A few news and notes

1.  A police officer gets 3 years from Judge Scola for helping out a group of pot dealers (via Miami Herald):

Life doesn’t have a delete button, U.S. District Judge Robert Scola told a former Miami-Dade County police detective as he sentenced the man to three years in prison for aiding and abetting a drug family’s distribution racket.
Roderick Silva, a highly valuable asset for the now-imprisoned Santiesteban family, pleaded guilty in April to protecting the violent pot organization, making him the 21st and possibly last defendant to be convicted in the long-running Miami federal case.
In a court apology, Silva said he is ashamed of the man he was and regrets the actions that put his wife and two children “through six years of heartache, stress and financial ruin.” Twenty friends and family members came to support the 46-year-old former officer at the sentencing.

 2.  The Blago case is coming back for re-sentencing after a bunch of convictions got wiped away (via AP): 

Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich may still end up serving all of his 14-year prison term despite an appeals court ruling that he didn't break the law when he sought to secure a post in President Barack Obama's Cabinet for appointing an Obama adviser to the president's old U.S. Senate seat.

In overturning five of 18 corruptions counts that sent Blagojevich off to a prison, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago on Tuesday also ordered he be resentenced. But the court said his original prison sentence may not be extreme, even with some counts dismissed.

Speaking outside the Blagojevich family home in Chicago, his wife, Patti, told reporters later Tuesday that her husband had expressed disappointment the court didn't hand him a clear legal victory.

"He's disappointed, of course," she said, the couple's 18-year-old daughter at her side. She added more optimistically, "Possibly this is a step in the right direction of getting Rod home to his family."

The court's unanimous ruling addressed a key question looming over the Blagojevich case: Where is the line between legal and illegal political wheeling and dealing? The panel's answer: When it came to Blagojevich's attempt to land a Cabinet seat, he did not cross the line. But his attempts to trade the Senate seat for campaign cash, however, were illegal, the court concluded.

 3.  This Alito interview is pretty revealing.  Why does Bill Kristol have a joker-like smile during the whole thing?