Waiting for the short list.

Last we heard, the Police Commission was going to give the mayor its list of three candidates tonight or early tomorrow. Now we hear it will likely be today, and that the mayor will make an announcement before sundown—give or take a few rays of light. (It is expected to be around 5 p.m.)

So will the Commission give the mayor a strong threesome or a stacked deck (as it did last time around)? Either is permissible, of course. But with this many interesting candidates, I’d hope for the former strategy, not the latter.

We will know soon. Stay tuned.

By the way, one of the people who is considered to have the best shot of landing on that short list is coming to speak to my USC grad students this afternoon—right about the time that the mayor could possibly be announcing the names. (I ain’t saying exactly who the guest is as that is my students’ story to break—and there is, of course, no guarantee that this person will be on the list.)

In any case, we count on it being an interesting class.

One more thing: I’ve been meaning to comment on the story about the selection of the chief in this week’s issue of the LA Weekly in which the Weekly speculates that George Gascon, the former LAPD Assistant Chief, turned Chief of Mesa, AZ, now the Chief of the San Francisco PD, is one of the two secret out-of-towners being who were interviewed by the police commission.

It would be a provocative idea were it not for the fact that it’s TOTALLY WRONG—which a brief Google search could have told the writer, Dennis Romero, and his editors.

Although he has long hoped to succeed Bratton, Gascon said publicly and succinctly at his swearing in during the first week of August that he would not be applying for the LA job. The timing sucked for Gascon, who was a bit sandbagged by Bill Bratton’s surprise resignation, but he dealt with the matter elegantly. In any case, we have known for months that Gascon did not apply.

Research, people. Research.

UPDATE:

The police commission is going to announce an interim chief at 2:45 3:45 p.m.. They said they weren’t going to have an interim chief. But they thought about it, now they are as we are likely two-weeks out from having a new chief chosen by the mayor and confirmed by the city council, so they decided it would be the prudent choice to have someone officially at the helm for those two weeks.

Also, if one or more of the assistant chiefs—like Jim McDonnell or Earl Paysinger, say— are on the short list, then slightly politically awkward circumstances could arise if there is no acting chief while the selection is being made, and high level decisions need to be made.

So, good call, police commission.

CONFIRMED: Interim chief is Deputy Chief Michael Downing, the only one of the Deputy Chiefs who did not apply to be chief. Right now Downing heads the LAPD’s counter terrorism bureau.

My friend Tod Goldberg is a very funny man who has popularized the term….well, you can find it on his blog. (Hint: It has two syllables, begins with F and ends something that rhymes with petard.)

Tod also is also the director of the UC Riverside MFA program in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts, located out in Palm Desert (which means he’s a serious academic who lives in a resort so can tan while grading papers).

And Tod is a very gifted writer.

Sunday night he was at Borders Books in Westwood reading from his new book of short stories called Other Resort Cities.

Other Resort Cities is filled with stories that are intelligent and deep and funny and strange and familiar and gut tearing.

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” wrote Joan Didion at the beginning of her iconic collection of So Cal essays, The White Album.

True. But it helps a lot if the stories and the story tellers are really, really good.

Tod is a really, really good storyteller.

Here, for instance, are the openings from two of my favorites of the book’s tales.

This is from Mitzvah:

That Rabbi David Cohen wasn’t Jewish had ceased, over time, to be a problem.

(The hit man part of the Rabbi’s background turns up a little later in the story.)

Or there is this from Walls:

We were not consulted. It was the 1970s. And then it was the early 1980s. What would happen was that men would come to the door, smelling of Brut, or smelling of cigarettes and the fine leather interior or their Gran Torinos or TR7s, and they would say, “I’m here to pick up Sally. This the right house?”

We’d say, “Yeah, come on in. She’s getting dressed.” Or we’d say, “Do you mean Mommy?” or, and this was rare, but it happened because we were young and angry and when your parents have divorced and all you have to show for it is a mother who has suddenly decided that she’d like to fuck as many men as possible, and a father who it turns out was gay but you wouldn’t know that until long after he was dead and you found the photos and the letters, but who, at the time, was dating a woman named Miss Lisa who hosted Romper Room on Channel 2, we’d say, “Are you our new daddy?” It was cruel, but we were smart and we were sad and we had agendas….

Here’s the thing: Good books make life better and Other Resort Cities is a very good book.

Writer Mark Haskell Smith interviewed Tod after the reading. A slew of other writers were there. Tod’s wife, writer Wendy Duran. actor/writer, Rider Strong, memoirist, Dinah Lenney, Lee Goldberg (writer/producer/brother-of-Tod), Loraine Despres, and writer/producer Carleton Eastlake, Andrea Leeb and Ryan Mecklenburg and more .

Two stories about justice & injustice—and wrongful convictions

AN LAPD LIEUTENANT TALKS ABOUT A FLAWED CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM

My friend LAPD Lieutenant Sunil Dutta has written an Op Ed for the Ventura Star that is very much worth reading. Dutta is a scientist and scholar of music and poetry turned police officer and he has a uniquely wise and philosophic view of policing—a profession he loves but, of which, he is also at times thoughtfully critical.

In this particular essay, Sunil used the Willingham arson case as a jumping off point.

Here is a clip or two:

Corrupt officers can destroy people’s faith in policing and cause incalculable harm to those with whom they come in contact. However, a major shortcoming in policing, something far more dangerous, has never been completely addressed seriously by our criminal-justice system. My scientific temperament picked up this issue within a short time after I joined LAPD, and a fear has always persisted in my subconscious that major harm could result from our reliance on two fallible tools: eyewitnesses and shoddy forensic science.

Last month, what I feared was confirmed in the most ghastly way…..

[BIG SNIP]

People, especially in law enforcement, have a hard time comprehending such stories. Don’t we live in a free society where criminals have too many rights and the police’s hands are tied up by too many regulations? Every cop knows at least a few criminals who walk around free — because we can’t charge or convict them.

Yet, we have innocent people railroaded through our “justice” system, all the way to lethal injections and electric chair. Why?

The answer lies both in our human and institutional natures. As humans, we tend to believe whatever fits our self-interest, discarding facts that tend to challenge our hypotheses. The errors of deduction can, therefore, multiply in an investigation when shoddy science is applied or where we rely solely on eyewitnesses. As Willingham’s case demonstrates, the combination can sometimes be fatal.

Read the rest.

PROSECUTORS RETALIATE AGAINST INNOCENCE PROJECT STUDENTS

Okay, one couldn’t make this kind of thing up. The NY Times story below has the details.

For more than a decade, classes of students at Northwestern University’s journalism school have been scrutinizing the work of prosecutors and the police. The investigations into old crimes, as part of the Medill Innocence Project, have helped lead to the release of 11 inmates, the project’s director says, and an Illinois governor once cited those wrongful convictions as he announced he was commuting the sentences of everyone on death row.

But as the Medill Innocence Project is raising concerns about another case, that of a man convicted in a murder 31 years ago, a hearing has been scheduled next month in Cook County Circuit Court on an unusual request: Local prosecutors have subpoenaed the grades, grading criteria, class syllabus, expense reports and e-mail messages of the journalism students themselves.

The prosecutors, it seems, wish to scrutinize the methods of the students this time. The university is fighting the subpoenas.

[SNIP]

Among the issues the prosecutors need to understand better, a spokeswoman said, is whether students believed they would receive better grades if witnesses they interviewed provided evidence to exonerate Mr. McKinney.

Read the rest. It’s jaw-dropping.

A former federal judge writing for the Huffington Post thinks so too.

And here is the Medill Innocence Project’s own account.

One of my very smart Annenberg grad students, Su Liu, happened to be downtown on Saturday during the opening celebration for the new LAPD administration building and so she snapped a bunch of photos that she made into the video slideshow above.

Su is an international student from Bejiing and has a good knack for seeing things around LA with fresh perspective.

Enjoy. I found the video the next best thing to being there myself.

ROMAN POLANSKI AND SAMANTHA GAILEY: A GIRL’S STARK WORDS STILL ECHO DOWN THE YEARS

This is exactly why narrative journalism matters. In Sunday’s LA Times, writer Joe Mozingo uses uses his excellent reporting and storytelling skills to unreel an account of the alleged rape of 13-year-old Samantha Gaily by Roman Polanski and the subsequent prosecution, or lack thereof. In a narrative that stretches from 1977 until now, Mozingo’s rigorous yet thoughtful article reminds us that Gailey’s clear, stark account of what Polanski did to her has never been refuted. Then he shows how adults with a plethora of competing interests have done much from the beginning to obscure and blunt the reality of what happened to the young Samantha Gaily.

Read it.

THE UNNECESSARY DEATH OF WOLF 427….AND OF A FIVE YEAR STUDY

As early wolf hunting season approached in Montana, several groups of biologists lobbied the state’s Fish, Wildlife and Parks agency in the hope of getting the FWP to establish a no hunting buffer zone around Yellowstone National Park in order to preserve the safety of the wolves being studied by well-known wolf biologist Douglas Smith—plus other scientists running related studies at universities such as the University of Oregon and UCLA. (Doug Smith has run Yellowstone’s wolf project since 1995, and his work is known all over the world.)

But FWP refused, saying the hunt was not aimed at the Yellowstone wolf packs, but at other wolves well outside the park that had caused problems by killing livestock.

The biologists were most worried about a group of radio-collared wolves known as the Cottenwood Pack, which Smith and his team had been closely monitoring for the past five years in a unique longitudinal study. FWP officials said all would be fine.

As it turned out, the FWP officials had no idea what they were talking about.

Within three weeks of the launch of early hunting season six Cottenwood Pack wolves were dead, among them the very unique alpha female of the pack known as Wolf 427.

It seems that certain hunters went looking specifically for the Yellowstone wolves, which given their experience inside the park, predictably had no fear of humans. The hunter who shot 427 reported later that when he raised his gun, the alpha wolf made no attempt to run.

“We didn’t think that wolves would be that vulnerable in the backcountry, so the level of harvest there has been a bit of a surprise,” says Carolyn Sime, FWP’s wolf program coordinator in Helena.

Right. (Love that use of the term “harvest.”)

The LA Times Kim Murphy has done a great job in following this story.

In what certainly appears to be a disturbing case of excessive force, San Jose police officers beat and tased a 20-year-old San Jose State University Student named Phuong Ho, after being called to the house shared by several students. The call to police occured after Ho and one of his roommate got into an argument and a steak knife may or may not have been brandished. According to the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Jose Mercury News (which first broke the story on Sunday), the knife had long ago been put down.

The alleged beating was captured on the cellphone video above.

I have come to the conclusion that I owe LA Times reporter Joel Rubin an apology.

On Friday morning, in a fit of pique, I accused him and the LA Times of slanting their coverage of the selection of the new chief of police in favor of Deputy Chief Charlie Beck. (Beck is an excellent man who is one of the short list who would make a fine chief, but that isn’t the point.) I came to this view after conversations with and emails from a number of insiders and cop watchers who feared that this POV was being communicated by the paper at a time when the selection process is—and should be—still open.

Last night, however, I talked at length with Joel Rubin. This morning, I once again reviewed the coverage. And I believe I had it wrong, in particular with regard to Rubin’s article.

Joel said that his recent story about the chief of police selection process was the result of reporting and interviewing that began when Bill Bratton resigned, and that he did not and would never slant his coverage in favor of one candidate or another. I believe him. I’ve followed Joel’s work during his tenure covering education and then on the police beat and have found him consistently to be a skilled, honest and ethical reporter who takes his job very seriously.

So to Joel Rubin I offer my sincere and unqualified apology for jumping to what I now believe was an unwarranted conclusion.

The fact that his reporting led him in some parts of his assessment of the chief’s contest to different conclusions than did my own reporting and interviewing (also begun the day we learned that Bill Bratton was going to resign) means only that we have interviewed a different mix of sources.

To the LA Times I also offer something of an apology. After talking to Joel and reconsidering the totality of the coverage in a calmer light, I do not think there was any purposeful slanting.

However, to this last statement I would offer one cautionary note. As those of us in the news business are particularly aware, the position of Chief of Police is, in many ways, more important to the well being of Los Angeles, and frankly more a powerful office, than that of any of the city’s elected officials. In Bill Bratton we were blessed with the chief we needed at a crucial moment in LA’s history. Now as we move into the era of AB—After Bill— we are further blessed with a range of good in-house candidates, a number of whom could be truly great chiefs.

Yet because of the importance of this job, there are understandably a lot of people and constituencies with strong interests in seeing this person selected over that one. So in reporting what our sources tell us about the way the current is running at any given moment, are we simply doing our job in informing the public, or are we inadvertently starting to push the current ourselves?

If the Times runs an editorial saying race and gender should not enter into the selection of chief (which, I agree, it shouldn’t) if not carefully worded, will that editorial be viewed at face value? Or will it be seen as the Times saying, pick the white guy—especially if, on that same day, a major news article runs about the selection process that says that one of the white guys has the inside track, that the main woman in the contest has a black mark against her, and does not even mention the Hispanic guy (or guys) as being even in the running?

Where is the correct boundary between informing the public about possible outcomes and risking influencing those outcomes?

I don’t have a clear answer to that question. I would merely respectfully suggest that it is a question we must ask ourselves over and over.

POLICE COMMISSION MAY HAVE THREE CHIEF CHOICES BY TUESDAY—OR NOT

According to the LA Times:

The Los Angeles Police Commission today completed two days of interviews with candidates vying to be the next LAPD chief. Officials hope to select three finalists by Tuesday.

The commission, a civilian panel that oversees the Los Angeles Police Department, met with 13 applicants. All but but two were LAPD deputy chiefs and assistant chiefs.

According to the Daily News:

Los Angeles Police Commission members hope to narrow the field of 13 applicants to the final three, possibly as early as Tuesday but no later than Nov. 16, commission president John Mack said after the interviews held at the City Club on Bunker Hill.

The Police Commission wouldn’t ID the two outsiders, said John Mack, as they both presently have Chief jobs somewhere else.

UPDATE: BY THE WAY, A NOTE TO THE LA TIMES: Could you possibly stump more obviously for Charlie Beck—in Joel Rubin’s piece (which was good in many ways, except for the Charlie stumping), the accompanying photos, and the unsigned editorial of October 21. I think Charlie would make a very good chief too (among a number whom I think would be excellent) AND, sure, I think if someone has the inside track right this minute, it is Beck.

Yet this is not a done deal. So quit slanting your coverage (and, doing things like tarring Sharon Papa for a situation that anybody honest would tell you was not of her making). It’s not one bit helpful to the process.

SATURDAY UPDATE: Since writing this, I’ve rethought the matter. See correction in newer post above.

AND WHILE WERE ON THE SUBJECT OF POLICE, ANOTHER BIG GANG CRACK DOWN

Before dawn on Thursday, more than 1,100 LAPD officers and FBI agents were banging on doors to make 45 arrests of members of the Rolling 60′s

Lots of people have the story, but why not listen to what the smart students at Annenberg Radio News did with it. They have more in the way of original reporting on the issue than either the LA Times, AP or the NY Times.

SCOTUS AND LWOP KIDS

The November issue of the American Bar Association Journal has a very thoughtful article on the two upcoming Supreme Court cases that will both challenge the notion of juveniles doing Life Without Parole—LWOP.

Here is how it opens:

“As any parent knows,” children are different. So said U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy more than four years ago in Roper v. Simmons. There, a deeply divided court ruled 5-4 that executing those who committed murder as ju­veniles vio­lated the Eighth Amendment’s proscription against cruel and unusual punishment. Part of the reason, the court said, was that juveniles were less cul­pable, less mature and less responsible than adults.

“The reality that juveniles still struggle to define their identity means it is less supportable to conclude that even a heinous crime committed by a juvenile is evidence of irretrievably depraved character,” Kennedy wrote for the majority.

“From a moral standpoint,” he added, “it would be misguided to equate the failings of a minor with those of an adult, for a greater possibility exists that a minor’s character deficiencies will be reformed.”

This month the court returns to the subject of juvenile justice by examining what has been termed the penultimate punishment for juveniles, life without parole.

In a pair of cases from Florida, Graham v. Florida and Sullivan v. Florida, the court must determine whether Roper’s reasoning—that juvenile defendants are fundamentally different from adult defendants—extends from the death penalty to life without parole. Arguments are scheduled for Nov. 9.

MORE AFTER THE JUMP….including Rush Limbaugh, the Willingham case and the Chicago 7

Read the rest of this entry »

1.

The final bail hearing for Alex Sanchez began around 1:40 p.m. on Monday, October 18.

Every bench in courtroom on the second floor of the federal court on Spring Street was packed to the point of slight discomfort for the audience, with several reasonably prominent people turned away altogether because they came too late.

After Judge Manual L. Real opened the proceedings, he told Sanchez’s attorney, Kerry Bensinger, to speak first. Bensinger is a tall, fit, affable, very smart man and a skilled researcher who is court appointed, but has spent an astonishing amount of time on this case already.* His courtroom manner, however, while calm and intelligent, has thus far lacked the aggressiveness that he and his client may need.

And then there is U.S. District Court Judge Manual Real. Appointed in 1966 by Lyndon Johnson, at 85, Judge Real is what we used to call a character. He has spent 43 years on the same bench and projects an image that combines the demeanor of an irascible uncle who mutters loudly and tyrannically over his soup at Thanksgiving dinner, with that of a glowering bird of prey.

2.

Bensinger told the judge that he would like to call to the stand Father Greg Boyle. The intention was to have the priest (who is frequently called as an expert witness in both state and federal trials) talk about the elements of the four wiretap conversations central to the prosecution’s case that he noted were discrepant from what the feds had said was on the recordings. Most importantly, Boyle would speak about the crucial section about Sanchez no longer being an active gang member that the prosecution had conveniently omitted from their filing. [Details here.]

It promised to be an interesting testimony.

On the way to the hearing I spoke to Greg about the four recordings and asked him if there was anything in the conversations that he thought was incriminating. “All the time I was listening, I kept bracing myself,” he said. “But it never came. There really isn’t anything.”

In an earlier hearing, the prosecution had called their own expert witness—LAPD detective Frank Flores—to characterize what was on the recordings. Attorneys in the audience assumed that Judge Real would permit Greg to take the stand in order to level the playing field.

Attorneys in the audience were wrong.

He did not need to hear from Father Greg, Judge Real shouted. (And when I say shouted, I am not being hyperbolic.) “It is not his interpretation that is important! It is that of the court!”

Bensinger tried to explain about the importance of the missing section that he said directly disputed the prosecution’s claim that Sanchez was an active gang member and a shot caller. But Judge Real was no longer listening. “That’s a matter for trial! Tri-al, counselor, don’t you understand?!”

3.

Bensinger said he had another witness he intended to call, a woman who runs a prominent gang tattoo removal agency in LA County. Bensinger wanted her to rebut the prosecution’s earlier contention that, although Sanchez had all his visible gang tattoos removed, the fact that he still had one left on his chest proved that he was still an active gang member.

Real shouted down that idea too.

“She’s not competent to say anything one way or the other!” he roared.

The only thing that Judge Real would allow from Bensinger’s prepared presentation, was the cross examination of Det. Frank Flores. This basically meant that the prosecution was able to present a witness and multiple pieces of evidence–exhibits— to “prove” why Sanchez was an active gangster and flight risk, while the defense was allowed no countering witnesses, and no countering exhibits.

With a sigh, Bensinger proceeded.

Bensinger asked Detective Flores why he didn’t include the missing material about Sanchez not being an active gang member in his own court filing. [See previous post for details] Flores said he didn’t think it was important. Kerry pressed that point and Flores said that Camaron—the nickname of the now-dead El Salvadoran MS-13 gangster who made the remarks —was speaking “tongue in cheek.”

At this, there was audible muttering from the crowd. “So Cameron was a post modern gangster who was speaking ironically?” someone near to me whispered.

4.

It was Bensinger’s contention that Sanchez threatened no one, and ordered no hits. To the contrary, said Bensinger, Sanchez was on the four calls in question to try to diffuse a situation in which several people—Sanchez prominently included—had been accused of being FBI informants. Because of this accusation, a Salvadoran gangtser with the nickname Cameron had caused a “green light” to be put on Sanchez and others. In other words, Cameron had ordered a hit on a number of people, including Sanchez. And Sanchez was trying use his contacts and personal influence to defuse what had become a volatile situation.

The issue of the FBI informant rumor and the “green light” are not in depute. What is in dispute and, based on the transcripts, open to interpretation, is what Alex Sanchez did about the threat.

5.

One of the issues that Bensinger brought up during the cross examination was his contention that Flores completely and crucially misidentified a person on one of the calls, a guy with the street name of Zombie. According to Flores, the person, “Zombie,” on the phone call was also the person who was eventually arrested for the murder of Cameron, a murder that Sanchez had allegedly ordered during the last of the four phone calls that are the center of the prosecution’s case.

Yet, according to Bensinger, the guy called “Zombie” on the call was a very different fellow from Juan Bonilla, the killer, who is also called Zombie.

(I know this nickname business is dizzying, but try to stay with me here.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, blogger Joe Scott, who also works for DA Steve Cooley, wrote that “Gnomes of Spring Street” have told him which three people are the finalists in the process to select a Chief of the LAPD to succeed Bill Bratton.

Then Scott names the three men who have generally been considered to be the most out in front of the front runners: Jim McDonnell, First Assistant Chief and Chief of Staff; Earl Paysinger, Assistant Chief in charge of operations; and Charlie Beck, Deputy Chief and Chief of Detectives.

Scott’s blog post was linked to and quoted from a lot yesterday.

Yet there are a few things that suggest he was rather hasty in posting his list.

1. For one thing, the LA police commission just began its interviews of the 12 pre-finalist finalists.

(At least we think there are 12 or around 12. Not even the finalists themselves were informed of the exact number. UPDATE: ABC7 says it’s 13. Eight being interviewed Wednesday, five Thursday. Along with other news crews, Channel 7 is camped outside the City Club on
Bunker Hill where the interviews are taking place.)

So if we are to believe Scott, the die is already cast, and the interviews are merely pro forma, which—by all accounts I’ve heard— is simply not true.

There are indeed some strong winds at the backs of each one of those three, and they could very easily be the triumvirate handed to the mayor in early November.

Chief of Detectives Charlie Beck is a cops-cop and the choice favored by the mayor’s chief of staff, Jeff Carr, and by Connie Rice. Beck has been Bratton’s pick as the Can-Do guy to solve such vexing problems as the rape kit backlog.

Jim McDonnell is at the top of a lot of lists, inside and outside the department. He is the skilled big picture theorist among the three, and is usually the name mentioned first by the uniforms on the street.

The well-liked former head of the department’s complicated South Bureau, during recent years, Earl Paysinger has been the man firmly in charge of operations during an extended period of dropping crime so commands much respect and has his own group of very strong supporters.

Yet to believe that anybody’s “gnomes” can predict all three as a lock at this point in the process is foolish. Plus it does not take into account all the various puzzle pieces that comprise the whole picture.

2. Look, for example, at the last shortlist for chief that an LA police commission sent to an LA mayor.

In the fall of 2002, when Bill Bratton was selected, his closest rivals from the department—people like George Gascon and Jim McDonnell— weren’t on the final list of three. Instead, the commission delivered along with Bratton’s resume, the stacked deck of Philadelphia’s former Chief John Timony and Oxnard Police Chief Art Lopez (a former LAPD deputy chief). The two were both capable men. In this situation, they were also ringers.

3. In the wide canvassing I’ve done in and around City Hall, and among the rank and file of the department, another of the names that continues to come up with frequency by street cops as one of the front-runners, is that of Assistant Chief Sharon Papa who, as the former chief of the MTA police, is the only person in the group to have had her own department to command. Do I think she’ll be the final pick? Probably not. At least, not this time. But could she be on the short list? Sure. Easily.

4. Finally, a dark horse in the mix is Deputy Chief Sergio Diaz. He was late to throw his name in, but during a short period he too has gathered a significant list of supporters from inside and outside the department. Given his depth and breadth of experience, and his performance as the problem solver head of Central Bureau (home of Avenues gang, et al), in many ways Diaz combines the main strengths of McDonnell and Beck, so cannot be crossed off either.

5. Given the talents of our homegrown candidates, the frequently expressed wishes of our very popular outgoing chief, and the unambiguous desires of the rank and file, the chances range from unlikely to impossible that Bratton’s replacement will be someone from outside the department. Yet an outsider could be among the three, just to show that the commission has fairly considered all comers.

So, yeah, the short list may, indeed, be made up of the three Scott mentions.

But I would energetically advise betting the ranch on it just yet.

PS: Joel Rubin has his own smart and well-reported take on the front runners, which is a must read on the topic.

He rightly mentions Deputy Chief Sandy Jo MacArthur, head of training division, as another dark horse. If I were to personally pick the person who has the best shot of being the department’s first woman chief, it would be MacArthur. Also, Rubin’s suggestion that the chief is quietly putting in a word for Beck is my read as well. And, the fact that the mayor put Connie Rice on his picking-the-chief advisory panel could be telling.

In short, there are very strong trends, but the jury’s still out.

PPS: The Alex Sanchez bail hearing post is still coming later.

It just happened this morning. The NY Times’ Adam Liptak has the best take on the story:

The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to decide whether federal courts have the power to order prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay to be released into the United States.

The case concerns 17 men from the largely Muslim Uighur region of western China who continue to be held although the government has determined that they pose no threat to the United States.

Last October, a federal judge here ordered the men released. But a federal appeals court reversed that ruling in February, saying that judges do not have the power to override immigration laws and force the executive branch to release foreigners into the United States.

An appeal from the Uighurs has been pending in the Supreme Court since April, and it is not clear why the justices acted on it now. The Obama administration has sent some of the prisoners to Bermuda, and Palau has said it will accept most of the rest. But one prisoner apparently has nowhere to go.

The prisoners have said they fear they will be tortured or executed if they are returned to China, where they are viewed as terrorists…..

Read on.

This is a great case. Go SCOTUS!!!