September 2010
2 posts
Obama administration seeks to avoid lawsuit for...
In the NYT: U.S. Debates Response to Targeted Killing Lawsuit
It seems the Obama administration is looking for any possible argument to justify its policy of assassinating U.S. citizens without legal restraint. But that’s not always easy to manage:
“The more forcefully the administration urges a court to stay out because this is warfare, the more it puts itself in the uncomfortable...
Court Dismisses a Case Asserting Torture by C.I.A
The Obama administration has placed a United States citizen on a targeted-killings list without a trial, blocked efforts by detainees in Afghanistan to bring habeas-corpus lawsuits challenging their indefinite imprisonment, and continued the C.I.A. rendition program
Details: NYT — Court sides with C.I.A. on extraordinary rendition
May 2010
1 post
Barack Obama chooses to censor images of rape and...
telegraph.co.uk reports:
In April, Mr Obama’s administration said the photographs would be released and it would be “pointless to appeal” against a court judgment in favour of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
But after lobbying from senior military figures, Mr Obama changed his mind saying they could put the safety of troops at risk.
Earlier this month, he said: “The most direct...
January 2010
2 posts
Most Americans would trim liberties to be safer →
pleasedontsqueezetheshaman:
azspot:
The survey found 51 percent of Americans agreeing that “it is necessary to give up some civil liberties in order to make the country safe from terrorism.”
Is liberty the new love handles? Then sign me up for some land-o-the-free liposuction!
Sorry folks, you’re the opposite of safe if your government can stick fingers in you every time you fly and...
Boston cops: citizen recording of abusive busts is...
Today at boingboing:
Boston cops are using the Massachusetts electronic surveillance laws to arrest and prosecute citizens who use their cellular phones to record abusive arrests. Though they haven’t been successful in prosecuting the acts, it hasn’t stopped the arrests — presumably the point isn’t to secure convictions, but rather to chill the recording of illegal police...
June 2009
1 post
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,...
May 2009
1 post
Torture Continues under Obama
At Washington’s Blog:
While torture under the Bush administration was horrible, at least it has stopped. Right? Wrong. Jeremy Scahill (the reporter who broke most of the stories on Blackwater) says that a military police unit at Guantanamo regularly brutalizes unarmed prisoners, including gang-beating them, breaking their bones, gouging their eyes and dousing them with chemicals....
February 2009
2 posts
Cambridge rejects Homeland Security surveillance...
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. ...
Obama defends "extraordinary rendition," asserts...
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...
November 2008
2 posts
Obama's Refusal To Reverse Bush Policy In...
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”.
More…
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...
September 2008
1 post
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,...
August 2008
1 post
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...
June 2008
3 posts
“I’m not here to say that the government is always right, but when the...”
– Senator Christopher Bond, R-Mo, June 19, 2008
Plan: "Seal off" entire neighborhoods
From examiner,com:
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...
McCain official: president has "near dictatorial...
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...
May 2008
1 post
WatchInternal Homeand Security checkpoint
April 2008
1 post
Homeland Security "suspends" property rights,...
The New York Times reports: Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff last week issued waivers suspending more than 30 laws he said could interfere with “the expeditious construction of barriers” in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas. The list included laws protecting the environment, endangered species, antiquities, farms, forests, Native American graves and religious freedom. The...
March 2008
2 posts
WatchIf he’s unclear on the idea of democracy then how can he spread it by force?
Ready, Aim, Foreign Policy
In a little-noticed but disturbing transformation, U.S. foreign policy decision-making is moving from the Department of State to the Department of Defense. A report released today shows that this shift of authority is on the verge of becoming permanent even as the Department of State and Congress sit passively on the sidelines. The report, entitled “Ready, Aim, Foreign Policy ”, is a publication...
February 2008
6 posts
Political show trials. Can't happen in America,...
Evidently it can. Don Siegelman, a popular Democratic governor of Alabama, a Republican state, was framed in a crooked trial, convicted on June 29, 2006, and sent to Federal prison by the corrupt and immoral Bush administration. The frame-up of Siegelman and businessman Richard Scrushy is so crystal clear ...
McCarthyism? What was that?
ABC News:Are American Teens Losing the Humanities?Study Shows Some Teens Are Blanking on the Basics of History, Culture Feb. 26, 2008— A recent study sponsored by Washington, D.C.-based organization Common Core revealed that almost 20 percent of 1,200 American teens could not identify the American enemy in World War II, and more than 25 percent mistakenly believed that Columbus sailed to...
“When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there...”
– Plato
Sixty years later...
“The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any...”
– Winston Churchill, Nov. 21, 1943
“Find out just what the people will submit to and you have found out the exact...”
– Frederick Douglass, ex-slave, abolitionist
January 2008
7 posts
New York City wants to ban Geiger counters
The Village Voice reports: Richard Falkenrath, the NYPD’s deputy commissioner for counterterrorism, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg have asked the City Council to pass a law requiring anyone who wants to own such detectors to get a permit from the police first. Want to test for pollution in low-income neighborhoods with high rates of childhood asthma? Gotta ask the cops for permission. Why? So...
“To declare that in the administration of criminal law the end justifies the...”
– Justice Louis D. Brandeis (1856–1941) US Supreme Court Justice
Harold Bloom: "What We Are Seeing Is the Fall of...
“I am 77 years old and I have never seen this country in such a bad state. It is madness. What we are seeing is the fall of the Roman Empire, only now it is the fall of America… This war is what Parthia was to Rome.” More…
“Prohibition is an awful flop.
We like it.
It can’t stop what it’s...”
– Franklin P. Adams (1931)
WatchWhat a police state looks like
“We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.”
– Edward R. Murrow
“Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who...”
– Albert Einstein, Out of My Later Years
December 2007
5 posts
“Man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and...”
– Ronald Reagan
“The civil libertarians among us would rather defend the constitution than...”
– Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, Dec. 17. 2007
“If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given...”
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
Archbishop Tutu: "Whoever imagined that you would...
At an event to commemorate the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UNDR) today, the Nobel laureate said the detention of suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban members at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was a “huge blot on a democracy”. Read more…
"We are in the business of scaring people"
Meet The New Supercops: The city of New York deploys terrorists of its own. No one sees them coming. There are no flashing lights, no sirens. The black Suburban simply glides out of Fifth Avenue traffic and pulls into a no-parking zone in front of the Empire State Building. Moments later, four men spill out in combat helmets and heavy body armor: Two carry submachine guns; the others,...
November 2007
1 post
“Other than telling us how to live, think, marry, pray, vote, invest, educate our...”
– Author unknown
October 2007
3 posts
“When the republic is at its most corrupt, the laws are most numerous.”
– Tacitus
“A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects...”
– Aristotle, Politica bk v (ca. 340 BCE)
Four Myths Government and Media Use to Scare Us...
We have a basic mythology: Appeasement of dictators leads to war. The historical basis for this narrative is the “appeasement” of Hitler at Munich. It encouraged him to believe the democracies — and the Soviets — were weak and would not oppose him. Now we are floating the story that Mahmoud Ahmenajad is a dictator (the new, new Hitler, after Saddam Hussein). If we...
“Preventive war was an invention of Hitler. Frankly, I would not even listen to...”
– President Dwight D. Eisenhower
September 2007
6 posts
“There is nothing more hostile to a city than a tyrant, under whom in the first...”
– Euripedes, c.400 BC
“If we confuse dissent with disloyalty— if we deny the right of the individual to...”
– Edward R. Murrow
August 2007
6 posts
“I think we should now put definitely, not only to Feisal but to the Constituent...”
– Winston Churchill writing about Iraq in 1922. …The full letter for context…
Security Theater
Zack Phillips at GovernmentExecutive.com writes: “International terrorism annually causes the same number of deaths as drowning in bathtubs or bee stings. It would take a repeat of Sept. 11 every month of the year to make flying as dangerous as driving. Over a lifetime, the chance of being killed by a terrorist is about the same as being struck by a meteor.” More…