘more due process' is absurd; there is no such thing as ‘due process light.' If the administration's proposed rules really bring these proceedings in line with constitutional requirements, there is no reason not to use our tried and true justice system. If they don't, these tribunals have no place in our democracy.

[More...]

Lakhdar Boumediene, imprisoned since 2001 when he was captured in Bosnia, has been released from Guantanamo and sent to France. France agreed to take the 43 year old Algerian because he has relatives there.

Boumediene has been on a hunger strike and force-fed since 2006. He's the detainee whose name appears on the landmark Supreme Court decision that held detainees can seek review of their detention through habeas petitions.

Boumediene is the second prisoner transferred to a third-party country by the Obama administration. In February, Binyam Mohamed, a native of Ethiopia who had lived in Britain, was returned to the United Kingdom.

2 down, 238 to go.

TNR and Jeff Rosen, take note. This is some actual legal reporting on Judge Sonia Sotomayor, from Tom Goldstein at SCOTUSblog:

Judge Sonia Sotomayor is an obviously serious candidate to serve on the Supreme Court. We have been struck by how the amount of commentary about Judge Sotomayor has ignored the most accessible and valuable source of information: her opinions as an appellate judge. Last year, I directed a project in which a team of Akin Gump summer associates extensively reviewed Judge Sotomayor’s opinions. Amy Howe subsequently revised and expanded their work, with contributions by me. Here, we summarize what we regard as Judge Sotomayor’s principal opinions in civil cases. Our only goal is to identify and summarize the opinions, not evaluate them.

A good roundup. And how the discussion should have started about the possibility that Judge Sotomayor may be President Obama's choice for the Supreme Court. It is worth a careful read. BTW, Judge Sotomayor will not be chosen by President Obama, imo, because of speeches like the one Orin Kerr reports on here. To me, the speech is unexceptional. To the Village, it will be an outrage. And Obama has shown no inclination to standing up to the Village. Just watch.

Speaking for me only

Update: Agent Lucas was acquitted by the jury.

Original Post

Former DEA Agent Lee Lucas has pleaded not guilty to an Indictment unsealed this week charging him with fabricating evidence, perjury and obstruction of justice in 17 cases.

A federal drug enforcement agent pleaded not guilty Wednesday to a federal indictment that accuses him of framing 17 people in controlled drug buys made by an informant.

Lee Michael Lucas, 41, of Cleveland appeared before U.S. District Judge Solomon Oliver on the 18-count indictment that includes counts of obstruction of justice, making false statements in official reports, perjury and violating civil rights.

The informant Lucas worked with, Jerrell Bray, pleaded guilty in 2007 and is serving 15 years. Several civil suits are pending against Lucas and the DEA by those the duo falsely accused.[More...]