The lastest lie from the White House is that all 93 U.S. Attorneys were being considered for firing by the President for not appropriately investigating voter fraud. Today's New York Times, White House Said to Prompt Firing of Prosecutors, ¶ 2:

Last October, President Bush spoke with Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales to pass along concerns by Republicans that some prosecutors were not aggressively addressing voter fraud, the White House said Monday.

This is an absolute and utter sham.

In the case of the fired U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas, it is almost the ultimate hypocrisy, short of the Iraq War, and every other lie the White House has told.  Tim Griffin, the replacement U.S. Attorney, has been implicated in voter fraud in the stolen Florida Presidential election in 2000.

New Mexico Governor and Democrat presidential contender Bill Richardson supports medical marijuana:

"We've only got a few days to go, and I'm urging very quick action on the ethics package," he said. "I'm urging very quick, strong action on predatory
lending. I want that cockfighting bill, I want medical marijuana, I want my tax cuts."

Another terrible idea, this time from Ohio:

Convicted sex offenders in Ohio may be soon be forced to drive cars with a special license plate denoting their offense....Under the proposal, the worst sex offenders - habitual sex offenders, predators, and child-victim predators - would have to display the plate on their vehicle for five years.

Offenders would face a criminal charge if they are caught without the plate, and enablers who loan vehicles to known offenders would face criminal charges, too. If an offender moves out of state, they would get a green sticker.

This is just another shaming punishment and one that will have no effect on the number of sex offenses.

10TV spoke with a local registered sex offender who said this would be a second sentence, once out of prison. A spokesperson for CURE Ohio, which supports former inmates, said the plates would demonize people, and it's more often not an ex-felon, but rather a neighbor or relative, who hurts a child.

I'll be railing against the measure on MSNBC tomorrow at 1:30 pm ET. (Barring getting bumped for a Libby verdict or other breaking news.)

A 96 year old mobster pleaded guilty in Florida today. It's a total trophy conviction (no one, thankfully, is anticipating he will go to jail.)

Albert "The Old Man" Facchiano used a cane in court and needed a special headset to hear the questions from U.S. District Judge James Cohn.

...."Is your mind OK?" Cohn asked Fracchiano, who will be 97 on March 10, in court at one point, a question Facchiano appeared to have trouble hearing. "Oh, yes," he eventually responded. "I can't hear, but I can understand, your honor."

Why did he plead guilty? The Government intended to try him in both New York and Florida. His lawyer says he couldn't have withstood both trials.

What a waste of criminal justice resources.

Law professor Ellen Podgor had a very thoughtful article, Throwing Away the Key, 116 Yale L.J. Pocket Part 279 (2007, about the need to rethink the draconian sentences being meted out to white collar criminals.

These modern changes in sentencing and parole law have caused the debate to shift: the question is no longer whether white-collar offenders should do less time than street offenders, but whether they should really be treated more harshly than international terrorists and violent criminals.

The sentences given to white-collar offenders seem oddly imbalanced when compared to those given to international terrorists and violent criminals. For example, eighty-year-old Adelphia founder John Rigas received a fifteen-year sentence, and his son Timothy Rigas, the CFO of the company, received a twenty-year sentence. The white-collar sentencing figures also seem out of line when compared with many state sentences for murder, rape, robbery, and burglary, crimes that find themselves federalized when serving as predicate acts of RICO.

Podgor uses Skilling, Milliken, Ebbers and others as examples, and concludes:

Many parents reasonably believe that appropriate methods of parental discipline should ordinarily be decided by parents, not by the government. And while there is widespread agreement that child abuse does not fall within the realm of appropriate discipline and should be criminalized, there is widespread disagreement whether spanking, without more, constitutes abuse.

A California legislator learned that lesson when she introduced a bill to criminalize the spanking of a child who hasn't reached the age of 4.

That proposal would have covered even a swat on the rear and made offenses punishable by up to a year in jail.

The bill found little support among other legislators, who reasonably believe that a quick paddling of an infant shouldn't subject a parent to a jail term.

The legislator's new proposal "would criminalize parental discipline involving a closed fist, belt, electrical cord, shoe or other objects." She denies that the new bill is a face-saving measure, but since California already has a variety of statutes criminalizing child abuse, it isn't clear that this one is really necessary.

The war against drugs has often been a war against the truth. A lawsuit filed today challenges the federal government's unyielding claim that marijuana has no efficacious medical use.

The lawsuit, filed today in federal court in Oakland, comes a week after the release of a controlled, clinical University of California, San Francisco study showing HIV patients who smoked marijuana found relief from chronic foot pain.

"We are asking the courts to weigh in on the science ... and force the government to stop making false statements about medical cannabis," said Steph Sherer, executive director of Americans for Safe Access.

The ASA argues that the administration is ignoring science, a charge that has become depressingly familiar. While the Bush years have been particularly hostile to science, no administration has been willing to authorize serious research into the medical benefits of marijuana.

While those with drug convictions are not able to get federal financial aid for college, the military is increasingly happy to welcome them into its ranks.

The elimination of student aid for drug offenders is unwise, unfair and as*-backwards. You can add your voice here.

You'd think that FBI agents, of all people, wouldn't lose track of weapons. Or laptops that hold classified documents.

The FBI reported 160 laptop computers as lost or stolen in less than four years, including at least 10 that contained highly sensitive classified information and one that held "personal identifying information on FBI personnel," according to a new report released today.

An undetermined number of the laptops -- between 10 and 51 -- contained classified information.

The bureau, which has struggled for years to get a handle on sloppy inventory procedures, also reported 160 missing weapons during the same time period, from February 2002 to September 2005, according to the report by the Justice Department inspector general's office.

Incompetence is the norm in the Bush administration, but tolerance of such widespread ineptitude in a federal agency is inexcusable.

Time Magazine has an article about the differing laws in various states on whether a man can be convicted of rape if the female consents, and then during intercourse, she changes her mind.

The answer depends on where you live. The highest courts of seven states, including Connecticut and Kansas, have ruled that a woman may withdraw her consent at any time, and if the man doesn't stop, he is committing rape. Illinois has become the first state to pass legislation giving a woman that right to change her mind. But in Maryland--as well as in North Carolina--when a woman says yes, she can't take it back once sex has begun--or, at least, she can't call the act rape.

The Maryland case is under appeal.

If the law doesn't recognize a woman's right to say no during sex, [victims' rights advocates] say, there is no recourse for a woman who begins to feel pain or who learns her partner isn't wearing a condom or has HIV. Those who are wary of these measures say they're not arguing against having a man stop immediately when a woman no longer wants to have sex, but with how to define immediately.

That is totally illogical to me. If it starts to hurt, or there's no protection, and he doesn't pull out, it may be unwanted sex at that point but it's not rape. Let's not trivialize real rape to accomodate definitions of consensual sex gone awry. Make up a new crime for that if it's going to be illegal. But to brand someone as a sex offender for life, require sex offender registration, submit them to possible life sentences? Come on.

More...

Sex offender registration began as a way to keep track of predators. Eager to appear tough on crime, many state legislators have pushed to expand registry membership to include sex offenders who are unlikely threats. Young adults who have sex with their minor girlfriends or boyfriends exemplify the kind of defendants who pose no threat to the general population, and who do not deserve the stigma of sex offender registration.

A judge who agrees with that reasonable philosophy tried to mete out justice to a 20 year old defendant by staying his felony conviction for 100 years, a creative way to assure that the young man would never have to register. The judge probably knew he’d be reversed – and reversed he was – but the judge at least made a statement that caught the public’s attention.

[Judge] Kirk said Thursday his opinion of the sex registry requirement, because of its lack of discretion, remains unchanged. ... "It is a travesty in my opinion that we are destroying a significant cadre of our young people because the law doesn't discriminate between those that are there because of youthful misadventure or those that are true sex offenders," Kirk said.

Mistaken eyewitness identification is the largest cause of wrongful convictions. New Mexico has a bill pending that would greatly reduce the chances of misidentification. A hearing is scheduled today on the bill.

Under the proposed regulations, an eyewitness must provide a written description before a lineup takes place; there must be at least six individuals in a live lineup and 10 photos in a photographic line-up; and the members of the lineup must be shown sequentially rather than simultaneously.

The bill would also restrict the amount of time in which law enforcement could bring a suspect by for a physical identification by a victim or witness to within one hour after the crime was reported. Anything beyond one hour would require a lineup with multiple photos or people....

Innocence Project co-director Barry Scheck explains in this letter (pdf) why the bill is so critical to justice.

The bill is Senate Bill 5. You can read the text here.