Category: Civil Rights

A Victory for Civil Rights in the UK

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5 Muslim students had their convictions for perusing Jihadi websites overturned.

The appeals court declared that, “Difficult questions of interpretation have been raised in this case by the attempt by the prosecution to use [anti-terrorism law] for a purpose for which it was not intended, …. We do not consider that it was made plain to the jury [in the original trial] … that they possessed the extremist material for use in the future to incite the commission of terrorist acts. We doubt whether the evidence supported such a case.”

It’s not in the US, but I’ll take it.

Newspapers Reprint Mohammed Cartoon In Response to Terror Threats

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Kurt Westergaard, the Danish artist who painted the picture of Mohammad having a bomb for a turban, was the target of an assassination conspiracy which was uncovered yesterday.

In response, newspapers across Europe have reprinted his cartoon.

Good for them. This is an issue of free speech, and the right to free speech includes the right to be an asshole without fear of violence or death.

For what it’s worth, I do find this cartoon offensive and bigoted:

But the idea that it merits death threats, or for that matter actual conspiracies to assassinate, is repugnant to any civilized people.

The freedom of speech includes the freedom to blaspheme.

By way of example:

I would expect that this would get me called a bigoted asshole, but anyone who thinks that it rates death, and has the inclination to act on it, needs to be removed from free society.

Comcast’sAnswer to Complaints of Sabotaging Applications: A Change to Their Terms of Service

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More confirmation that the Cable companies will be the first ones up against the wall when the revolution comes.

In response to complaints to spoofing packets to break filesharing applications (and other applications too, like Lotus Notes), Comcast has rewritten its terms of service.

The short version is:

Our network sucks, and we can block your peer-to-peer connections — and everything else — for any or no reason. And since the FCC’s competition policy lets us operate with no competitors — where else are you going to go?

Additionally, Comcast’s terms of service have “conduct terms” that would make John Ashcroft proud.

Note to self: Check out Verizon Fios terms of service.

The Whitehouse is Now Claiming that Waterboarding is Legal, and Mukasey Says Whatever a Political Hack in the DoJ Declares is Legal Too

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Well, we now have the White House assurting that waterboarding is legal, simply because they say so, and you have our So-Called Attorney General, Michael Mukasey, saying that if the political hacks appointed by Bush and His Evil Minions™ in the Justice department said that it was OK, then there is no crime, so he will not investigate warrantless wiretapping or torture.

Seriously, these folks really hate most basic founding principal of the Republic, a nation of laws, and not men.

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Well On Our Way to the Police State

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What is a police state?

I would argue that it is a country in which all rights are sublimated to increasing the capabilities of the state security apparatus to conduct any business that it desires without impediment.

No bothersome warrants, no consideration of the rights of the accused, torture, no privacy, etc.

Cases in point:

  • FBI intends to assemble a massive database of physical characteristics of people, including retinal and iris scans, palm prints, and tattoos.
    • Of course my initial response to the idea of a database of tattoos was, “Why bother. Just tattoo numbers on people’s wrists. It worked so well the last time out.”
  • And then we have some crypto-fascist at DHS who wants to require Real ID cards to track people’s cold medication purchases. I understand that pseudoephedrin can make meth, but this is insane.
  • Of course, in a police state, you have to have massive prisons stuffed to the gills with people, so AG Mukasey wants congress to act because people who got disproportionate sentences under the racist crack laws might will get out earlier under the new sentencing guidelines.
    • Dude, that was the whole idea of changing the guidelines. The disproportionate sentencing was deliberately racist, and demonstrably so, and this is why they want it changed. Rockefeller style drug laws have proved a failure. All it’s left the US with is the greatest proportioned of imprisoned in the world.
  • Finally, we are requiring permission for USA citizens to return to the US.

    Under new regulations and procedures announced to take effect over the next month, citizens of the USA will, for the first time, be required to obtain USA government permission in order to return home to their own country from abroad — from anywhere else in the world, by air or sea or land.

    On no other aspect of the right to travel is international law more clear than on the right of return to the country of one’s own citizenship: “No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country.” The new regulations are a flagrant violation of the obligations of the USA as a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and other international human rights treaties, as well as a violation of the Constitutional duty of the USA government to treat such treaties as the highest law of the land.

I want my country back.

New Rule: Our Troops, No Midieval Clerics Get the Power to Judge People

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Sayed Pervez Kambaksh has been sentenced to death for blasphemy.

Hi crime, he “he downloaded a report from a Farsi website which stated that Muslim fundamentalists who claimed the Koran justified the oppression of women had misrepresented the views of the prophet Mohamed”, and “distributed the tract to fellow students and teachers at Balkh University.”

He was not allowed a lawyer. He was not allowed to speak.

We’ve turned the most secular government in the Arab world into an ethnically cleansed theocracy, and because of the resources we pulled from Afghanistan to do that, Afghanistan is heading back towards becoming…well…Afghanistan.

Heck of a job, Bushie.

Kentucky: Breathalyser Code Must Be Turned Over to Defense

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This is a good decision. The idea that one is allowed to present a number from a black box which no one in the court can fully understand is ludicrous.

Excerpts from the Court of Appeals of Kentucky’s opinion:
A subpoena may be quashed only upon a showing that compliance therewith would be unreasonable or oppressive. We do not believe the commonwealth and CMI have made this showing.

The request is not unreasonable because its purpose is to challenge the validity of the breath alcohol readings produced by the Intoxilyzer 5000 instrument, which is anticipated to be used at trial in support of the Commonwealth’s DUI charge against House. The reading was also used to support the aggravating factor of driving with a breath alcohol reading of .18 or more.

Relevant evidence is admissible unless excluded by some other rule. Because a flaw in the computer source code of the Intoxilyzer 5000 would be consequential to the accuracy of the reading intended to be relied upon by the commonwealth, such evidence is relevant and admissible. Accordingly, requesting the computer code to test the verity of the readings produced by the instrument is not unreasonable.

Senate FISA Vote Update

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Well, according to FDL, read the live blogging there, I cannot do justice to it, nothing is going to come out of the Senate. The ‘Phants are still blocking it.

Of interest, however, is that both Arlen Specter (R-PA) and
Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) will be voting with the Democrats.

Specter, of course, makes noises, and toes the line, and Rockefeller has been the champion of retroactive telco immunity.

It’s odd.

I do not know what is going on, but this is very, very odd.

FWIW, Sens. Mark Pryor (D-AR), Ben Nelson (D-NE), Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) and Mary Landrieu (D-LA) voted with the Republicans to end debate and amendments on the bill.

FWIW, Landrieu is up next year in LA, but she will lose, as the ethnic cleansing of New Orleans has ensured that.

No money to the DSCC. Give directly to races, because otherwise, it will go to folks like Pryor, Lincoln, Nelson, and Landrieu.

It’s wasted money.

Bush Threatens Veto on FISA Extension, Reid Calls Him “Shamefully Irresponsible”

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Bush is ratcheting up the rhetoric on the “give the phone companies a blow job” version of the FISA update, and Harry Reid is pushing back.

Bush is threatening a veto of an extension of the so called “Protect America Act”, because, even though it protects phone companies for current warrantless domestic spying, it does not indemnify them for prior spying, some of which began in February 2001, more than 7 months before 911.

Let’s be clear. Indemnification is not about getting phone companies to cooperate. It is about helping phone companies conceal the details of this activity, so that Bush and His Evil Minions™ will never face legal consequences of their law breaking.

Well, $%#@ that.

Breaking: Clinton and Obama to Show Up to Oppose Cloture on FISA Update

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Care of Firedoglake, they will both show up to vote against cloture on the “give the phone companies a blow job” version of the FISA update.

Good for them, or more accurately, their pollsters. Someone told them that this was more important than a fund raising meeting.

Telco immunity is about Bush and His Evil Minions&trade covering up their illegal wiretapping activities that started before 9/11.

What is going on With FISA

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Firedog Lake asks What The F*!k Is Up With FISA?

Reid is now saying that if there is not an extension, than there will be nothing when the current misbegotten bill expires on February 1.

According to Think Progress, this is Reid’s Statement:

The White House threat to veto a short extension of the Protect America Act is shamefully irresponsible. The President is simply posturing in advance of Monday’s State of the Union address.

When it comes to providing a strong long-term Foreign Intelligence Surveillance bill, Democrats in Congress are focused on solutions, while Republicans are obviously playing politics.

The House has already passed a FISA bill, and the Senate was ready to pass its own bill until Republicans blocked all amendments. At the same time, Democrats are ready to extend current law for as long as necessary, but Republicans are blocking that extension and the White House is threatening a veto.

It is shenanigans like this that make Americans so eager for change. We hope the American public will remember these Republican stunts when they go to the polling booth this November.

In any event, current law ensures that no ongoing collection activity will be cut off on February 1. There will be no terrorism intelligence collection gap. But if there is any problem, the blame will clearly and unequivocally fall where it belongs: on President Bush and his allies in Congress.

The ‘Phants overreached. They were going to get everything that they wanted this, so they wanted this, and a pony…OK, it wasn’t a pony, they wanted to be able to humiliate the Democrats too.

More on Fascist Catholic Archbishop in St. Louis

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Saint Louis University’s basketball couch Rick Majerus tells fascist Archbishop to piss off regarding said cleric’s suggestion that disciplinary action be taken against him because he showed up to a Hillary Clinton rally, and made pro-choice statements.

Ignoring the towering idiocy of demanding that a basketball coach towing anti-woman, anti sex line of Archbishop Raymond Burke, there is also the matter, rasied in my last post on this issue, that St. Louis University just won a court case regarding a tax financing for a new sports arena because they had demonstrated they were not, “controlled by a religious creed”.

This is not the first time that this moron has damaged both the reputation and the institution of the Catholic Church:

Burke has spoken out before against Catholics or Catholic institutions that stray from church doctrine. During the 2004 election, he said he would not administer Holy Communion to presidential candidate John Kerry, a Catholic, because he supported abortion rights.

Last year, Burke dropped his seat on the board of a charity that let singer Sheryl Crow perform at a benefit concert. Crow supports abortion rights and embryonic stem cell research.

On Tuesday, Burke said he would ask Saint Louis University officials to take “appropriate action” against Majerus after the coach gave a TV interview at the Clinton rally during which he said he was Catholic and pro-choice.

In 1942, the Bishop of Father Coughlin to STFU. Perhaps it might be advisable for someone in Burke’s chain of command to do the same.

My Letters to My Senators on Telco Immunity

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I had to send two very different letters, because Ben Cardin voted against retroactive Telco immunity, and Barbara Mikulski voted for it.

To the Honorable Barbara Mikulski:

I have no idea why you were one of the 12 Democratic Senators to vote for Telecommunications Company immunity in the recent vote on the FISA update.

However, I will tell you as a lifelong Democrat, I can find no reason for you to do so.

Given the electoral dynamics of Maryland, you are at no risk, and in any case, you are not up for election this year.

The activity that you voted to indemnify PRE-DATED THE 911 ATTACKS, and the demands of the Bush administration, and were CLEARLY illegal.

Indemnification is an attempt to cover up the clearly illegal actions of the Bush administration and the NSA to illegally spy on Americans.

Absent a convincing justification for this vote, I cannot support you, or vote for you in the future.

This is not an issue of national security. FISA as it exists already includes the necessary mechanisms to make our country secure, notwithstanding DNI Michael McConnell’s lies on this matter.

This is not a matter for politics, or for listening to lobbyists employed by the telecommunications industry.

These actions were clearly illegal, which is why Qwest refused this access, and given the intensity of the desire of the Bush administration on this issue, I can only conclude that the purpose of this immunity is to cover up systematic surveillance of political opponents.

To the Honorable Benjamin Cardin:

I appreciate your vote on to remove telecommunications immunity from the FISA update.

This is a matter beyond politics, and it strikes at core of our constitutional rights to be free from unreasonable searches.

Much of the illegal activity in question was taken months before the attacks on 9-11, and it was unequivocally illegal.

The desire for immunity on the part of the Bush administration is clearly driven by a desire to cover up their role in illegally spying on American citizens, which very likely involved spying political opponents.

Personally, I would consider any vote to create retroactive immunity to be unacceptable, and dangerous to our republic.

You can find a list of the Democratic Senators who betrayed their oaths of office here.

I’m Confused on the FISA Progress

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First, Harriy Reid attempts to exhibit some intestinal fortitude, and demands real filibusters, and then 12 Democrats (Sens. Evan Bayh (D-IN), Tom Carper (D-DE), Daniel Inouye (D-HI), Tim Johnson (D-SD), Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Claire McCaskill (D-MO), Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Bill Nelson (D-FL), Ben Nelson (D-NE), Mark Pryor (D-AR), Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), and Ken Salazar (D-CO)) voted with the Republicans to keep Telco immunity.

I have to figure that this is Reid playing both ends against the middle. He says, “Real Filibuster”, and defuses efforts to remove him as leader, but then twists arms to get Dem Senators to vote to support bush’s position.

It still appears, however, that George W. Bush won’t get what he wants from the house easily, so he hasreleased White House wiretap docs to the house.

NOTE: When reading this article, there is a significant factual error, “The companies were helping the administration carry out the so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program, a still classified effort that intercepted communications on U.S. soil without oversight from the FISA court from Sept. 11, 2001 to January 17, 2007.”

This is not true.

This program was initiated in February, 2001, predating the attacks by 7 months.