Naked City

• Naked City

  Headlines and happenings from Austin and beyond

  BY MIKE CLARK-MADISON

• Naked City

  More eyes than usual upon a city parking contract

  BY MIKE CLARK-MADISON

• Naked City

  "Upset emissions" pose a not-so-nonroutine threat to air quality

  BY WELLS DUNBAR

• Naked City

  A raw deal on health insurance stays sweet for Aetna

  BY MICHAEL KING

• Naked City

  The Secretary of State calls time-out on the voting machine front

  BY LEE NICHOLS

• Naked City

  The DOJ spams America with canned op-eds supporting mandatory minimum sentences

  BY JORDAN SMITH

• Naked City

  The brain trust agrees to restore some – but not all – of last year's health care cuts

  BY MICHAEL KING

• Naked City

  How radical! A station that plays several different kinds of music!

  BY KEVIN BRASS

• Naked City

  March to update the women's suffrage movement for modern times

  BY DIANA WELCH

• Naked City

  Progressives organize, train, and rally to turn Texas blue

  BY RACHEL PROCTOR MAY

Under the fearless leadership of Attorney General John Ashcroft, the U.S. Department of Justice has taken to churning out prewritten op-ed pieces in support of mandatory minimum sentencing requirements, which are being pitched to local newspapers bearing the signatures of local U.S. attorneys, reports the Drug Reform Coordination Network. Ashcroft's full-throttle "AstroTurfing" campaign – i.e., a pseudo-grassroots campaign – comes in response to a growing discontent with the man-min sentencing structure, voiced by several federal judges, including Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy – and, more recently, a June 24 Supreme Court decision (Blakley v. Washington), in which the court opined that juries, and not judges, must decide the facts of a case if those facts may result in a longer sentence.

The DOJ's bolstering campaign was outed earlier this month by the advocacy group Families Against Mandatory Minimums and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, after the "model" op-ed turned up in three different newspapers. And last week DRCNet spotted the same piece – which warns that the high court's Blakley decision jeopardizes "the safety of America" – in three Tennessee newspapers, signed by two different U.S. attorneys.

Meanwhile, the Nevada Supreme Court has declined a motion filed by the Marijuana Policy Project, which asked the court to force federal drug czar John Walters to account for all taxpayer money he spent in 2002 stumping in the Silver State against a ballot initiative that sought to decriminalize possession of up to 3 oz. of marijuana. The MPP argued that Walters' visits to the state were in clear violation of the 1939 Hatch Act, which regulates the political activities of government officials. Further, Walters refused to comply with Nevada's election expenditure reporting requirements and was chastised by the state's attorney general for his "disturbing" interference in the state vote.

Nonetheless, Walters was allowed to circumvent the law after the AG opined that Walters would likely prevail in court. On Aug. 18, the state's highest court confirmed that opinion in a one-paragraph order.