Glenn Greenwald has an excellent expose on the cruel and inhumane conditions of Pvt. Bradley Manning's pretrial detention. Manning is accused of leaking the State Department cables to Wikileaks. He's being held in solitary confinement at the military brig at Quantico.

For 23 out of 24 hours every day -- for seven straight months and counting -- he sits completely alone in his cell. Even inside his cell, his activities are heavily restricted; he's barred even from exercising and is under constant surveillance to enforce those restrictions. For reasons that appear completely punitive, he's being denied many of the most basic attributes of civilized imprisonment, including even a pillow or sheets for his bed (he is not and never has been on suicide watch).

Here's the website for the Marine Corps Base Quantico which includes the Brig. Manning is thought to be in Special Quarters 2. [More...]

Via CBS News, Mark Stephens, attorney for Wikileaks' Julian Assange, appears on David Frost's al Jazeera TV show and says they've received word a grand jury has been empaneled in Alexandria, VA to investigate criminal charges.

"We have heard from the Swedish authorities there has been a secretly empaneled grand jury in Alexandria...just over the river from Washington DC, next to the Pentagon," Stephens said. "They are currently investigating this, and indeed the Swedes we understand have said that if he comes to Sweden, they will defer their interest in him to the Americans. Now that shows some level of collusion and embarrassment, so it does seem to me what we have here is nothing more than holding charges...so ultimately they can get their mitts on him."

Mark Madoff, Bernie Madoff's son, hanged himself today while his wife was out of town and their two year old son slept in a nearby bedroom.

Today is the second anniversary of the arrest of Bernie Madoff. It was Mark and his brother Andrew who called authorities and turned Bernie in the day after he told them what he had done. No criminal charges had been brought against Mark, although civil lawsuits were plentiful.

How sad. The New York Times has more here and the New York Post here.

Julian Assange's lawyer has told ABC News that a U.S. indictment for spying is imminent. (I'm not linking to ABC News because their news articles play audio when you click on them and I hate that.) His attorney, Jennifer Robinson, says:

Our position of course is that we don't believe it applies to Mr. Assange and that in any event he's entitled to First Amendment protection as publisher of WikiLeaks, and any prosecution under the Espionage Act would in my view be unconstitutional and puts at risk all media organizations in the U.S."

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Actor Wesley Snipes reports to prison today to serve a three year sentence for failure to file tax returns. He's not happy, but he's going.

Snipes will be at the McKean Federal Correctional Institution in Lewis Run,

The Justice Department announced the indictment of more than 300 people today for investment fraud as part of Operation Broken Trust.

The operation was launched on August 16, 2009. Attorney General Holder said today that 343 people have been charged criminally, 189 face civil charges and 87 defendants have been sentenced to prison.

The DOJ press release is here.

Galleon Group founder Raj Rajaratnam has lost his motion to suppress wiretaps.

Thousands of conversations between Mr. Rajaratnam and more than 130 colleagues, employees, friends and family were secretly recorded by federal agents over a nine-month period in 2008.

The Judge did sever some of the conspiracy counts:

Mr. Rajaratnam and Ms. Chiesi are among 24 people charged criminally in a broad probe into insider trading on Wall Street. So far, 14 people have pleaded guilty in the case.

The day before Thanksgiving, the feds have arrested Don Chu in the hedgefund insider trading investigation. He is charged by complaint (no Indictment yet.)

Why today? CNBC says he was planning on traveling to Taiwan next week. Via the Wall St. Journal:

Here’s the WSJ’s ongoing coverage of the arrest and what it means. Read here, here, here, here and here for LawBlog stories on what’s happened so far in the investigation.

Highlights from the complaint are here.

When a police officer breaks the law, shouldn't they be treated the same as anyone else? Or even more harshly if they abused their power as guardians of community safety? Not in Oakland, where former Bart cop Johannes Mehserle was sentenced today to the minimum two years in prison for killing unarmed 22 year old Oscar Grant. The shooting was captured on videocamera and went viral on You Tube. (Raw footage here, news version here.)

Mehserle was convicted by a jury of involuntary manslaughter. He testified he mistook his firearm for his Taser and accidentally shot Grant. The jury found he acted negligently and that he unlawfully took Grant's life but didn't intend to kill Grant.

The jury also found Mehserle had used a gun during the crime, a sentencing enhancer, but the Judge threw that out today, "saying it was not supported by the evidence." With credit for time already served, Mehserle will be eligible for parole in 7 months. [More...]

After 58 hours of deliberation, the jury in the trial of Howard K. Stern, boyfriend/manager of Anna Nicole Smith, acquitted him on 7 of the 9 counts he was facing, most of which charged him with providing drugs to "an addict."

He was convicted of two counts, for using a false name on a prescription and conspiring to obtain controlled substances by fraud. (His name instead of Anna's were on some of the prescriptions.)

Bottom line: The jury did not find anyone prescribed or delivered drugs to "an addict."

"The whole case here was based on the idea that Anna was some drug-seeking, drug-crazed addict ... for that part of the people's case, Howard was acquitted across the board," said Stern's attorney, Steve Sadow, who emphasized that his client was convicted only of using false names to obtain medication, which he contended was for Smith's privacy.

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The Nevada Supreme Court today upheld O.J. Simpson's convictions for armed robbery and kidnapping.

The opinion is here.

The Court reversed the conviction of his co-defendant, saying he should have received a separate trial due to, among other things, the prejudice of being tried with O.J. The opinion is here.

When will he be eligible for parole on the 33 year sentence? My best guess, 9 years.

105 tons of marijuana seized in Mexico. (Lots more pictures below the fold.) The Mexican authorities at a press conference held by Brigadier General Staff commander of the Second Military Zone, Alfonso Duarte Mujica, said it began with a random observation by the Tijuana municipal police who noticed a convoy of vehicles accompanying a tractor trailer. A shootout ensued and they called for backup and the military and other law enforcement groups quickly arrived. They detained a bunch of people who took them to houses in three different poor neighborhoods of the city, and then they got to a warehouse where they located six tractor trailers loaded with the pot.

So whose pot was it? Apparently not the cartels'. Gen. Duarte Mujica says there are no more cartels in Baja and Tijuana. [More...]