Carnival of the Vanities #65 is at Drumwaster’s Rants!
Bonfire of the Vanities #24 is at Wizbang!

I missed this outrage until Oliver Willis brought it to my attention:

“Lingerie-Free Lingerie Bowl Planned”
The Lingerie Bowl, the controversial pay-per-view Super Bowl half-time program, won’t have its model/players on the field wearing lingerie, the show promoter said Tuesday, but denied he was pressured to do so by its sponsor, Dodge.
. . .
Mitch Mortaza, president of Horizon Productions Inc., said despite the name of the show and promotional photos showing players clad in lingerie with numbers stitched into bras, the plans have always been for players to wear slightly different outfits. The women players — seven on each side — will wear short shorts instead of panties and a sports bras decorated with lace, rather than lingerie tops. They’ll also wear shoulderpads, helmets and other protective equipment not shown in promotional photos.

Soon they’ll be trying pass off a game between the No. 2 and 3 ranked teams in the nation as the BCS championship. . . .

A disturbing tale, a wrong which money damages seem inadequate in making right:

A man who spent seven years in prison after he was wrongfully convicted of raping a girl at a Bronx daycare center won a $5 million settlement from the city, his lawyer announced yesterday.
. . .
The man, Alberto Ramos, 40, said that while in prison he endured beatings, was sodomized and tried to commit suicide several times. His conviction was overturned in 1992 when a judge found that the prosecutor had withheld evidence that could have resulted in an acquittal.
. . .
Mr. Ramos was one of five men convicted of sexually abusing children at three city-run day care centers in the Bronx during the mid-1980’s. All of the convictions have since been reversed.
. . .
The evidence uncovered during the civil lawsuit was “astounding,” Mr. Rudin [Ramos’ attorney] said.
City child abuse investigators said that they had referred the Ramos case to the Bronx district attorney’s office for prosecution even though they believed that Mr. Ramos was innocent and that the child’s story was false.
Day care center officials said the child had a history of sexual behavior in the classroom. They testified that they not only told the trial prosecutor about evidence favoring Mr. Ramos but had also informed other prosecutors before Mr. Ramos was arrested. No prosecutor disclosed the information to the defense.

An NPR story on this today pointed out how the false convictions of Ramos and the other defendants came during a period of media hysteria on pre-school safety. Apparently the prosecutors were more interested in grabbing headlines than meting out justice.
Yesterday’s lessons should be applied today. And the area most ripe for prosecutorial abuse today–with all its hype and secrecy–is terrorism. Case in point:

Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen being held incommunicado as an enemy combatant, can meet with a lawyer once the government decides it would not hamper his interrogation, Justice Department officials said on Tuesday.
Senior department officials said “dirty bomb” suspect Padilla, a U.S. citizen held without access to a lawyer for more than 18 months, may eventually meet with an attorney. Lawyers for Padilla have been arguing for access to him and the case is pending before a U.S. appeals court in New York.
“Once the intelligence collection efforts are judged not to be hampered or jeopardized by access to counsel, then there’s no objection to access to counsel,” one of the officials said.

How noble of the Justice Department–it may allow Padilla to consult with a lawyer once it’s “safe.”
We don’t have any reason to doubt the DOJ’s judgment, do we?

Countless media hours will be spent hashing out what kind of trial Saddam Hussein should receive. Who will conduct it? What will the rules be? And on and on.
Don’t get me wrong–those are important issues, particularly for those responsible for running the trial. But as a practical matter, we already know what the trial is going to show–the only issue is what punishment Saddam will receive.
You know, if we put as much effort into discussing our own rights as we spend debating Saddam’s legal standing, we wouldn’t have things like the Patriot Act hanging over our heads.

Drugs may be seeping in from Mexico as fast as ever, but narcotics agents have scored an important victory in the war against vibrators:

A Texas housewife is in big trouble with the law for selling a vibrator to a pair of undercover cops, and the Brisbane vibrator company she works for says Texas is an “antiquated place” with more than its share of “prudes.”
Joanne Webb, a former fifth-grade teacher and mother of three, was in a county court in Cleburne, Texas, on Monday to answer obscenity charges for selling the vibrator to undercover narcotics officers posing as a dysfunctional married couple in search of a sex aid.
Webb, a saleswoman for Passion Parties of Brisbane, faces a year in jail and a $4,000 fine if convicted.

[Insert your own war on drugs/war on terror/Second Amendment punchline here.]
Via Atrios.