Cathy Young's Boston Globe column today, Those accused of rape have rights, too, explains the importance of the rights of the accused in a sexual assault case--and using recent high-profile cases as examples, shows how overbroad application of rape shield laws are unjust.

Rape is a despicable crime, and an accusation of rape should be taken very seriously -- but the rights of the accused should be rigorously protected. After the 1997 trial of sportscaster Marv Albert, defending the judge's decision to admit compromising information about Albert's sexual past but not about his accuser's, feminist attorney Gloria Allred decried "the notion that there's some sort of moral equivalency between the defendant and the victim." Yet as long as the defendant hasn't been convicted, he and the victim are indeed moral equals in the eyes of the law.

It's frightening to put oneself in the place of a sexual assault victim who finds the intimate details of her life paraded in public. But it's at least as terrifying to imagine that you, or your husband or brother or son, could be accused of sexual assault and denied access to relevant information that could make the difference between guilt and innocence.

The new Report to the Congress: Downward Departures from the Federal Sentencing Guidelines (October 2003) is available online here. This report was submitted in response to section 401(m) of the the Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to endthe Exploitation of Children Today Act of 2003, Pub. L. No. 108-21.

Here's background to the report and the issues behind it.

The new Report to the Congress: Downward Departures from the Federal Sentencing Guidelines (October 2003) is available online here. This report was submitted in response to section 401(m) of the the Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to endthe Exploitation of Children Today Act of 2003, Pub. L. No. 108-21.

Here's background to the report and the issues behind it.

Law Professor and Instapundit Glenn Reynolds has an interesting column up over on his MSNBC weblog today. Writing about dumb laws, he says:

...law is like anything else: when the supply outstrips the demand, its value falls. If law were restricted to things like rape, robbery, and murder, its prestige would be higher. When we make felonies out of trivial crimes, though, the law loses prestige. As the old bumper stickers about the 55 mile-per-hour speed limit used to say: “It’s not a good idea. It’s just the law.”

The answer perhaps, Reynolds says, is simply to ignore them.

Law Professor and Instapundit Glenn Reynolds has an interesting column up over on his MSNBC weblog today. Writing about dumb laws, he says:

...law is like anything else: when the supply outstrips the demand, its value falls. If law were restricted to things like rape, robbery, and murder, its prestige would be higher. When we make felonies out of trivial crimes, though, the law loses prestige. As the old bumper stickers about the 55 mile-per-hour speed limit used to say: “It’s not a good idea. It’s just the law.”

The answer perhaps, Reynolds says, is simply to ignore them.

Newsday has an excellent editorial today, U.S. Should Let Doctors Advise the Use of Marijuana. Read the whole thing, but here's a snippet:

Washington should not thwart the will of the people where they've approved the use of marijuana to relieve the nausea and wasting of chronic illness. The war on drugs should not target the sick and dying.

This came via email from the ABA:

The ABA Justice Kennedy Commission Hearings
Washington, D.C.
November 12, 13, and 14, 2003

ABA President Dennis Archer appointed “The ABA Justice Kennedy Commission” to examine issues raised by United States Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy in his historic speech to the ABA at its annual meeting on August 9, 2003 in San Francisco. President Archer has asked the Commission to prepare recommendations and a report for consideration by the ABA at its next annual meeting -- to be held in Atlanta in August 2004. For the Commission to meet the deadline set by President Archer, it needs the immediate help of knowledgeable and concerned individuals and groups. The issues we shall consider include:

• Whether the use of mandatory minimum sentencing at the state and federal levels should be repealed.
• Whether sentencing guidelines have unduly limited judicial discretion in sentencing and require revision.
• Why more than 40 percent of our 2.1 million prison population are people of color and more than 20 percent are Hispanic.
• Whether prison conditions encourage rehabilitation and reentry after prison or promote recidivism and require revision.
• Whether the pardon process at the state and federal levels should be reinvigorated.

The Commission has scheduled three days of hearings in the Moot Court Room of the George Washington University Law School on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, November 12, 13 and 14. The hearings will be open to the public, and attendance of interested parties is encouraged. Because of time constraints, the Commission cannot hear oral testimony from all individuals and groups who might like to testify. The Commission is anxious, however, to receive written submission from any individual or group with experience, expertise and interest in the issues described above. Written statements should be submitted by 5 p.m., Wednesday, November 5, 2003

Back in July, we wrote about an article buried in the New York Times concerning Minnesota's new law charging Public Defenders. Today, the Washington Post reports that the Minnesota law, which went into effect July 1, is under attack. And that due to budget deficits, other states, such as Arkansas, Ohio, New Jersey and Maryland, have implemented similar laws.

The danger is that people will not avail themselves of the right to counsel to avoid the charge," said Norman Lefstein, dean emeritus at the Indiana University School of Law at Indianapolis. "It really is an effort to squeeze every last cent [from the poor] without regard to the consequences. It's inconsistent with the fundamental right to counsel."

Here are the details of the Minnesota law. Daniel Homstad, an assistant defender in Hennepin County, writes that under the new law, the state has jumped a $28.00 fee that could be waived by a judge, to mandatory, non-waivable fees in amounts up to $200.00. Homstad says:

The problem with the law lies in its flat-rate schedule and the removal of the judge's discretion to determine whether the copay would work a manifest financial hardship upon the defendant. Absent a fair, means-tested rate schedule, the public defender copays will really become application fees that many will be unable to pay. These copays will lead some truly indigent people to choose to forgo counsel.

The U.S. has announced the formation of Operation Gray Lord, a joint task force of the DEA and FDA which will pursue those involved with the buying and selling of illicit drugs on the internet:

The Food and Drug Administration and the Drug Enforcement Administration, have formed a special task force to crack down on the growing tide of illicit sales of narcotics on the Internet.

And for the first time, regulators are hinting that those who order the drugs may face prosecution. "It's illegal to import narcotics," Mark B. McClellan, the F.D.A. commissioner, said in an interview. "We do have steps in place to intercept such products and to take further legal action."

The task force, called Operation Gray Lord, will include officials from the Justice Department, some local law enforcement agencies and perhaps even top law enforcement officers from Canada because much of the trade originates there. Task force members intend to pursue the purveyors of prescription narcotics aggressively...

Elizabeth Willis, chief of the drug operation section of the D.E.A.'s office of diversion control, says:

If a prescription is written by a doctor based solely on information from an online questionnaire, it's not valid, so the distribution is illegal."

We don't like the idea of going after drug purchasers -- the ultimate users. Here's where the "Rush Limbaugh defense" may kick in, if he ends up not being charged. Why should he get to go into treatment and avoid prosecution for illegally purchasing prescription drugs if others don't get that opportunity? Our recommended solution is not to prosecute Rush, but to afford all purchasers caught through Operation Gray Lord the option of a diversion program to avoid a criminal prosecution and conviction.

It seems no one is happy with the independent report commissioned by the Justice Department on its hiring practices and diversity initiatives. The Justice Department has censored most of it by blacking out huge portions, including the principal findings and all recommendations.

Former Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson, who was in charge of the diversity initiative, didn't like the report:

There were some things in there that as an African-American that I maybe didn't agree with," said Thompson, who recently left Justice for the Brookings Institution. "And there were other things that I didn't think we could do from a legal standpoint."

People for the American Way and other civil rights advocacy groups were less than thrilled as well. It seems the initiative was flawed from the get-go when Ashcroft and Thompson decided to add two categories to the study--economic and geographic background. Rather than promoting ethnic and minority diversity, those categories ended up "extending attorney outreach to many others, including white men."

The office of the Inspector General has issued a report criticizing the DEA for its report keeping:

Efforts by the Drug Enforcement Administration to target, disrupt and dismantle global drug-trafficking organizations cannot be measured and, as a result, it remains unclear whether the agency is adequately achieving its drug enforcement goals and objectives, a report said yesterday.

The Justice Department's Office of Inspector General said the DEA had failed to meet key aspects of the government's new performance-reporting guidelines, which focus on results instead of procedure, and that the agency's strategic objectives were "not quantitative, directly measurable or assessment-based."

The FBI didn't fare much better:

The Justice Department's Office of Inspector General, in a 145-page report, said that while the FBI made progress in correcting problems with outdated infrastructures, fragmented management, ineffective systems, inadequate training and problems with computer security, more work is needed to guard against terrorists.

"This audit shows that while some progress has been made, more needs to be done to correct deficiencies that we have identified in prior reports," Mr. Fine said.

...The report also said computer applications were not secure from unauthorized access.

We wish the Bush Administration would focus more on pushing its law enforcement agencies to make us safe and secure with the powers they already have instead of pushing so hard for legislation that will only make us less free.

President Bush and the Justice Department claim to be for states' rights-- except when states don't agree with them. One example: medical marijuana.

Oregon's citizens voted to legalize medical marijuana. Travis Paulson, who lives with his 84 year old mother, got the required license and grew the plant in his back yard. Until the feds came to his house one day, dressed in black like "Ninja warriors" and stopped him. It was the second such raid in Oregon this year.

So what about states' rights?

"The legal scuffling doesn't sit well with Oregon House Rep. Floyd Prozanski, D-Eugene. The Bush administration is "very quick to say they believe in states' rights, except for (these issues) and anything else they don't agree with," he said. "When the federal administration differs with state law in any state, they are applying their enforcement procedures to gain compliance."

When asked about the raids and the feds' policy towards medical marijuana activities that are legal in the state in which they occur, Brian Blake, spokesman for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, gave this doublespeak: