Decline and Fall
Jun 15th, 2009 @ 9:03 am
Defense Department sees protests as terrorism
Josh Richman writes:
Antiterrorism training materials used by the Department of Defense teach that public protests should be regarded as “low level terrorism,” according to a letter of complaint sent to the department today by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California.
“Teaching employees that dissent on issues of public concern is something to be feared, rather than encouraged, is a dangerously counterproductive use of scarce security resources, making us less safe as a democracy,” Northern California ACLU Staff Attorney Ann Brick and ACLU Washington National Security Policy Council Michael German wrote in the letter to Gail McGinn, Acting Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness.
“DoD employees cannot accomplish their mission of protecting our nation and its values unless they understand that those values encompass the right to criticize our government through protest activities,” they wrote. “It is imperative that they are taught the difference between political, religious or social activism and terrorism.”
Feb 23rd, 2009 @ 9:27 am
Cambridge rejects Homeland Security surveillance cameras
The Boston Globe reports that The Cambridge, MA, City Council voted unanimously on February 2 to block the activation of eight surveillance cameras already installed and paid for by the Department of Homeland Security. Communities across the country have accepted Department of Homeland Security grants to install and network surveillance cameras in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks. Often, as in nearby Boston, MA, there was no public discussion of the installation and operation of the cameras and no vote was ever taken.
In Cambridge, however, city councilors were concerned not only about privacy issues raised by residents, but also by the secrecy of the four to six year grant process and the continuing lack of information regarding the proposed use of the cameras. Briefings in January by the police commissioner and fire chief failed to provide sufficient answers. Cambridge Mayor Denise Simmons complained: “We don’t know how they’re going to be operated. We don’t know how they’re going to be governed. We don’t know who’s going to have access to the information that they collect.”
Cambridge is believed to be the first community in this country to reject government use of surveillance cameras. Law enforcement officials argue that the cameras are necessary to monitor potential targets of terrorist activity, and that they also prove useful in criminal investigations and emergency traffic control. The Cambridge City Council remained unconvinced that, as a matter of public policy, the security benefits of surveillance cameras outweigh the potential damage to civil liberties.
Feb 22nd, 2009 @ 10:00 am
Obama defends "extraordinary rendition," asserts state secrecy privileges
In today’s Washington Post, constitutional lawyer Bruce Fein writes:
Binyam Mohammed, an Ethiopian native, is suing a subsidiary of Boeing for arranging flights to execute the Bush-Cheney “extraordinary rendition” program. It entails kidnapping terrorism suspects based on the president’s say-so alone and transporting them to other countries for torture. Mr. Mohammed alleged that after his kidnap and transport to Morocco, he was routinely beaten, suffering broken bones.
He was frequently threatened with rape, electrocution and death.” United States laws make torture a criminal offense irrespective of the nationality of the violator or the place of the crime.
Last week before the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, President Obama echoed the position of Bush-Cheney that the state secrets privilege required dismissal of Mr. Mohammed’s suit. In other words, individual constitutional rights of the highest order should be sacrificed on the altar of national security. At the same time, Mr. Obama was deciding to defend the arch-defender of torture, former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, from a suit brought by Jose Padilla. The complaint alleges that Mr. Yoo concocted the legal justification for detaining and harshly interrogating Padilla as an “enemy combatant” without accusation or trial. (The United States later recanted its enemy combatant allegation).
Mr. Obama invoked the state secrets privilege a second time last week to block litigation challenging the legality of the Bush-Cheney “Terrorist Surveillance Program” (TSP) that he had assailed as a senator.
President Obama has left undisturbed the bulwark of Bush-Cheney usurpations or constitutional excesses: the Military Commissions Act of 2006; the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments Act of 2008, which eviscerates the Fourth Amendment; the Status of Forces Agreement with Iraq concluded by Bush-Cheney as an executive agreement to evade Senate scrutiny as a treaty requiring a two-thirds majority; and President Bush’s hundreds of signing statements.
Nov 4th, 2008 @ 4:29 pm
Obama's Refusal To Reverse Bush Policy In Afghanistan Angers Human Rights Groups
The usually quite Obama-friendly Huffington Post writes:
Less than a month after signing an executive order to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, President Barack Obama has quietly agreed to keep denying the right to trial to hundreds more terror suspects held at a makeshift camp in Afghanistan that human rights lawyers have dubbed “Obama’s Guantanamo”.
Nov 3rd, 2008 @ 9:35 am
Federal hordes pillage Mongol property
via DownsizeDC:
Quotes of the Day:
“If the court grants our request … then if any law enforcement officer sees a Mongol wearing his patch, he will be authorized to stop that gang member and literally take the jacket right off his back.” - U.S. Attorney Thomas O’Brien
“The government can’t ban confederate flags, swastikas, or klan robes, and it sure as hell can’t ban the display of the Mongols’ logo.” - Marc J. Randazza
“What if the government had decided that, because of the Watergate scandal, nobody could use the word Republican again? - Zeichner Ellman
Subject: Federal hordes pillage Mongol property
The case hasn’t even gone to trial yet , but U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper has authorized the seizure of the defendants’ …
* Clothing, motorcycles, and other property bearing the Mongols trademark.
* Any similar property bearing the trademark that belongs to the defendants’ “agents, servants, employees, family members, and those persons in active concert or participation with them.”
In other words, many people who weren’t even indicted will have their property seized.
Sep 22nd, 2008 @ 8:29 am
The Cult of the Presidency
The chief executive of the United States is no longer a mere constitutional officer charged with faithful execution of the laws. He is a soul nourisher, a hope giver, a living American talisman against hurricanes, terrorism, economic downturns, and spiritual malaise. He—or she—is the one who answers the phone at 3 a.m. to keep our children safe from harm. The modern president is America’s shrink, a social worker, our very own national talk show host. He’s also the Supreme Warlord of the Earth.
Aug 7th, 2008 @ 10:37 am
Government by consent?
To say, as the advocates of our government do, that a man must give up some of his natural rights, to a government, in order to have the rest of them protected — the government being all the while the sole and irresponsible judge as to what rights he does give up, and what he retains, and what are to be protected — is to say that he gives up all the rights that the government chooses, at any time, to assume that he has given up; and that he retains none, and is to be protected in none, except such as the government shall, at all times, see fit to protect, and to permit him to retain. This is to suppose that he has retained no rights at all, that he can, at any time, claim as his own, as against the government. It is to say that he has really given up every right, and reserved none…
It is especially noticeable that those persons, who are so impatient to protect other men in their rights that they cannot wait until they are requested to do so, have a somewhat inveterate habit of killing all who do not voluntarily accept their protection; or do not consent to give up to them all their rights in exchange for it.
If A were to go to B, a merchant, and say to him, “Sir, I am a night-watchman, and I insist upon your employing me as such in protecting your property against burglars; and to enable me to do so more effectually, I insist upon your letting me tie your own hands and feet, so that you cannot interfere with me; and also upon your delivering up to me all your keys to your store, your safe, and to all your valuables; and that you authorize me to act solely and fully according to my own will, pleasure, and discretion in the matter; and I demand still further, that you shall give me an absolute guaranty that you will not hold me to any accountability whatever for anything I may do, or for anything that may happen to your goods while they are under my protection; and unless you comply with this proposal, I will now kill you on the spot,” — if A were to say all this to B, B would naturally conclude that A himself was the most impudent and dangerous burglar that he (B) had to fear; and that if he (B) wished to secure his property against burglars, his best way would be to kill A in the first place, and then take his chances against all such other burglars as might come afterwards.
Our government constantly acts the part that is here supposed to be acted by A. And it is just as impudent a scoundrel as A is here supposed to be. It insists that every man shall give up all his rights unreservedly into its custody, and then hold it wholly irresponsible for any disposal it may make of them. And it gives him no alternative but death.
If by putting a bayonet to a man’s breast, and giving him his choice, to die, or be “protected in his rights,” it secures his consent to the latter alternative, it then proclaims itself a free government, — a government resting on consent!
— From Lysander Spooner’s 1886 A Letter to Grover Cleveland
Jun 20th, 2008 @ 10:44 am
“I’m not here to say that the government is always right, but when the government tells you to do something, I’m sure you would all agree that I think you all recognize that is something you need to do.”
Senator Christopher Bond, R-Mo,June 19, 2008
Jun 4th, 2008 @ 5:26 pm
Plan: "Seal off" entire neighborhoods
WASHINGTON - D.C. police will seal off entire neighborhoods, set up checkpoints and kick out strangers under a new program that D.C. officials hope will help them rescue the city from its out-of-control violence.
Under an executive order expected to be announced today, police Chief Cathy L. Lanier will have the authority to designate “Neighborhood Safety Zones.” At least six officers will man cordons around those zones and demand identification from people coming in and out of them. Anyone who doesn’t live there, work there or have “legitimate reason” to be there will be sent away or face arrest, documents obtained by The Examiner show.
Lanier has been struggling to reverse D.C.’s spiraling crime rate but has been forced by public outcry to scale back several initiatives including her “All Hands on Deck” weekends and plans for warrantless, door-to-door searches for drugs and guns.
Under today’s proposal, the no-go zones will last up to 10 days, according to internal police documents. Front-line officers are already being signed up for training on running the blue curtains.
Peter Nickles, the city’s interim attorney general, said the quarantine would have “a narrow focus.”
“This is a very targeted program that has been used in other cities,” Nickles told The Examiner. “I’m not worried about the constitutionality of it.”
Others are. Kristopher Baumann, chairman of the D.C. police union and a former lawyer, called the checkpoint proposal “breathtaking.”
Shelley Broderick, president of the D.C.-area American Civil Liberties Union and the dean of the University of the District of Columbia’s law school, said the plan was “cockamamie.”
“I think they tried this in Russia and it failed,” she said. “It’s just our experience in this city that we always end up targeting poor people and people of color, and we treat the kids coming home from choir practice the same as we treat those kids who are selling drugs.”
The proposal has the provisional support of D.C. Councilman Harry “Tommy” Thomas, D-Ward 5, whose ward has become a war zone.
“They’re really going to crack down on what we believe to be a systemic problem with open-air drug markets,” Thomas told The Examiner.
Thomas said, though, that he worried about D.C. “moving towards a police state.”
Jun 2nd, 2008 @ 12:25 pm
McCain official: president has "near dictatorial powers"
Michael Goldfarb has just been named Deputy Communications Director of the McCain campaign.
Discussing whether withdrawal timetables “somehow infringe on the president’s powers as commander in chief,” Goldfarb wrote:
Mitchell’s less than persuasive answer: “Congress is a coequal branch of government… the framers did not want to have one branch in charge of the government.”
True enough, but they sought an energetic executive with near dictatorial power in pursuing foreign policy and war. So no, the Constitution does not put Congress on an equal footing with the executive in matters of national security.
