More on Thursday’s historic Court decision:

Under the federal sentencing guidelines, which penalize defendants who choose to go to trial and can sharply increase sentences based on factors like the financial losses involved, a federal judge in Houston sentenced Mr. Olis, a 38-year-old midlevel executive with an infant daughter, to 24 years in prison. On Thursday, in striking down Washington State’s sentencing law, the Supreme Court almost certainly also doomed the federal guidelines that generated Mr. Olis’s sentence and hundreds of thousands like it. That means Mr. Olis, who has started serving his sentence while the courts consider his appeals, may be entitled to a much shorter prison term. In light of the decision, said Frank O. Bowman, an author of a treatise on sentencing law, “Olis’s sentencing range would probably be zero to six months.”

Thursday’s decision requires any factor that increases a criminal sentence, except for prior convictions, to be proved to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. Many sentencing schemes allow or require judges to impose longer sentences based on all sorts of criteria, including the defendant’s background and the nature and severity of his crime. The decision may also affect sentencing laws in at least seven states in addition to Washington and the federal system, said Kevin R. Reitz, an expert on sentencing at the University of Colorado. In all of those jurisdictions, many people sentenced in recent years may be expected to challenge their sentences. And prosecutors, defendants and judges in pending and new cases will face an altered landscape. “It throws the whole country’s criminal system into turmoil,” said Professor Bowman, who teaches law at Indiana University.

The Illinois Republican Party scrambles to find a candidate to pit against Barack Obama in the wake of Jack Ryan’s quitting the Senate race:

Beleaguered Republican U.S. Senate hopeful Jack Ryan ended his campaign Friday, leaving his party scrambling to find a replacement with enough money and magnetism to mount a serious challenge against Democratic candidate Barack Obama. Ryan had been under attack by a wide range of party leaders for a lack of candor following the release this week of previously sealed records from his divorce from TV actress Jeri Ryan, giving rise to what one prominent Republican called “buyer’s remorse.” Jack Ryan had fought the release, insisting he was trying only to protect his son and not to hide embarrassing information. But the files showed Jeri Ryan had accused her ex-husband of taking her to sex clubs and trying to pressure her into having sex in front of others. Ryan met with staff Friday morning to inform them of his decision to quit the race. Later, he issued a statement explaining he was stepping down because a fixation on the divorce charges meant that a “debate between competing visions and philosophies” could not take place in the Senate race.

…Republican pressure on Ryan to step aside began Monday with the release of the files, including one document in which Ryan vigorously denied the allegations of his ex-wife. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert Schnider released the information as the result of motions filed by the Chicago Tribune and WLS-Ch. 7. Calls for Ryan’s withdrawal intensified throughout the week as party officials–saying Ryan misled them about the extent of his ex-wife’s allegations–warned of the damage he could do to an already struggling party’s chances in November. On Thursday, U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Plano and state GOP chairwoman Judy Baar Topinka called U.S. Sen. George Allen, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. They asked him to pull the plug on Ryan’s campaign, according to a GOP source who spoke frequently with top Ryan campaign staffers…Even before the release of the court files, Ryan had trailed Obama by a wide margin in public opinion polls, and his decision to quit came after his campaign commissioned yet another poll to gauge public response to the growing divorce file controversy, the Republican source said.

Korean hospital workers win a five-day week:

The nation’s unionized hospital workers Tuesday agreed to end their strike after all-night negotiations with the management on key issues, including a five-day workweek. The labor and the management agreed to the imposition of a revised five-day workweek, under a system that sees unionized workers alternating shifts so that each Saturday sees 50 percent of them working. The agreement came early in the morning after union members decided to accept the management’s final proposal. Management officials had walked out of the negotiations, saying the talks had broken down again. An estimated 15,000 nurses and hospital administrative workers from over 100 hospitals nationwide stayed on strike for the 13th straight day since June 10.

Meanwhile, the five-day work week remains under assault throughout the United States.

Just in case there was any question about who the Environmental Protection Agency is going to bat for under Bush:

A new series of whimsical public service announcements from the Environmental Protection Agency are lampooning the notion that cars can be made more energy efficient while the ads encourage conservation at home…A top E.P.A. official said the $1 million campaign was developed by a branch of the agency that specializes in energy-saving home appliances and was not intended to send a message about cars.

Indeed, as the E.P.A. says, energy use at home can cause twice the emissions of a single car. But most families have more than one car and emit roughly the same amount of global warming gases in their vehicles as in their homes, said David Friedman, senior policy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental research and advocacy group. “With a car, you can cut your fuel use in half by using a hybrid,” he said. “You’re not likely to cut your electricity use in half by using more efficient appliances.”

The LA Times reports on SEIU’s next great labor struggle:

The Service Employees International Union, which built itself into the nation’s largest union by aggressively organizing janitors and home-care workers, plans to take on three fast-growing outsourcing companies in its biggest campaign ever. Speaking at his union’s quadrennial convention in San Francisco on Monday, SEIU President Andrew Stern said the companies – France’s Sodexho Inc., Britain’s Compass Group and Philadelphia-based Aramark Corp. – are growing at the expense of union workers, whose jobs are being contracted out. “Today, these three companies employ 1.1 million workers and are growing so fast in cleaning, food service, laundry, transportation, maintenance and anything else that can be contracted out in schools, universities, government, office buildings, hospitals and nursing homes that in a few years they will overtake Wal-Mart in size,” Stern told a cheering crowd of nearly 4,000 members. “These three global service companies – they are our Wal-Mart.”

Apparently, it’s only torture if someone gets killed:

An August 2002 memo by the Justice Department that concluded interrogators could use extreme techniques on detainees in the campaign against terror helped provide an after-the-fact legal basis for harsh procedures used by the C.I.A. on high-level leaders of Al Qaeda, according to current and former government officials.

The legal memo was prepared after an internal debate within the government about the methods used to extract information from Abu Zubaydah, one of Osama bin Laden’s top aides, after his capture in April 2002, the officials said. The memo provided a basis for coercive techniques used later against other high-ranking detainees, like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the chief architect of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, who was captured in early 2003. The full text of the memo was made public by the White House on Tuesday without any explanation about why it was written or whether its standards were applied. The memo suggested that the president could authorize a wide array of coercive interrogation methods in the campaign against terrorism without violating international treaties or the federal torture law. It did not specify any particular procedures but suggested there were few limits short of causing the death of a prisoner.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports on the impact nationally of predatory debt policies of the kind practiced by Yale – New Haven Hospital used by hospitals in Philadelphia:

Even now, Carolyne King still shudders remembering her run-in with hospital bill collectors. The trouble began when King, an uninsured clerical worker, checked into Graduate Hospital in Philadelphia four years ago with severe chest pains, a worrisome sign given her history of heart disease. Two days of tests showed that King, 62, was not in imminent danger. But then she got the bill: Graduate wanted $31,327, far more than King could afford on her salary of $18,000 a year. Debt collectors soon started sending dunning notices, telephoned demanding the money, and eventually persuaded a court to slap a lien on her West Philadelphia home. “I was in a state of shock,” King said. “There were times when I literally felt they had my back up against the wall.”

Looks like he’s got something to hide:

Vice President Dick Cheney blurted out the “F word” at Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont during a heated exchange on the Senate floor, congressional aides said on Thursday.
The incident occurred on Tuesday in a terse discussion between the two that touched on politics, religion and money, with Cheney finally telling Leahy to “f— off” or “go f— yourself,” the aides said.

“That doesn’t sound like language the vice president would use but there was a frank exchange of views,” said Cheney spokesman Kevin Kellems.

The Supremes make a predictably bad decision allowing Justice Scalia’s duck-hunting partner to keep his energy records sealed at least through the election:

The Bush administration won’t have to reveal secret details of Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force before the election, after the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a lower court should spend more time sorting out the White House’s privacy claim. In a 7-2 decision, justices said the lower court should consider whether a federal open government law could be used to get task force documents. Even if that court rules against the administration, appeals would tie up the case well past November.

And an unexpectedly just – and perhaps momentous – one, written by, of all people, Justice Scalia:

The Supreme Court invalidated the criminal sentencing system of the State of Washington on Thursday in a decision that also cast doubt on whether the 20-year-old federal sentencing guidelines can survive a constitutional challenge. Bitterly split in a 5-to-4 decision that cut across the court’s usual ideological lines, the justices continued a profound five-year-long debate over the respective roles of judges and juries in criminal sentencing. In this case, they ratcheted that debate up to a new level that left the federal guidelines in constitutional limbo and cast doubt on the validity of thousands of sentences, at both the state and federal level. Sentencing in about a dozen states is likely to be affected by the ruling…In the Washington guidelines case, Justice Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion held that the Washington system, permitting judges to make findings that increase a convicted defendant’s sentence beyond the ordinary range for the crime, violated the right to trial by jury protected by the Sixth Amendment. The facts supporting increased sentences must be found by a jury beyond a reasonable doubt, Justice Scalia said.

Sovereignty ain’t what it used to be:

The Bush administration has decided to take the unusual step of bestowing on its own troops and personnel immunity from prosecution by Iraqi courts for killing Iraqis or destroying local property after the occupation ends and political power is transferred to an interim Iraqi government, U.S. officials said.

Another shameful moment for the Anti-Defamation League:

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) made its apology yesterday in a newsrelease that stated: “(The ADL) is respectful of the Shahada, the Muslim
Declaration of Faith, which is expressed by millions of Muslims around the world…It was never our intent to offend anyone and we apologize to those who took offense.” On Saturday, the Southern California office of the Council onAmerican-Islamic Relations (CAIR-LA) demanded that the ADL apologize to Muslims for “hate-filled Islamophobic rhetoric” distributed by one of its California offices.

The ADL made its original offensive statements in reference to acontroversy started by right-wing and pro-Israel groups over the decision
by Muslim students at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) to wear stoles bearing the shahada at weekend graduation ceremonies. The stoles in
question also said in Arabic: “God, increase my knowledge.” Opponents falsely claimed that the stoles are an expression of support for terrorism.