President Bush issued 29 pardons today. I "Lewis" Scooter Libby was not among them.

That doesn't mean one won't be forthcoming now that Libby has dropped his appeal. Bush has said previously he wouldn't give a pardon while the appeal was pending. Since Libby only announced his intent to withdraw the appeal yesterday, it could just be a matter of timing. Bush can grant pardons until he leaves office in 2009.

Here's the full list. Included is one commutation of a crack cocaine sentence -- see below.

By a unanimous vote, the U.S. Sentencing Commission has made its November, 2007 reduction in crack cocaine penalties retroactive. The effective date is March, 2008. The statement is here.

This is very good news, but note the limitations:

Not every crack cocaine offender will be eligible for a lower sentence under the decision. A Federal sentencing judge will make the final determination of whether an offender is eligible for a lower sentence and how much that sentence should be lowered. That determination will be made only after consideration of many factors, including the Commission’s direction to consider whether lowering the offender’s sentence would pose a danger to public safety. In addition, the overall impact is anticipated to occur incrementally over approximately 30 years, due to the limited nature of the guideline amendment and the fact that many crack cocaine offenders will still be required under Federal law to serve mandatory five- or ten-year sentences because of the amount of crack involved in their offense.

Maybe it's something in the water down in Phoenix. Now in addition to their off-the-wall Sheriff, Joe Arpaio, they have a County Attorney, Andrew Thomas, who's spending $700k on a DUI program that includes posting the mug shots of those arrested for driving under the influence on the web. Even MADD doesn't like it, and that's saying something.

The hall of shame is even worse for drunken drivers convicted of a felony. A select few will find their faces plastered on billboards around Phoenix with the banner headline: Drive drunk, see your mug shot here.

The Web site and billboards, which began last month, are the brainchildren of Andrew P. Thomas, the county attorney here who has served as the prosecutorial counterpart to the county’s hard-edged sheriff, Joe Arpaio, who has been known to force inmates into pink underwear.

Thomas is not without his critics. He's sometimes called "Little Joe" because of his closeness to Arpaio.

When he took office in January 2005, Thomas made it clear he was following Arpaio's playbook. Politics and retribution would be the order of the day.

Here's the first of 70 pages of misdemeanor mugs in Scottsdale.

More...

The Justice Policy Institute has a new report "The Vortex: The Concentrated Racial Impact of Drug Imprisonment and the Characteristics of Punitive Counties," on the racial disparity in the imprisonment of drug offenders.

The report confirms that African Americans are imprisoned in far greater numbers than whites.

Of 175,000 people sent to prison for drugs nationwide in 2002, over half were black, though blacks are 13 percent of the population.

It found no relationship between rates at which people are sent to prison for drug offenses and the rates at which people use drugs. The study said 9.2 percent of blacks use illegal drugs, compared with 8.1 percent of whites.

More....

The New York Times shines its light on the felony murder doctrine today.

I wish they had included the case of Lisl Auman, which I think best shows the absurdity of the rule.

Many states still carry this archane law on their books. It's way past time for it to be abolished.

After a Fort Collins, Colorado judge last week ordered the police to return 39 plants to two medical marijuana caregivers, the police department has complied: by returning dead plants.

James and Lisa Masters, the former defendants and owners of the plants, will sue. Their lawyer puts the value of the plants at $100,000.

The Judge ordered the plants and the grow system returned after ruling the search was illegal. The D.A. says there was no obligation to preserve the plants because the Masters weren't on the registry at the time of the search. (They couldn't afford it and with help from others, were placed on the registry several days later.)

When a policy that is "properly followed" ends in the death of an innocent teenage girl and her 9 year old sister, it's time to change the policy.

Franklinton Police Chief Ray Gilliam said Sunday afternoon policy was properly followed in a high-speed police chase and crash that killed three people. ... Franklinton police officer Michael Dunlap observed Guy Christopher Ayscue, 38, of Henderson, driving very erratically in a Pontiac, according to police. Dunlap tried to stop Ayscue using his lights and siren, but Ayscue drove off, and Dunlap pursued.

Dunlop chased Ayscue for 13 miles. Three times during the chase, Dunlop saw Ayscue enter a lane of oncoming traffic, but Dunlop continued the high speed pursuit. That judgment may not have violated a flawed departmental policy, but Dunlop was foolish to give Ayscue an incentive to drive faster.

Ayscue was traveling north on U.S. Highway 15 and went to pass another vehicle in a no-passing zone when he hit a 1999 Kia head-on, Gilliam said. ... It is estimated that Ayscue was traveling at 90 mph at the time of the crash.

New in Rolling Stone, Ben Wallace-Wells has a six page article on How America Lost the Drug War.

Last week, Columnist Froma Harrop exposed the failure of the war on drugs.

If two people do it, is it a movement?

Distributing Vicodin to people who don't have a prescription for it is conduct that typically results in the kind of harshly punitive criminal sentence that has become the trademark of the war on drugs. Unless the drug distributor is a business like Cardinal Health Inc. The DEA "is suspending its license to distribute controlled substances from its Auburn, Wash. facility" because it sold Vicodin to a "pharmacy that allegedly dispensed excessive amounts based on illegitimate prescriptions from Internet pharmacy web sites."

A license suspension sounds serious, doesn't it? Not to Wall Street analysts.

Shares of Cardinal Health Inc. edged higher Friday as analysts said the Drug Enforcement Administration's action to suspend the company's controlled substances license at its Washington facility won't materially affect its bottom line.

And why is that? (more ...)

Larimer County, Colorado District Court Judge James Hiatt ordered the cops to return 39 seized marijuana plants and a grow system to a couple who grew the plants as caregivers for themselves and a few other patients.

Brian Vincente, lawyer for the couple, hopes authorities have taken care of the plants as provided by the state's medical marijuana law, which was approved by voters in 2000.

"If they've allowed these plants to die, they've broken the law," said Vincente, executive director of Sensible Colorado, a non-profit advocacy group of medical marijuana patients. He described the ruling as the largest return of medical marijuana to a grower since the law went into effect.

If the plants were destroyed, Vincente said his clients will seek compensation for the plants, which he estimated to be about $100,000.

The prosecution is deciding whether to appeal the judge's order. [More...]

Antoine di Zazzo, a Taser representative in France boasts he's been stunned more than 50 times and it didn't cause "real pain." He's also tasered France's far-right politician Jean-Marie Le Pen and convinced French President Nicolas Sarkozy of the stun gun's benefit. Sarkozy promised to buy one for all 300,000 French policemen and gendarmes.

But the more frightening news is this:

Di Zazzo's French company is also developing a mini-flying saucer like drone which could also fire Taser stun rounds on criminal suspects or rioting crowds. He expects it to be launched next year and to be sold internationally by Taser.

While Taser continues to insist the stun gun doesn't cause death,

There have been at least three other deaths this week in the United States after police use of the Taser.

Providence, Rhode Island columnist Froma Harrop today exposes some of the statistics from the War on Drugs, calling it a failure:

Since it started in 1970, American law enforcement has arrested 38 million people for nonviolent drug offenses, nearly 2 million last year alone. The number of people jailed for violent crimes has risen 300 percent, but the prison population of nonviolent drug offenders has soared 2,558 percent.

The culprit, as Harrop says, is mandatory minimum sentences. [More...]