Chalk one up for the right to know.

Thanks to a new ruling and the persistence of reporter George Lardner, it looks like we'll be able to find out the names of the unsuccessful pardon and commutation applicants who tried to secure clemency from former President George W. Bush.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly gave Lardner a crucial victory in his lawsuit filed to force disclosure of the unsuccessful pardon and commutation applicants. Certainly, some entertaining names will be among the list. Through early November 2008, Bush had denied 1,535 pardon requests and 6,290 commutation requests.

Lardner, known for his work with the Washington Post, had filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Justice Department's Office of Pardon Attorney. This is evidently part of his work researching the presidential pardon power, which he is conducting through the Center for the Study of the Presidency. The pardon attorney, in turn, had contended the applicants' names were exempt from disclosure en masse. But the judge reasoned otherwise, in part:

"Just as disclosure of the names of successful clemency applicants furthers the public’s interest in understanding the functioning of the clemency process, so too does disclosure of the identities of unsuccessful clemency applicants “let citizens know ‘what their government is up to.’."

The judge further reasoned that the clemency applicants had no reasonable expectation that their applications would remain secret, and concluded their reputations would not be harmed by disclosure of their failed clemency bid.

John H. Sununu -- the former New Hampshire governor and White House chief of staff, not the former New Hampshire senator -- sued Philippine Airlines in 1998. Sununu claimed the airline had stiffed him and his partner, Victor H. Frank, Jr., out of some $513,00.

That suit lives on.

Friday, U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy, Jr. kept alive part of the original claim filed by Sununu and Frank. While dismissing a breach-of-contract component, Judge Kennedy declined to dismiss the entire case.

The suit is most instructive, perhaps, for the light it sheds on the lobbying and influence-peddling strategic international consulting business. In brief, Sununu and Frank had signed on to help negotiate reduced lease payments for four aircraft that Philippines Airlines leased from World Airways. Sununu and Frank said they would use their "prestige, reputations and personal contacts," and contend they ultimately saved their client more than $12 million.

The case has been in the deep freezer for years because Philippines Airlines had gone into the equivalent of bankruptcy proceedings, from which it has recently emerged.

Anarian Chad Jackson led a Little Rock gang called the West Side Posse. Charles Raynor led a rival gang called the Monroe Street Hustlers. The two gangs fought constantly.

One day in 2001, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals noted in a decision issued Thursday, Jackson and fellow gang member Chris Bush spotted Raynor talking on a cordless phone in his front yard. Then:

"Jackson remarked, 'There go Little Chuck [Raynor], man. He out there slipping. We need to go on and get him.' Jackson instructed the driver to park behind the house, and Jackson and Bush exited the vehicle carrying a .40 caliber semiautomatic handgun and a .357 Magnum, respectively. They approached Raynor from an alley running alongside the house and began firing. One of the bullets struck Raynor in the head, killing him."

OK, so Jackson is a tough guy. But is he a slinger and a banger?

A gang intelligence expert testified that a "slinger" is a drug dealer and a "banger" is a gang member who's engaged in violent activities. Both terms, the expert testified, applied to Jackson.

Jackson objected, claiming the rhetorical characterizations were inadmissible character evidence, made without sufficient back-up evidence. It was not a trivial argument; one member of the Arkansas Supreme Court agreed.

But in its ruling Thursday, the 8th Circuit concluded the two terms were simply a summing up of what had been previously testified to; they were cumulative, and thus unlikely to have had in themselves much of an impact on the jury's decision.

The slang words certainly carry an extra punch, though, simply because they are so vivid and easy to recall. That's undeniably helpful to the prosecutors, who want to shape jurors' perceptions of the defendant. It is not the mass of evidence the mind recalls, but the quick summing up.

Tough day at the office Wednesday for Ms. Deborah-Denise Dubose, who in rapid succession had five separate lawsuits dismissed by U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth.

For what may best be described as an assortment of reasons, Ms. Dubose had sued the Treasury Department, Washington, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, PNC Bank, a business entity named Horning Brothers and another business entity identified as "Cofritz Co."

The flavor of these five separate lawsuits may be appreciated by one claim, in which she stated that prisoners bring her "look-alike" to the apartment complex and that the prisoners:

"have there house arrest machines illegally hooked up to my electric and have been for over 4 1/2 years. They both threaten to rope and whatever else to me to my face, and the Rental Office laughs about it."

Another claim states, in its entirety:

Please correct my name on my 501(c)(3) Please!
Tax exemption number: (redacted)
Name of church organization: Deborah-Denise Dubose United House of Prayer
Thank you in advance!

Can rehabilitation justify a longer prison sentence? On Tuesday, in an interesting case, the Circuit Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said no.

Other circuits have said otherwise, which is one of the reason why the sealed cased decided Tuesday is worth a look. The facts alone are worth a look.

The 56-year-old gentlemen involved was sentenced to 11 years in prison after pleading guilty to distributing 2.1 grams of heroin. His name is kept under seal because, as part of a plea agreement, he forked over some information about other bad guys. The information proved not very useful, but isn't why the trial judge sentenced him to the 11 years. Said the trial judge, U.S. District Judge John D. Bates:

"I do think that the defendant may benefit from some of the programs and educational training and the
medical treatment that is available in the federal prison system, and that would actually be more
available and more useful for the defendant over a somewhat longer period of time than it would over a
very short period of time."

Circuit Split Alert: the 2nd and 3rd Circuits have ruled that promoting rehab is not a valid and sufficient reason for imposing a longer sentence, while the 9th and 8th Circuit have ruled it can be. Citing strict statutory language, the D.C. Circuit opines:

"In deciding how long to keep a defendant in prison, sentencing courts may not use imprisonment as a means of rehabilitation."

It's important to use the right words when filing a Freedom of Information Act. A ruling Monday by U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth illustrates.

Lamberth was considering a claim by the law firm Carter, Fullerton and Hayes, which had filed a FOIA request seeking Federal Trade Commission documents concerning investigations of the alcohol industry. The request cited "documents…relating to malt beverages; malt beverage manufacturers; and distilled spirits wholesalers/distributors; malt beverage, wine and distilled spirits retailers."

Belatedly, following filing of the lawsuit, the FTC discovered numerous documents that had not been previously released to Carter, Fullerton and Hayes. Here's the trade commission's explanation for the delay:

"Although Plaintiff’s FOIA request sought documents related to regulation of ‘alcohol,’ ‘wine,’ ‘spirits’ and ‘malt beverages,’ Plaintiff did not ask the FTC to search for documents containing the term ‘liquor.’"

Suits & Sentences note to self: completely exhaust Roget's Thesaurus when filing next FOIA request.

Carter, Fullerton and Hayes contended the FTC's explanation "strains credulity" and argued the firm should not need to invoke certain "magic words" in order to obtain a reasonable FOIA response.

For an assortment of reasons -- and the magic words business was not the real foundation of this dispute -- Lambeth sided with the FTC and dismissed the FOIA suit

The University of California at Santa Cruz has many virtues, but ideological diversity is not one of them.

The gorgeous ocean-view campus is one of the nation's prettiest, the academic program is stimulating, the students and faculty are smart and the Ultimate Frisbee playing fields are absolutely stunning.

Pause for a Suits & Sentences flashback.

But on this seemingly 'shroom-rich campus that has adopted the name Banana Slugs for its athletic teams, do not expect to find anything quite so traditional as an ROTC program or even a military recruiter. And in a ruling Friday, the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has rejected a bid by the Young America's Foundation to penalize U.C. Santa Cruz for its supposed inhospitality to the military.

YAF, which bills itself as "committed to ensuring that young Americans understand and are inspired by...the importance of a strong national defense." Incredibly -- for anyone who knows the U.C. Santa Cruz reputation -- the conservative organization had several members on the Santa Cruz campus. They claimed that on five occasions between 2005 and 2007, student and faculty protests blocked or disrupted military recruiters on campus.

YAF sued, trying to force the federal government to invoke the Solomon Amendment and withdraw tens of millions of dollars in federal funding. No dice. On Friday, the appellate panel upheld a trial judge in concluding that the conservative youth could not show that the action they sought -- the withdrawal or threatened withdrawal of the federal funds -- would actually solve the problem they identified of impeded military access.

Michigan farmers on Thursday lost their challenge to a new national animal ID program. On the other hand, they did catch some sympathy from U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer. While dismissing the farmers' complaints, Judge Collyer did acknowledge in her 17-page opinion:

"Living a pastoral life in the 21st century is clearly a struggle and Plaintiffs’ complaints about forced electronic tagging and forced inclusion in a national database are understandable."

The farmers themselves, in rather quaint language, had asserted in one legal filing that the Agriculture Department's animal ID plan was "destroying their pleasant agricultural way of life." Pleasant is, well, it's a pleasant word to see. More concretely, the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund complained that the identification numbers and radio frequency information collected by the Agriculture Department will "result in the collection of information into a huge national database against their wills and in violation of their religious
beliefs."

The animal ID system is supposed to track animals later found to be associated with disease like bovine TB. It's a massive undertaking, with more than 95 million beef and dairy cattle in the United States, and Collyer noted that the Michigan farmers are "alarmed by such a gargantuan collection of personal information about themselves and their livelihoods."

Nonetheless, Collyer reasoned that the federal Agriculture Department couldn't really be sued because adoption of the animal ID system was up to individual state agriculture departments. In turn, associated complaints against the Michigan Department of Agriculture failed because the federal laws cited by the aggrieved farmers -- like the Religious Freedom Restoration Act -- didn't apply to states.

Suits & Sentences offers a tip of the hat to Jackson L. McGrady, who on Wednesday prevailed over the Department of the Navy in a Freedom of Information Act dispute. McGrady beat the Navy despite the fact that he was proceeding pro se, representing himself against the Navy's professionals. He even won the admiration of U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler, who noted:

"Plaintiff may be pro se but his pleadings were as clear, well-written, and well-reasoned as those submitted by most practicing lawyers."

Actually, Kessler added, "there is some documentary evidence to suggest" that McGrady himself is a trained attorney. Indeed, a two-second Google search suggests McGrady serves or has served as senior associate counsel for the U.S. Marine Corps Combat Development Command. But still: self-representation is no easy feat.

McGrady, himself a former Marine Corps major, had requested copies of the documents associated with the Marine Corps' promotion boards that convened in 2004-2005 to select new lieutenant colonels. The Navy contended the documents sought were "proceedings" that could be properly withheld. McGrady said they weren't "proceedings," and Kessler agreed, reasoning:

"They are simply a compilation of data, and a tool, albeit a very important one, used by Selection Boards."

The promotion documents -- called "master brief sheets" -- were noted by Kessler to "provide the the data used during the  process, not the substance of the deliberations." Kessler's decision means the Marine Corps must cough up the documents sought by McGrady, who is apparently seeking evidence as part of a separate claim he pursuing over what he deems an unjust denial of promotion.

A trial judge on Tuesday handed a stinging defeat to David Safavian, former Bush administration official and one-time colleague of infamous lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

In a 35-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman rejected Safavian's bid for acquittal and request for a new trial. Friedman's decision leaves intact Safavian's on-again, off-again conviction.

Initially convicted in June 2006 on four counts of lying and concealment, and sentenced to 18 months in prison, Safavian later won reversal of the convictions by  an appellate court. Last December, following a second trial, Safavian was convicted again.

Safavian raised critical points; for instance, the former chief of staff for Bush's General Services Administration argued that a false statement made in a request for an ethics opinion cannot be considered "material" as a matter of law. Other of Safavian's arguments seem more of a stretch: for instance, he argued that a false statement to an FBI agent wasn't material because the agent already knew Safavian was lying. He further claimed the government engaged in vindictive prosecution, by pursuing charges the second time around that hadn't been raised in the first trial.

But Friedman concluded:

"There was no miscarriage of justice..."