Kudos to marijuna advocate Ed Rosenthal. A federal judge in California today threw out the charges against him, agreeing they were the result of a vindictive prosecution:

A federal judge threw out criminal charges today against an Oakland man accused of growing medical marijuana, ruling that authorities had vindictively prosecuted him because of remarks he made after he successfully appealed an earlier conviction.

U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco dismissed charges of tax evasion and money laundering against Ed Rosenthal, an author and activist who has been dubbed the "Guru of Ganja."

Good news for those who, like me, believe the Second Amendment confers an individual right to bear arms. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals today holds it does. The opinion is here.

Covering the decision extensively: How Appealing, Instapundit, Volokh Conspiracy and Cato.

As Volokh notes, this is not the first federal appeals court to rule this way. The 5th Circuit did in U.S. v. Emerson, which I wrote about here, when contrasting with the 10th Circuit position.

My bottom line on the issue hasn't changed since 2002 when I started TalkLeft:

Being for the Second Amendment doesn't mean defense lawyers are not liberals. It means they won't give up any constitutional right, even ones they may not exercise personally. Give 'em an inch and.....besides, the Second Amendment is only one away from the Fourth.

Via How Appealing:

From an opinion that a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit issued today, "The police could not have removed the drugs that Williams stashed near his genitals without making some 'intimate contact,' and we reject Williams's claim that such contact is per se unreasonable." According to the factual background section of the opinion, "The officer, who was wearing a latex glove, opened Williams's pants, reached inside Williams's underwear, and retrieved a large amount of crack and powder cocaine near Williams's genitals."

In striking down California's sentencing law yesterday which allowed judges, as opposed to juries, to determine aggravating factors warranting an increase in a criminal sentence, the Supreme Court further solidified the principles it began with its Apprendi, Blakely and Booker decisions. The New York Times provides this analysis.

First, the prior cases in a nutshell,

[Apprendi]invalidated New Jersey’s hate-crime statute, which gave judges the power to make the specific factual findings that converted an ordinary crime into a hate crime, with an enhanced sentence. The court ruled that the Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury gave that role to juries.

Your employer wants you to submit to drug testing but assures you that the results will be kept confidential. Is your privacy protected? Don't count on it.

Baseball players supplied urine samples in 2003 to help Major League Baseball get a handle on the number of players who use steroids.

Baseball players were told the results would be confidential, and each player was assigned a code number to be matched with his name.

A day before the results were to be destroyed, federal agents issued subpoenas compelling production of test results for ten players, including Barry Bonds, who is suspected of fibbing to a grand jury when he denied using steroids. Armed with warrants for the ten test results, agents in 2004 seized the results of tests of about one hundred players, most of whom weren't named in the subpoenas or warrants.

This expanded search didn't bother the Ninth Circuit, which reversed (pdf) two lower court rulings favoring the Players Association that would have required the government to return any test results that weren't described in the warrants. The dissent offers an analysis that's more faithful to players' legitimiate expectations of privacy in their medical records. Here's the concluding paragraph:

Phill Kline was voted out of office as the Attorney General of Kansas by citizens who rejected his mindless crusade against abortion providers and their patients. He should have spent his last weeks in office sitting quietly or taking some vacation time. At the very least, he should have respected his successor's request not to file abortion-related charges before leaving office.

Instead, Kline filed charges (pdf) against an abortion provider for performing unlawful late term abortions. The charges were the culmination of a controversial investigation that relied on subpoenas to review private medical records.

Fortunately for the doctor, a judge ruled that Kline exceeded his authority and almost immediately dismissed the charges. The district attorney argued that Kline could not act as a prosecutor in her county without being invited. Translation: go away, Phill.

Via Scotus Blog, the Supreme Court ruled for a drug defendant today, blocking his deportation. The case is Lopez v. Gonzales, opinion (html) here.

Shorter version: If the crime of conviction is a felony under state law but only a misdemeanor under federal law, it's not an aggravated drug felony and therefore doesn't trigger automatic removal.

The decision came in the case of Jose Antonio Lopez, a native of Mexico. He entereed the U.S. illegally in 1985 or 1986, but became a lawful permanent resident in 1990. In 1997, he was charged in state court in South Dakota with one count of possessing cocaine and one count of a conspiracy to distribute the drug. He ultimately pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting possession by another person.

Under state law, his crime was a felony, leading to a potential prison sentence of up to five years. He was sentenced to the maximum, but actually served only 15 months. Federal officials moved to deport him to Mexico, based upon the conviction for what they considered to be an "aggravated felony." Under federal law, however, the crime could only be punished as a misdemeanor.

Put another way, removal is still possible for drug crimes that are misdeanors under federal law, but not mandatory. This is important because with automatic removal, one cannot request asylum or cancellation of removal.

Even though the trial judge, a conservative, called the 55 year sentence of Weldon Angelos excessive, the Supreme Court let it stand today.

Angelos' crime? Carrying a handgun during three 8 oz. marijuana sales.

The Supreme Court on Monday let stand a mandatory 55-year prison sentence, condemned as excessive by the federal judge who imposed it, for a man convicted of carrying a handgun during three marijuana deals.

It didn't matter than he never brandished or used the gun.

Record producer Weldon Angelos received the minimum sentence under the law - a harsher sentence than a child rapist or a terrorist who detonates a bomb aboard an aircraft would receive, according to his attorneys. The justices, without comment, left the prison term undisturbed.

Sal Magluta, the last of the cocaine cowboys, was resentenced Thursday to 195 years in a federal prison. There will be an appeal.

I think The Sal Magluta - Willie Falcon case is one of the most fascinating cocaine cases in South Florida's history. I have been following the case since it was first brought ten years ago, through the trials, appeals and ancillary actions.

He was acquitted of the most serious charges against him, ordering murders of prospective witnesses. His conviction for bribing a juror in his first trial was later overturned on appeal. Thus, his only convictions were for non-violent money laundering crimes, each of which carry a 20 year sentence. The judge stacked the sentences.

In a victory for free speech and a loss for those who may be defamed online, the California Supreme Court has ruled bloggers and Internet providers and bulletin board owners can't be sued for for defamation for writings posted by others on their site.

The bottom line:

"Until Congress chooses to revise the settled law in this area" people who contend they were defamed on the Internet can seek recovery only from the original source of the statement, not from those who re-post it."

The text of the decision is here.

How Appealing has a compilation of news articles discussing the decision.

Michael Skakel, convicted of the murder of Martha Moxley for which he is serving a 20 year to life sentence, lost his bid for Supreme Court review.

The principal issue was the expiration of the Statute of Limitiations at the time Skakel was charged. Former Solicitor General Ted Olson represented Skakel, the nephew of Ethel Kennedy, in the appeal.

At the time of Moxley's killing, Connecticut had a five-year statute of limitations on murder cases that did not involve the death penalty. One year later, in 1976, the state legislature removed the five-year deadline in such cases.

The Connecticut Supreme Court upheld Skakel's conviction, overturning its earlier holding that the new law did not apply to crimes committed before its enactment. The legislature intended to remove the deadline for prosecution for all crimes, like Moxley's killing, for which the statute of limitations had not yet expired, the state court said.

This is a shame. Students for a Sensible Drug Policy reports that on Friday, a federal judge granted the Bush administration's motion to dismiss an ACLU and SSDP lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the law that strips financial aid from college students with drug convictions.

SSDP says it's more important for people to contact Congress and demand the repeal of this harmful and unfair penalty that has denied educational opportunities to nearly 200,000 would-be students.

The judge's ruling is here (pdf).