Mining public records…….. like your phone, email, credit cards……. what country is this again??

The Justice Department is considering letting the FBI investigate Americans without any evidence of wrongdoing, relying instead on a terrorist profile that could single out Muslims, Arabs or other racial and ethnic groups.

Currently, FBI agents need reasons — such as evidence or allegations that a law probably has been violated — to investigate citizens and legal residents. The new policy, law enforcement officials say, would let agents open terrorism investigations after mining public records and intelligence to build a profile of traits that, taken together, are deemed suspicious.

More at the Detroit Free Press

From From the Left blog (awesome blog):

When the Supreme Court threw out a longstanding legal precedents and government practice to make it harder for an employee to sue over unlawful pay discrimination.

The 5-to-4 ruling came in the case of Lilly Ledbetter, a supervisor at a Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company plant in Alabama, who over several years received smaller raises than men in comparable positions. A jury found that Goodyear violated Ms. Ledbetter’s rights under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

But a majority of the Supreme Court decided she was entitled because her case was filed after the 180-day deadline for filing such claims. They decided that Ms. Ledbetter had to sue within 180 days of the company’s discriminatory raises and that the persistence of unfairness from check to check was not relevant.

The “Fair Pay Act” was sponsored by Sens. Edward Kennedy (MA) and Arlen Specter (TN) would redefine the deadline for making a charge of pay discrimination under Federal Title VII from when a worker receives unequal pay, not from the day a company first decided to discriminate, as the Supreme Court wrongly decided.

Read more »

More at NPR

There are two videos you really should see if you’ve missed them.

The brief video below is Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) explaining the real life ramifications of the surveillance policies the Bush administration and their allies want:

This comes courtesy of Glenn Greenwald, who has more here, and who often writes on these issues.

The second video is pretty disturbing, of a woman being strip’searched after a call to the police for help:
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Civil rights are probably under greater assault now than they’re been in a few decades. Glenn Greenwald reminds us the FISA fight isn’t done. Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell aims to create an Orwellian surveillance state, citing imaginary boogeymen and phantom evidence (The New Yorker article is not yet online, but will be eventually here). Eliminating habeas corpus and employing torture should never have occurred, but the scoundrels who perpetrated it are still in power, and their damage must be fixed. The basic concept of the rule of law and a sound justice system have been systematically attacked. Finally, a key Supreme Court case involving an Indiana Voter ID law is being decided - and I fear good law, common sense and basic decency will not prevail.

In previous years for MLK Day, I’ve posted the text of the famous “I Have a Dream” speech, and links to video of it. That speech never ceases to give me a chill, and is hard to top, so go here if you’d like to feel that inspiration again. It’s a good reminder of what can, has and must be done.
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Remind me again why it was so important to get them into power in 06? Oh that’s right….they were going to make everything better and stop all this bullshit. Riggghhhttt! So the President has corporations spy on us illegally and then talks congress into giving them immunity and make it alright for them to continue to spy on us. What a fucking country!!! Oh, and by the way, they were doing this PRIOR to 911.

From the New York Times:

John Aravosis over at AMERICAblog has penned several posts recently (The Backlash Begins, Part I II & III) regarding the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), groundbreaking legislation that would bring protections to millions of Americans in the LGBT communities.

Briefly- two bills were voted on by the House Leadership; one that included workplace protections only for lesbians, gays and bisexuals. The other covered these groups and the transgendered community also. The trans-inclusive ENDA bill simply would not pass. At issue is, the transgendered community thinks that, if not included in ENDA, then the bill should be scrapped altogether… putting on-hold possible workplace protections for the LGB communities.

Comments to these posts have been running pretty heated. John, along with roughly half of the commenters to his posts, have taken the position that the transgendered-less ENDA bill should be introduced and voted on so as to at least bring about long sought after protections to the gay community. Then later, fight for the transgendered. The other half are saying “all or nothing!”.

On it’s face, I’d have to agree with John. Rights for some have come by very slowly. Should some groups’ rights be put on hold until everyone has their respective protections? I don’t think so. But I can understand the pro-transgendered concerns in this also. Time and time again, people that once shared a position on a lower rung of the American ladder, and were lucky enough to have climbed their way up, oftentimes forgot about those they’ve left below.

But there’s something bigger here that’s being ignored. A larger picture that should be looked at.

We’ve been trumpeting for centuries now that we’re the “land of the free”, “home of the brave” and “all men are created equal”… blah, blah, blah. Yet, people, United States citizens, are having to fight and beg for rights and equal protections daily! What sense does this make? Can anyone answer this? I thought ALL MEN WERE CREATED EQUAL!

In a perfect world, there would be no special protections. If an employer were to fire an employee, their justification for doing so should be for poor work performance only.

People should be considered equal. Their rights the same. It should be up to an employer (or some other entity) to prove that a person or group is not worthy of said rights and protections… and not the other way around! “We the people…” is the cornerstone for which this country was founded. Not “we the corporations”, nor “we the wealthy, or bigoted, or jesus-freaks”!

We shouldn’t have to demand our rights. They’re already ours. They were given to us by our Founding Fathers. Many lives have been sacrificed throughout the history of this country to keep and secure those rights.

Any employer or entity denying you those rights are only denying their own American heritage.

What’s that I hear……. the Twilight Zone theme…….

Tackling a dilemma right out of a science fiction novel, the state Senate passed legislation Thursday that would bar employers from requiring workers to have identification devices implanted under their skin.

State Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto) proposed the measure after at least one company began marketing radio frequency identification devices for use in humans.

The devices, as small as a grain of rice, can be used by employers to identify workers. A scanner passing over a body part implanted with one can instantly identify the person.

“RFID is a minor miracle, with all sorts of good uses,” Simitian said. “But we shouldn’t condone forced ‘tagging’ of humans. It’s the ultimate invasion of privacy.”

Simitian said he fears that the devices could be compromised by persons with unauthorized scanners, facilitating identity theft and improper tracking and surveillance.

The bill has been approved by the state Assembly and now goes to the governor.

More at the LA Times

Unsurprisingly, Dan Froomkin has a splendid round-up of editorials, articles and blog posts on the recent, horrendous FISA bill. (All the cartoons were linked by Froomkin, except the last one, which I’ve meaning to use for a while now.)

Crooks and Liars has video of Glenn Greenwald and Marjorie Cohn discussing these issues here with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! The full show is here.
Read more »

(Graphic by Tengrain, blogswarm idea by Ripley at The Zen Cabin, and thanks to Blue Gal for spreading the word.)

While the Bush administration rattles sabers once again and insists on more unchecked surveillance power and fewer civil rights for Americans, and Democrats seem set to capitulate for no good reason, it’s worth taking stock of the Bush administration’s actual record on terrorism.
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Israel KamakawiwoÊ»ole - “Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World”

For a shorter version featuring the late “Braddah IZ” click here.

Most people acknowledge today that it was wrong 40 years ago to deny couples who loved each other the right to marry, the freedom to marry, simply because of one’s own religious belief. We want to remind people of past mistakes. This 40th anniversary of Loving is the perfect opportunity to do that. The similarity [to anti-gay rhetoric] is it’s religious-based discrimination. -Mitchell Gold, Faith In America

I’m laying down odds and taking bets. Contact me.     (j/k!)

Mr. Gold, I wish you the best of luck in your endeavor.

Scriptual Showdown

Arguing for marriage equality for everyone, an activist group started by furniture designer Mitchell Gold seeks to remind Americans that interracial marriage was banned just a few decades ago.
(Julie Scelfo, Newsweek)

Gold: ‘There’s so much talk today in politics about religion, and frankly too often at that intersection is discrimination’

June 8, 2007 - For years, Mitchell Gold, a founder of the popular furniture company Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams, has been irritated by what he sees as fundamentalist Christians- use of the Bible to justify withholding civil rights from gays. Scripture, Gold argues, was used in the past to defend slavery, prohibit interracial marriage and prevent women from voting. Frustrated that few politicians dare to confront anyone brandishing a Bible, in 2005 Gold formed the group Faith In America (FIA), which says its goals are to educate people about the past “misuse” of religion and scripture. FIA’s latest campaign is centered on next week’s 40th anniversary of Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court decision that overturned Virginia’s ban on interracial marriage, which had been supported by a Virginia judge who ruled the intention of “Almighty God” was to keep the races separate.
[...]

I think many politicians are afraid to say somebody using their Bible is wrong. Secular civil-rights groups are very uncomfortable. And we feel enough harm has been done, it’s time to stop this, to stand up and have the courage to say to folks, this really is not right, to think back about what types of harm this kind of religious thinking has done in the past. When he realized the harm he was causing, Jerry Falwell in the 1970s apologized to African-Americans for [previously] supporting segregation. We-re hoping that good Americans today will recognize if they-re using their biblical beliefs to deny gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender people of their full and equal rights, that’s it’s wrong and harmful.

Full article at MSNBC.com

By EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS, Associated Press Writer
from YAHOO! NEWS

JACKSON, Miss. - A federal jury on Thursday convicted reputed Klansman James Ford Seale of kidnapping and conspiracy in the 1964 deaths of two black teenagers in southwest Mississippi.

Seale, 71, had pleaded not guilty to charges related to the deaths of Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee. The 19-year-olds disappeared from Franklin County on May 2, 1964, and their bodies were found later in the Mississippi River.

Federal prosecutors indicted Seale in January almost 43 years after the slayings.

During closing arguments earlier in the day, prosecutors acknowledged they made “a deal with the devil” but said that offering immunity to a Klansman to get his testimony against James Ford Seale was the only way to get justice.

U.S. Attorney Dunn Lampton summarized the evidence against James Ford Seale, who is being tried on charges of conspiracy and kidnapping related to the 1964 deaths of Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee. The 19-year-olds disappeared on May 2, 1964, and their bodies were found later in the Mississippi River.

If Seale, 71, is convicted, he could be sentenced to life in prison.

Aziz Huq
from “THE NATION”

Early this week, judge advocates halted two prosecutions in the Guantnamo military commissions established under the 2006 Military Commissions Act (MCA). This is not the first setback the Administration’s second-tier court system has hit; the Supreme Court invalidated an earlier iteration of the commissions in 2006. And it won’t be the last. But while this week’s setback likely will be speedily surmounted, it casts an unexpected light on the MCA’s real purposes, and what’s at stake when the Bush Administration plays politics with national security.

Understanding the significance of this week’s ruling means delving into a bit of procedural arcana. The devil in the MCA is, almost literally, in the details–and unless we attend closely to the rococo details of the statute, we’ll miss the ways in which the Administration intends to slowly erode our liberties.

At the beginning of this week, the military commissions’ two judges–Army Col. Peter Brownback and Navy Capt. Keith Allred–dismissed charges filed against Omar Khadr and Salim Hamdan. The rulings focused on a question of categorization–basically, the judges found that Khadr and Hamdan had been wrongly classified. But how did this happen?

The MCA, which created the military commissions, states that only an alien who is an “unlawful enemy combatant” can be tried in a military commission. It also defines “unlawful enemy combatants” in tremendously sweeping terms to include anyone who has “materially supported hostilities.” Many civil libertarians, including myself, expressed grave concerns about the scope of this provision. Read in tandem with recent Supreme Court cases, it might be taken not merely as a gateway to trial by military commission but also as a sweeping new executive detention authority.

The MCA doesn’t say how a person gets designated as an “unlawful enemy combatant.” But all except one of the detainees at Guantnamo have already all been classified as enemy combatants by a procedure known as a CSRT, or Combatant Status Review Tribunal. (The one exception is a prisoner recently transferred to the base.) CSRTs are shoddy summary procedures in which the detainee has barely a role and cannot respond to the secret evidence used to detain him.

read more at THE NATION

From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George Bush and his administration seem to be taking them all.

This article appeared in the April 27, 2007 edition of “The Guardian”

Last autumn, there was a military coup in Thailand. The leaders of the coup took a number of steps, rather systematically, as if they had a shopping list. In a sense, they did. Within a matter of days, democracy had been closed down: the coup leaders declared martial law, sent armed soldiers into residential areas, took over radio and TV stations, issued restrictions on the press, tightened some limits on travel, and took certain activists into custody.

They were not figuring these things out as they went along. If you look at history, you can see that there is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship. That blueprint has been used again and again in more and less bloody, more and less terrifying ways. But it is always effective. It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy - but history shows that closing one down is much simpler. You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps.

As difficult as this is to contemplate, it is clear, if you are willing to look, that each of these 10 steps has already been initiated today in the United States by the Bush administration.

Because Americans like me were born in freedom, we have a hard time even considering that it is possible for us to become as unfree - domestically - as many other nations. Because we no longer learn much about our rights or our system of government - the task of being aware of the constitution has been outsourced from citizens’ ownership to being the domain of professionals such as lawyers and professors - we scarcely recognise the checks and balances that the founders put in place, even as they are being systematically dismantled. Because we don’t learn much about European history, the setting up of a department of “homeland” security - remember who else was keen on the word “homeland” - didn’t raise the alarm bells it might have.

It is my argument that, beneath our very noses, George Bush and his administration are using time-tested tactics to close down an open society. It is time for us to be willing to think the unthinkable - as the author and political journalist Joe Conason, has put it, that it can happen here. And that we are further along than we realize.

Conason eloquently warned of the danger of American authoritarianism. I am arguing that we need also to look at the lessons of European and other kinds of fascism to understand the potential seriousness of the events we see unfolding in the US.

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy

After we were hit on September 11 2001, we were in a state of national shock. Less than six weeks later, on October 26 2001, the USA Patriot Act was passed by a Congress that had little chance to debate it; many said that they scarcely had time to read it. We were told we were now on a “war footing”; we were in a “global war” against a “global caliphate” intending to “wipe out civilization”. There have been other times of crisis in which the US accepted limits on civil liberties, such as during the civil war, when Lincoln declared martial law, and the second world war, when thousands of Japanese-American citizens were interned. But this situation, as Bruce Fein of the American Freedom Agenda notes, is unprecedented: all our other wars had an endpoint, so the pendulum was able to swing back toward freedom; this war is defined as open-ended in time and without national boundaries in space - the globe itself is the battlefield. “This time,” Fein says, “there will be no defined end.”

Creating a terrifying threat - hydra-like, secretive, evil - is an old trick. It can, like Hitler’s invocation of a communist threat to the nation’s security, be based on actual events (one Wisconsin academic has faced calls for his dismissal because he noted, among other things, that the alleged communist arson, the Reichstag fire of February 1933, was swiftly followed in Nazi Germany by passage of the Enabling Act, which replaced constitutional law with an open-ended state of emergency). Or the terrifying threat can be based, like the National Socialist evocation of the “global conspiracy of world Jewry”, on myth.

It is not that global Islamist terrorism is not a severe danger; of course it is. I am arguing rather that the language used to convey the nature of the threat is different in a country such as Spain - which has also suffered violent terrorist attacks - than it is in America. Spanish citizens know that they face a grave security threat; what we as American citizens believe is that we are potentially threatened with the end of civilization as we know it. Of course, this makes us more willing to accept restrictions on our freedoms.

For the rest of the article and steps 2 - 10, click HERE