So says Fade, from House Of The Rising Sons:

True Patriots fight FOR Freedom, not against it

They are aresting American citizens for t’shirts that offend warhawks. They are arresting preachers in America for calling for an end to the Iraq war. They are arresting eighty year old men who openly voice their opinion peacefully.

They are arresting American citizens for exercising free speech.

We are not free to oppose the warlike among us. We are not free to express morality in a country run by the immoral. We are not free to assemble peacefully when our opinion opposes that of the corporatists.

We are not free.

Fade is a must-read! Click HERE for the rest of this post.

from FreePress.net

Over 95 percent of comments filed at agency demand a free and open Internet

WASHINGTON — Tens of thousands of public comments supporting Net Neutrality flooded the Federal Communications Commission before the close of the agency’s official inquiry yesterday. In a landslide, well over 95 percent of the comments called for rules that prohibit phone and cable companies from discriminating against Web sites or services.

People from different backgrounds, living in every corner of the country, demand this basic Internet freedom. Internet users from all 435 congressional districts used SavetheInternet.com’s online tools to send personal messages to the FCC.

“I am living the American dream because of Network Neutrality — my games have been used in thousands of schools all over the world,” says Karen Chun, a single mother and owner of a successful online educational games business. “Without Net Neutrality, my little Web site would have been consigned to oblivion because I wouldn’t have been able to pay the fees the ISPs want to charge.”

Net Neutrality supporters include a broad range of small business owners, students, churchgoers, bloggers, political candidates, educators and activists who say that protecting Net Neutrality is fundamental to their family life, work and interests.

“In rural America, the Internet is very important in staying informed,” wrote Charles and Carol Swigart of Huntingdon, Pa. “We read several national newspapers every day to get the news our local paper does not thoroughly cover. All persons who publish on the Internet should have an equal opportunity to have their voices heard.”

Kelly Jones of Portland, Ore., told the FCC that “corporations are not, and have never been, qualified as gatekeepers to American communication and growth. If the FCC believes in true democracy, it must ensure that broadband providers do not block, interfere with or discriminate against any lawful Internet traffic based on its ownership, source or destination.”

read more at Free Press.net

you can also hear an interview about net neutrality and radio diversity in the July 2, 2007 edition of Blue Herald Radio.

Aziz Huq
from “THE NATION”

Early this week, judge advocates halted two prosecutions in the Guantánamo 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 Guantánamo 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

Ridiculous…… why not spend your time figuring out how to fix the traffic problems, or the lack of water, or a million other things……..

BY CHARLES RABIN

Miami-Dade Commissioner Barbara Jordan has proposed a symbolic resolution.In a move that may prompt debate over freedom of speech, Miami-Dade County Commissioner Barbara Jordan is trying to do away with the n-word.

She’s proposing a symbolic resolution that would create a moratorium on the word throughout the county — though it has no consequences for anyone who uses the slur.

Jordan said her resolution, which asks the county’s 35 municipalities to adopt similar measures, is not a response to recent digressions from radio host Don Imus and comedian Michael Richards, or an attack on the hip-hop music industry, where use of the term is somewhat common.

Instead, she said, it’s aimed at a word that is simply unacceptable in any circumstance.

”Every time I hear the word, I cringe. Maybe I’m just old school, but it bothers me,” said Jordan, one of four blacks on the 13-member County Commission.

On Monday, the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union called Jordan’s proposal a waste of time. And a friend of Jordan’s — one who had a famous run-in with the law over his own choice of words — questioned whether her moratorium was appropriate.

Rapper Luther Campbell of the group Two Live Crew, who was at the center of a famous obscenity case, said he applauded Jordan’s effort, but he warned her to be careful.

”I don’t think government has a role in free speech,” said Campbell, who said he punishes his kids on the Liberty City Optimists club football team when they use the word.

More at the Miami Herald