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You have to wonder just what level of moral and ethical depravity you have to reach to be a Fox News talker these days.

Col. Ralph Peters -- who doesn't exactly have a track record for probity to begin with -- went on Neil Cavuto and offered a solution to dealing with terrorists at Guantanamo Bay -- just kill them all:

Peters: Neil, I've gotta tell you where I'm coming from. I come from Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, the anthracite coal fields. We don't screw around with terrorists.

[Oh, yeah -- that Schuylkill County: Where redneck juries let minority-bashing thugs off scot-free. In other, they don't screw around with white terrorists -- they just let 'em go. OK, good to know.]

Peters: First of all, I am not concerned about the human and legal rights of terrorists. Because as far as I am concerned, when a human being chooses to commit an act of terror against innocent human beings, he puts himself outside of humanity. And this obsession with the legal -- supposed legal and human rights of terrorists -- a small number -- condemns billions of human beings, billions, to live in fear.

And again, Neil, once you commit an act of terror, in my book, you are outside, you are anathema, and you should be killed.

Now, I'm not talking about killing every living thing in the barnyard. But for example, when we attack an Al Qaeda compound, and the people defending the Al Qaeda compound can -- and they're shooting at us, that's probably a pretty good indicator that they are terrorists. So I see no reason to bring them to the United States, no reason to bring them to Guantanamo. There are a small number of senior terrorists who have intelligence value. Them we should take prisoner, but we should do the interrogations in foreign countries -- and why set ourselves up for legal problems?

Now Neil, I know it's not politically correct. I don't care. I care about the security and well-being of my fellow Americans. I care about the human rights of innocent people around the world. And as far as I'm concerned, terrorists should die.

And a good thing that's happening now -- as soon as you had this movement to close Guantanamo, et cetera et cetera, the word I'm getting from the field is our special operators and our soldiers and Marines on the front lines are taking fewer prisoners.

Cavuto: All right, so in other words, they're killing them.

Peters: Yep.

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One of the main features of the running debate over the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act -- which, should it pass, would become the nation's first real federal bias-crimes law -- has been conservatives' insistence on digging up new rationales to oppose it, and then clinging to them intransigently, regardless of how thoroughly their arguments get knocked down.

Thus we get spectacles like Sean Hannity with Steve King, flatly dissembling to a national audience about what the legislation does, how it works legally speaking, and repeating the usual Zombie Lies: "this bill creates thought crimes," "it creates special rights," "it protects sexual perverts," and "all crimes are hate crimes." Or Virginia Foxx informing Congress that Matt Shepard's murder was a "hoax."

That's the brazenly dishonest component of the right-wing opposition. Then there's the only somewhat less dishonest approach of the right's more intellectual corners, which does not stoop to naked falsehoods in the fashion of Hannity et. al., but instead relies on a more legalistic, largely libertarian construct that is opposed to the law on the basis of their general opposition to expanding the reach of federal law -- but clings just as mightily to disproven claims and its own preconceived mythology about bias crimes.

Their reasoning runs roughly thus: The law raises the danger of double jeopardy, while the depth of the hate-crimes problem is wildly overstated by liberal civil-rights groups. There is no problem with enforcement or investigation of these crimes. There is no problem, like we had in the South during the Civil Rights era, with juries refusing, largely on the basis of race, to convict people for bias crimes.

Apparently, these people don't bother to read the news. Because fresh in the national headlines this week is the case of the Shenandoah, Pa., jury that apparently indulged in some very current nullification in the case of the hate-crime beating death of a Latino man named Luis Ramirez.

Indeed, it seems the Justice Department is currently reviewing the case to see if federal charges might be warranted:

Two Pennsylvania teens acquitted of the most serious state charges in the beating death of a Mexican immigrant could still face federal charges.

Justice Department spokesman Alejandro Miyar says the civil rights division is reviewing evidence surrounding last summer's fatal fight between high school football players in Schuylkill County and 25-year-old Luis Ramirez.

This is a tricky issue with the law as currently written, because federal prosecutors would have to find that the killers committed a federal violation in order to act on this case. That would not be nearly the issue if LLEHCPA were already law.

One of the major components of the LLEHCPA, as we recently explored in some detail, is the ability of federal prosecutors to step in and file federal charges in cases like these where the state or local prosecutions fail for whatever reasons.

Now, this is where the conservative intellectuals weigh in, claiming the law raises the specter of double jeopardy. You'll call that this was David Freddoso's objection over at NRO -- to which we responded by citing Frederick Lawrence, dean of the GWU Law School, who explains that this falls easily under the rubric of the doctrine of dual jurisdictions:

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You don't have to have been from rural Pennsylvania to have been able to predict the outcome of this case:

Some satisfied, others outraged with verdict for immigrant's death

Friends and relatives of two teens accused in the beating death of a Mexican immigrant struggled to contain their relief as not-guilty verdicts were announced on the most serious charges against the former high school football stars Friday.

Gasps filled the courtroom and some had to be restrained by sheriff's deputies as they tried to rush the defense table after Derrick Donchak, 19, and Brandon Piekarsky, 17, were acquitted of aggravated assault, reckless endangerment and ethnic intimidation for the death of Luis Ramirez.

Piekarsky was also found not guilty of third-degree murder for the death of Ramirez, who died of blunt force injuries after an encounter with the teens last summer.

As Avery Friedman argues persuasively in the video from CNN yesterday, this was a pretty clear-cut case of jury nullification: the weight of evidence against the accused was so powerful that it's clear the all-white jury -- like similar juries in the South during the Civil Rights struggle -- was not going to convict two young white men of murdering a Mexican. Even if, as Friedman says, "the only reason he is dead is because he was Mexican."

Prosecutors alleged that the teens baited the Ramirez into a fight with racial epithets, provoking an exchange of punches and kicks that ended with Ramirez convulsing in the street, foaming from the mouth. He died two days later in a hospital.

Piekarsky was accused of delivering a fatal kick to Ramirez's head after he was knocked to the ground.

As they poured out of courthouse, the teens' supporters shouted "I was right from the start" and "I'm glad the jury listened" at cameras that caught the late-night verdict.

But Gladys Limon, a spokeswoman for the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund, said the jury had sent a troubling message.

"The jurors here [are] sending the message that you can brutally beat a person, without regard to their life, and get away with it, continue with your life uninterrupted," she said.

Considering some of the details of the killing, it's also inordinately clear this was a classic bias crime, with the incident instigated by racially charged taunts that made clear the victim was selected because of racial animus:

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Keller's Thoughts on DC's Leaking

I've been calling and emailing journalists to try and get their reactions about the possible fallout for reporters since Porter Goss has been polygraphing the CIA for leakers. A certain drumbeat is going around that journalists should be questioned and put into jail. A few at the Washington Post have said, " no comment." One reporter from Congressional Quarterly said: "It would not only be a gross abuse of power but a violation of the very first Amendment."

Fishbowl DC has Bill Keller's full email response:

"Whatever the reason, I worry that we're not as worried as we should be. No president likes reporters sniffing after his secrets, but most come to realize that accountability is the price of power in our democracy. Some officials in this administration, and their more vociferous cheerleaders, seem to have a special animus towards reporters doing their jobs. There's sometimes a vindictive tone in way they talk about dragging reporters before grand juries and in the hints that reporters who look too hard into the public's business risk being branded traitors. I don't know how far action will follow rhetoric, but some days it sounds like the administration is declaring war at home on the values they profess to be promoting abroad....read on"

Rahm Emanuel defends against Delay's charges

Emanuel went on MTP to defend the DCCC against allegations made by Tom Delay saying this is a democratic plot against him

Download | play -WMP low res

Bittorrent-WMP Hi Res

Rahm: This may come as breaking news…websites don't indict members of Congress, grand juries do. Websites don’t admonish a member, not once, not twice, three times, which is what happened to Tom DeLay. The highest ranking official in the history of the House of Representatives to be indicted. All that website does is reflect a culture, in my view, of corruption and cronyism that pervades the political system....read on

Goodnight, moon   corrente

American Justice     Politics in the Zeros

Ex-prosecutor says he kept Jews off juries

A former prosecutor's claim that he conspired with a judge to keep Jewish jurors off a death penalty case was to be the focus of a court hearing scheduled for yesterday. 

Astounding quote:     essays & effluvia

Upon signing the Schiavo Law, President Bush

corrente

Politics in the Zeros

Ex-prosecutor says he kept Jews off juries

A former prosecutor's claim that he conspired with a judge to keep Jewish jurors off a death penalty case was to be the focus of a court hearing scheduled for yesterday.

AARP prepares to punch back on Social Security

Newsweek

....President Bush's proposal for sweeping changes in the 70-year-old retirement program has touched off the mother of all lobbying battles, and AARP is suddenly in the line of fire. A pioneer of grass-roots lobbying, the group finds itself under attack from a new legion of well-funded, Web-based foes who have decided that the Bush plan will fail if a leading critic—AARP—isn't bloodied.

Bob Brigham has more here

Dave Meyer has more about United Seniors here which include:

United Seniors has a long history of misleading and deceiving senior citizens

The Myth of America's 'Lawsuit Crisis'

By Stephanie Mencimer via AlterNet

Last December, Newsweek featured a cover package by Stuart Taylor and Evan Thomas that blared: "Lawsuit Hell: Doctors. Teachers. Coaches. Ministers. They all share a common fear: being sued on the job." Paired with a weeklong tie-in on NBC News and online chats on MSNBC.com, the article claimed that because "Americans will sue each other at the slightest provocation," the country is suffering from an "onslaught of litigation" that costs Americans $200 billion a year. The story was full of tales claiming to illustrate Americans' overarching sense of legal entitlement and desire to "win a jackpot from a system that allows sympathetic juries to award plaintiffs not just real damages…but millions more for the impoossible-to-measure 'pain and suffering' and highly arbitrary 'punitive damages.'"

Not only were the particulars of the Newsweek story misleading. The essence of the story was wrong, too. Newsweek's "onslaught" of lawsuits simply hasn't happened. According to the National Center for State Courts, a research group funded by state courts, personal injury and other tort filings, when controlled for population growth, have declined nationally by 8 percent since the 1975, and have been falling steadily in real numbers since 1996. The numbers are even more dramatic in places with rapid population growth, like Texas, where the rate of tort filings fell 37 percent between 1990 and 2000. Even in liberal California, the rate of filings has plummeted 45 percent over the past decade. And those overly sympathetic juries Newsweek derides as so eager to dole out big bucks to injured victims?

In 2001, they voted against plaintiffs in 75 percent of all medical malpractice trials, according to the federal government's Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). read on