Cato Institute has a new report on the co-opting of the grand jury system by prosecutors for use as a way around -- instead of a safeguard to protect -- the civil liberties of criminal suspects. [Link via Randy Balko of the Agitator]

For more on this issue, and the need for reform, click here.

Florida Governor Jeb Bushs orders that a guardian be appointed for a fetus. Abortion rights advocates are angry.

The American Civil Liberties Union, along with the National Organization for Women and Center for Reproductive Rights, filed a brief Tuesday asking a court to deny the governor's request. The brief claims such a judgment would go against precedent that a fetus is not a person.

``He ought to be ashamed of himself,'' said Howard Simon, executive director of ACLU of Florida. ``That he would personally step in and take responsibility to coerce a developmentally disabled rape victim to carry a pregnancy to term.'' Bush's decision overrules child welfare officials who said such an appointment would be illegal.

In Chicago, prostitute-activists are urging social services over arrests.

Whatever their childhood aspirations, each of the women -- ranging in age from their late twenties to their early fifties -- ended up selling their bodies to strangers for money. They sometimes were beaten and cheated by customers, served time in jail and were run out of neighborhoods by residents who said the women's behavior destroyed property values.

Now, in face-to-face meetings set up by the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, the women have begun telling their hard-knocks life stories to those same neighbors who once shooed them away. Their goal is to get society to focus less on criminal prosecution and more on solving the underlying problems that lead women such as them -- and some men, too -- to the streets in the first place: sexual abuse, drug dependency, poor job skills and low self-esteem.

We agree with providing social services instead of jail time. In fact, we think prostititution should be decriminalized altogether.

Monica Lewinsky has written a serious op-ed article in the Los Angeles Times for Mother's Day, Tell Mama All About It? Not Without a Lawyer, in which she argues for the creation of a parent-child privilege.

Few people are aware that, in our country, parents can be forced to testify against their children and vice versa; there is no parent-child privilege under the aegis of the federal government. We have a husband-wife privilege, a doctor-patient privilege, an attorney-client privilege and even a privilege between priest and penitent. But no comparable confidential boundary is recognized for parent and child.

All of these existing privileges place value on certain relationships in order to foster and then protect them. Their inviolability is deemed more important than the truth-finding function of the courts. Isn't the parent-child relationship every bit as important, if not more so?

Monica is right. Parent-child communications should be legally protected in the same way as communications between a person and her religious advisor, psychiatrist, attorney or spouse. The need for trust and open communication between parent and child is one of the most basic and fundamental values in our society.

Courts have traditionally held that it is up to the legislature to enact a parent-child privilege. Congress and state legislatures need should enact a statute that protects a parent from being forced to testify in any official proceeding as to what his or her child told the parent in confidence, unless the child expressly agrees to the disclosure. Similarly, the law should protect a child from having to testify against his or her own parent.

Exceptions should be built into the statute where the communication was made in the presence of others (and therefore not confidential,) or in furtherance of a crime by both parent and child or in any case in which the child is a victim of violence or abuse.

Thanks, Monica.

"Medical marijuana patients may be able to protect themselves from harmful toxins in marijuana smoke by inhaling their medicine using an electric vaporizer, according to initial results of a study by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) and California NORML."

The full report, released April 15, 2003, is available here. [thanks to Hit and Run for the link]

Bruce Weber writes in the New York Times about a shock therapy program for police recruits.. The program is held at Washington's Holocaust Museum where the recruits are acquainted with the Gestapo tactics of Nazi Germany.

After a comprehensive tour, there are lectures, including one by the Assistant Director of the Anti-Defamation League explaining the "similarities between the mandates of the local police in the Third Reich and those of the recruits. "

"Every single thing happens on a local level," Ms. Becker said, "and that's you. You decide who is a stereotype and who is an individual. You decide who is a criminal and who isn't."

Human Rights Watch has issued a 25 page report alleging that Vancouver police are persecuting drug users in a downtown, impoverished neighborhood.

An anti-drug crackdown by the Vancouver Police Department has driven injection drug users away from life-saving HIV prevention services, raising fears of a new wave of HIV transmission in the city that is already home to the worst AIDS crisis in the developed world, said Human Rights Watch.

Based on a field study conducted in recent weeks, Human Rights Watch documented cases of police officers beating and otherwise mistreating drug users in custody, conducting public strip searches, and using petty allegations such as jaywalking to justify stops and searches. The report also documents a significant reduction in the use of needle exchange programs and other life-saving services related to fear of police abuse and harassment among drug users.

You can read the report here.

In 2002, there were 1,359 wiretap applications made to state and federal judges in non-terrorism cases . All but one were approved. In fact, it was the only wiretap application rejected in the last four years.

Over the past 11 years, out of over 13,000 wiretap applications, only four were rejected.

An average of 403 conversations are intercepted on each wiretap. Wiretaps are good for 30 days, after which 30 day extensions can be granted. The longest running federal wiretap ran one year, having been extended 11 times. One New York state wiretap ran over two years. 77% of the taps were for cell phones and pagers.

Not surprisingly, Ashcroft had a better year with his secret FISA Court wiretap applications. All 1,228 applications were granted.

NORML says "hogwash" to the new British Medical Journal "Scare Mongering" Editorial alleging that pot contributes to 30,000 deaths per year in the U.K.

London, United Kingdom: NORML Foundation Executive Director Allen St. Pierre criticized an editorial published today in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) hypothesizing that marijuana smoking may be responsible for an estimated 30,000 deaths a year in the UK, primarily due to heart and respiratory illnesses.

"This editorial is scare mongering at its worst," said St. Pierre. "The authors of this editorial admit they have no scientific evidence to back up their claims. By far the greatest danger to health posed by the use of marijuana stems from a criminal arrest and conviction."

Although the editorial's authors acknowledge that there is a "dearth of epidemiological evidence" demonstrating pot's health hazards, and that case-controlled studies regarding marijuana's impact on health are rare, they still contend that marijuana poses a serious physical and mental health hazard. "One could calculate that if cigarettes cause an annual excess of 120,000 deaths among 13 million smokers (in the United Kingdom), the corresponding figures for deaths among 3.2 million cannabis smokers would be 30,000, assuming equality of effect," they opined.

Authors' extrapolations did not account for the fact that average tobacco smokers consume far more tobacco over the course of their lifetimes than marijuana smokers consume cannabis.

A previous large-scale population study of marijuana use and mortality conducted by Kaiser Permanente and published in the American Journal of Public Health found that marijuana use, even long-term, "showed little if any effect ... on non-AIDS mortality in men and on total mortality in women." In addition, a 1999 report by the US National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine concluded, "There is no conclusive evidence that marijuanacauses cancer in humans, including cancers usually related to tobacco use."

A pair of editorials published in the British medical journal, The Lancet, reached a similar conclusion, finding: "The smoking of cannabis, even long-term, is not harmful to health. S It would be reasonable to judge cannabis as less of a threat S than alcohol or tobacco."

For more information, please contact either Allen St. Pierre or Paul Armentano of The NORML Foundation at (202) 483-8751.

We will soon introduce legislation to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana," he told a Liberal party fundraiser. ...."Some might have a criminal record that will be a shadow over his (her) life for years to come," the Prime Minister said. That makes decriminalization important so "young people do not have unnecessary criminal records for the rest of their lives."

San Francisco police officers improperly searched two girls last year and violated the rights of a 14-year-old boy they arrested, according to departmental charges that could cost five officers their jobs. The internal charges -- signed this month by Acting Chief Alex Fagan -- stem from a confrontation between police and three youths in Hunters Point that outraged the city's African American community.

Federal and state courts authorized a total of 1,358 wiretap applications, down 9 percent from the 1,491 applications in 2001. ........Wiretaps were most frequently authorized to investigate violations of drug and gambling laws....Of the wiretaps authorized in 2002, 77 percent (1,052 wiretaps) cited drug offenses as the most serious offense under investigation.