I’m working on a deadline but will have more posting later today…. In the meantime:

Last year on May Day, in MacArthur Park, police used their batons to whack immigrant parents with their kids, plus small NPR reporters and various camera people (with their cameras rolling)—resulting in more than 300 excessive force complaints.

Among this year’s most to-the-point glimpse of what went wrong last year is this report by KPCC’s Frank Stolz talking to Juan Calos Baustista who says he had his leg broken by police at last year’s rally when he was shielding his four year old son.

But a year later, many changes have been made—-both in terms of departmental training, and on the LAPD’s command staff (the replacement of then Central Bureau head, Deputy Chief Caylor Carter, with well-liked Deputy Chief Sergio Diaz, among the most prominent changes).

Whether or not the training and the departmental changes had anything causal to do with it, this year’s May Day was festive and pretty much problem free. Of the photos I’ve seen from the day’s marches and rallies, one of those I like best the photo above of Deputy Chief Michael Hillman, by LA Times photographer Rick Loomis. Hillman is a cop’s cop, beloved by the rank and file as the guy they’d be most likely to follow into hell if the situation demanded it.

Fortunately yesterday’s May Day activities required no such thing.

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In the upcoming April 17 issue of the New York Review of Books, veteran investigative reporter Raymond Bonner reviews four books that cover aspects of Guantanamo. But as is often the case for the best NY Review of Books stories, Bonner’s piece is less review than it is a comprehensive essay on the issue that the books generally cover—which is, in this instance, the ghastly moral and legal bungling that has characterized the Bush administration’s handling of terrorists suspects both at Guantanamo Bay and the various “black sites” that we, the lowly American public, have learned about only in disturbing dribs and drabs.

Here’s the opening of Bonner’s essay:

On February 11, 2008, the Pentagon announced that charges were being filed against six men in connection with the September 11 attacks, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, alleged mastermind of the attacks and one of al-Qaeda’s most senior members, and Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a leader of the Hamburg cell that included several of the September 11 pilots. It has taken nearly seven years for these men to be indicted—while more than 240 other prisoners continue to remain at Guantánamo in a state of indefinite detention without charge. In contrast, Britain, after one of the longest and most expensive trials in its history, has already convicted and sentenced four men for the failed attacks on the London subway on July 21, 2005.

Last year, British officials also arrested three other men for involvement in the deadly attacks on three London subway lines and a bus on July 7, 2005, two weeks earlier; they are scheduled to go on trial at the end of March. Spain has convicted twenty-one of twenty-eight men charged in connection with the terrorist attacks on commuter trains in Madrid in March 2004; and Indonesia has held lengthy trials and convicted four men who were accused of the terrorist attacks in Bali in October 2002, two of whom have been sentenced to death, and two to life imprisonment.

“Justice delayed is justice denied” is a guiding principle of the American criminal justice system. The Bush administration has ignored this principle with impunity, and America’s image abroad has suffered greatly as a result.

The administration could have avoided much of the criticism it has received for its handling of terrorism suspects. It didn’t have to listen to the civil libertarians and human rights lawyers. All it needed to do was heed the advice of the country’s military lawyers…..

[snip]

As the Bush administration, in the weeks after the September 11 attacks, began hurriedly drafting rules to try suspects, the most senior military lawyers, from all four services, were “appalled” at the lack of rights that the administration proposed granting the defendants….

Bonner’s essay goes a lot further, including references to what the three presidential candidates have been willing to say—and not say—about Guantanamo and torture. For example there’s this:

“Only Obama makes a point in his speeches that he would restore habeas corpus for Guantánamo prisoners,,” writes Bonner. “It generally brings loud applause.”

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Three separate stories tonight—one on television, two on radio—addressed the idea that the Bush Administration has created what many have called an Imperial Presidency—a presidency that believes itself above the US courts, above the necessity to honor long-standing government treaties, and above international law.

The first of the three stories was the much ballyhooed 60 Minutes segment about Murat Kurnaz, a German traveling in Pakistan who was nabbed three months after 9/11 and transported to Afghanistan where he says he was tortured severely. It seemed to matter little that the FBI, U.S. intelligence and German intelligence had reportedly concluded that Kurnaz was innocent of the terrorism charges brought against him. He was subsequently transferred to Guantanamo where charges against him fell further apart. In 2002, German intelligence agents wrote their government, saying, “USA considers Murat Kurnaz’s innocence to be proven. He is to be released in approximately six to eight weeks.” Instead, Kurnaz was kept in Guantanamo for an additional three and a half years.

When contacted, the US Department of Defense responded to 60 Minutes in letter form that called Kurnaz’ accusations outlandish and unsubstantiated.

The second two stories were on this week’s This American Life. In one episode, TAL tells about the more than a hundred foreign women who got married to Americans, then had their spouses die less than two years after the marriage. The US government responded to their grief and loss by curtly informed the widows “You’re no longer married to Americans. Your citizen application is denied. Now get out of the country.” The widows went to court over the matter, and the court told the government that it had to let the women stay. But the US government ignored the court and told them they have to leave anyway.

Story three was about an American couple who lived on the Canadian border and decided to build a retaining wall inside the ten-foot buffer zone that is on either side of the international boundary. The International Boundary Commission told the Americans that they couldn’t have the wall inside the buffer zone and would have to take it down. The Americans sued the Commission, the bi-national entity created by a 1925 treaty to inspect and oversee the US Canada border. And that’s when the Bush administration stepped in….

You can hear the rest on This American Life here. (The promos up now, and podcasts will be available of the program in a few days)

In a way this is all an old issue. We have long been aware that in instances ranging from FISA to signing statements, when the Bush administration doesn’t like a law or a legal ruling it pretty much does what it pleases regardless of restrictions placed on it by Congress or courts.

But the real question is, what will happen next January when we have a new president? Wll he or she keep the newly established Imperial presidency, or dismantle it.

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Michael Mukasey’s turning out to be a barrel of fun. First there was the whole waterboarding thingy last week about how he couldn’t possibly prosecute anyone who tortured anybody else because, well, the DOJ (secretly) approved it.

But turns out he IS ready to be oh-so-tough in holding the line against the rampaging hoards of low-level drug offenders. Here’s the deal:

Last fall the US Sentencing Commission voted unanimously to make retroactive its decision to reduce the recommended mandatory minimum for possession of crack cocaine, bringing it more in line with the penalties for powder cocaine. In response, last week, Mukasey took it into his head to decide that he knew better.

In his testimony before Congress Thursday, Mukasey urged lawmakers to pass a law preventing the changed minimums from applying retroactively. He warned that “nearly 1,600 convicted crack dealers, many of them violent gang members, will be eligible for immediate release into communities nationwide.”

Only one teensy weensy problem with Mukasey’s statement. It wasn’t true—as a quick glance at the Sentencing Commission’s original press release outlining the plan for retroactivity makes clear.

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Just when you think there can’t possibly be a more jaw-dropping bureaucratic screw-up than the Los Angeles Unified School District’s year-long inability to pay its teachers their correct salaries …the State of California treats us to this.

Here’s the deal, the The Service Employees International Union—SEIU—specifically, SEIU’s Local 1000 filed a lawsuit on Wednesday suing Arnold Schwarzenegger and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation for…..are you ready for this? failing to figure out the correct release dates for around 33,000 inmates serving time in California prisons.

Yes, you read right. The CDCR has has around 33,000 people that they’re letting out….whenever.

These are people whose sentences were affected by two court rulings that mandated “good-time” credits for certain inmates. In the case of non-violent offenders this might mean as much as 50 percent off their sentences, or with violent offenders, as little as 15 percent.

When I got SEIU spokesman, Danny Beagle, on the phone, I asked for a random example of what we’re talking about. “Okay,” he said, “I have a case right here. This guy was supposed to have been released in….let’s see…. February of 2007. But instead he was released on, I think it says, early October of 2007. Yeah, October.” In other words, EIGHT MONTHS LATER than the guy—whoever he is—was mandated by the courts to be let out of lock-up.

That is, to put it in the mildest terms, unlawful

The reasons SEIU is bringing the suit has to do with the fact that it represents the correctional case records analysts who are supposed to figure this stuff out, but who say they are so understaffed and overloaded that they simply can’t do their jobs—and they don’t want to get sued because of it.

Plus the SEIU feels it would be a good thing if the state abided by the U.S. Constitution.

“The whole process of setting release dates is melting down,” said Marc Bautista, the Local 1000 VP who actually filed the suit in Sacramento Superior Court. Bautista estimates another 99 analysts are needed to remedy the shortfall. “We have repeatedly warned CDCR of this problem and they have refused to act.”

Oh, and did I mention the cost of these 33,000 little mistakes? Well, allow me to do a little math for you. The State Legislative Analyst estimates that each prisoner costs around $43,287 a year to incarcerate, or a little less than $120 a day. Now, when we think about Prisoner X, above, the guy who spent eight extra months in the pinta, that’s $120 times 30 days times 8 months—-or $28,800. Not chump change, but not going to break the state. (Although Prisoner X’s righteous civil lawsuit seeking damages for his eight wrongful months behind bars might be a tad more costly, but we won’t go there.)

Now, if we have 33,000 prisoner X’s serving that much extra prison time, it adds up to…..just under a billion dollars. ($950,400,000 to be exact.) But I’m sure the state couldn’t be SO stupid as to keep 33,000 people locked up for 8 months over their time.

We really, really hope not. But the truth is, it could be worse. For instance, with a non-violent drug case, four years might be dropped to two. Surely we aren’t keeping some people two extra years…..are we?

“We really don’t know,” said the SEIU’s Danny Beagle.

It turns out that, among the inmates they do know about, according to Thursday’s Sacramento Bee, one had his release date miscalculated by 643 days (nearly two years). Another stayed 366 days longer than his mandated sentence.

This is not reassuring.

Now remember, this is all happening in a state where the prisons are so overcrowded that last year the governor declared a state of emergency. To remedy the problem, the state legislature passed AB900, which will add 53,000 new inmate beds at an estimated cost to the California taxpayers of…$7.8 BILLion.

Note to Governor Arnold and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez: Guys, before you go on your nice little $7.7 billion building spree to get us those new beds, do you think it might be a good idea to, like, first get rid of some of the 33,000 bed-using people who may or may not be legally mandated to be there?

Just curious.

By the way, bigtime kudos to SEIU Local 1000 for slapping these fools in Sacramento upside the head with this lawsuit.

I gotta go. This whole thing’s giving me a headache.

(Photo: Rich Pedroncelli / AP)

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Today’s papers are loaded with articles and opinions about yesterday’s SCOTUS hearings that, with a brand new case, are again addressing the issue of whether the prisoners at Guantanamo should be able to challenge their detentions with some sort of due process. (Writs of Habeas Corpus would be nice.)

Such cases have gone before the Supremes twice before, and both times the court ruled in favor of the detainees. But then Congress stepped in with the Military Tribunals Act, (a horrid little piece of legislation that should shame any Dem who voted in its favor). And so the issue came back to the court. Yet, this time it was being heard before a SCOTUS that has a more conservative make up than the former court, with right-leaning Justice Kennedy again the likely swing vote. Today’s stories are mostly about handicapping the deepening divisions within the court as they affect this important case.

The New York Times describes how the Supremes appear ready to uphold some rights for the detainees, although how many rights and which ones—for instance, whether the court would consider reinstating Habeas Corpus —is very much open to question.

Part of what is being considered with this case is matter of the Military Tribunals and their legality. As the WaPo put it, “….even if the court holds that the captives have a constitutional right to challenge their detention, the next question would be whether the military tribunals used to determine whether the suspects may be held indefinitely as enemy combatants are an adequate substitute for habeas proceedings.”

It’s a fascinating case with far reaching implications for the country, and the arguments drew a full house of watchers, including a bunch of senators. So far the best account of yesterday’s high points was written by Tony Mauro at Law.com, who set the scene with dramatic flourish:

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LAPD’s head terrorism guy, Deputy Chief Mike Downing, is a smart and decent fellow. And most of his testimony before the Senate’s Committee on Homeland Security’s and Governmental Affairs last month about the department’s strategy for outreach into Muslim communities was very nuanced and intelligent.

But it went off the rails when he got to the now-much publicized—and much criticized—part of the report that talked about mapping Muslim neighborhoods to asses for terrorist potential.

It is our hope to identify communities, within the larger Muslim community, which may be susceptible to violent ideologically-based extremism and then use a full-spectrum approach guided by antintelligence-led strategy. Community mapping is the start of a conversation, not just data sets: It is law enforcement identifying with its community and the community identifying with its families, neighborhoods, city, state, country and police.

So what exactly does that mean? That the cops were going to find corners of the Muslim community where people were…..what? Talking angrily?

And here’s how the LA Times reports it:

In a document reviewed by The Times last week, the LAPD’s counter-terrorism bureau proposed using U.S. Census data and other demographic information to pinpoint various Muslim communities and then reach out to them through social service agencies.

Racial profiling, no matter how well intentioned, is still racial profiling. It’s not the LAPD’s job to look for perceived pockets of homegrown terrorist potential. (Is it law enforcement’s job to look for crimes being planned or committed? Yes. But should they also look for people who might one day, if the right circumstances develop, start thinking about committing crimes…? That would be a no, folks.) Nor is it the cops’ job to become some kind of badge-wearing sociologist/social workers in order to keep that perceived potential from developing.

Yesterday when Downing was on Warren Olney’s Which Way LA show , he wisely announced that the department was dumping the mapping plan because of the understandable upset it was causing in the Muslim community.

Chief Downing is meeting with members of the Muslim community about the issue today.

Kudos to the cops for having the willingness to admit their misfire, and then to work with the various Muslim communities to find a solution that makes a bit more practical and cultural sense.

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For fifteen years the U.S. government has claimed that the U.S. located Islamic charity, the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, was a terrorist organization that funded Hamas.

Hoping to nail down evidence of their nefarious deeds, the feds wire-tapped the Holy Land folks, seized the group’s files, and eventually succeeded in shutting down the organization itself in 2001—all without filing a single charge. Finally, in 2004, the feds arrested five of Holy Land’s top officials, and charged them with a combined 200 criminal counts—ranging from tax violations to materially helping terrorists. (Oh, and by the way, four of the men charged were American citizens.)

The problem was, after fifteen years and a whole lot of American taxpayer money, the government lawyers and investigators couldn’t seem to prove wrongdoing—at least not so far as jury could figure it.

So, on Monday, the trial against those five Holy Land officers collapsed in a mistrial. According to a nicely-reported story by the LA Times’ Greg Krikorian, the whole thing was made stranger by the fact that the two jury holdouts at first failed to vote for conviction, if the jury foreperson is accurate. Or possibly they didn’t vote at all. Things still aren’t clear. Furthermore, the the two holdouts were observed to be sleeping throughout most of the trial and the later deliberations.

But whatever. After a two-month trial and nineteen days of deliberations, the government’s “landmark” terrorism finance case fell in on itself in a smoking pile of awful.

For the record, the Holy Land Officials maintained that the organization had only ever raised money to help the poor of Palestine, particularly children.

The prosecution claimed the Holy Land’s money was sent to “zakats”—charity committees—which were really fronts for terrorist activity.

Key defense testimony came from career diplomat Edward Abington, the former U.S. consul general in Jerusalem and the second-highest ranking intelligence officer in the State Department before his retirement. He told jurors he was briefed daily by the CIA and was never told that any of the zakat committees were under Hamas’ control.

Abington also recalled how he had personally visited each of the zakat charity committees named in the indictment and did not believe they were linked to terrorism.

Last year, one of my Irvine students reported on the arrest and two-year incarceration of another of the Holy Land’s officers, which brought the larger case to my attention. (As it happens, my student did an excellent job researching and writing.)

The case sounded like egregious overreaching then, and even more so now.

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As you go into the weekend, this is a wild ride of a story that is definitely worth reading. Most of the events have occurred in the last 48-hours. Here are the high points:

On Thursday, night the two chief execs of Phoenix New Times, Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin—guys whose company, New Times Media, also happens to own the LA Weekly, OC Weekly, and the Village Voice—were arrested in Phoenix by the Maricopa County sheriff’s deputies on charges of revealing grand jury information.

But, before we get to the grand jury info and the arrest, a little back story:

In 2004 and 2005, New Times did several articles investigating the famously colorful Sheriff of Maricopa County, Joe Arpaio.

And Joe really, really, REALLY didn’t like that.

For those of you unfamiliar, Joe Arpaio has long been a media darling for his quirky “tough-on-crime” methods, which include making jail prisoners wear pink underwear, putting them on stripe-suited “chain gangs,” having them sleep in tents in inclement weather, making them eat outdated and green-tinged bologna, and so on. If Joe Arpaio didn’t exist, someone would make him up.

Yet, although Arpaio presents himself as an amusing and eccentric tough dude able to give the bad guys what they deserve, there have been far darker stories of abuses, injuries and deaths at the hands of deputies in his jails, political dirty tricks, plus a string of curious financial dealings—all of which the alternative newspaper dutifully and rightly dug into. Here’s how former Phoenix New Times reporter (now Village Voice editor) Tony Ortega explains it:

Taking advantage of post-9/11 privacy statutes, for example, Arpaio had convinced the county to remove from public view records of the million-dollar commercial real-estate transactions he was making. How,[New Times reporter] Dougherty wondered, was a modestly paid county sheriff making those kinds of deals?

The issue that triggered the grand jury and the appointment of, in all seriousness, a special prosecutor (a person named Dennis Wilenchik who was supposedly hand chosen by Sheriff Joe, and is incidentally under investigation by the Arizona Bar) is the fact that the Phoenix New Times published Joe’s home address in one of their articles.

Nevermind that the thing is easily available online. (I found it here in less than three minutes. The property is listed under his wife Ava’s name. And a quick cross-check turned this up to verify it.)

Reality be damned, Jumping Joe persuaded the Maricopa County Attorney to charge New Times and reporter Dougherty with a felony for listing the address. And then came the Grand Jury and the subpoena delivered to New Times.

And what a subpoena it was!

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NOTE: As we swing deeper into election season, I’ve agreed to do some semi-regular posting at the Huffington Post’s Off the Bus section, looking primarily at how social justice and related issues intersect with the Presidential race. (Blogfather and good friend, Marc Cooper, lured me into this.) So, if you’ve got tips or topics you think I oughta tackle, bring ‘em on.

It has been clear for some time that, whenever she debates her democratic rivals, Hillary Clinton is determined to position herself as the toughest guy in the room. But, now that—rightly or wrongly— she appears to believe she’s headed for a lock on the democratic nomination, her advisers admit that she’s begun to campaign beyond the primaries to the general election. This means that, instead of merely trying to out-macho Obama and Edwards, HRC is now focused on demonstrating that she’s a manlier man than Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson or Mitt Romney. This would all be fine and dandy if it were not for the fact that Hil’s way of proving she is ultra buff—politically speaking—has some very unfortunate downsides.

A prominent example is her vote late last month for the Kyl-Lieberman amendment, a nasty, war-mongering little measure that urged the State Department to declare Iran’s 125,000-member Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization. This Dick Cheney-dream of a move is the rough equivalent of, say, Russia declaring the U.S. Marines a terrorist group. In other words, it’s a stance that is provocative at the least and, at worst, a back door, tacit agreement that it’s okay for the President to order tactical strikes against Iran’s military training bases without Congressional approval. Obama and Edwards both came out against the resolution (although Barak wasn’t there for the vote). Yet, Hilary has declared that her YEA vote was simply to “put some teeth into all this talk about dealing with Iran.” Right, Hil, just like the Iraq war resolution.

More recently, there has been Hillary’s waffling on torture. In last week’s interview with the Washington Post, she gave a stupendously fuzzy answer when asked what she thought about torture in general, and the CIA’s special interrogation methods, specifically: “It is not clear yet exactly what this administration is or isn’t doing,” HRC said. “We’re getting all kinds of mixed messages. I don’t think we’ll know the truth until we have a new president. I think [until] you can get in there and actually bore into what’s been going on, you’re not going to know.”

When a full transcript of the interview was released, we saw that Hil also said the US should draw a “bright line” about the torture issue, a specifics-challenged stand that doesn’t really differentiate itself from that of George “We don’t torture.” Bush.

This past Monday, Hillary appeared on The View where she was again questioned on the torture issue and had a brand new opportunity to say “No waterboarding,” no “rendering” people to countries that do practice torture. She didn’t take it.

In some ways, Hillary’s macha routine is understandable.

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