Judge removed after racial comment: A South Carolina judge who admitted calling crack cocaine addiction “black man’s disease” has been banned from the bench, the state’s Supreme Court said in an order Monday.

(Via MSNBC.com: Crime & courts.)

Wow. Just wow.

It’s nice to see that the state supreme court stepped in and did the right thing, but it’s still a shame that this could even happen. However, given South Carolina’s recent spate of freak-outs, it’s perhaps not that surprising.

Consider:

Justice finds that Gonzales aides broke federal hiring laws: WASHINGTON — Aides to former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales violated federal laws and Justice Department policies by illegally selecting employees based on their conservative and Republican leanings, a joint report by two department watchdog agencies reported Monday.

(Via McClatchy.)

I can’t say this is very surprising (more like a “Well, duh!” moment), but it’s good to see that even the IG in the DOJ can admit that the behavior by the political appointees at Bush Justice has been atrocious.

Baby steps. It’s just too bad Bush will be able to run out the clock.

John C. Coughenour – The Right Place to Try Terrorism Cases – washingtonpost.com: I have spent 27 years on the federal bench. In particular, my experience with the trial of Ahmed Ressam, the “millennium bomber,” leads me to worry about Attorney General Michael Mukasey’s comments last week, urging Congress to pass legislation outlining judicial procedures for reviewing Guantanamo detainees’ habeas petitions. As constituted, U.S. courts are not only an adequate venue for trying terrorism suspects but are also a tremendous asset in combating terrorism. Congress risks a grave error in creating a parallel system of terrorism courts unmoored from the constitutional values that have served our country so well for so long.

Once upon a time we were a nation ruled by laws, not by fear. Once upon a time, we entrusted the courts as the arbiter of justice, not the political branches. Coughenour gets it exactly right when he says:

Courts guarantee an independent process, not an outcome. Any tribunal purporting to do otherwise is not a court.

Any attempt to alter the process so as to arrive at a preconceived outcome ought to be viewed with suspicion. Any attempt to reduce the independence of the panel hearing the case should be rejected. Any law that seeks to justify the creation of kangaroo courts in “land of the free and the home of the brave” must be protested.

Law.com – Memo: ‘Good Faith’ Protects Against Torture Charge: The Justice Department in 2002 told the CIA that its interrogators would be safe from prosecution for violations of anti-torture laws if they believed “in good faith” that harsh techniques used to break prisoners’ will would not cause “prolonged mental harm.”

Wait a minute, wait a minute. I thought it was we atheist pinko liberals who were supposed to be the moral relativists. Now we find out that situational ethics apparently is A-OK if you’re torturing people, so long as the torture doesn’t cause “prolonged mental harm”? What kind of bunk reasoning is that?

Is it possible for any torture not to cause prolonged mental harm? It’s torture; that’s kind of what it’s supposed to do.

Crikey. I can’t wait until January.

Although it does kind of give a whole new meaning to “faith-based initiatives”.

Law.com – High Court Justices Go Digital to Access Founding-Era Documents: U.S. Supreme Court justices on both sides in the landmark D.C. v. Heller gun rights case resorted to original documents in making their case about the meaning of the Second Amendment. But they used a little-known digital resource to get there, a project whose mission is to digitize thousands of Founding-era documents that shed light on the original meaning of the Constitution.

The Constitutional Sources Project, which launched publicly last September, has digitized and made freely available online more than 11,000 historical documents relating to the Constitution and the amendments.

Definitely a neat resource, and it appears to be usefully organized. You better believe it’s been bookmarked.

Google to face charges over Down’s syndrome video – Times Online: “Google is to face criminal charges in Italy over a video which appeared on one of its sites showing a disabled teenager being taunted by his peers.”

This is the part that seems odd to me:

Google is understood to have removed the clip from the Google Video site within hours of administrators being notified of its existence in September, 2006.

If Google did, in fact, take quick and appropriate action as soon as they were notified, exactly what is the basis for the charges against the Google executives? The only way to prevent any objectionable material ever being posted would be for Google to pre-approve all content, which is clearly impossible given the volume of material that makes it to Google sites.

Just another example of why I’m relatively glad I live in America, I guess, where our Constitutional protections for free speech are so much stronger than in most of Europe.

Seeded at Newsvine:

It’s not every day that Harry Pregerson and N. Randy Smith line up on the same side.

Seeded at Newsvine:

A ‘vulnerable’ man cut off his own head with a chainsaw after being ordered to move out of his home to make way for developers, police believe.

David Phyall’s severed head was found beside the power tool inside his housing association flat shortly after receiving his evict …

Seeded at Newsvine:

France’s highest court denied citizenship to Faiza Mabchour, a Moroccan woman, on the grounds that she practices a form of Islam called Salafism, which requires a rigorous interpretation of the Quran.