Major Democrats in New York, including former Democratic Governor Hugh Carey, are crossing party lines to back incumbent George Pataki in the New York Governor's race.

Other prominent New York Democrats for Pataki include "former New York City Mayor Ed Koch, former Queens Borough President Claire Shulman [and] state Senator Olga Mendez." The Chinatown Democratic Club and the New Era Democrats are also behind Pataki.

Our view: He has done a good job for New York, but until he keeps his promise on repealing the state's appallingly unfair and draconian Rockefeller drug laws, we don't think he deserves an endorsement.

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Friday reversed a lower court ruling that had placed medical marijuana initiative back on the ballot.

The appeals court ruled "Congress had the right to block District of Columbia residents from voting on whether to legalize marijuana for medical use [because] the Constitution gives Congress exclusive power to define the district's legislative authority."

The Court also ruled that "a congressional act barring D.C. residents from putting the legalization of marijuana on the ballot does not violate their First Amendment right to free speech."

Here's a succinct history of the ballot controversy, and as we pointed out on August 21, it was Congressman Bob Barr who caused it all:

In November 1998, an initiative in the District of Columbia tried to approve medical marijuana. " For almost a year no one knew whether the referendum had passed, because Rep. Bob Barr (R., Ga.) impounded the $ 1.65 it would have cost to tally the vote. Finally, last September, the courts overruled Barr. Seven out of ten D.C. voters had decided in favor of legalization. Refusing defeat, Barr pushed a bill through Congress that blocked the spending needed to enact the new law. As fallback, Barr has also proposed a joint resolution of Congress to simply overturn by fiat the will of the people expressed freely and fairly at the ballot box. " (Harper's Magazine December 1, 1999, available on Lexis.)

The Marijuana Policy Project sued the District of Columbia Board of Elections and Ethics charging the law Barr pushed through Congress was unconsitutional. The D.C. Court agreed. But today, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed.

The National Symposium on Felony Disenfranchisment, sponsored by The Sentencing Project, has been meeting the past two days in Washington in an effort to find ways to ease voting restrictions on those with felony criminal records.

The group estimates that "a half-millon people with a felony conviction will be allowed to vote in this November's elections as a result of changes in state laws over the past five years." The group is advocating that even more ex-convicts and inmates be allowed to cast ballots.

Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, New Mexico, and Texas are the latest states to make some positive changes. The group says this reflects an increasing recognition among policymakers that the voting rights of all citizens are essential in a democracy. In the past two years, Delaware and Maryland have substantially scaled back their lifetime voting bans and New Mexico repealed its prohibition entirely.

According to Marc Mauer, assistant director of The Sentencing Project and the author of Race to Incarcerate, all states except Maine and Vermont strip felons of their voting rights for some period of time. Most prohibit voting while in prison and 32 restrict voting on probation and/or. Florida is one of only 8 states that deny voting rights for life to all ex-felons.

The group says it has obtained figures from the Department of Justice showing that 3.9 million felons are currently or permanently disenfranchised. That's a lot of potential votes--enough to affect the outcome of an election.

The Symposium Program for this week's meeting shows that participants are learning that:

On Frank Lautenberg as a replacement candidate for Torricelli:

"Lautenberg is a supporter of abortion rights and staunch opponent of the death penalty."

Let's get him in there!

Via Instapundit, we find a potential replacement for Torricelli. Vodkapundit speculates on who delivered the news to "The Torch"...DailyKos has an analysis of what it could mean election-wise in New Jersey.

Update: You can read the full text of Torricelli's speech here. (free registration required.)

We have an update today on one of our recent posts Ryan v. Ryan in Illinois. There is a new article Cruz Factor in the Chicago Sun Times about Attorney General and gubernatorial hopeful Jim Ryan's participation in the Rolando Cruz case. ( Here is our earlier post on the Cruz case.)

Ryan was the prosecutor who sent Cruz to death row, where he stayed until he was acquitted at a third trial. It was discovered that the police had manufactured a confession that helped convict him, DNA tests showed he was not the rapist and the real rapist ultimately confessed.

The Chicago Sun Times article informs us that "As DuPage County state's attorney, Jim Ryan oversaw the first two prosecutions of Rolando Cruz for the rape and murder of Jeanine Nicarico. One of his deputies, Joe Birkett, worked on those cases and the final trial in 1995, in which Cruz was found not guilty. Ryan and Birkett are the GOP nominees for governor and attorney general. Their Democratic opponents, Rod Blagojevich and Lisa Madigan, say both men helped put an innocent man on Death Row."

Daily Kos today thoroughly covers and explains the case and the political ramifications here.

An update: Normon Solomon, in Determined Journalism Can Challenge Injustice has high praise for a new radio documentary highlighting the Cruz case.

"In a documentary called " Deadly Decisions," from American RadioWorks, correspondent Alan Berlow found that "jurors may be influenced by their own fears and prejudices when they sentence people to death."

"The documentary, co-produced by Minnesota Public Radio and NPR News, succeeded in ways that public radio shows like "Morning Edition" and "All Things Considered" routinely fail. Meticulously researched, the special report devoted a full hour to scrutinizing what happens under the surface of official accounts, easy narratives and quick soundbites."

"The result was exemplary journalism that explained how people can be put to death by a legal system that's theoretically equitable but functionally skewed against defendants without white skin or financial resources. ..."

"One of the documentary's illustrative stories involved the experiences of a man named Michael Callahan, who was a juror in a murder trial. Callahan described a jury atmosphere reminiscent of "Twelve Angry Men." But instead of sitting in a make-believe cinematic jury room in the 1950s, Callahan was sitting in a real jury room in the 1980s. "

"Most of the jurors seemed inclined to convict even before the trial began. And the prosecutor's case was so weak that Callahan recalled feeling "aghast." Yet, convinced that "sooner or later the truth is going to come out," he went along with voting to convict the defendant, Rolando Cruz, of first-degree murder."

"An entire decade passed before the truth came out. "Cruz had nothing to do with the murder," the documentary reported. "He had lost nearly 12 years of his life, most of it on death row."

You can listen and view the portion of the documentary pertaining to the Cruz case and juror interview here.

One of the most complete articles on the Rolando Cruz case was written by Alan Berlow and published in the November 1999 Atlantic Monthly. You can read it here.

Daily Kos does a great job of calling the Governor races this November--he does it three ways with cool color maps showing the current breakdown, how it would be if the elections were held today, and what the best case scenario would be.

The New York Times today has an update on the feud between Attorney General Jim Ryan and Governor George Ryan over Governor Ryan's planned clemency hearings in Illinois and on the twin lawsuits filed by AG Jim Ryan. Ryan doesn't think that 15 minutes per inmate is enough time for a clemency hearing. His real concern is that Gov. Ryan will grant clemency to all the inmates currently on death row in Illinois.

We reported on the feud at length here last week.

We want to highlight Rob Warden's comments in today's Times article:

"But Rob Warden, director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University, said the short hearings should suffice, because the main argument for clemency is that the capital punishment system is flawed and unfair. Since Illinois re-established the death penalty in 1977, 12 people have been executed and 13 have been exonerated; a governor's commission in April said 85 major reforms were essential to make the system just.

"All of these people, 100 percent of them, were convicted and sentenced to death under a system that is generally acknowledged to be grossly dysfunctional," Mr. Warden said. "We know there are some innocent people remaining under death sentence in Illinois; we're just not sure which ones they are. The intelligent thing to do is let's just stop using this broken system."

AG Jim Ryan is far behind his democratic challenger in the race to succeed George Ryan as Governor.

"Confusion over the two Ryans, who are not related and have never been close, along with other internal dysfunctions, leave the Republican Party in danger of losing a governorship it has occupied for 26 years."

"Polls show Jim Ryan trailing the Democratic nominee, Representative Rod R. Blagojevich of Chicago, by at least 11 points, but suggest that lead is cut in half once voters are told candidate Ryan is not incumbent Ryan. The governor's term was tarnished by revelations that contracts and driver's licenses were traded for campaign contributions under his watch as secretary of state. "

"To clarify that the Republican Ryans are not one person, Jim Ryan's campaign has asked newspapers to use first initials in headlines and employ a logo where the candidate's first name is much larger than his last."

An article in today's Washington Post theorizes that Jeb Bush's re-election troubles in Florida may be a preview of those facing his brother in 2004.

"The race is front-and-center on the national political agenda because his name is Bush and his state is Florida and his brother fought a historic no-holds-barred battle for the White House on this very field two years ago. George W. Bush is nowhere on the ballot this year, so for Democrats, his brother is the next best thing. Jeb's a surrogate. A trial run."

Both the Attorney General and the Governor of Illinois have the last name Ryan. The AG is Jim Ryan and the Governor is George Ryan.

This is important today because AG Jim Ryan is suing Gov. George Ryan in an effort to block clemency hearings for 157 inmates on death row.

Gov. Ryan, who instituted the much needed moratorium on captial punishment in Illinois, is leaving office in January and plans to grant clemency to those still on death row because none of the 85 reforms recommended by the Illinios Commission on Capital Punishment have been instituted.

By now it is no secret that the death penalty system is broken. And that if an innocent person has not already been executed in this country, it is only a matter of time until that occurs. Illinois has one of the worst records: Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, the Innocence Project reports that in Illinois "twelve people had been executed and thirteen freed from death row after their innocence was proven, five of them due to postconviction DNA testing" by the time Governor Ryan issued his death penalty moratorium two years ago.

So why is AG Jim Ryan trying to stop Gov. George Ryan from holding clemency hearings? We'd call it a political move. He's trailing badly in the polls in his battle with Democrat Rod Blagojevich to replace George Ryan as Governor.

It's not that AG Jim Ryan opposes the moratorium. He can't. In fact, he is one of the reasons it happened.

"Indeed, Jim Ryan's own personal involvement in one of the most controversial death penalty cases, that of Rolando Cruz, has left him open to criticism for being slow to fix the system. He headed the DuPage County state's attorney's office when Cruz was convicted for participating in the murder of 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico. Cruz was later acquitted at a third trial amid charges that police and prosecutors fabricated evidence."

"The Cruz case was one that spurred George Ryan to declare a moratorium on executions in 2000."

Gov. Ryan is doing the right thing by ordering that sentences for those currently on death row in Illinois be converted to life sentences without the possibility of. Jim Ryan's lawsuit is merely a desperate power play to stay politically alive.

We agree totally with Rittenhouse and Atrios on this one: Support Bill McBride for Governor of Florida and send Jeb Bush packing. Give Until It Hurts!

The Marijuana Policy Project reports that the medical marijuana initiative will be on the D.C. ballot this November .

"The District of Columbia Board of Elections and Ethics (BOEE) today notified proponents of Initiative 63, the medical marijuana initiative, that the initiative would appear on the November general election ballot. The written notice from BOEE wraps up an arduous, 14-month battle that included several lawsuits and hundreds of wrongfully invalidated signatures."

"Initiative 63 would protect from arrest seriously ill people who use marijuana under the advice of their physicians. In July 2001, the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), a D.C.-based non-profit advocacy group, filed with the BOEE a request to circulate petitions for the initiative. The BOEE denied that request in December 2001, because the so-called "Barr Amendment," a rider to the D.C. Appropriations bill named after its sponsor, U.S. Rep. Bob Barr (R-GA), prevented the city from spending any money to process the initiative."

"MPP then filed suit against the federal and District governments in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, on the grounds that the Barr Amendment was an unconstitutional abridgment of political speech. On March 28, 2002, federal judge Emmet G. Sullivan ruled in favor of MPP."

After that there were more challenges and more lawsuits.

"We faced incredible odds to put this initiative on the November ballot," said Robert Kampia, MPP's executive director. "Because a vast majority of voters approved a similar initiative in 1998, we never imagined that this campaign would turn into a journey reminiscent of Homer's Odyssey. The real winners, though, are the seriously ill people who will now have legal access to medical marijuana."