PATRIOT ACT REMAINS UNBRIDLED
"The Republican-led House bowed to a White House veto threat Thursday and stood by the USA Patriot Act, defeating an effort to block the part of the anti-terrorism law that helps the government investigate people's reading habits.
The amendment appeared on its way to victory as the roll call's normal 15-minute time limit expired, but GOP leaders kept the vote open for 23 more minutes as they persuaded about 10 Republicans who initially supported the provision to change their votes, losing by 210-210, with a majority needed to prevail. "
(COMMON DREAMS)

DEATH PENALTY APOLOGIA
Acting under severe constraints imposed by our own constitutional system, we execute some people here and there, episodically confessing worry and even shame that we're not quite sure about what we're doing. Then we nervously try it all again. Politically, we can't live without capital punishment. Morally, we have some trouble living with it. So we impose just enough of it to keep the art form alive.
(SLATE, unearthed by Kate Varner)

DO-IT-YOURSELF FIREWORKS DISPLAY
"Using your mouse, click in the sky above NYC. HAPPY FOURTH!!!!!"
(Suggested by Jay Lewis)

"FEENEY 2" PROPOSED
Not content with filling up the country's prisons, the Jihadists have decided to exacerbate the injustices perpetrated by their already draconian policies. We're talking about here, in the U.S.! Despite the recent Blakely decision that puts the whole scheme in question Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), a proponent of the notorious Feeney Amendment, has introduced legislation to further curtail the sentencing discretion of federal judges.
A hearing regarding this legislation will take place on Tuesday, July 6, before the House of Representative's Crime Subcommittee. Because Congressman Sensenbrenner is the Chair of the House Judiciary Committee and controls the committee's agenda, The "Defending America's Most Vulnerable: Safe Access to Drug Treatment and Child Protection Act" (H.R. 4547) poses a serious risk. It would:

Establish mandatory minimum sentences for drug distribution involving persons under 18 years of age. The sale of any quantity of any controlled substance (including anything greater than five grams of marijuana) by a person older than 21 to a person younger than 18 would be subject to a ten-year mandatory minimum sentence; persons 21 years or older convicted a second time of distributing drugs to a person under 18 or convicted a first time after a felony drug offense has become final would receive a mandatory life sentence.

Result in a blanket five-year mandatory minimum sentence for distribution of any quantity of any controlled substance in a metropolitan area. The bill increases to five years the federal mandatory minimum sentence for the sale of a controlled substance, of any type or quantity, within 1,000 feet of a school, college, public library, drug treatment facility (or any place where drug treatment, including classes, are held), or private or public daycare facilities -- in short, almost anywhere in cities across the U.S.

Unduly restrict the federal "safety valve" to cases in which the government has certified that the defendant pled guilty to the most serious readily provable offense (the one that carries the longest sentence), and has "done everything possible to assist substantially in the investigation and prosecution of another person," and would prohibit the federal "safety-valve" in cases where drugs were distributed or possessed near a person under 18, where the defendant delayed his or her efforts to provide substantial assistance to the government, or provided false, misleading or incomplete information. Eliminate the mitigating role cap under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines for minimal or minor drug offenders.

Exacerbate overly harsh sentencing based on drug weight by requiring that a defendant be punished for the conduct of co-conspirators that occurred before the defendant joined the conspiracy.
(NACDL)

IT'S A HERITAGE THING
Essie Mae Washington-Williams, a biracial woman who stepped forward last year to acknowledge that she was the daughter of the late Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, now wants to join the United Daughters of the Confederacy, an organization of descendants of soldiers who fought for the South in the Civil War."
(NYT)

$87,000,000,000.00
"On September 7th, 2003, President Bush announced on national television that he was asking the Congress to grant him an additional $87 billion dollars for the next fiscal year, beginning October 1, to continue the fight on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But $87 billion is an impossibly high number for anyone to visualize. Let's have a look...."
(CRUNCHWEB, unearthed by Connie Acevedo)

INSIDE THE BELLY OF A BEAST
Purna Raj Bajracharya, 47, who came from Nepal in 1996, was swallowed up in the government's new maximum security system of secret detention and secret hearings, and his only friend was the same F.B.I. agent who had helped decide to put him there.Visa violators would be held indefinitely, until the F.B.I. was sure the person was not involved in terrorism. As a visa violator under suspicion, Mr. Bajracharya was among hundreds placed in the special interest category, and his case was wiped from the public record.
(NYT)

BUSH DOCTRINE ERODING
"The occupation of Iraq has increasingly undermined, and in some cases discredited, the core tenets of President Bush's foreign policy, according to a wide range of Republican and Democratic analysts and U.S. officials. "
(WASHINGTON POST, unearthed by tompaine.com)

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM
"By only describing its individual parts, Americans fail to grasp the massive weight and dimension of the elephant. The big picture is obscured. We can't see that what's in front of us is all part of the same beast: failed conservative policies."
(ALTERNET, unearthed by tompaine.com)

UTAH V. MOONEYS
(No, Not Those Moonies, this couple belongs to a different religious sect): "Utah law incorporates a federal regulation exempting from prosecution members of the Native American Church who use peyote in bona fide religious ceremonies. On its face, the federal regulation does not restrict the exemption to members of federally recognized tribes. The exemption is available to all members of the Native American Church."
(Suggested by Paul Whitehurst)

LOCAL POLL SHOWS SUPPORT FOR WAR IS WEAKENING
"As violence in Iraq escalates leading up to Wednesday's transfer of power, fewer Alabamians now think the U.S. invasion made the world safer, according to the results of a Mobile Register-University of South Alabama poll taken last week. Less than half the 407 people surveyed said the war has made the world a safer place, a stark difference from April 2003, after the successful invasion, when more than three-quarters of respondents said the same thing. "
The poll results are consistent with a USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll released on Thursday that shows that for the first time since the start of the war in Iraq, a majority of Americans now say the U.S.-led invasion was a mistake. Fifty four percent of the 1,005 Americans polled said it was a mistake to send U.S. troops into Iraq, compared with 41 percent who held that view three weeks ago. The findings mark the first time since Vietnam that a majority of Americans has called a major deployment of U.S. forces a mistake, USA Today reported on its Web site. Like the local poll, this poll also showed that 55 percent said the war has increased U.S. vulnerability, compared to a December poll in which 56 percent said the war made the United States safer.
Click Below for
New York Times Article
Findlaw story
Common Dreams Piece
(VARIOUS SOURCES)

DON'T FORGET WHO IS OUT THERE DOING THE DIRTY WORK

UNION CALLS FOR IRAQ PULLOUT
Nearly 4000 delegates of Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the nation's largest with 1.6 million members, voted unanimously at the union's national convention in San Francisco today to end U.S. occupation of Iraq and to bring U.S. troops stationed there home.
(ANTI-IMPERIALIST LEAGUE, Suggested by Cuba News Digest)
For Common Dreams story on other voices calling for pullout Click Here

REVEREND MOON CROWNED MESSIAH IN CONGRESS
"As a shining symbol of democracy, the United States capital is not ordinarily a place where coronations occur. So news that the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the eccentric and exceedingly wealthy Korean-born businessman, donned a crown in a Senate office building and declared himself the Messiah while members of Congress watched is causing a bit of a stir."
(NYT)

UNDERSTANDING SECT FIRST STEP TOWARDS PEACE
"Shiites stick together. Their formidable official religious establishment, or Hawza, acts as one entity, even though its members may be in Najaf, in Qom in Iran (the other major center of learning), or any other place with substantial numbers of Shiites. Unlike, say, the Vatican, the Hawza is not an organized theocracy with clear hierarchies and chains of authority. Rather, it is bound by fervor, consensus and the utter devotion of its leaders and followers. This makes it a tricky institution to predict. "
(NYT)
For an excellent piece on Saudi Arabia and the problems of terrorism there see the latest Newsweek or click here.