In 2001, MCC Brooklyn, a federal detention center for pre-trial arrestees who aren't allowed to or can't make bail pending their trials and sentencings, began videotaping lawyers meeting with their clients. And they lied about it. Yesterday, the lawyers filed a lawsuit seeking thousands in damages.

"When lawyers from the Legal Aid Society made their way into the federal detention center in Brooklyn in the fall of 2001 to meet with detainees, they said, they were alarmed to see video cameras on the walls. Concerned about the confidentiality of their conversations with their shackled clients - immigrant detainees who were rounded up after the Sept. 11 attacks - the lawyers asked whether they were being taped. Prison officials assured them, they say, that the cameras were turned off.

"But the cameras were running. The federal prison was intentionally recording the lawyer-client conversations in violation of federal law and prison policy, according to a December report by the inspector general of the Justice Department, Glenn A. Fine. `Surreptitiously taping attorney-client communications is a direct attack on the role of counsel and on these Legal Aid attorneys' well-established constitutional rights,' said Nelson A. Boxer, a partner of the Dechert law firm, who is representing the lawyers without fee. The plaintiffs are seeking damages under a federal statute that prohibits electronic eavesdropping without court approval and sets $10,000 for each violation. They have agreed to donate any money award to the Legal Aid Society, they said."

We hope the Government has to fork over every red cent for this egregious intrusion.

"If the Justice Department is not going to defend the Constitution, then we will," said Bryan Lonegan, one of the plaintiffs.

There shouldn't be a fine levied on the government, there should be jail time for the individual violators! I doubt the government would begrudge the money if they had to pay a fine, but some prison guard might think twice about going along with it if he knew he could find himself on the wrong side of the bars if he gets caught. This is a violation of the Constitution, not some petty contract dispute.

Freedom of Information Act? What Freedom of Information Act?

The Bush administration is offering a novel reason for denying a request seeking the Justice Department's database on foreign lobbyists: Copying the information would bring down the computer system.

"Implementing such a request risks a crash that cannot be fixed and could result in a major loss of data, which would be devastating," wrote Thomas J. McIntyre, chief in the Justice Department's office for information requests.

...."This was a new one on us. We weren't aware there were databases that could be destroyed just by copying them," Bob Williams of the Center for Public Integrity said Tuesday.

Coming next: we can't fulfill your request because the dog ate all our floppy disks and we can't get more until the next fiscal year starts.

They're not even pretending to be serious anymore, are they?

Nope, they're not! And if I were a congressman who heard this "explanation," I would move to launch an inquiry into why the Bush administration's computers are so delicate that they crash if you dare to try to use them, giving particular attention to the question as to whether this situation puts the country at risk during "wartime". (After all, there IS a WAR ON, in case they weren't aware of it!)

THE TEXAS EDUCATION "MIRACLE"

George Bush became governor of Texas in 1994 and reforming education was one of his major campaign promises. So how did he do?

A U.S. Census Bureau study shows that Texas again ranks last in the percentage of high school graduates.

The study released Tuesday shows that 77 percent of Texans age 25 and older had a high school degree in 2003, the same percentage as a decade earlier, when Texas ranked 39th in the country. Meanwhile, graduation rates in other states have improved and a record 85 percent of Americans have high school degrees.

So Bush's programs apparently had no effect at all, while other states showed consistent improvement. The result is that Texas now ranks dead last.

But there's good news for Texans: both George Bush and Rod Paige, the superintendent of the Houston school district and the man most closely associated with the "Texas Miracle," are gone. The bad news is that George Bush is now president of the United States and Rod Paige is his Secretary of Education.

Oops.