Wired reports:
The Air Force is tightening restrictions on which blogs its troops can read, cutting off access to just about any independent site with the word "blog" in its web address.

When I hear stuff this utterly stupid, it makes me want to scream.... Piles of torn out hair are accumulating around my desk as we speak," one senior Air Force official writes in an e-mail.

San Francisco Chronicle reports:

California State University East Bay has fired a math teacher after six weeks on the job because she inserted the word "nonviolently" in her state-required Oath of Allegiance form.

Marianne Kearney-Brown, a Quaker and graduate student who began teaching remedial math to undergrads Jan. 7, lost her $700-a-month part-time job after refusing to sign an 87-word Oath of Allegiance to the Constitution that the state requires of elected officials and public employees.

Another one from the "won't see it in the American media" file - The Guardian interviews economist Joseph Stiglitz about his new book ("The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict" - it's on sale at Amazon). When the Congressional Budget Office estimated the cost of the war at "only" $500,000,000,000, Stiglitz thought that seemed low. So he spent a couple of years looking into it.

Three trillion. That's just America, folks. Not Britain's expenditures, for instance. And it's a conservative estimate, because it ignores the cost of economic burdens, just looks at actual expenditures.

The article's worth reading. Did you know the Pentagon spends $400,000 a year on a contractor who replaces a grunt costing only $40,000 a year? That's what they mean when they say "privatization". Remember how "privatization" is supposed to "save us money"? What they really mean is it will save them money, if by "save" you mean that their friends will make a lot of money.

Have Arrest Warrant for One worker. Why Not Detain a Whole Factory Full at Gunpoint?

Sorry for the inconvenience, says government, but, after all, reasonable use of force and fourth amendment rights are, well, subjective.

Citizen's commission of labor groups launches investigation practices of enforcement actions by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE). The Commission will investigate claims of unconstitutional workplace enforcement actions, including massive round ups and detention of workers and in particular ICE's use of arrest warrants for a limited number of illegal immigrants who work at a given company as a pretext to detain the entire workforce, including many U.S. citizens, while agents determine whether there are additional illegal immigrants among them.

"Tens of millions of workers in America go to work every day without . . . an awareness that at their workplaces, without any warning, they could be swept up in a massive raid conducted by heavily armed government agents," said Joe Hansen, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union and chairman of the National Commission on ICE Misconduct and Violations of 4th Amendment Rights. "Workers are not aware that they could be detained at gunpoint. That they could be handcuffed. . . . That they could be denied any contact with family members or legal counsel."

In the Washington Post ICE spokeswoman Pat Reilly explains, " "I would imagine that some people may be detained beyond what they feel is reasonable. But it's subjective," she said. "What we're trying to do is get to the bottom of who has the right to be here and who might be posing as a U.S. citizen."

Southern Illinois boat fiberglass and gel coat repair shop owner  (a non-smoker) defies state's ban on smoking at all business establishments.

The Southern.com reports:

A call from authorities hasn't halted one West Frankfort man's plans to host a peaceful protest against the state's recently implemented Smoke-Free laws.

John Hemminghaus has been passing out flyers and making phone calls to invite as many people as he can reach to a March 1 event he is calling a "Smoke In."

"This country was founded on civil disobedience," Hemminghaus said in a previous interview. "It has gotten to where, now, people are afraid to get into trouble. It kind of makes me mad that everybody has turned into cowards."

Monday afternoon, Hemminghaus said he was recently contacted by Williamson County State's Attorney Chuck Garnati in regards to his plans.

"Chuck said I would be taken into custody and get a $2,500 fine," he said. "Nobody I know can find where anybody in Illinois has been arrested yet."

Hemminghaus owns Wounded Rig Inc. - a boat fiberglass and gel coat repair shop - located on Illinois 37, just south of West Frankfort, although he falls under the jurisdiction of the Williamson County Sheriff's Department.

He said Garnati told him that law enforcement would be present at his event if he couldn't be talked out of hosting the rally.
(Thanks to the Agitator)

Baldwin, Fla. Town council passes law making it illegal within town limits to wear baggy pants, with punishments ranging from 40 hours of community service to a $500 fine.

The St. Petersburg Times (by way of Monty Python) reports:

"WHEREAS," begins Ordinance 2007-17, "the Town Council of the Town of Baldwin has found that the welfare of the residents of the Town of Baldwin is hampered and imposed upon by persons intentionally wearing their pants below their waist for the purposes of exposing themselves and their undergarments ..."

Baldwin has joined a debate that's gone national, raising issues of freedom of expression, indecent exposure and the possibility of racial profiling because the majority of the wearers of the baggy pants are young, black and mimicking hip-hop stars. Over the past few years, this has popped up from Connecticut to Missouri, with laws actually being passed in a handful of mostly small, southern towns - Louisiana, then Georgia, then Opa-locka in South Florida. Now here.

Ambrose read in the Jacksonville paper about Hawkinsville, Ga., and decided to follow along.

"Pull up your pants!" he said in a recent interview. "It's common decency, y'all!"

"They are underpants," said Marvin Godbold Jr., the longtime mayor. "They are to be worn under your pants."

"It's offensive," council member Libby Willis said.

The people here blame all this on lots of things: DCF, MTV, the Internet, Roe vs. Wade, Bill Clinton, Dennis Rodman, the end of corporal punishment, the breakdown of family values, just general godlessness. They say this mess started in the '90s, or maybe the '60s, or maybe right around World War II.

From the news behind the news department -- an excellent backgrounder from Holland about the liquid bombers -- you know, the ones whose dire threat to Western civilization means that we can't take breast milk for our babies onto planes any more because it could explode.

Well, except these liquid bombers didn't have a liquid bomb, there's no practical chemical means of making such a bomb, they didn't have plane tickets, or passports or -- well -- anything, really. Exactly the kind of threat the Bush Administration feels comfortable with: a toothless one.

It's a decent article. I'll be following DeepJournal from now on.

Who says there's no free lunch, or

How the DEA  and US military helped turn a hard-scrabble Nicaraguan coastal town with 85% unemployment into a wealthy leisure class utopia.

 NJ suburban town police out on a "Friday night sweep"arrest 10 teenagers not for any acts they committed, but simply for being outdoors after the 10pm curfew.

The city's curfew ordinance states that it is unlawful for anyone under 18 to be in any public place between the hours of 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., with limited exceptions.

It adds that it is also unlawful for parents or guardians to knowingly or by inefficient control allow their children to be in public places during the prohibited hours.

Millville, NJ is hardly alone. since the 1990s at least 500 cities and towns have imposed curfews as a "preventive deterrent" to juvenile crime, despite their questionable constitutionality and dubious effectiveness. Yet the practice continues to expand, with increasingly onerous requirements and punitive enforcement.

The making of a new class of social lepers
LA CityBeat reports:

When Ricky was 16, he went to a teen club and met a girl named Amanda, who said she was the same age. They hit it off and were eventually having sex. At the time Ricky thought it was a pretty normal high school romance.

Two years later, Ricky is a registered sex offender, and his life is destroyed.

Amanda turned out to be 13. Ricky was arrested, tried as an adult, and pleaded guilty to the charge of lascivious acts with a child, which is a class D felony in Iowa. It is not disputed that the sex was consensual, but intercourse with a 13-year-old is illegal in Iowa.

Ricky was sentenced to two years probation and 10 years on the Iowa online sex offender registry. Ricky and his family have since moved to Oklahoma, where he will remain on the state's public registry for life.

Being labeled a sex offender has completely changed Ricky's life, leading him to be kicked out of high school, thrown out of parks, taunted by neighbors, harassed by strangers, and unable to live within 2,000 feet of a school, day-care center or park. He is prohibited from going to the movies or mall with friends because it would require crossing state borders, which he cannot do without permission from his probation officer. One of Ricky's neighbors called the cops on him, yelled and cursed at him, and videotaped him every time he stepped outside, Ricky said.

"It affects you in every way," he said. "You're scared to go out places. You're on the Internet, so everybody sees your picture."

 For having her (Fully Clothed) breasts graze the back of a  13 year old boy's head in a crowded game room.

Williamette Week reports. (excerpt below, worth reading in full)

An appeal last week to the state Supreme Court may be the final chance for justice for a former Boys and Girls Club staffer, found guilty of sexual assault in a case one ex-cop calls the worst travesty of justice he's seen in 20 years as an investigator.

If the court refuses to take up the case or rules against 27-year-old Veronica Rodriguez, she'll go to prison for five more years, after already serving one year for a crime she denies committing.

A Washington County jury found Rodriguez guilty in 2005 of first-degree sexual assault after police accused her of running her hands through a 13-year-old boy's hair and pulling the back of his head against her covered chest in the middle of a crowded game room at the Boys and Girls Club in Hillsboro.

Under Measure 11, a 1994 voter-approved ballot initiative setting mandatory minimum sentences, Rodriguez faced six years and three months in prison. But Circuit Judge Nancy Campbell gave her 16 months instead, saying the Measure 11 sentence would violate the state constitution as cruel and unusual punishment.

Rodriguez served one year at the Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Wilsonville, earning time off for good behavior. Meanwhile, prosecutors appealed her sentence, and in December a three-judge panel at the state Court of Appeals ruled unanimously that Rodriguez should serve out the remaining five years of her Measure 11 sentence. Rodriguez's appeal of that ruling landed at the Supreme Court on Feb. 13.

Rodriguez's conviction destroyed her career as a social worker. A registered sex offender as a result, she's now living in Spokane with her parents and working as a barista.
(Thanks to the Agitator)

So very, very wrong - envious of the air industry, Amtrak officials will be screening passengers, too. Think about this: you can't drive a train into a building, and you don't need to be on the train to blow it up (because trains, you see, run on tracks, which are by definition many miles long and fixed in position and, you know, on the ground instead of being a mile up in the air.)

Even if we stipulate -- which I don't -- that the TSA's measures for air security make sense, then those same measures simply don't make sense for rail. They just don't. The article I linked to (at the Chicago Trib) says, "Concern has been mounting" since the 2004 bombing in Madrid. But see -- in Madrid, they bombed the tracks. Not the train. So these measures wouldn't have done anything at all in that situation.

The only possible reason for these measures is to make officials think they have power over suspected terrorists (or anybody else they choose, as we are already seeing in airports), and to make the train-riding public aware that they are being watched and scrutinized. That's all it can be -- it's authoritarianism, pure and simple.

This just has to stop.

But let's look at who the author of this article, Sarah Karush, talked to, shall we?

• Bill Rooney, VP of Security at Amtrak. Makes sense.
• Alex Kummant, CEO of Amtrak. Still makes sense.

Maybe she could talk to somebody not at Amtrak? Sure:

• Tim Connors, of the Center for Policing Terrorism at the Manhattan Institute

Go ahead, click through to the CPT-MI. I'll wait here -- or, if you're impatient like me, you can just accept my assessment of that page, encapsulated in the phrase "tragedy of 9/11".

Did we hear from anybody who didn't think it's a good idea that Amtrak is going to spend a whole lot of money on security consultants to school the public in being good Germans, in return for not being able to do anything about any hypothetical terrorist threats? No, we did not. We just got a bunch of feel-good mumbling about progress, and "reality has changed and now everything has to be transformed" and "this model stands up in court" and "bad guys won't be able to anticipate this." Sure -- nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

So we have a nice little article about creeping authoritarianism -- but without questioning whether that's where America should be going.

Good job, Chicago Tribune.

From the truth continues to remain stranger than fiction (or the drug war is weirder and more surreal than any bad trip dept.)

Cookeville, Tennessee police let their attack dog loose on suspect for no cause, after he's already put his hands up to comply with a stop. Dog bites man repeatedly. Cop searches suspects pockets and find NO DRUGS. Then (captured on video) another officer appears to give the arresting officer a signal  pulls something from his pocket, and (using the same hand) seems to put something into the suspect's  pocket. What happens next? Voila.

 The officer then pulls out a bag of pocket and proclaims "Whoa, Carlos, weed? Now you got you another freaking charge, how about that?"
(thanks to Jonathan Turley)

So a college student complains when professor advanced the view that sexual orientation might be a complex mixture of nature and nurture, genetics and experience.

No big deal, right. The kind of discussion you might expect, or at least hope for, in a class on human heredity.

Yet, so freaked was the dean of San José/Evergreen Community College that the professor was terminated WITHOUT a hearing.
(Thanks to FIRE)

 

 

 

From the feeling safer yet department: this in from the New York Times. Two doctors (man and wife) and their 10-month-old were flying from Chicago to New England. Worried about delays and the fact that baby food isn't actually sold at airports, they packed extra.

TSA didn't like that. So they confiscated the dangerous contraband, saying it was too much for a 2-1/2 hour flight (ignoring the whole winter thing.) Said the couple needed a note from a doctor to bring more. Reminded that they were doctors (thus that route to authoritarianism blocked) TSA said it had to be another doctor. But a phone call to the pediatrician wasn't enough -- no, they just had to confiscate the baby food. Baby food.

Get this -- a TSA spokesbeing said the officers "were behaving in a reasonable manner with people who were pretty insistent about what they wanted to bring through," adding, "Obviously this is one of those judgment call gray areas where the officer does have discretion."

The officer does have discretion. Translation: TSA owns your ass if you fly. Get used to it, because you have no recourse whatsoever. Oh, sure, file your complaint. But we don't have to act on it, there is no oversight of the complaints process at all, and we're still keeping your baby's food if we want to.

Good job, America.

Freedom of Enterprise, right?

Not if the government, in this case the city government of Seattle and state Supreme Court of Washington, decide to make your little local waste-hauling business (and all little waste-hauling businesses) illegal.

Why? So they can create a monopoly for two multi-national corporations.

(Thanks to Brian Doherty at Reason)

Protest Artist Arrested for Carrying Placard Reading "Nooses On Sale" in Boston's financial district

The Boston Phoneix reports

22 years ago  artists Milan Kohout  was expelled from Czechoslavakia by the secret police. 

 After being forced out of Czechoslovakia, Kohout was granted political asylum in the United States, studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, became a US citizen, and -- now able to make his avocation his vocation -- joined Mobius, the internationally acclaimed local artists group.

Kohout, who has taught at Tufts and at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and participated in art programs in China, Taiwan, Croatia, Poland, and Cuba, is now facing criminal charges here in Boston as a result of a one-man performance he staged this past November in front of a Bank of America office in the Financial District.

 

Shreveport, Louisiana cop starts roughing up an (unarmed) woman who, after being pulled over for a DUI, gets argumentative. Midway through the scuffle beat down he gets the video shut off (for an unknown period of time,  the details of which hopefully will eventually be reconstructed in a civil suit). When cam starts up again the woman is lying handcuffed in a pool of blood.

The incident occurred last November. Fortunately the cop, Officer Wiley Willis, has been fired for what authorities say was his handling of the incident. No criminal charges have (yet) been filed in connection with the woman's injuries, which include, according to her attorney a broken nose, a severe cut on her forehead, two broken teeth and bruises on her arms and shoulder.

Thanks to Jonathan Turley

Steve Greenhut of the Orange County Register asks a good question:

What kind of society rips a 17-year-old autistic boy from his loving home and places him in a state-run mental institution, where he is given heavy doses of drugs, kept physically restrained, kept away from his family, deprived of books and other mental stimulation and is left alone to rot?

Greenhut reports on the experiences of a Russian immigrant family in California whose autistic child was forcibly removed on the basis of a judgement from a psychologist who'd never even met the child. As he writes:

The forced removal came after the Tseglins came to loggerheads with the government over Nate's proper treatment. The parents are opposed to the use of psychotropic drugs and argue that Nate has had strong negative reactions to them. They point to success they've had with an alternative, holistic approach that focuses on diet and psychiatric counseling. The government disagreed, so it took the boy away from home and initially placed him in a group home - where he had the same negative reaction to the drugs that his parents predicted would happen.

Of course, once social workers are involved in a family, they are reluctant to relinquish their power - something I've found in every Child Protective Services case I've written about. And even though the court determined "the evidence is clear that the parents have always stood by and tried to help their son," the court sided with the government. That's another common theme from these closed family-court proceedings - the social workers' words are taken as gospel, and the parents are treated like enemies and given little chance to defend themselves.

The details are complicated and discouraging. But, essentially, the parents were cut out of any decision-making regarding their son. They were given only short visits with him. After he ran away from the group home, the government transferred Nate to a mental hospital. The Tseglins say the drugs the hospital gave Nate caused him to have a "grand mal" seizure, and his health has continued to deteriorate while he languishes in a government mental facility. When they visited him over the summer, they found his face swollen. He faded in and out of consciousness and was suffering from convulsions. They believe he has been beaten and are worried about sexual abuse, given that he is housed with the criminally insane.

The Tseglins claim Child Protective Services has told them they have the "wrong set of beliefs" and even threatened to force them to undergo court-ordered psychological evaluation. The agency at one point suspended the parents' visitations as a way "to assist them in coming to grips regarding their son." The Tseglins, as former citizens of the Soviet Union, have good reason to be fearful of the authorities. But they tell me that they experienced nothing of this sort in the former communist nation. If their descriptions are correct, then the Soviets weren't the only ones who know how to create a totalitarian bureaucracy.

The family's legal argument is persuasive:

"Riva and her husband have cared for Nate, in their home, for his entire life, until he was dragged kicking and screaming away from his parents. ... The court found that it was very impressive that the parents 'were able to maintain Nate in the home for the better part of a decade when he was having some severe behavioral difficulties.' ... The court found further that when the parents put Nate on a 'more holistic approach' and ignored the professional opinions, that 'for a period of time, Nate responded very well to that.' Even though Nate subsequently deteriorated, the court found that he fared no differently using the more traditional medical approach.' ...

"In short, this case turns on value judgments, such as whether it is preferable for Nate to be maintained in his own home, subject to occasional physical restraint, surrounded by the love and devotion of his parents and brother, or whether Nate should be placed in a locked facility, subject to occasional physical restraint and constant chemical restraint, surrounded by strangers and a burden to the California taxpayer. ... The real issue in this case is that the agency and some medical personnel believe their opinions regarding Nate's treatment are better than the parents' choices, and have sought the judicial intervention to override the parents' decisions regarding their son."

It's hard to quarrel with a bureaucracy calling itself Child Protection Services, or with the idea of having some sort of community agency intervene to stop true abuse of children. But that power can and, according to Greenhut, has been abused capriciously and autocratically.

(Thanks to Lew Rockwell.com)

From Reuters

The Supreme Court on Tuesday turned down a legal challenge to the warrantless domestic spying program President George W. Bush created after the September 11 attacks.

The American Civil Liberties Union had asked the justices to hear the case after a lower court ruled the ACLU, other groups and individuals that sued the government had no legal right to do so because they could not prove they had been affected by the program.

The civil liberties group also asked the nation's highest court to make clear that Bush does not have the power under the U.S. Constitution to engage in intelligence surveillance within the United States that Congress has expressly prohibited.

The Supreme Court sided with the administration and rejected the appeal without any comment.

Still think the big corporations aren't out of control? Oh, sure, you can say that the telcos just wanted to help out, so it's important to let them off the hook for violating the law. But the real upshot for any corporation isn't patriotism -- it's the bottom line. If they do anything but the bottom line, their shareholders can sue them. So the telco immunity provisions in the spy law the House is heroically refusing to pass is just about the money.

Don't believe me? Well, the Washington Post tells us that now, Congress is working on legislation to make sure banks don't have to follow intellectual property law if it will cost them money. "They could save billions." Well, sure. They could save even more if they didn't have to give you your money when you asked for it -- perhaps we can look into that next.

The short version of the story is this: a little company in Texas called DataTreasury had a great idea to digitally scan and archive checks. And they patented that technology. Then banks realized it was a good idea -- so they started doing the same thing without bothering to pay DataTreasury their royalties. DataTreasury sued (natch), the banks tried to overturn the patent, and it was upheld. So the banks just went to Washington, cozied up to a guy named Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), and voilà! Mr. Sessions introduces legislation to let them off the hook. God knows their kids are probably at home without even beans to eat, at the outrageous rates DataTreasury is charging them to ... what's that? A penny a check? Oh.

Here's the key, with corporate thinking. The rules are only there to make sure they keep making money. They make the rules -- I didn't ask them to beef up intellectual property law. But when it becomes difficult for them to follow their own rules, the rules change.

OK, it's not getting my blood to boil like, say, the government killing a kid on the way to the hospital or something, but we have to find our outrage where we can.

Wikileaks, the self-proclaimed global whistle-blower web site that allows people to anonymously upload documents governments and corporations (for whatever reasons) don't want public, has always been controversial. Championed as an open-source pure free speech venue for anonymous truth-tellers and troublemakers to get important information out about abuses of power that otherwise wouldn't get out, criticized for lacking a journalistic vetting process to differentiate real muckraking from fake (and flake).

One thing's for sure they've already in their short existence pissed off plenty of the right forces, from the Chinese government to the Thai military junta. They've also pissed off a Swiss bank for publishing docs about a Swiss bank and alleged money laundering in the Cayman Islands.
Whether or not there are a legitimate legal grounds for retracting publication of those particular documents I don't know. but it seems quite outrageous to have a US court shut the entire site down.

Tasers would never be used to intimidate would be protesters and to chill dissent. So it's no doubt a coincidence I guess that the St. Paul PD has an additional 230 tasers on order which, just in time for the Republican National convention in town this summer, will give every cop on the force their own taser.

Thanks to Huffington Post

That's a proposal that making the rounds and apparently gaining momentum in several Massachusetts towns The ostensible purpose, keeping libraries safe from rapists and child molesters by having names and photos of library patrons checked against a database of registered sex offenders, seems on its face well-meaning and innocuous enough, as encroachments against basic freedoms often do. Of course, even if you accept the (dubious) premise that showing ID will deter sexual criminals, what's the use of checking names of only local registered offenders when a rapist could come from elsewhere in the county or state. Why not check names against wider available databases. And, while we're at it, why not (in the name of safety, of course) check ID against other databases to screen for other kinds of potential criminality. Or to make sure illegal immigrants aren't reading books at taxpayer expense.

Is it really just paranoia to see the introduction of library checkpoints as another step toward having ID checks routinized in other areas of public space (malls, parks, you name it).

Because tasers are used so sparingly and judiciously, only as a last resort against armed and dangerously violent criminals (not, for instance, against people already handcuffed and shackled) I guess we have nothing to worry about from a new "non-lethal" method of human incapacitation for use by law enforcement under contract by Department of Homeland security with help from the Los Angeles Police Department, for potential use by the Coast Guard, Border Patrol, Secret Service and air marshals and likely domestic police forces.  It is described as a high-tech flashlight, which flashes at such a high frequency that when it reaches the eyes of the target it overloads the brain, causing disorientation, blindness, headache, and nausea.

From the No wonder the Bill of Rights is in trouble dept.

According to a survey by the  McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum in Chicago only one in one THOUSAND Americans know that the first amendment contains five freedoms: speech, press, peaceable assembly, religion and petitioning of grievances. Only about one-quarter could name more than one first amendment freedom.
Thanks to Jonathan Turley

Bill in state house would give courts Power to Involuntarily commit 'habitual" drug users.

A bill introduced in the Pennsylvania legislature would allow judges to order "drug dependent" people into involuntary drug treatment, including inpatient treatment, upon petition by that person's family members. Introduced by Rep. Thaddeus Kirkland (D-Delaware), HB 1594 would allow for repeated 90-day commitment orders -- apparently without end.

The bill would allow the courts to order a drug and alcohol assessment by a psychiatrist, a psychologist specializing in drug and alcohol assessments and treatment, or a certified addiction counselor. If the assessors deem the respondent in need of treatment, the court could impose a 90-day treatment order. Before that period is up, another hearing would be held and another 90-day treatment order could be issued. According to the bill, "The court may continue the respondent in treatment for successive ninety-day periods pursuant to determinations that the person will benefit from services for an additional ninety days. The court may also order appropriate follow-up treatment. If the court finds, after hearing, that the respondent willfully failed to comply with an order, the court may declare the person in civil contempt of court and in its discretion make an appropriate order, including commitment of the respondent to prison for a period not to exceed six months."

Thanks to Stop the Drug War

Court records increasingly being kept form press, public scrutiny. I wonder what's happening in other states.

A Star Tribune investigation of federal court cases in Minnesota shows that 83 of 3,000 criminal cases filed between January 1998 through 2007 were under seal - a number that troubles government watchdogs.

About two-thirds of those cases have been under seal for more than three years.

When a case is under seal, nothing but a case number is public - the name of the person charged and the nature of the case are kept quiet. The public can't know if the case involves terrorism, juveniles, or something else.

"It used to be that sealings were extraordinarily, extraordinarily exceptional," said Martin Garbus, a First Amendment litigator in New York. But that's changing, he said.

It's easy to lose track of just how much information has disappeared into the White House. Fortunately, Paul Kiehl over at TPMmuckraker.com has been doing it for us, for over a year now. Check it out, and imagine what a fantastic job the administration must be doing.

Some highlights:
...In October 2007, National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell reversed the practice of declassifying and releasing summaries of national intelligence estimates."
...A rule change at the U.S. Geological Survey restricts agency scientists from publishing or discussing research without that information first being screened by higher-ups at the agency.
...After the Bureau of Labor Statistics uncovered discouraging data about factory closings in the U.S., the administration announced it would stop publishing information about factory closings.
... In a related effort to prevent the release of information about his office, Cheney has also instructed the Secret Service to destroy copies of visitor logs.

I especially love imagining who Cheney isn't meeting with. Aliens? Bilderbergs? Lincoln's ghost? It's all up to you now, America. Now that's freedom.

The administration that got itself into power by getting a friendly Supreme Court to overrule a pesky lower one is looking to get that same ideologically corrupt court (with a couple more of its own cronies installed in it) to give its stamp to the notion that governments (read the executive branch) have unlimited power to declare who is an enemy combatant at will, without the need to explain or justify their decisions. 

A reason to be cheerful. A victory for the right to protest.

Decision clears defendants arrested on false pretext of obstructing the public highway near the Bush "ranch".

This shit has to stop. MichaelFuti was 14 months old, and from American Samoa. He was a US citizen, as was his nurse; his mother, traveling with him, had a visa to bring him to the hospital in Honolulu for heart surgery.

The illiterates we hire to police our airports, however, weren't clear on that concept (or so we think, because US Customs refuses to talk to the press.) They detained not just the mother, thinking her visa wasn't in order, but the two US citizens as well, because ... well, just because they could, apparently.

Michael's oxygen wasn't working right, though. And when the two women started to scream, our helpful officials refused even to open the door, instead instructing the subjects to remain calm.

The boy died later that morning. But at least our borders remain protected.

Good job, America.

I am writing today to express my extreme disappointment with your vote on the Protect America Act extension this week.

When I donated to your campaign in 2006 based on your stem cell views, that was the first time I had ever been moved to contribute to a campaign at all.  As a progressive in Indiana, I'm used to not being represented in Congress, but your principled stand for science impressed me, Michael J. Fox got my attention, and Pig Boy got my dander up.

So I sent a little money, and so I've always felt a little proprietary about you. I suppose on some level, since you share my beliefs on one point, I expected you to share them when it comes to the rule of law as well.

Turns out you don't favor the rule of law at all, and that's really disappointing.  America's safety, such as it is, doesn't depend on protecting corporate lawbreaking from seeing the light of day.

Shame on you, Ms. McCaskill.  I don't say that lightly.  But I honestly can no longer imagine what you think you're doing there in Washington.

Why I keep coming back to Glenn Greenwald: he just has a way with words:

"Who would have guessed that after 235 years, the fate of America, its ability to survive as a Nation, would depend on giving license to AT&T and Verizon to break the law without being sued by their customers in court?"

(unless it can be deemed in any way to be racist, sexist, indecent, scandalous, illegal, inciting, promoting of alcohol or illegal substances, or in any way oppressive in nature)".

FIRE's Speech code of the month

Judge dismisses renditions lawsuit in San Jose

When is a government founded on the rule of law (versus, let's say autocratic fiat) beyond the law? When it claims (by autocratic fiat) immunity from legal oversight and accountability on the basis of state secrets.



The SF Chronicle report, reading like a montage of Lewis Carroll, Franz Kafka and George Orwell.

U.S. District Judge James Ware in San Jose said he had no authority to decide whether, as three current prisoners and two freed inmates alleged, Jeppesen International Trip Planning colluded with the CIA to violate their rights. The suit instead must be dismissed at the outset because its subject is a secret program that cannot be examined in a public proceeding, Ware said.

Public and confidential declarations filed by CIA Director Michael Hayden show that "proceeding with this case would jeopardize national security and foreign relations," Ware said.

"At the core of plaintiffs' case against defendant Jeppesen are 'allegations' of covert U.S. military or CIA operations in foreign countries against foreign nationals - clearly a subject matter which is a state secret," the judge said.

From the Sometimes the courts get it right and remind us that we still actually live in a free country department.

Thanks to Legal Satyricon.

From the "I predicted this" department - those fun-loving guys at DHS and FBI are warning that women appearing to be pregnant could actually be devious suicide bombers.

Some parts that tickled my funny bone: The security "expert" who "isn't surprised at the new lows terrorists will stoop to", and the fact that authorities have no "specific, credible intelligence" pointing to actual, you know, fake pregnancies used to kill people.

I'm not too surprised at these stooping lows, either -- and I wonder if the entire to-do isn't just a reason for this quote from the FBI:

Authorities are increasingly worried that al Qaeda is actively recruiting people who look like Americans and sound like Americans to carry out the next attack on America. "Whether it's Americans or whether it's people who can launch from Europe, because they have visas or passports that allow them to travel to the United States, they are looking at people who can operate in the west," says Philip Mudd of the FBI.

In light of yesterday's Guardian article entitled "Bush orders clampdown on flights to the US", I suspect that the money quote in the FBI's little speech isn't that some would-be terrorists have "visas or passports that allow them to travel to the United States."

Ya think, Sherlock? Like all the perfectly legal Saudi immigrants responsible for the last go-round? But note that nobody ever talked to the Saudis about that one -- we need their sweet, sweet oil. Instead, we beat up on poor countries in Europe, like the Czech Republic, with lots of citizens with family here in the States. Pressure them, and if they go for the bait it'll look like what you're asking is reasonable.

Well. Enough ranting, I suppose. The short version of this post could simply have been: "DHS still stupid, Bush still a jerk."

Checks and Balance?

Senate Authorizes Broad Expansion of Surveillance Act

The Senate yesterday approved a sweeping measure that would expand the government's clandestine surveillance powers, delivering a key victory to the White House by approving immunity from lawsuits for telecommunications companies that cooperated with intelligence agencies in domestic spying after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

On a 68 to 29 vote, the Senate approved the reauthorization of a law that would give the government greater powers to eavesdrop in terrorism and intelligence cases without obtaining warrants from a secret court.

Good analysis here by Jonathan Turley on Democratic leadership gave Senator Chris Dodd (Connecticut Senator who sponsored the amendment) the shaft. Plus Turley offer sa priceless portrait in courage:

"Neither Sen. Clinton nor Sen. Obama were present for the final vote. Yet, the key vote was the immunity question. It was not a close vote, but it was a shocking absence given the criticism leveled at the party elite for their failure to protect civil liberties. Clinton released a statement saying that she both supported changes and opposed them -- failing to note that it is hard to support or oppose anything when you do not exercise your vote."

And, for those who still care, Ryan Singel asks the question:Is Retroactive Telecom Immunity Unconsitutional?