I found an interesting post on Underdog by Jon Katz describing a case handed down this week, U.S. v. McCarson.  An excerpt:

When convicted felons are around guns and unlawful drugs, they risk exposure to substantial incarceration time. Lewis D. McCarson learned that when federal marshals came to his girlfriend's home with an arrest warrant for him. U.S. v. McCarson, 2008 U.S. App. LEXIS 11234 (D.C. Cir. May 27, 2008). Other than the arrest warrant, all went well for McCarson until he told the marshals that he wanted to wear his black pants, coat, and shoes on his way out the door. The marshals went to the bedroom for those articles of closing, and claim they then saw a bag of marijuana and a handgun in plain view and cocaine by the time they further opened the drawer to retrieve the handgun.

One lesson learned here: McCarson's apparel request to the marshals boomeranged back with the rank smell of feces. Because the marshals had an arrest warrant but no search warrant, one is left to wonder whether they would have bothered doing anything to find the gun and drugs had McCarson just agreed to leave the home in his underwear...

When asked about his favorite candidate in this year's presidential race, 31-year-old Steven Hubbard didn't hesitate to say, "Obama's my man."

But that's where his political voice ends. Hubbard, a convicted felon from Tupelo, is one of nearly 150,000 inmates and convicted felons in Mississippi who've lost their right to vote, nearly 7 percent of the state's adult population...

...Mississippi has a procedure that would allow Hubbard to have his rights restored. But with the presidential election less than six months away, some people have begun to wonder about the effect of having so many voting-age Americans disenfranchised, particularly black voters.

According to the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit criminal justice organization engaged in research and advocacy, 48 states and the District of Columbia prohibit inmates from voting while incarcerated on felony offenses. Only Maine and Vermont permit these inmates to vote. Thirty-five states prohibit felons from voting while they are on parole.

"We don't let everyone vote - not children, not non-citizens, not the mentally incompetent. There are certain minimum and objective standards of trustworthiness, loyalty and responsibility, and those who have committed serious crimes against their fellow citizens don't meet those standards."