Category: Justice

Texas cops taser diabetic seizure man

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What the hell is wrong with these cops?

Texas cops taser diabetic seizure man

By Lester Haines
Published Wednesday 20th June 2007 12:25 GMT

A Texas man who called 911 to request medical assistance for a diabetic seizure earned a tasering from local cops for his trouble, the Waxahachie Daily Light reports.

Allen Nelms, 52, was suffering said seizure “during the early morning hours of April 28 when his girlfriend, Josie Edwards, called 911 to request paramedics”.

A police officer duly turned up at the house on Waxahachie’s east side, “inquired as to what was going on”, then called for back-up. Shortly after, and as Nelms was “in his bed in the couple’s bedroom”, cops “burst in with their guns drawn and yelling at him to get on the floor”.

Edwards recalled “about six or seven police officers kicked the front door in and stormed the back bedroom where she said she could hear one telling Nelms to get on the floor”. Her statement, which forms part of an written complaint made by Nelms to the Waxahachie police department, says: “Allen was shouting, ‘Please don’t do me like this. I just need help.’ Next thing I heard some ‘zing’ noise and Allen was shouting. I asked what were they doing to him. One policeman replied, ‘We just took care of him.’ … After they did their shooting and laughing, they came out [of] the rooms. The paramedics had to pull out the Tasers.”

Nelms claims he was “struck by Taser barbs on his left side, his back and his shoulder” as he went to roll over, and subsequently handcuffed, with “paramedics intervening when the officers began trying to yank the Taser barbs from his skin”. The paramedics removed the barbs, checked Nelms’ blood sugar level, and the cuffs came off. He was neither arrested nor charged.

In an interview with the Daily Light, Nelms added: “One of the officers said I ‘lunged’ at him. I asked him, ‘How can I lunge at you from my back and on my bed?'” He said he had “never had a problem in calling for paramedics before, and there is no history of his becoming violent when he is having a diabetic seizure”.

Edwards’ statement says: “Of the 16 years that we [have] lived here and called for paramedics, police decide to come and take over and try to almost kill the man. They never asked any questions [like] did he have a heart pacer, they just wanted to have fun by shooting Tasers and handcuffing the man after he was shot.”

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What She Daid, Deborah Leavy Edition

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I guess that the Beltway pundits think that punishment only applies to black and Hispanic folks.

Thank you Ms. Leavy, for a breath of honesty from Philadelphia.

DO THE CRIME, DO THE TIME
Deborah Leavy

PROMINENT conservatives, pundits and websites are rallying around I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, ex-chief of staff to Vice President Cheney, who has been sentenced to 30 months and fined $250,000 after being convicted of obstruction of justice, perjury and lying to a grand jury and federal investigators.

In sentencing Libby, federal Judge Reggie Walton cited “overwhelming” evidence of Libby’s guilt. “People who occupy these types of positions, where they have the welfare and security of the nation in their hands, have a special obligation,” declared the judge, who was appointed by President George W. Bush.

But conservative Republicans argue that Libby is a dedicated public servant, and that he is merely the victim of a faulty memory. They are pressuring President Bush to pardon Libby.

But many Democrats are gleeful. They haven’t forgotten that when Bill Clinton lied about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, Republicans called him unfit for office, and Clinton was impeached. Now the shoe is one the other foot, Democrats crow.

Revenge should have no role in the criminal-justice system, nor should it be a reason to exult in Libby’s case. If revenge were the reason for Libby’s sentence, I would join those calling for his pardon.

But I don’t think the judge is sending Libby to prison for payback. Judge Walton is known as a tough sentencer, and since Libby did the crime he should do the time.

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Impeach Antonin Scalia

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Impeach him now.

Un-dirtyword-believable.

With real, and counter productive, torture going on RIGHT NOW, authorized at the highest levels of government, this twit has to use a bit of schlock TV, because he just wants to torture people.

What would Jack Bauer do?
Canadian jurist prompts international justice panel to debate TV drama 24’s use of torture

COLIN FREEZE

June 16, 2007

OTTAWA — Justice Antonin Scalia is one of the most powerful judges on the planet.

The job of the veteran U.S. Supreme Court judge is to ensure that the superpower lives up to its Constitution. But in his free time, he is a fan of 24, the popular TV drama where the maverick federal agent Jack Bauer routinely tortures terrorists to save American lives. This much was made clear at a legal conference in Ottawa this week.

Senior judges from North America and Europe were in the midst of a panel discussion about torture and terrorism law, when a Canadian judge’s passing remark – ‘Thankfully, security agencies in all our countries do not subscribe to the mantra ‘What would Jack Bauer do?’ ‘ – got the legal bulldog in Judge Scalia barking.”

The conservative jurist stuck up for Agent Bauer, arguing that fictional or not, federal agents require latitude in times of great crisis. “Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles. … He saved hundreds of thousands of lives,” Judge Scalia said. Then, recalling Season 2, where the agent’s rough interrogation tactics saved California from a terrorist nuke, the Supreme Court judge etched a line in the sand.

“Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?” Judge Scalia challenged his fellow judges. “Say that criminal law is against him? ‘You have the right to a jury trial?’ Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer? I don’t think so.
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The YouTube – uTube Lawsuit

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The suit is just plain silly. It’s clear that Utube had real damage as a result of Youtube, intentional or not, and Google could have made this all go away for a few bucks.

See the website screen capture below. All they have done is to put up a banner to cover the costs of clueless people who can’t type in a web site correctly.

A screen shot of Utube: Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us

YouTube – uTube showdown stays alive in federal court

A website by any other name
By Kevin Fayle in San Francisco
Published Tuesday 12th June 2007 22:14 GMT

Silicon Justice What’s in a name, right?

For the Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment Corporation, operator of uTube.com, its domain name means cash – and with a federal court’s recent refusal to dismiss the company’s suit against YouTube, the possibility of even more cash in the future.

The company has operated uTube.com as a means to sell used pipe and tube mills and rollform machinery since 1996. After YouTube’s launch in 2005, the sleepy little Ohio website went from around 1,500 visitors a month to roughly 70,000 per day. The company alleges that this caused its web host’s servers to crash, which disrupted its business and sullied its reputation. It also claims that bandwidth overages bumped its hosting fees from $100 a month to $2,500.

In true Midwestern fashion, the company made the best of a bad situation by adding a ringtone search engine to the site, as well as links to dating, insurance and gambling sites. These new features now pull in $1,000 a day or more, according to one report.

In addition to capitalizing on the name confusion by hawking Internet crap, uTube has also sued YouTube in federal court. The company has asked for monetary damages, as well as injunctions to stop YouTube’s operation and for the court to transfer the YouTube.com domain to uTube.

The judge hearing the case just dismissed a number of uTube’s complaints, but also refused to grant YouTube’s motion to dismiss the entire suit. The judge also gave uTube permission to amend its complaint to see if it can revive any of the dismissed causes of action.

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Surprise. Making US Attournies Political Hit Men Will Be Used Against Them in Court

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These morons have added yet Another hurdle for prosecutors pursuing corruption in particular, and white collar crime (notice the wage and hour case?) in general.

I’m wondering if this wasn’t on some level intended. After all, protecting rich white guys is a Republican priority.

U.S. attorneys fallout seeps into courts

Defense lawyers in different cases are raising new questions about government prosecutors and potential political biases.
By Richard B. Schmitt, Times Staff Writer
June 18, 2007

WASHINGTON — For months, the Justice Department and Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales have taken political heat for the purge of eight U.S. attorneys last year.

Now the fallout is starting to hit the department in federal courtrooms around the country.

Defense lawyers in a growing number of cases are raising questions about the motives of government lawyers who have brought charges against their clients. In court papers, they are citing the furor over the U.S. attorney dismissals as evidence that their cases may have been infected by politics.

Justice officials say those concerns are unfounded and constitute desperate measures by desperate defendants. But the affair has given defendants and their lawyers some new energy, which is complicating life for the prosecutors.

Missouri lawyers have invoked the controversy in challenging last year’s indictment of a company owned by a prominent Democrat, on suspicion of violating federal wage and hour laws. The indictment, which came two months after the owner announced that she was running for political office, was obtained by a Republican U.S. attorney who also has been criticized because he charged workers for a left-leaning political group on the eve of the 2006 midterm election.

A lawyer in a child pornography case recently defended his client at a federal trial in Minnesota in part by questioning the motives of the Republican U.S. attorney, who has come under scrutiny in the congressional investigation into the prosecutor purge.

Lawyers for a former county official in Delaware who has been accused of corruption asked a judge in early May to allow them to subpoena the Justice Department and White House for documents to see whether political motives factored into charges being brought against the official. They cited the brewing controversy inside the Beltway.

“Those revelations dramatically reinforce the reasons to believe that considerations beyond mere law enforcement are behind this prosecution,” the lawyers wrote.

The defendant, a once up-and-coming Democrat, was being prosecuted by the U.S. attorney in Wilmington, a Republican appointee.

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But Democrats say there is evidence that the dismissals were part of a Bush administration effort to affect investigations in public corruption and voting cases that would assist Republicans. The probe has also shown that politics may have played a role in the hiring of some career Justice employees, in possible violation of federal law.

The controversy has drained morale from U.S. attorney offices around the country. And now, legal experts and former Justice Department officials say, it is casting a shadow over the integrity of the department and its corps of career prosecutors in court.

There has long been a presumption that, because they represented the Justice Department, prosecutors had no political agenda and their word could be trusted. But some legal experts say the controversy threatens to undermine their credibility.

“It provides defendants an opportunity to make an argument that would not have been made two years ago,” said Daniel J. French, a former U.S. attorney in Albany, N.Y. “It has a tremendously corrosive effect.”

Defense lawyers in political corruption cases often argue to juries that the prosecution was motivated by politics, especially when the prosecutor happens to be of a different political party than the defendant.

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Anti-Hacking Laws Put Security at Risk

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This does not protect companies. Openness is the route to computer security. Security through obscurity is a sham.

Anti-hacking laws ‘can hobble net security’

Good Samaritans discouraged by threat of prosecution
By Robert Lemos, SecurityFocus
Published Monday 18th June 2007 09:52 GMT
Mobile computing: Opportunities and risk – Free whitepaper

Jeremiah Grossman has long stopped looking for vulnerabilities in specific websites, and even if he suspects a site to have a critical flaw that could be compromised by an attacker, he’s decided to keep quiet.

The silence weighs heavily on the web security researcher. While ideally he would like to find flaws, and help companies eliminate them, the act of discovering a vulnerability in any site on the internet almost always entails gaining unauthorised access to someone else’s server – a crime that prosecutors have been all too willing to pursue.

“I have long since curtailed my research,” said Grossman, who serves as the chief technology officer for website security firm WhiteHat Security. “Any web security researcher that has been around long enough will notice vulnerabilities without doing anything. When that happens, I don’t tell anyone, rather than risk reputational damage to myself and my company.”

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Impeach Albu Gonzalez, Impeach Him Now

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Impeach Dick Cheney Tomorrow.

Impeach George Bush the very next day.

His response to his politicization of the Justice department is MORE politics.

POINTING THE WAY FOR PROSECUTORS
Under fire, not in retreat

Gonzales’ plan for attorney reviews would further politicize process

By Andrew Zajac, a national correspondent based in the Tribune’s Washington Bureau
Published June 17, 2007

Atty Gen. Alberto Gonzales so far has survived a political crisis over the firing of nine U.S. attorneys, a rare potential vote of no-confidence in the Senate and numerous calls for his resignation.

His response? Gonzales recently proposed tightening the leash on the men and women who prosecute federal crimes across the nation.”

Gonzales described what he delicately calls “a more vigorous and a little bit more formal process” for annually evaluating prosecutors. What that means, as he explained it, is hauling in every U.S. attorney for a meeting to hear, among other things, politicians’ beefs against the prosecutor.

If that should happen, expect the fair-mindedness and independence Americans still count on from their Justice Department to slip.

In testimony to Congress and comments at the National Press Club, Gonzales framed the meetings as a way of improving communications. But it also looks a lot like a way to remind recalcitrant U.S. attorneys what the home team expects.

On Friday, a spokesman for Gonzales insisted in a written statement that the attorney general has no intention of holding one-on-ones with every U.S. attorney.

“The view of the overwhelming majority of U.S. attorneys is that they do not want a new, formalized review process — including one that might involve annual one-on-one meetings between each U.S. attorney and the Attorney General or the Deputy Attorney General. We have listened and agree with these views,” the spokesman said.

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Good Court Decision on Eminent Domain

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I was appalled by the actions taken in Kelo v. City of New London, but not the court decision.

The idea of taking someone’s home, and giving it to a real estate developer is a POLITICAL calculus, and not a judicial one.

If you look at the case, the right wingers on the court sided against the “taking”, and they did so with an ulterior motive.

They were looking to make it a wedge for the “Fair Use” crazies, who want to be reimbursed for not putting a toxic waste dump on their land.

This decision is far more narrow, and simply says that fallow land is not blighted land under the NJ constitution.

Ruling limits use of eminent domain

Thursday, June 14, 2007

By SCOTT FALLON
STAFF WRITER

New Jersey towns will have a harder time seizing private property for redevelopment after the state Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that targeted property must be blighted and not merely underused.

The ruling will have far-reaching effects, state officials said, and could aid property owners fighting eminent domain in Lodi, North Arlington and Passaic.

The 42-page unanimous decision said that town officials cannot seize homes and businesses simply because they believe those properties can be put to better use.

“The court is giving notice that municipalities no longer have unfettered access to private property,” said Harvey Pearlman, a lawyer who represents a Passaic homeowner whose house was condemned by the city without his knowledge.

The court wrestled with what constitutes blight in deciding a case from Gloucester County, where the town of Paulsboro sought to condemn a 63-acre tract made up mostly of wetlands.

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Scooter Is Going To Gaol.

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As tempting as it is to make politically incorrect jokes, I will simply leave it at:

Scooter is a Really Bad Name in Prison

Judge won’t delay Libby prison term

By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writer 1 minute ago

WASHINGTON – A federal judge said Thursday he will not delay a 2 1/2-year prison sentence for I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, a ruling that could send the former White House aide to prison within weeks.

U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton’s decision will send Libby’s attorneys rushing to an appeals court to block the sentence and could force
President Bush to consider calls from Libby’s supporters to pardon the former aide.

Specter to vote against Gonzales – Yahoo! News

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This is a good thing. Bush won’t let Abu Gonzalez go, because he knows where the bodies are buried, and he is a close personal friend.

We also now have confirmation that the vote means nothing, because Spector votes with the Dems only when it does not matter.

Top Republican to vote against Gonzales – Yahoo! News: “By LAURIE KELLMAN, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 16 minutes ago

WASHINGTON – The top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee said Monday he will vote for a no-confidence resolution against Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
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Sen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record), R-Pa., said he’s concerned like others in his party that the resolution, sponsored by Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and up for a test vote later in the day, was a Democratic effort to embarrass Bush and push Gonzales to resign.

But Specter has long said that Gonzales has exercised poor leadership on a host of issues, from the firings of eight federal prosecutors to the Justice Department’s handling of wiretapping authority under the USA Patriot Act.

‘If you ask Arlen Specter, do I have confidence in Attorney General Gonzales, the answer is a resounding no,’ Specter said during a news conference in Philadelphia. ‘I’m going to vote that I have no confidence in Attorney General Gonzales.'”

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U.S. Supreme Court rules against Philip Morris – Jun. 11, 2007

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Good. Hope they fry.

U.S. Supreme Court rules against Philip Morris – Jun. 11, 2007

Justices unanimously reversed a ruling allowing the Altria Group unit to transfer a class-action lawsuit to federal court from state court.
June 11 2007: 11:59 AM EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Monday that a class-action lawsuit against Philip Morris USA, a unit of Altria Group, should not be decided in federal court, handing a defeat to the tobacco company.

The justices unanimously reversed a ruling that allowed Philip Morris to transfer the lawsuit to federal court from the Arkansas state court where it initially was filed.
Video More video
CNN’s Allan Chernoff reports on the controversy sparked over a smoking ban in apartment buildings. (April 24)
Play video

At issue is a suit filed against Philip Morris by two Arkansas women alleging that the company engaged in unfair business practices in marketing its low-tar Cambridge Lights and Marlboro Lights cigarette brands.”

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Three Cheers for the Rule of Law

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Mr. Bush, L’état, ce n’es jamais tu. (The State is never you) My apologies for the high school French, but the use of the familiar form is intentional, and an insult.

Court Says Military Cannot Hold ‘Enemy Combatant’ – New York Times

In a stinging rejection of one of the Bush administration’s central assertions about the scope of executive authority to combat terrorism, a federal appeals court ordered the Pentagon to release a man being held as an enemy combatant.

“To sanction such presidential authority to order the military to seize and indefinitely detain civilians, Judge Diana Gribbon Motz wrote, “even if the President calls them ‘enemy combatants,’ would have disastrous consequences for the Constitution — and the country.”

“We refuse to recognize a claim to power,” Judge Motz added, “that would so alter the constitutional foundations of our Republic.”

This is All About Racism

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Let’s be clear. This case was about stringing up a black man from the beginning, and the DA is stringing it out because it’s good politics there.

Tough on crime=Keeping the N%^$#@s down.

Appeal blocks release in teen sex case – CNN.com: “ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) — Prosecutors filed a notice of appeal on Monday in the case of Genarlow Wilson, blocking him from being released from prison, his attorney B.J. Bernstein said.

Wilson is serving a 10-year prison sentence for a sexual encounter with a 15-year-old girl that occurred when he was 17.

Earlier in the day, a judge in Monroe County, Georgia, voided that sentence and said Wilson should be released.

The judge ruled Wilson could serve one year, less than he has already served, and that he would not be listed as a sex offender.

Why We Need A Bill of Rights.

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I’m not suggesting that all, or most, peace officers do this, but this guy busted someone for looking at his dog, and he won’t even get a suspension for this.

The blue wall of silence needs to be eliminated.

This is how people act when they can act with impunity.

Animal cruelty case yields ‘doggone’ dismissal: Rutland Herald Online
June 6, 2007

By Peter Hirschfeld Times Argus Staff

CHELSEA – A woman facing jail time for “staring” at a police dog had charges against her dropped Monday after an Orange County prosecutor viewed videotape of the alleged crime.

Jayna Hutchinson, now of Lebanon, N.H., was scheduled for a jury trial this week on a misdemeanor charge of cruelty to animals.

A Vermont State Police sergeant said Hutchinson was intoxicated and stared at his police dog in a “taunting/harassing manner” last July while officers were in the process of investigating a reported melee outside a West Fairlee establishment.

“Prosecuting a woman for staring at a police dog is absurd,” said Kelly Green, a public defender appointed by Vermont District Court in Orange County to represent Hutchinson. She likened the act to giving a police officer the finger – a form of expression protected by rights accorded under the First Amendment.

“After looking at the video, I did not think it was worthwhile proceeding,” Orange County State’s Attorney Will Porter said Tuesday.

He said it would be difficult to prove that Hutchinson’s behavior met the statutory standard for cruelty to animals, which in this case would have required that Hutchinson “intentionally torment(ed) or harass(ed) an animal owned … by a police department.”

According to an affidavit, Hutchinson approached Sgt. Todd Protzman on the night of July 31 as he and at least three other officers were investigating a fight. Hutchinson, who later registered a .218 blood-alcohol content, told Protzman she wanted to report that she had been beat up the night before by one of the men involved in the fight, according to Green.

Green said the video showed Protzman mocking Hutchinson’s appearance.

“I think his comment about Jayna’s looks revealed the real reason he arrested her,” Green said. “I’d venture a guess to say that if she’d been small and pretty and had been complaining of being assaulted, he may have done more to investigate her claims.”

Porter said he saw no indication of improper behavior by Protzman and that he was doing his best to deal with a very intoxicated person.

“Ms. Hutchinson was very intoxicated. Did he have some abrupt comments toward her? Yeah,” Porter said. “He had some curt responses to get her out of his hair so he could attend to what he was there for.”

FCC Prudes Get Spanked by Court

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The court basically said that Dick Cheney told Pat Leahy to go Cheney himself, he made the word “Fuck” acceptable.

The FCC Jihad was bad policy anyway, it was just driven by the need to pander to the Republithug base.

Court Rebuffs F.C.C. on Fines for Indecency – New York Times

By STEPHEN LABATON
Published: June 5, 2007

WASHINGTON, June 4 — If President Bush and Vice President Cheney can blurt out vulgar language, then the government cannot punish broadcast television stations for broadcasting the same words in similarly fleeting contexts.

That, in essence, was the decision on Monday, when a federal appeals panel struck down the government policy that allows stations and networks to be fined if they broadcast shows containing obscene language.

Although the case was primarily concerned with what is known as “fleeting expletives,” or blurted obscenities, on television, both network executives and top officials at the Federal Communications Commission said the opinion could gut the ability of the commission to regulate any speech on television or radio.

Kevin J. Martin, the chairman of the F.C.C., said that the agency was now considering whether to seek an appeal before all the judges of the appeals court or to take the matter directly to the Supreme Court.

The decision, by a divided panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York, was a sharp rebuke for the F.C.C. and for the Bush administration. For the four television networks that filed the lawsuit — Fox, CBS, NBC and ABC — it was a major victory in a legal and cultural battle that they are waging with the commission and its supporters.

Under President Bush, the F.C.C. has expanded its indecency rules, taking a much harder line on obscenities uttered on broadcast television and radio. While the judges sent the case back to the commission to rewrite its indecency policy, it said that it was “doubtful” that the agency would be able to “adequately respond to the constitutional and statutory challenges raised by the networks.”

The networks hailed the decision.

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Reversing decades of a more lenient policy, the commission had found that the mere utterance of certain words implied that sexual or excretory acts were carried out and therefore violated the indecency rules.

But the judges said vulgar words are just as often used out of frustration or excitement, and not to convey any broader obscene meaning. “In recent times even the top leaders of our government have used variants of these expletives in a manner that no reasonable person would believe referenced sexual or excretory organs or activities.”

Adopting an argument made by lawyers for NBC, the judges then cited examples in which Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney had used the same language that would be penalized under the policy. Mr. Bush was caught on videotape last July using a common vulgarity that the commission finds objectionable in a conversation with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain. Three years ago, Mr. Cheney was widely reported to have muttered an angry obscene version of “get lost” to Senator Patrick Leahy on the floor of the United States Senate.

“We find that the F.C.C.’s new policy regarding ‘fleeting expletives’ fails to provide a reasoned analysis justifying its departure from the agency’s established practice,” said the panel.

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Another Republican to Cop a Plea

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Two aids of Norton, huh? Wonder when she’s going to do the perp walk.

I have a unique perspective on all this. I went to college, and served on the student senate with, Tony C. Rudy, Tom Delay’s former deputy chief of staff.

I once called %$#&ing stupid on the floor of the senate.

Tony was actually a nice guy once he got off the senate floor.

That being said, I hope that they all roll. They are a part of a cancer that needs to be excised from the body politic.

TheHill.com – Former Norton aide to plead guilty in Abramoff case

June 06, 2007

The Hill has learned that Italia Federici, a one-time political aide to former Interior Secretary Gale Norton, has agreed to plead guilty to tax evasion and obstruction of Congress as part of the investigation into the lobbying activities of Jack Abramoff.

The Republican activist will be the second person with ties to Norton to plead guilty in the Abramoff investigation. Former Deputy Interior Secretary J. Steven Griles pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about his relationship to Abramoff and Federici. He is to be sentenced later this month.

Julie Amero Gets New Trial!!!

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This was bullsh%$ from the beginning. The school did not update its filters, and she was told not to turn off her computer under any circumstances.

There appears to be prosecutorial misconduct too.

Hat tip to Lindsay Beyerstein. She really was the person who got coverage of this.

Of course, the poor woman is still out legal fees, and a child. The stress of the trial led to a miscarriage.

TheDay.com – Substitute Teacher Gets New Trial on Porn Charges
By Karen Florin Published on 6/6/2007

A New London Superior court judge this morning overturned the conviction of Julie Amero, who was found guilty of exposing Norwich schoolchildren to pornography on a computer, and has granted Amero a new trial.

Judge Hillary Strackbein said the state had conducted further forensic information that the jury had not heard at the trial. The information, according to defense experts, was that the computer had generated pornographic popups and that Amero, a substitute teacher, was not at fault. Amero had been convicted of four counts of risk of injury to a minor and faced up to 40 years in prison.

She has has been the subject of national attention as of result of the conviction, and seemed relieved after Attorney William Dow explained the judge’s ruling.

“I have a great team behind me and I feel very comfortable with the rulings,” she said before getting into a car with her husband and leaving.

“It was a porn trap,” said Chip Neville, a retired computer sciences professor who had petitioned the office of the Chief State’s Attorney to review the verdict.

“We’re all exposed to this. We wander into the wrong site innocently.”

Talk About Screwing Up In Reverse.

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Since only hemorrhoids, cancer, and Dick Cheney are more popular than the Avignon president, it won’t cost him anything to pardon Libby.

Impeach Dick Cheney now. Impeach George Bush tomorrow.

Critical phrase in bold at end.

In the West Wing, Pardon Is A Topic Too Sensitive to Mention – washingtonpost.com

By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 6, 2007; Page A01

The sentence imposed on former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby yesterday put President Bush in the position of making a decision he has tried to avoid for months: Trigger a fresh political storm by pardoning a convicted perjurer or let one of the early architects of his administration head to prison.

The prospect of a pardon has become so sensitive inside the West Wing that top aides have been kept out of the loop, and even Bush friends have been told not to bring it up with the president. In any debate, officials expect Vice President Cheney to favor a pardon, while other aides worry about the political consequences of stepping into a case that stems from the origins of the Iraq war and renewing questions about the truthfulness of the Bush administration.

The White House publicly sought to defer the matter again yesterday, saying that Bush is “not going to intervene” for now. But U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton indicated that he is not inclined to let Libby remain free pending appeals, which means the issue could confront Bush in a matter of weeks when, barring a judicial change of heart, Cheney’s former chief of staff will have to trade his business suit for prison garb. Republicans inside and outside the administration said that would be the moment when Bush has to decide.

“Obviously, there’d be a significant political price to pay,” said William P. Barr, who as attorney general to President George H.W. Bush remembers the controversy raised by the post-election pardons for several Iran-contra figures in 1992. “I personally am very sympathetic to Scooter Libby. But it would be a tough call to do it at this stage.”

At the same time, some White House advisers said the president’s political troubles are already so deep that a pardon might not be so damaging. Those most upset by the CIA leak case that led to the Libby conviction already oppose Bush, they noted. “You can’t hang a man twice for the same crime,” a Republican close to the White House said.

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Yes, but this is near treason.

I Will Not Donate to Any Candidate Directly or Indirectly Employing James Carville

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And neither should you.

The Smoking Gun has copies of the Scooter Libby Love Letters – June 5, 2007.

One of these is signed by James Carville.

I don’t care if the only woman willing to f&^% you in the world is a conservative Republican. You don’t write nice letters about someone committing treason.

Libby, under the instructions of Dick Cheney, outed a CIA covert operative to get back at her husband.

The Libby Over/Under

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I’m going for 28 months, and that the judge gives him 6 weeks to show up with his toothbrush.

UPDATE:

The overs win. 30 months, from CNN.

According to Firedog Lake, no bond pending appeal

As to bond pending appeal, Walton basically said no, but Defense can submit a memo. That is due on Thrsday, and then the govt’s is due on Tuesday, with Libby’s response due on Wednesday. If Walton decides against bond pending appeal after reading those motions, then it all goes to the prison system and Libby goes to jail in normal schedule, which would be about 45-60 days.