Sure, you remember him.

He's retiring.

This article says he "gave no specifics on his plans after his July 31 resignation, though rumors have swirled for months that he was considering a deal for a television court show."

He was quite a character - a "former New York cab driver -- 57 years old and on the bench nearly 29 years" who "opened his chambers to television cameras and quickly made clear he was no ordinary judge. On the opening day of the case in February, he declared: 'This body belongs to me right now.'"

But his retirement is not, like the article says, merely to spend more time with his family

Rather, this article from last Friday notes he got busted smoking a joint in a city park in March, about a month after the Anna Nicole hearing.

He'd been thinking about retirement "but recent events factored in...."  I'll say.

It looks like he's getting a diversionary disposition of the offense.  Which is, in my opinion, appropriate.  Then again, after dealing with those knuckleheads, one could easily argue he needed a little, well, relaxation or whatever it was he was getting from burning some rope while in a city park ... and shouldn't have even been arrested at all.

I'm torn on this one...I'm a firm believer that we have an inalienable right to keep our blood, urine and even our breath to ourselves regardless of what job we hold.  Then again, truck drivers have to submit to these tests after they have an accident that causes harm, regardless if they are at fault or not...so why not cops?

Ken Silverstein asks and Mark Perry answers.

A Moratorium Wired to Stop the War
Jeremy Brecher & Brendan Smith, The Nation, June 18, 2007

Refitting an idea from the Vietnam era to the age of the Internet, organizers of the Iraq Moratorium Day are inviting ordinary Americans to demand an end to the war in targeted activities in their local communities and viral activities online. The goal is a "monthly expression of determination to end the war."

The initiators, a handful of individuals from different corners of the antiwar movement, are asking people to make a simple pledge:

• "I hereby make a commitment that on Friday, September 21, 2007, and the third Friday of every subsequent month I will break my daily routine and take some action, by myself or with others, to end the War in Iraq."

US Labor Against the War and Progressive Democrats of America have already signed on to the Moratorium effort. Individual supporters include some of the usual suspects in the antiwar movement--Susan Sarandon, Howard Zinn, Anne Wright, Tom Hayden and Eve Ensler, as well as Edwidge Danticat, Danny Glover and Gold Star dad Fernando Suarez de Solar. But the movement is also tapping unusual suspects like Adam Neiman, CEO of the fair-trade fashion house No Sweat, actress Mercedes Ruehl and the antiwar Freeway Blogger.

"We felt that it was critical to move beyond the periodic national demonstrations in Washington, DC, New York and/or San Francisco, and instead develop and advance an approach that encourages increasingly massive local actions that suggests, more than anything else, no more business-as-usual," said Bill Fletcher Jr., a Moratorium organizer who is former president of TransAfrica Forum. "The Iraq Moratorium will allow local actions integrally connected at a national level such that each effort is understood and felt to be part of a national movement without at the same time creating a new organization or coalition."

Moratorium activities will range from wearing black armbands to not buying gas; from writing letters to politicians and the media to vigils, rallies and teach-ins; from special religious services to music, art and cultural events; from film showings and lectures to student-initiated alternative classes.

Organizers will work with netroots activists to post video of Moratorium activities on the site and on YouTube and similar sites. Poetry about the war will be solicited, and website visitors will be asked to help choose the best to be included in an anthology. Working groups have been formed to spread the word in the blogosphere.

My friend Dan was on his way home the other day, and found an American flag crumpled in a gutter outside his apartment building. The flag, perhaps as big as the cover of a book, had been used as a decoration for some pre-Fourth of July party, but afterwards was merely thrown aside like litter for the street-sweepers to collect.

Dan gathered it up, smoothed the creases, and hung it from a nearby railing. The motivation for his actions was hard for him to explain, but it came down to this: Everything else in America is so screwed up, but this American thing before him would not be defiled within reach of his arm. My friend, surrounded by the chaos of a flailing nation and filled with the need to act, found some solace in the rescue of that flag.

He is not alone in his sentiments, not alone in his desire to make things right again within reach of his arm.

There is something happening today in America. With the right kind of ears, you can hear it in the sound of millions of brows slowly furrowing in anger and disgust. It feels like those tense moments just before the eruption of a summer thunderstorm, those moments when the air is electric, the ozone reek of spent lightning fills the world, and you know something very loud is about to happen.

What is happening, what can be heard and smelled and sensed all across the land, is the cresting wave of rage, betrayal and fury that is, finally, roaring across the shores of our collective American heart. After more than six years of lies, theft, graft, corruption, manipulation and misconduct, just about every living person within these borders finds themselves today gripped by the slow seethe, directed inward as much as outward, of one who has come around to see just how much of a fool they've been played for.

There are numbers to argue the reality of what is happening: The latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll has 81% of Americans believing this country to be very much on the wrong track. Put simply, four out of every five people nowadays have that furrowed brow, that sense of betrayal, that slow seethe.

It is a Becoming, this thing, or perhaps an Awakening. It is very real, and is all around us, and it feels like something very loud is about to happen.

Vice President Exempts His Office from the Requirements for Protecting Classified Information

Washington, D.C. -- The Oversight Committee has learned that over the objections of the National Archives, Vice President Cheney exempted his office from the presidential order that establishes government-wide procedures for safeguarding classified national security information. The Vice President asserts that his office is not an "entity within the executive branch."