Between the Cory Maye case, the 20-year forensics scandal involving favored prosecution witnesses Steven Hayne and Michael West, and the recent exonerations of three men wrongly convicted of murder, you'd think that Gov. Haley Barbour (R-Miss.) would begin to have some concern about how justice is administered in his state. But Barbour hasn't said a word about any of those stories. Instead, after years of refusing to grant pardons—including even posthumous pardons to framed civil rights leaders—Barbour has in the last year pardoned five convicted killers, four of whom killed their wives or girlfriends. Strangely, as Reason Senior Editor Radley Balko explains at Slate, all five men had the good fortune of being selected for a trusty program that had them working at the governor's mansion where Barbour lives.

• Ben Bernanke's bid for another term atop the Fed struggles past the Senate banking committee.

• The SEIU and the AFL-CIO dial back their support for the Senate health care bill. Well, sort of.

• 2009 sets the record for the number of journalists killed around the world. I blame Craigslist.

• The FBI's relationship with American Muslims takes a dive.

• The Brits say bye to paper checks.

The New York Times columnist on Aug. 7:

Some commentators have tried to play down the mob aspect of these scenes, likening the campaign against health reform to the campaign against Social Security privatization back in 2005. But there's no comparison. I've gone through many news reports from 2005, and while anti-privatization activists were sometimes raucous and rude, I can't find any examples of congressmen shouted down, congressmen hanged in effigy, congressmen surrounded and followed by taunting crowds. [...]

So this is something new and ugly.

Krugman today:

A message to progressives: By all means, hang Senator Joe Lieberman in effigy.

Meanwhile, Krugman's page-mate David Brooks, in a Hamlet-style piece on health care reform, waxes positively Obamaesque about the bill's magic cost-effectiveness:

[T]hey are experimenting with dozens of gradual programs that might bend the cost curve.

If you've ever heard about it, it's in there — improved insurance exchanges, payment innovations, an independent commission to cap Medicare payment rates, an innovation center, comparative effectiveness research. There’s at least a pilot program for every promising idea.

Italics mine. Here's a cost-saving reform I've heard of, that's not in there, because the president rejected it at the very beginning of this process: Place individuals on equal tax footing as employers when it comes to purchasing health insurance plans, so that we can transition from the post-WWII Company Man artifact of health-insurance-as-reward-for-employment, to a competition-spurring, cost-reducing model of individuals owning and shopping around for their own policies. In other words, markets, not mandates.

As Peter Suderman keeps pointing out, this plan doubles down on most everything that's bad with the current system. Pretending in the face of mounting evidence that this limping husk of a bill contains every bold reform idea there is might just be one reason why it's not very popular. At some point, people just stop believing you.

Around noon here today, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and U.S. President Barack Obama bracketed Brazilian President Lula de Silva on the podium at the plenary of the Copenhagen climate change conference. My off-the-cuff analysis is that neither man appeared to budge from their negotiating positions, leaving still in doubt how the negotiations might conclude.

Premier Wen listed his country's recent energy efficiency accomplishments and other climate-friendly activities such as a massive reforestation effort. However, Wen insisted that the Kyoto Protocol remain as the guide for negotiations which signals that developing countries, including China, do not have to make legally binding commitments to control their greenhouse gas emissions. Wen reiterated China's promise to increase its carbon intensity (amount of carbon per unit of GDP) by 40 to 45 percent by 2020. Wen also noted that the China had reduced its carbon intensity by 46 percent between 1992 and 2005. So the new target seems to be pretty much on the business-as-usual path, not an additional commitment to control emissions. 

For his part, President Obama did not offer deeper greenhouse gas emissions cuts and he insisted that whatever deal is struck here in Copenhagen in must rest on three pillars: mitigation, transparency, and financing:

First, all major economies must put forward decisive national actions that will reduce their emissions, and begin to turn the corner on climate change. I’m pleased that many of us have already done so, and I’m confident that America will fulfill the commitments that we have made: cutting our emissions in the range of 17 percent by 2020, and by more than 80 percent by 2050 in line with final legislation.

Second, we must have a mechanism to review whether we are keeping our commitments, and to exchange this information in a transparent manner. These measures need not be intrusive, or infringe upon sovereignty. They must, however, ensure that an accord is credible, and that we are living up to our obligations. For without such accountability, any agreement would be empty words on a page.

Third, we must have financing that helps developing countries adapt, particularly the least-developed and most vulnerable to climate change. America will be a part of fast-start funding that will ramp up to $10 billion in 2012. And, yesterday, Secretary Clinton made it clear that we will engage in a global effort to mobilize $100 billion in financing by 2020, if – and only if – it is part of the broader accord that I have just described.

I was watching the speech in the press room and when it concluded I heard a few small boos from the assembled foreign journos.

It looks like the negotiations will be a cliffhanger (and that I'll end up being here all night).

Wen's speech is not online yet, but you can read Obama's here.

In the latest edition of Friday Funnies, Scott Stantis looks at the evolving debate over climate change.