Already the media pundits are predicting "hard time" for Paris Hilton after last night's arrest in Las Vegas on a cocaine possession charge.

I doubt it. First off, while possession of cocaine is a class E felony in Nevada, the statute mandates probation except in certain instances, and Paris doesn't fit any of the exceptions. Nevada, like most states, also has deferred sentencing for those who are guilty of such offenses, allowing them to end up without a permanent conviction on their record.

Paris' prior conviction in CA was for alcohol-related reckless driving, a misdemeanor. She's no longer on probation. [More...]

It's "Restoring Honor" Day. Bob Herbert:

America is better than Glenn Beck. For all of his celebrity, Mr. Beck is an ignorant, divisive, pathetic figure. On the anniversary of the great 1963 March on Washington he will stand in the shadows of giants � Abraham Lincoln and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Who do you think is more representative of this nation?

This is an Open Thread.

Here's some of the news I missed while at work today:

6,000 pounds of cocaine seized in Florida is worth $80 million. In Sacramento, 475 pounds of meth seized last week was worth $100 million -- until the Sheriff decided it was 600 pounds and worth $200 million. In India, authorities seized a lab and found 16 pounds of meth authorities value at RS 13 crore, around $3 million. (Rs 16 Cr = USD 4 million). Do they just pull these numbers out of a hat?

The India meme: The drugs were made in India, by companies using Iranian and Chinese chemists, and headed to cartels in Central and South America who would then send them to the U.S. [More...]

By now you should know about the offensive Glenn Beck "Restoring Honor" event to take place at the Lincoln Memorial on the 47th Anniversary of MLK's "I Have A Dream Speech." Truly one of the more offensive stunts in recent memory. And no doubt the day will provide us coverage of this:

With this:

Which puts in mind this:

Earlier this year St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa decided to announce his support of AZ SB 1070. Free country. But what is not free is La Russa's attempt to pass off his appearance (with Albert Pujols) at the offensive Glenn Beck event tomorrow as "non-political." Missourian David Kuhn of TPM writes:

[W]hile I feel a twinge of disappointment, what really jumped out at me is that La Russa says he and Pujols agreed to appear because it's a non-political event. "I made it clear when we were approached: I said, 'If it's political, I wouldn't even approach Albert with it.' I don't want to be there if it's political," La Russa told the Post-Dispatch.

(Emphasis supplied.) La Russa is full of it. And no way he does not know it. That he has attached himself to one of the most offensive figures in American Media says a lot about La Russa. I do not know if Albert Pujols has any idea what La Russa has got him into. But shame on La Russa either way. He has every right to tarnish his own image with this Beck association. But he should not be dragging Pujols into it.

Speaking for me only

My daughter is taking her drivers test. Time flies.

Open Thread.

We had server difficulties this afternoon which hopefully are now resolved.

There's a double eviction tonight on Big Brother. I think Matt will be the first one sent home. (No spoilers in comments please until 10 pm ET.) For those of you who still don't know who Snooki and Mike "The Situation" are, there's also a new episode of Jersey Shore. And a new Project Runway. What a dismal summer this has been for TV.

The Judge in the Rod Blagojevich case said today he's only inclined to allow two lawyers at taxpayer expense for the now-broke former Governor. He did say he'd allow more lawyers if Rod found a benefactor. Will Donald Trump step up? Don't count on it.

The judge hopes to start the re-trial in early January, but didn't set a firm new date. So far, Sam Adams, Jr. and Sr. are still on board.

I'll bet Tony Rezko and others who pleaded to felonies and cooperated, but haven't been sentenced yet, aren't thrilled about waiting another five months. According to a motion Team Blago filed in April, 2010, here's the list of them: Ali Ata, Joseph A. Cari, Jr., John Harris, Jacob Kieferbaum, Stuart Levine, Steven Loren, Alonzo Monk, Antoin Rezko, and Dr. Robert Wienstein. Blago tried to preclude them from testifying. The grounds: [More...]

Robert Blagojevich gets some welcome news: The Government is dropping its case against him and won't be refiling charges.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Reid Schar said the government was dropping two counts of extortion conspiracy and one count each of wire fraud and extortion because of "the disparity in the roles" of the two brothers and "in the interests of justice."

I'm glad the Government made the right call, see my post, Enough about Rod, Lets Talk About Robert.

Before JournoList kept Joe Klein relatively informed, he had a penchant for writing stupidities about issues he had not the first clue about. Apparently the demise of the JournoList has Klein going back to his old ways. In a generally clueless post about Social Security, this specific bit of ignorance caught my eye:

There is a strong progressive argument for fixing social security now. Actually, there are two. First, as we saw when Bill Clinton chose to address the federal deficit in 1993, markets respond to fiscal responsibility. In that case, interest rates declined and the economy boomed (despite higher taxes, I must repeat again and again); now, a move toward federal fiscal responsibility might encourage the U.S. business community to start investing the $1.8 trillion in cash it is hoarding and thereby create some jobs.

(Emphasis supplied.) Setting aside the fact that Social Security is not a fiscal problem, Klein simply has no understanding of our current economic problem - which is deficient aggregate demand. Paul Krugman has explained this point a million times already:

The Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, today released a report, "Sexual Victimization in Prisons and Jails Reported by Inmates,2008-09, available here.

The report is required by the The Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 (P.L. 108-79) which directs the the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) to conduct "a comprehensive statistical review and analysis of the incidents and effects of prison rape for each calendar year," and to "provide a list of prisons and jails according to the prevalence of sexual victimization."

The findings: 90,000 inmates, more than 4 percent of prison inmates and over 3 percent of jail inmates, reported being sexually victimized in custody. [More....]

Looks like Sarah Palin isn't the only Palin who craves media attention. E! Online reports Bristol Palin will be competing on Dancing With the Stars this season. Will she even last as long as Tom DeLay? Have any prominent Democrats been cast for the show? If not, maybe it's because fewer Dems need the image rehabilitation the show can provide.

Also on the new season, according to E!: Mike "The Situation" from Jersey Shore. It would be pretty funny if Bristol and Mike hooked up as a result of the show. Sarah Palin would probably pray every night for a Bristol-Levi Johnston reconciliation.

Good news: Reportedly not on the cast this season: The over-hyped Bachelorette Ali Fedotowsky or her chosen one, Roberto Martinez. Who else reportedly made the cut: singer Michael Bolton. Who didn't: Kirstie Alley. The cast will be announced on Monday during "Bachelor Pad." [More...]

More affectionately known as the Catfood Commission. Jane Hamsher writes:

Nancy Altman and Eric Kingson, who had served as Obama�s Social Security advisors on both the campaign and his transition team, sounded the alarm in a piece that appeared in Harvard�s Nieman Watchdog entitled Has Obama created a Social Security �death panel�?:

President Obama and the leadership in Congress have delegated enormous, unaccountable authority to 18 unrepresentative, inordinately wealthy individuals. The 18 individuals are meeting regularly, in secret, behind closed doors, until safely beyond this year�s mid-term election. If they reach agreement, their proposal will be voted on in December by a lame duck Congress, without the benefit of open hearings and deliberations in the pertinent committees and without the opportunity for open debate and amendment on the floors of the House and Senate. Despite the speed and lack of accountability, the legislation will affect, in substantial ways, every man, woman, and child in this nation.

(Emphasis supplied.) It is also the Dem Party Death Panel as it will certainly destroy the Democratic Party for the foreseeable future if the Congress votes for the Catfood Commission's recommendations to destroy Social Security.

Change you can believe in.

Speaking for me only

Leave it to politicians like New York Gov. David Paterson to miss the forest for the trees.

"This is what the terrorists want," said New York Gov. David Paterson Thursday. "This is the terrorists getting a yield on their investment when they attacked this country and blew up the World Trade Center, that we're now fighting each other. This is making their day."

It's not the lone nutjob causing that reaction. Replace the "fighting with each other" with "spying on Americans, destroying our civil liberties, restricting Miranda rights and becoming a police state" and it's a valid point and one that needs to be made more often. How much better it would read had he said:[More...]

Open Thread.

Giving "taking it to the streets" a whole new meaning: Via the ACLU, Forbes magazine reports that the full body scanners being used at airports are being deployed by the Government for use in street vans called called Z Backscatter Vans, or ZBVs.

American Science & Engineering, a company based in Billerica, Massachusetts, has sold U.S. and foreign government agencies more than 500 backscatter x-ray scanners mounted in vans that can be driven past neighboring vehicles to see their contents, Joe Reiss, a vice president of marketing at the company told me in an interview. While the biggest buyer of AS&E’s machines over the last seven years has been the Department of Defense operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, Reiss says law enforcement agencies have also deployed the vans to search for vehicle-based bombs in the U.S.

“This product is now the largest selling cargo and vehicle inspection system ever,” says Reiss.

Video below of the vans in action: [More...]