Republican Third Party Groups — $43,664,661
Democratic Third Party Groups — $6,658,236

Heckuva job there, Supreme-ys.

Hate to say I told ya so, but, uh, I did.

A bitterly divided Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that the government may not ban political spending by corporations, labor unions or other organizations in elections. The court’s majority in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission swept aside a century-old doctrine in election law, ruling that the campaign finance restriction violated the First Amendment’s free speech principles. The dissenters said opening the floodgates to corporate money will corrupt democracy.

Well, I guess at least the corporate influence will be unmistakably obvious now. So we’ve got that. We’ve also got a near 0 probability of any reform candidate ever winning, and a near 1.0 probability of incumbent protection … leading to further ossification of our government and the strengthening of the oligarchy. On the other other hand, maybe this is outrageous enough to re-spur the reform movement … in another 100 years.

While I should add that I believe the definition of an “activist” judges is one who issues a decisions with which you disagree, this is an activist decision. There is nothing more “activist” than overturning a 100-year old precedent, which the Scalitothomasroberts group did. Thus, the Bush “minimalists” and “strict constructionists” and “originalists” are … activists.

Also, fuck you, Kennedy.

A federal appeals court on Monday issued one of the most comprehensive rulings yet limiting police use of Tasers against low-level offenders who seem to pose little threat and may be mentally ill.

In a case out of San Diego County, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals criticized an officer who, without warning, shot an emotionally troubled man with a Taser when he was unarmed, yards away, and neither fleeing nor advancing on the officer.
…
The San Diego County case is the latest ruling to address the issue.The court recounted the facts of the case: In the summer of 2005, Carl Bryan, 21, was pulled over for a seat-belt violation and did not follow an officer’s order to stay in the car. Earlier, he had received a speeding ticket and had taken off his T-shirt to wipe away tears. He was wearing only the underwear he’d slept in because a woman had taken his keys, the court said without further explanation.During his second traffic stop in Coronado, he got out of the car.

He was “agitated … yelling gibberish and hitting his thighs, clad only in his boxer shorts and tennis shoes” but did not threaten the officer verbally or physically, the judges wrote.

That’s when Coronado Police Officer Brian McPherson, who was standing about 20 feet away watching Bryan’s “bizarre tantrum,” fired his Taser, the court said.

Without a word of warning, he hit Bryan in the arm with two metal darts, delivering a 1,200-volt jolt.Temporarily paralyzed and in intense pain, Bryan fell face-first on the pavement. The fall shattered four of his front teeth and left him with facial abrasions and swelling.

…

A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit affirmed the trial judge’s ruling on Monday, concluding that the level of force used by the officer was excessive.McPherson could have waited for backup or tried to talk the man down, the judges said. If Bryan was mentally ill, as the officer contended, then there was even more reason to use “less intrusive means,” the judges said.”Officer McPherson’s desire to quickly and decisively end an unusual and tense situation is understandable,” Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw wrote for the court. “His chosen method for doing so violated Bryan’s constitutional right to be free from excessive force.”
…
“Certainly the officer should be able to articulate the reason the force (was used), and a mere resistance to comply may not be enough,” said Sheriff John McGinness.

According to the FBI report, which was originally posted online by WikiLeaks, an organization that posts leaked documents, police also found a National Socialist Movement membership application filled out by Cummings. The NSM currently is the largest neo-Nazi organization in the country, with 69 chapters in 30 states.

Amber Cummings reportedly told police that her husband was “very upset” over Barack Obama being elected president, had been in contact with white supremacist groups, and that he’d been mixing chemicals in their kitchen sink while talking about dirty bombs

Imagine if it were a Republican president and Cummings was named Garcia or Sharif.

Oh, wait, I know why… let’s talk about steroids and LiLo’s new lips. Muuuuch more important these days, because everyone knows there’s no such thing as domestic terrorism.

Four forensic pathologists agree that Larry Swearingen, set to be executed Tuesday, could not have committed the 1998 murder that sent him to death row.

The four include the medical examiner whose testimony helped secure Swearingen’s guilty verdict. That medical examiner now says college student Melissa Trotter’s curiously preserved body could not have lain in the East Texas woods for more than 14 days — and probably was there for a much shorter time.

The results mean Swearingen was in jail when the 19-year-old’s body was left behind, the pathologists say.

At the least there is significant objective doubt as to whether or not Swearingen could have committed this murder. All attempts to have the courts review this evidence or reconsider have fallen upon deaf ears. It is now down to appeals to mercy from a hangin’ Republican in order to extinguish all options.

Update: Fed court intervenes, grants appeal, execution is stayed. Fantastic!

U.S. Senator Ted Stevens was convicted of all seven felony charges of failing to report gifts from a company in his home state of Alaska, a possibly fatal blow to the career of the Senate’s longest-serving Republican.

The Alaska Supreme Court refused to halt an investigation into Governor Sarah Palin’s firing of the state police chief, paving the way for tomorrow’s planned release of the findings.

The Supreme Court dismissed the case brought by five state Republican lawmakers who sought to stop the probe, claiming it was unconstitutional and tainted by partisan politics. The investigation, known as Troopergate, took on national importance after Republican presidential nominee John McCain picked Palin as his running mate.

The Alaska Legislative Council, a bipartisan committee of 14 lawmakers that conducts business when the Legislature isn’t in session, voted unanimously on July 31 to investigate Palin’s July 11 firing of Alaska Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan. The commissioner said he was dismissed for refusing to fire state trooper Mike Wooten, who was involved in a divorce and custody battle with Palin’s sister.

Federal agents may take a traveler’s laptop computer or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed.

Also, officials may share copies of the laptop’s contents with other agencies and private entities for language translation, data decryption or other reasons, according to the policies, dated July 16 and issued by two DHS agencies, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Your data will never, ever be disappeared. This is essentially the newest ultimate expression of the fascist panopticon. Welcome to your GOP overlords.

Suggestions: If you must travel across borders with your laptop, use a high-security system (Linux, or in a pinch, a Mac) and if stopped, refuse to hand over your password or log in. You’ll almost certainly lose your laptop (for a bit), but your data will still be yours and what passes for privacy these days still secured… until quantum computers come out, that is.

Alternatively, pack a blank hard drive and hide your second. So long as your second (real) hard drive is still encrypted and not in obvious plain sight where it will be seized, you’ll be fully up and running as soon as you get out of Der Homeland’s sites… and they’ll be stuck with useless, false information.

I’m sensing a new business opportunity in database-destroying false information hard drives to savvy consumers. a) profit; b) privacy; c) civil liberties; and d) if we poison the database with bad information, it will lose all value. Any interested angel investors out there, give me a call.

I should point out that the policy is not all that new, just the publishing of it. Schneier has some other suggestions on how you can hide your data (encryption within encryption, among others)

Also: fuck you, Democrats. We expect that from the GOP, but you guys? Screwed the pooch. I want my Constitution back!

In dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the White House, the most senior Bush administration officials discussed and approved specific details of how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, sources tell ABC News.

The so-called Principals who participated in the meetings also approved the use of “combined” interrogation techniques — using different techniques during interrogations, instead of using one method at a time — on terrorist suspects who proved difficult to break, sources said.

Highly placed sources said a handful of top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects — whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding.

The high-level discussions about these “enhanced interrogation techniques” were so detailed, these sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed — down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic.

The advisers were members of the National Security Council’s Principals Committee, a select group of senior officials who met frequently to advise President Bush on issues of national security policy.

At the time, the Principals Committee included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

The fact that these people are still (mostly) running our government instead of being behind bars is probably the most accurate snapshot, and indictment, of our country today. Ruled by a clutch of undemocratic totalitarians, the America I grew up with is gone and our moral authority with it.

…

Teen faces WMD charge after plastic egg explodes

An 18-year-old Elizabethtown man is charged with possessing a weapon of mass destruction and other offenses over a plastic egg explosion.

Police say he ignited a plastic egg filled with plastic air-gun pellets in a flea market, hitting at least five people and causing alarm. It happened Saturday afternoon at a Saturday’s Market in Londonderry Township, Dauphin County.

Ignoring, for the moment, the patent absurdity of charging someone with using a “weapon of mass destruction” when that “weapon” caused, and could cause, no destruction at all, let alone “mass destruction” and all of the negative reflections upon the state of our society and policing if this charge were indeed levied… is it even possible to lay this charge on the kid?

Mebbe.

Pennsylvania statutes¹ show that this incident probably meets the statutory definition … but only by the barest whisker, if at all. The statute allows for bring this charge if a person “without lawful authority to do so, intentionally, knowingly or recklessly possesses or manufactures a weapon of mass destruction.”²

Naturally, this begs the question: what is a weapon of mass destruction under Pennsylvania law?

I’m glad you asked, Johnny! Because the answer is in the same statute. A “weapon of mass destruction” is “A biological agent, bomb, chemical agent or nuclear agent.”

A plastic egg filled with plastic pellets is not a biological, chemical, or nuclear agent, leaving the only possibility of bomb. What is the definition of “bomb” under this statute? “An explosive device used for unlawful purposes.”

And that’s where the sliver of possibility resides. I’m pretty sure the egg went BANG and was used in the creation of calamity, thus it likely satisfies both elements of the definition. Absurd, but likely.

Now, this statute, or at least that provision, is certainly ripe for some constitutional void-for-vagueness challenges (a “bomb” is a weapon of mass destruction? Really? No matter how big?), which I’m certain we won’t see here as the strategy was likely one intended to make the kid take a plea bargain. By a similar reading of this statute, it would make no difference if the kid had a plastic egg, EFP, or a box full of Pop-Its that scared three biddies.

Welcome to the new GOP world of bedwetting fear. Make sure you carry spare undies for every time a gnat farts in your direction.

Abstract:

Imagine that police arrest an individual for a simple traffic infraction, such as running a stop sign. Under the search incident to arrest doctrine, officers are entitled to search the body of the person they are arresting to ensure that he does not have any weapons or will not destroy any evidence. The search incident to an arrest is automatic and allows officers to open containers on the person, even if there is no probable cause to believe there is anything illegal inside of those containers. What happens, however, when the arrestee is carrying an iPhone in his pocket? May the police search the iPhone’s call history, cell phone contacts, emails, pictures, movies, calendar entries and, perhaps most significantly, the browsing history from recent internet use? Under longstanding Supreme Court precedent decided well before handheld technology was even contemplated, the answer appears to be yes.

I’ve read the paper and I think that the abstract above is incorrect as to what the paper states, but also Gershowitz’ conclusion overreaches. I think it clear and inarguable that the iPhone or other devices¹ may be seized incident to arrest, but it is doubtful that they may be “searched” beyond data already stored on the phone.

A key difference between the cigarette pack search he refers to frequently and searching a technological device is that the officer may easily detect contraband or dangerous goods using one of their senses. This “closed container” doctrine has been upheld by courts already to allow officers to read text messages on phones on an arrested suspect and then use those text messages as evidence.

However with modern devices, much of the information that would be of interest to the police is stored on third party servers. A typical search that would yield indictment-worthy information is going to be email, IM messages, or similar which are under the control of third parties (such as email providers), not stored in the phone themselves.² If you allow immediate mining of third parties, such as Yahoo email, that under any and every theory and ruling in American law (FISA bill and Bush administration excepted), then you have destroyed the Fourth Amendment for all intents and purposes (in laymen’s terms: you need the court’s permission to ask these providers for information. If you access this information without permission, you’ve just done an end-run around the Constitution. You must subpoena teh googlez!). It is as plain as the Newspeak nature of doughy pantload’s book – if you access third party services that would otherwise require a warrant, you have violated the Fourth Amendment.

Gershowitz addresses this in part, but also hand waives it away, using the example of an officer who gets access to a device’s password by accessing the owner’s email, finding the password there, and then using that password to open the device. Gershowitz argues that this search is permissible, whereas I would argue that accessing the user’s email is a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment and any subsequent searches on the phone would be excluded as fruit of the poisonous tree. Gershowitz also ignores the time and technical savvy required for an officer holding a suspect to do this. If the officer has time to do this, they have time to do it back at the station, after obtaining a warrant.

The paper does a typical journal article scattershot attack after that of potential theories to apply to the “new” situation, none of which is very revealing or realistic. As with most everything in law, the answer’s going to be shoehorn the situation into existing justifications, shoehorn + minor twist to address the truly novel part (which sometimes has the result of turning the existing justification on its head), or in about 1 out of fifty thousand cases “something new.”

Short response: somewhat interesting theory, but I remain unconvinced that the conclusion that such searches are “likely” to be upheld is the correct one. Much of this, of course, relies on which judge hears which case. Traditional jurisprudence would, I feel quite strongly, uphold the prohibition on accessing any off-device services to search the device. Given the radical authoritarian nature of the justices the Bush administration has placed on the bench, I am uncertain as to the actual outcome when this potential issue becomes a reality.

Jose Padilla, once accused of plotting with al Qaeda to blow up a radioactive “dirty bomb,” was sentenced Tuesday to 17 years and four months on terrorism conspiracy charges that don’t mention those initial allegations.

Padilla, an American citizen, was taken on U.S. soil (with Ashcroft holding a press conference to announce the grab of the dirty bomber), held without charges for 3.5 years,¹ in solitary confinement, denied access to an attorney, and tortured.² I’ve mentioned this before.

Without even going to the elements of what appears on the surface to be a Thought Crime more than an actual crime, there is no conceivable way by which this trial could be imagined to have been fair or Padilla’s civil rights upheld. Any one of the elements above would be sufficient in a system still beholden to the rule of law to create a mistrial; taken together the are a nightmare of coercion, duress, and authoritarianism.

This verdict is a black eye on the Department of Justice, the prosecuting attorneys who did not resign rather than try this case, the judge, the judicial system, the media, the Bush administration, and America.

Just fucking embarrassing.

I’m sure my shame and anger will comfort the now-physically and mentally broken Padilla while he’s in solitary confinement and on suicide watch for the next 17 years.

The Bush administration and the DoJ forwarded an argument in this case, and one that has apparently stood, that the President has the power to declare anyone – even a United States citizen – to be an enemy combatant and outside the jurisdiction of our system of laws. Again, I’ve talked about this before. Gentle reader, from the results of this case, you too could be deemed an enemy combatant. At any time. In any place.

I hope you like Uzbekistan. Or at least windowless rooms in hot climates. I also hope you aren’t too attached to your fingernails, skull, or skin.

Note: unlike John Cole, I don’t think this sentence is a rebuke to the Bush government. To reach that stage, you first have to accept the Bush-DoJ interpretation of enemy combatant and that this was a fair trial. A real rebuke would have dismissed the case. This is just mealy halfassed reasonableness by the judge.

House Oversight Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) revealed that the White House failed to preserve emails for at least 473 separate days. Waxman’s report said “Vice President Cheney’s office showed no electronic messages on 16 occasions from September 2003 to May 2005.” Among the sixteen days for which email are missing from Vice President Cheney’s office “is Sept. 30, 2003, the same day the day the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced they were investigating who outed former CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson.”

INT. office – night

We revolve around a classic, quality desk largely cleared of papers. It’s dark wood exudes power and solidity. A single lamp spotlights the desktop and the two liver-spotted hands lightly touching at the fingertips. CHENEY, the man behind the hands, is in shadow. He may or may not be undead. Thunder BOOMS outside and rain DRUMS on the windows. The phone RINGS.

cheney

The data we provided to Congress is incomplete you say? And the missing days just happen to align with my Energy Task Force and the Plame records?

(beat)

My, that is unfortunate.

(beat)

How could that have ever happened?

CUT TO:

Close up of a severe, old, possibly dead man’s eyes. Which are behind glasses. We slowly pan back until we can see all of CHENEY’S face. A corner of one side of his mouth curls up. CHENEY winks. The lamp CLICKS off.

END

Remember, this is the group that permanently deleted the pre-Iraq email backups. The group (especially Rove) that used RNC mail servers for official government business and then deleted those emails when subpoenaed. All of this is in violation of the Federal Records Act and we’re not even into conspiracy to obstruct justice territory or the substance of the underlying crimes yet.

And Congress apparently still thinks “impeachment” is a new cocktail from Georgia.

The White House has acknowledged recycling its backup computer tapes of e-mail before October 2003, raising the possibility that many electronic messages — including those pertaining to the CIA leak case — have been taped over and are gone forever.

The disclosure came minutes before midnight Tuesday under a court-ordered deadline that forced the White House to reveal information it has previously refused to provide.

Among the e-mails that could be lost are messages swapped by any White House officials involved in discussions about leaking a CIA officer’s identity to reporters.

Note that this, in addition to, you know, hiding the crimes, is almost certainly in violation of the Federal Records Act. To be in compliance with the FRA, records may only be destroyed under the authority of a records disposition schedule approved by the Archivist of the United States.

NARA issues a General Records Schedule (GRS) that gives record descriptions of records that are common to most Federal agencies and authorizes record disposals for temporary records. The Department is responsible for developing agency record schedules-with the approval of the Archivist of the United States-that are tailored to our own agency-specific records that are not provided for in the GRS.

Record schedules are mandatory instructions of what to do with records (and nonrecord materials) no longer needed for current Government business. The records schedules indicate how long a document must be kept before it is transferred to a Federal Records Center, destroyed or transferred to NARA for permanent preservation.

Now, gentle Congresscritters, who is going to be the first to query the record schedules to see if these documents were on the list? Who is going to be the first to issue a subpoena? Who is going to be the first to mention “criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice”?

I’m going with “no one,” but they should. Not only did Congress let the administration get away with rampant lawbreaking for 7 years… they’re going to let them destroy the evidence while they sit around and have bullshit investigations about fucking steroids in a sport?!? Jesus fuck that makes me want to find the nearest protruding object and run into it full force with my eyeball.

The sad part is, I remember when this behavior by the Busheviks used to surprise me.

A former congressman and delegate to the United Nations was indicted Wednesday as part of a terrorist fundraising ring that allegedly sent more than $130,000 to an al-Qaida and Taliban supporter who has threatened U.S. and international troops in Afghanistan.

The former Republican congressman from Michigan, Mark Deli Siljander, was charged with money laundering, conspiracy and obstructing justice for allegedly lying about lobbying senators on behalf of an Islamic charity that authorities said was secretly sending funds to terrorists.

Siljander is a true warrior for the true GOP cause – money. It’s not about nationalism, jingoism, saving the troops, saving the unborn, saving christmas… it’s all about the benjamins. With regards to his true orthodoxy, Siljander is surely going to spend eternity with his 72 bags of glittery gold. Or the gold may be from the fronts of his soon-to-be cellmate smiling down at Siljander as Siljander performs his patented 72-lick salad toss. Hard to tell on these things. It’s heaven for one of them!

I give it approximately 30 10 minutes before Faux news “inadvertently” labels the GOP Republican GOP Republican GOP Republican GOP Republican GOP Siljander as “(D-MI)”. Oopsies! How’d that D get in there?

Read the indictment in my newly-opened “unfinished” legal bits section.

Chief Justice John Roberts suffered a seizure at his summer home in Maine on Monday, causing a fall that resulted in minor scrapes, Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said.

He will remain in a hospital in Maine overnight.

Mr. Bowles, an Ohio inmate, challenged his conviction in federal district court and lost. The court told Mr. Bowles that he had until Feb. 27 to appeal. He filed the appeal on Feb. 26, and was ready to argue why he was wrongly convicted. But it turned out the district court made a mistake. The appeal should have been filed by Feb. 24.

The Supreme Court ruled, 5 to 4, in a majority opinion written by Justice Clarence Thomas, that Mr. Bowles was out of luck, and his appeal was invalid. So much for heeding a federal judge.

A special shout out to the cowardly Dems who were “keeping their powders dry” when they chose not to fight first Roberts then scAlito.

In the biggest news story of the year so far out of Washington, I Lewis “Scooter” Libby, a former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, has just been convicted by a jury for lying about his role in the public outing of a covert CIA officer whose husband, a former diplomat, had strongly challenged the Bush administration’s case for going to war against Iraq.

Now, given the testimony and what we know, it is obviously time to impeach Cheney. Granted, he and Bush should have been impeached long ago, but we have even stronger evidence of his felonious activities now.

Impeach Cheney before that blood clot finally kills the evil bastard.

Washington State is one of several states racing to see which will be first to send the U.S. House of Representatives a petition to impeach Bush and Cheney.

State Senator Eric Oemig, on February 14, 2007, introduced a resolution (PDF) calling on the Washington State Legislature to petition the U.S. House. Please thank him: oemig.eric@leg.wa.gov

(NM and VT are also in on the action)

Impeachment is more than warranted, it’s a necessity if our nation is to survive.

The Pentagon has been using a little-known power to obtain banking and credit records of hundreds of Americans and others suspected of terrorism or espionage inside the United States, part of an aggressive expansion by the military into domestic intelligence gathering.

The C.I.A. has also been issuing what are known as national security letters to gain access to financial records from American companies, though it has done so only rarely, intelligence officials say.

Banks, credit card companies and other financial institutions receiving the letters usually have turned over documents voluntarily, allowing investigators to examine the financial assets and transactions of American military personnel and civilians, officials say.
…
But it was not previously known, even to some senior counterterrorism officials, that the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency have been using their own “noncompulsory” versions of the letters. Congress has rejected several attempts by the two agencies since 2001 for authority to issue mandatory letters, in part because of concerns about the dangers of expanding their role in domestic spying.

What we’ve got here is an agency that is forbidden from spying on citizens… spying on citizens… without a warrant… keeping the information in a database (read: forEVER)… and using this information in completely unaccountable, untold ways. Oh, and the Pentagon, NSA, and FBI are also in the act.

This is unconstitutional, illegal, and exceedingly dangerous. Whatever remained of our democracy is teetering on the brink of elimination.

Interesting how the righty jackasses screaming about jackbooted thugs in powder blue helmets are totally OK with this when there’s a Republican administration in charge. Idiots. Don’t you know that your names too are going to be on the list eventually?

… oooh, American Idol’s on!

Saddam Hussein was executed by hanging shortly before 6 a.m. (10:00 p.m. EST) on Saturday, U.S.-backed Iraqi television station Al Hurra and Arabic satellite channel Arabiya said.

There’s nothing like a kangaroo court in an illegitimate and unjust legal system executing a former dictator in secret to really bring home my country’s support of the Rule of Law and security in the righteousness of our actions.

Imagine how much weaker we would have looked had we sent Saddam to the International Crime tribunal, presented actual evidence in an impartial court, and then acted on that courts judgment. I sure am glad we didn’t go that option. Non sureties are for wimps.

“Today is May 21,” a naval official declared to a camera videotaping the event. “Right now we’re ready to do a root canal treatment on Jose Padilla, our enemy combatant.”

Several guards in camouflage and riot gear approached cell No. 103. They unlocked a rectangular panel at the bottom of the door and Mr. Padilla’s bare feet slid through, eerily disembodied. As one guard held down a foot with his black boot, the others shackled Mr. Padilla’s legs. Next, his hands emerged through another hole to be manacled.

Wordlessly, the guards, pushing into the cell, chained Mr. Padilla’s cuffed hands to a metal belt. Briefly, his expressionless eyes met the camera before he lowered his head submissively in expectation of what came next: noise-blocking headphones over his ears and blacked-out goggles over his eyes. Then the guards, whose faces were hidden behind plastic visors, marched their masked, clanking prisoner down the hall to his root canal.

The videotape of that trip to the dentist, which was recently released to Mr. Padilla’s lawyers and viewed by The New York Times, offers the first concrete glimpse inside the secretive military incarceration of an American citizen whose detention without charges became a test case of President Bush’s powers in the fight against terror. Still frames from the videotape were posted in Mr. Padilla’s electronic court file late Friday.

This is what the Bush administration believes is in its power to do to American citizens, particularly those dusky hued ne’er do wells.

Now lawyers for Mr. Padilla, 36, suggest that he is unfit to stand trial. They argue that he has been so damaged by his interrogations and prolonged isolation that he suffers post-traumatic stress disorder and is unable to assist in his own defense. His interrogations, they say, included hooding, stress positions, assaults, threats of imminent execution and the administration of “truth serums.”

…

In the brig, Mr. Padilla was denied access to counsel for 21 months. Andrew Patel, one of his lawyers, said his isolation was not only severe but compounded by material and sensory deprivations. In an affidavit filed Friday, he alleged that Mr. Padilla was held alone in a 10-cell wing of the brig; that he had little human contact other than with his interrogators; that his cell was electronically monitored and his meals were passed to him through a slot in the door; that windows were blackened, and there was no clock or calendar; and that he slept on a steel platform after a foam mattress was taken from him, along with his copy of the Koran, “as part of an interrogation plan.”

Yes, the current administration believes that it can hold American citizens in detention indefinitely, without access to counsel or habeas corpus. They feel they can do this to anyone Bushigula decides is an “enemy combatant.”

Mr. Padilla’s situation, as an American declared an enemy combatant and held without charges by his own government, was extraordinary and the conditions of his detention appear to have been unprecedented in the military justice system.

The post 9/11 bedwetters in the public, aided by a timorous and sycophantic media, enabled the unelected authoritarians in the Bush administration (and the FBI and DoJ who had their wet dream laws all typed up and ready to go) to piss all over the Constitution.

Dr. Angela Hegarty, director of forensic psychiatry at the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens, N.Y., who examined Mr. Padilla for a total of 22 hours in June and September, said in an affidavit filed Friday that he “lacks the capacity to assist in his own defense.”

“It is my opinion that as the result of his experiences during his detention and interrogation, Mr. Padilla does not appreciate the nature and consequences of the proceedings against him, is unable to render assistance to counsel, and has impairments in reasoning as the result of a mental illness, i.e., post-traumatic stress disorder, complicated by the neuropsychiatric effects of prolonged isolation,” Dr. Hegarty said in an affidavit for the defense.

This could be you. Or your uncle. Or your mother. Or your nephew. Or your daughter.

What pressure that could be brought to bear has been with the result that Padilla has finally been charged… as a new defendant to an ongoing case in Miami (read: they did not have the evidence to file an independent case against him). Nowhere in this indictment are any of the big propaganda scare story accusations present.

Mr. Padilla was added as a defendant in a terrorism conspiracy case already under way in Miami. The strong public accusations made during his military detention — about the dirty bomb, Al Qaeda connections and supposed plans to set off natural gas explosions in apartment buildings — appear nowhere in the indictment against him. The indictment does not allege any specific violent plot against America.

Mr. Padilla is portrayed in the indictment as the recruit of a “North American terror support cell” that sent money, goods and recruits abroad to assist “global jihad” in general, with a special interest in Bosnia and Chechnya. Mr. Padilla, the indictment asserts, traveled overseas “to participate in violent jihad” and filled out an application for a mujahedin training camp in Afghanistan.

This could be you.

“During questioning, he often exhibits facial tics, unusual eye movements and contortions of his body,” Mr. Patel said. “The contortions are particularly poignant since he is usually manacled and bound by a belly chain when he has meetings with counsel.”

Hopes among women’s groups in Nicaragua that President Enrique Bolaños would stop one of the most restrictive abortion laws in Latin America from taking effect have been dashed, as the president signed it into law late Friday.

Abortion has been illegal in Nicaragua for more than a century, and most women who decide to end unwanted pregnancies seek procedures at underground clinics. But the new law strikes out a clause that made it possible for a woman to obtain an abortion legally when three doctors certified that unless she did, her own life would be in danger.

For months, the proposed law has drawn fierce criticism from several local women’s groups, the country’s association of gynecologists, the United Nations, the World Health Organization and Human Rights Watch, among others.

“This is a throwback to the Middle Ages for women’s rights,” Juana Jiménez, the leader of the Women’s Autonomous Movement in Nicaragua, said after the law was passed.

In an unprecedented transparent attempt to severely limit the right to peaceful protest and freedom of speech of low-wage Houston janitors and their supporters, a Harris County District Attorney has set an extraordinarily high bond of $888,888 cash for each of the 44 peaceful protestors arrested last night. Houston janitors and their supporters, many of them janitors from other cities, were participating in an act of non-violent civil disobedience, protesting in the intersection of Travis at Capitol when they were arrested in downtown Houston Thursday night. They were challenging Houston’s real estate industry to settle the janitors’ strike and agree on a contract that provides the 5,300 janitors in Houston with higher wages and affordable health insurance.

The combined $39.1 million bond for the workers and their supporters is far and above the normal amount of bail set for people accused of even violent crimes in Harris County. While each of the non-violent protestors is being held on $888,888 bail …

• For a woman charged with beating her granddaughter to death with a
  sledgehammer, bail was set at $100,000;
• For a woman accused of disconnecting her quadriplegic mother’s breathing
  machine, bail was set at $30,000;
• For a man charged with murder for stabbing another man to death in a bar
  brawl, bail was set at $30,000;
• For janitors and protesters charged with Class B misdemeanors for past
  non-violent protests, standard bail has been set at $500 each.

More than 5,300 Houston janitors are paid $20 a day with no health insurance, among the lowest wages and benefits of any workers in America.

America… where we love all the people all the time unless they carry signs and interfere with our consumerist days or the “free” market or organize collectively or are brown or…

Here’s a pic, behold the charge of the might brigade: