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Latest Articles: Dead Constitution
A Step Away From the Imperial Presidency
Post Date: 2007-09-28 21:41:56 by Zipporah
7 Comments
A Step Away From the Imperial Presidency The Democratic Congress has yet to muster the votes or courage to repeal a series of noxious measures — rubber-stamped by the previous Republican majority — that pushed presidential power to dangerous extremes in the name of fighting terrorism. In a disappointing showdown earlier this month, Senate Republicans blocked an effort to reverse one of the most ignominious aspects of last year’s Military Commissions Act — the suspension of the right of habeas corpus to block foreign detainees from challenging their imprisonment in federal courts. Fortunately, the prospects are better for undoing a lesser-known example of ...
Bruce Springsteen calls out Bush Administration: “This is a song about things that shouldn’t happen here…happening here.”
Post Date: 2007-09-28 18:45:07 by Zipporah
26 Comments
“This is a song called Livin’ In the Future. But it’s really about what’s happening now. Right now. It’s kind of about how the things we love about America, cheeseburgers, French fries, the Yankees battlin’ Boston… the Bill of Rights [holds up microphone, urging crowd to cheer] … v-twin motorcycles… Tim Russert’s haircut, trans-fats and the Jersey Shore… we love those things the way womenfolk love Matt Lauer. But over the past six years we’ve had to add to the American picture: rendition, illegal wiretapping, voter suppression, no habeus corpus, the neglect of our great city New Orleans and its people, an attack on the ...
In 2006, Less than half of military votes overseas counted
Post Date: 2007-09-28 15:55:19 by robin
2 Comments
WASHINGTON — Overseas military voters had less than half of their votes counted in last year’s congressional elections, according to data released by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission on Monday. “One thing is clear: At every level of government, we need to do a better job,” said Donetta Davidson, chair of the commission. “We must make sure all eligible voters are getting their opportunities.” The figures, released at the commission’s annual conference on ways to improve and troubleshoot the absentee voting process, showed that only about 992,000 of the nearly 6 million eligible overseas citizens requested ballots for the 2006 general election. ...
Blackwater: Are You Scared Yet?
Post Date: 2007-09-28 15:16:06 by ghostdogtxn
11 Comments
Judge: Use of Troops' Names Protected Political Speech By The First Amendment
Post Date: 2007-09-28 00:04:33 by Brian S
2 Comments
(09-27) 18:27 PDT PHOENIX, (AP) -- Anti-war T-shirts displaying the names of slain American service members are political speech protected by the First Amendment, a federal judge ruled Thursday. The judge temporarily blocked enforcement of a new state law that makes it a misdemeanor to sell items that use names of slain troops without permission of their families. Flagstaff resident Dan Frazier, who sells the T-shirts with the names of nearly 3,500 troops who died in Iraq and the words "Bush Lied — They Died," had sought the preliminary injunction. The requirement of getting permission from families amounts to a flat prohibition "given the difficulty and cost of ...
IBM software aids in vast surveillance of Chicago streets Sweeping video program aimed ultimately at "suspicious behavior"
Post Date: 2007-09-27 19:26:49 by Zipporah
3 Comments
September 27, 2007 (IDG News Service) -- The City of Chicago is developing a futuristic video surveillance system designed to scan city streets looking for everything from bombs to traffic jams. For the past few years Chicago has been rolling out thousands of video surveillance cameras linked by fiber-optic cables. This Operation Virtual Shield system is intended to give the city's emergency response coordination agency the ability to remotely keep track of emergencies in real time. Now, with the help of IBM Corp., Chicago's Office of Emergency Management and Communications (OEMC) is looking to expand the system's capabilities so that IBM's software can analyze the ...
BREAKING: Two more provisions of Patriot Act struck down (UPDATED with video)
Post Date: 2007-09-27 18:54:37 by Zipporah
0 Comments
Watch And we have lots to celebrate because a federal judge cited a provision of a little-used document known as “The Bill of Rights.” Wapo: A federal judge in Oregon ruled Wednesday that two provisions of the USA Patriot Act are unconstitutional, marking the second time in as many weeks that the anti-terrorism law has come under attack in the courts. …Judge Ann Aiken ruled that the Patriot Act violates the Constitution because it “permits the executive branch of government to conduct surveillance and searches of American citizens without satisfying the probable cause requirements of the Fourth Amendment.” Read more...
pax- americana
Post Date: 2007-09-27 16:09:06 by richard9151
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"The United States must cultivate a mental view toward world settlement after this war which will enable us to impose our own terms, amounting perhaps to a pax- americana.": U.S. Department of State - Source: Minutes S-3 of the Security Subcommittee, Advisory Committee on Postwar Foreign Policy, 6 May, 1942, Notter File, Box 77, Record Group 59, Records of the Department of State, National Archives, DC. = "We could not leave them to themselves -- they were unfit for self-government -- and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse than Spain's was .. there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and ...
(HILLARY) Clinton Defends Her Lieberman-Kyl Vote
Post Date: 2007-09-27 15:12:25 by aristeides
24 Comments
Clinton Defends Her Lieberman-Kyl Vote By Leslie on September 27, 2007 at 1:38 PM in Current Affairs Last night during the Presidential debates, Hillary was rebuked for her yea vote on the Lieberman-Kyl amendment, which designated Iran’s military as a terrorist organization. One of the sharpest exchanges came over a vote in the Senate on Wednesday on a resolution urging President Bush to designate the Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist group. Clinton supported the measure, Biden and Dodd opposed it. Obama did not vote. “I am ashamed of you, Hillary, for voting for it,” said former senator Mike Gravel of Alaska. When Clinton defended the vote as ...
Oregon judge knocks down part of Patriot Act
Post Date: 2007-09-26 23:17:58 by kiki
3 Comments
SEATTLE (Reuters) - An Oregon judge on Wednesday ruled that two provisions of the Patriot Act violated the U.S. Constitution's protection against unlawful searches and seizures. U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken ruled in favor of Brandon Mayfield, a lawyer wrongly arrested by the FBI in 2004 for possible ties to the Madrid train bombings, who challenged the secret searches of his home and office. The judge said the amendments made by the Patriot Act to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act allows the government to conduct searches and monitor American citizens without probable cause, which is typically required by the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. "The defendant ...
News photographers face trial in Toledo for covering Nazi rally
Post Date: 2007-09-26 20:12:32 by robin
5 Comments
Two professional news photographers are scheduled to stand trial in Toledo, Ohio, today, following their arrests nearly two years ago while covering a rally by a small group of Nazis outside the Government Center building. Both were arrested as they photographed the events of December 10, 2005, including not only the Nazis and the noisy but peaceful crowd of anti-Nazi protestors, but also the actions of the police officers. Police from 13 Ohio jurisdictions were mobilized to present, in the words of Toledo officials, a “show of force” with “zero tolerance” for the day. With nearly 1,000 members of law enforcement present, many on horseback, the police outnumbered ...
2 Patriot Act Provisions Ruled Unlawful
Post Date: 2007-09-26 19:22:57 by Brian S
6 Comments
(09-26) 16:17 PDT Portland, Ore. (AP) -- Two provisions of the USA Patriot Act are unconstitutional because they allow search warrants to be issued without a showing of probable cause, a federal judge ruled Wednesday. U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken ruled that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, as amended by the Patriot Act, "now permits the executive branch of government to conduct surveillance and searches of American citizens without satisfying the probable cause requirements of the Fourth Amendment." Portland attorney Brandon Mayfield sought the ruling in a lawsuit against the federal government after he was mistakenly linked by the FBI to the Madrid train bombings ...
Read Your Own DHS Travel Dossier
Post Date: 2007-09-26 18:35:05 by Zipporah
1 Comments
Read Your Own DHS Travel Dossier The Department of Homeland Security already knows everything about your travel. Now, for the first time, The Identity Project makes it easy for you to request the unclassified parts of the dossier that the DHS has complied on you. Warning: You can only request records on behalf of yourself or others with their written explicit permission. There are severe penalties for making requests for records on someone else without their knowledge. Are you prepared to find out for yourself the outrageous amount of personal information Homeland Security has been vacuuming-up on you? This is how to do it: 1. Download and fill-in the following two ...
Federal Judge: Michigan Breath Test Law For Pedestrians Under 21 Unconstitutional
Post Date: 2007-09-26 17:55:27 by Brian S
5 Comments
September 26, 2007 A federal judge in Detroit today struck down as unconstitutional a Michigan law that allows police to force pedestrians under the age of 21 to take a Breathalyzer test without first obtaining a search warrant. In a 32-page opinion, U.S. District Court Judge David M. Lawson struck down the state’s Minor in Possession (MIP) law because it “authorizes police officers to perform a search of minors without a warrant or legal excuse for not obtaining one” in violation of their Fourth Amendment rights. The decision does not apply to drivers of a motor vehicle and allows police officers to administer breath tests without warrants in emergencies. Michigan is ...
NSA 'may not realize' it collected info on innocent Americans, top US spy says
Post Date: 2007-09-26 10:28:03 by Brian S
3 Comments
Powerful supercomputers are vacuuming up so much information that logs of calls to or from innocent Americans could exist in government databases indefinitely, the nation's top intelligence official said Tuesday. "You may not even realize it's in the database because you do lots of collection," Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell said, referring to the "inadvertent collection" of Americans' communications through a vast surveillance program instituted after 9/11. An untold number of communication logs on US citizens could exist within a National Security Agency database of information gained through warrantless wiretaps of foreigners abroad, ...
Chairman Waxman Writes to Secretary Rice on State Department Stonewalling
Post Date: 2007-09-25 21:38:18 by kiki
1 Comments
Today Chairman Henry Waxman of the Oversight Committee wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice about three extraordinary communications the Committee has received from the State Department regarding corruption within the Iraqi government, the operations of Blackwater USA, and the status of political reconciliation in Iraq. The State Department has instructed its officials that they cannot communicate with the Committee about corruption in the Maliki government unless the Committee agrees to treat all information, including “broad statements/assessments,” as national security secrets. Other points of growing contention between the Committee and the State Department include ...
Department of Homeland Security sues state
Post Date: 2007-09-25 20:55:30 by Zipporah
1 Comments
Department of Homeland Security sues state By Paul MerrionSept. 24, 2007 (Crain’s) — The Department of Homeland Security sued the state of Illinois on Monday to block a recently enacted state law that prevents Illinois employers from participating in a new federal citizenship verification program. Illinois was one of five states with high illegal immigrant populations chosen to launch the federal government’s new “E-Verify” program, a free Web site that allows employers to check whether a job applicant’s Social Security number is valid. Out of concerns that the “E-Verify” program’s database is inaccurate and that it takes too long to get ...
letter from the ACLU
Post Date: 2007-09-25 16:46:29 by kiki
0 Comments
It’s time for Congress to stop caving in and start standing up to the Bush Administration. Our “leaders” in Washington keep telling us to wait for a more politically expedient time to restore our freedoms. Well, I have a message for them: Don’t Wait for ’08! That’s going to be the ACLU's rallying cry during our critical 100-day campaign demanding immediate action from Congress to restore our constitutional rights. With your help, we are going to put all 535 members of Congress on the record by asking a simple question - Will you defend the Constitution? And will you defend it now? Answering yes means standing up on four critical issues: ending warrantless ...
House Passes Tougher Iran Sanctions Measure
Post Date: 2007-09-25 14:38:07 by aristeides
10 Comments
House Passes Tougher Iran Sanctions Measure By Adam Graham-Silverman, CQ Staff Sept. 25, 2007 – 12:06 p.m. The House Tuesday passed a measure to impose tough new sanctions on Iran, including a ban on all imports and an expansion of curbs on exports to that country. The bill (HR 1400) passed 397-16. It was a surprise addition to the schedule and passed on the same day Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is in the United States to address the U.N. General Assembly. The legislation, sponsored by Foreign Affairs Chairman Tom Lantos, D-Calif., is the toughest in a series of measures the House has passed in recent months targeting Iran’s nuclear program and sponsorship of groups ...
The President's Last Stand
Post Date: 2007-09-25 13:33:11 by Peetie Wheatstraw
1 Comments
On January 20, 2009, when the next President of the United States swears to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution," will he or she instruct the new Congress to undo the subversions of that document perpetrated by George W. Bush during his final months in office? At a Justice Department meeting last month, a range of civil-liberties lawyers asked administration officials if the president would agree to be limited by even the hugely expanded powers in the new Protect America Act, which allows his administration to engage in warrantless spying on Americans' e-mails and phone calls. It became alarmingly clear that the answer was no: The president remains convinced that ...
Of all the enemies to public liberty,
Post Date: 2007-09-24 21:18:16 by richard9151
1 Comments
Men love their ideas more than their lives. And the more preposterous the idea, the more eager they are to die for it. And to kill for it.: Edward Abbey = "The greatest country, the richest country, is not that which has the most capitalists, monopolists, immense grabbings, vast fortunes, with its sad, sad soil of extreme, degrading, damning poverty, but the land in which there are the most homesteads, freeholds-where wealth does not show such contrasts high and low, where all men have enough-a modest living-and no man is made possessor beyond the sane and beautiful necessities.": Walt Whitman (1819-1892): = "A State divided into a small number of rich and a large number of ...
The New Weapon in the Border Guard Arsenal: the Dreaded Google Search
Post Date: 2007-09-24 20:22:41 by Zipporah
12 Comments
The New Weapon in the Border Guard Arsenal: the Dreaded Google Search By Ziya Tong 09.25.07 | 2:00 AM Illustration: Sean McCabe; Google Photo: Getty Start Previous: How to: Make Fake Blood next: Secrets Revealed! Decode Those Weird Symbols on Consumer Electronics. A Canadian psychotherapist named Andrew Feldmár was barred from the US last year after a border guard discovered he'd written an article about ...
Is Star Simpson's "fake bomb" just an art jacket?
Post Date: 2007-09-24 19:05:43 by aristeides
11 Comments
Is Star Simpson's "fake bomb" just an art jacket? Star Simpson, a 19-year-old MIT student, was arrested at gunpoint Friday morning at Boston's Logan Airport when officers suspected that a circuit board and battery she had pinned to her sweatshirt was a bomb. Indeed, every news outlet is now referring to the thing as a "fake bomb," and Simpson has been charged with possessing a "hoax device." But pictures of the sweatshirt that officials are putting out show something quite less scary -- I have no idea what a real bomb looks like, but I don't think it's a plastic board with a 9-volt battery on it. Simpson's explanation is that the jacket ...
Homeland Security's Data Vacuum Cleaner In Action An Investigation by the Identity Project
Post Date: 2007-09-23 13:39:35 by Zipporah
4 Comments
Homeland Security's Data Vacuum Cleaner In Action An Investigation by the Identity Project I. ATS, APIS, Secure Flight: Different Bottles, Same Water A. The Bottles For years, DHS ran a secret travel surveillance program called the Automated Targeting System. This data mining program came to light earlier this year when DHS announced plans to openly monitor the international comings and goings of Americans with a legal version of the scheme called the Automated Passenger Information System, or APIS. APIS, which is now fully operational, places requirements for government-issued travel credentials on all Americans as well as individualized, explicit, prior, per-flight permission ...
VETERANS DISARMAMENT ACT TO BAR VETS FROM OWNING GUNS
Post Date: 2007-09-23 04:56:39 by robin
23 Comments
Hundreds of thousands of veterans -- from Vietnam through Operation Iraqi Freedom -- are at risk of being banned from buying firearms if legislation that is pending in Congress gets enacted. How? The Veterans Disarmament Act -- which has already passed the House -- would place any veteran who has ever been diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) on the federal gun ban list. This is exactly what President Bill Clinton did over seven years ago when his administration illegitimately added some 83,000 veterans into the National Criminal Information System (NICS system) -- prohibiting them from purchasing firearms, simply because of afflictions like PTSD. The proposed ban is ...
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