• Loretta Nall is all over the recent arrest of marijuana activist Marc Emery in Vancouver--and the U.S. attempt to make Canada the 51st state so that it can enforce its drug policy there. Here's the video of the DEA announcement of Emery's arrest.

• Flex Your Rights has the citizen's guide to refusing subway searches. (Also check out TalkLeft's new subway tote with the Fourth Amendment printed out on both sides to keep the searchers mindful of how they are violating the Constitution.)

• Grits for Breakfast on the increased use of pretext traffic stops to bring out the dogs and search for drugs

• Amnesty International now has a death penalty blog. One of the best death penalty blogs is Abolish the Death Penalty, written by David Elliot of NCADP.

It's your turn to pick the topics and opine.

5280, Denver's sole glossy monthly and nationally acclaimed magazine, for which I and several others blog daily on Colorado issues from politics and crime, particularly Tom Tancredo and Ken Salazar, to restaurants and cool events, got a great bloglift (yes, I coined that phrase, as Skippy would say) today -- if you get a minute, or if you are interested in Colorado goings-ons, check it out.

[Disclosure: I do get paid by 5280 for blogging. But I've been carping for months about their need to get a new look, and they more than exceeded my expectations.]

I can see from the comments people are itching to go off-topic. I'm headed to the jail to visit a client for the afternoon, so here's an open thread. Please play nice.

Noah of Defense Tech is blogging from Iraq.

I've been in Iraq for nearly two weeks, now. And, except for the sand storms, truck bombs, helicopter rides, and 140 degree heat, it's been exactly like home.

Stay safe, Noah.

Did anyone watch the hearing? Is there other news? Your turn.

Update: Much longer article with new title and links now available here. The first half of the article is about the mis-information about Edith Clement. Were journalists purposely misled to give them less time to research Roberts before the announcement?

Howard Kurtz has an article today in the Washington Post, Court Nominee In Eye of the Blogger Swarm.

This is the first Supreme Court nomination of the Internet age, meaning that liberal and conservative opinion-mongers are already blanketing cyberspace with arguments, facts, taunts, polemics, gossip and electronic links to raw data, hoping to rally the faithful and influence the mainstream media coverage.

Kurtz writes about a BlogPac call the night of Roberts' nomination with 50 bloggers.

The lightning-quick attacks came after 50 top liberal bloggers held a 45-minute conference call Tuesday night. "On the left, we've always talked about the need to have an echo chamber," says John Aravosis, a Washington lawyer and gay rights activist who writes at Americablog.com.

Kurtz reviews the various positions on Roberts taken by bloggers and notes that not all liberal bloggers are marching in lockstep:

There's plenty to talk about today, including the hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee on the Reporter's Shield law. But, topics are open.

• Former CIA Agent Larry Johnson has a blog and a new article today on the Valerie Plame Outing, Mr. Bush, Have You No Shame?

• Heretik has great new very topical graphics today.

• Randy at Beautiful Horizens, the liberal blog concentrating on Latin American Affairs, provides some personal experience with the death penalty, through a brother-in-law who was murdered whom he never had a chance to meet. Please, read his posts. He and his wife, notwithstanding the murder of her brother, continue to oppose the death penalty.

• Mahablog is profiled in the Washington Post Magazine. "Take two bloggers from opposite ends of the overheated political debate, put them on a Washington tour bus together, then ponder the fate of an increasingly uncivil society."

Your turn to pick the topics and speak your minds.

Happy Blogiversary to Skippy and we wish him many, many more.

He brings a smile on every visit.

(Thanks to Julia at Sisyphus Shrugged for making the picture)

Digby says go here. For more reasons, go here and here.

This article on Rep. James Sensenbrenner by Maurice Possley in the Chicago Tribune is a must. Sensenbrenner is rapidly becoming Public Enemy Number One.

In an extraordinary move, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee privately demanded last month that the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago change its decision in a narcotics case because he didn't believe a drug courier got a harsh enough prison term.

Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), in a five-page letter dated June 23 to Chief Judge Joel Flaum, asserted that a June 16 decision by a three-judge appeals court panel was wrong. He demanded "a prompt response" as to what steps Flaum would take "to rectify the panel's actions" in a case where a drug courier in a Chicago police corruption case received a 97-month prison sentence instead of the at least 120 months required by a drug-conspiracy statute.

Sensenbrenner is behind the "five years for a joint" and "snitch or go to jail" bill pending in Congress. As TChris wrote, it's time to "just say no" to Sensenbrenner.