Well, according to this story, the Virginia Republicans have dropped their loyalty oath requirements.
I guess that the Grand Old Party of Stalin does not like it when their ideas get a public airing.
Category: Civil Rights
A Rundown on GOP Loyalty Oaths
Grand Old Party of Stalin, I guess.
- The Virginia Republican party is requiring a signed oath that you will vote for the Republican presidential nominee.
- The Kansas state Republican Party is forming a loyalty committee to punish officials who endorse or contribute to the wrong people.
- On Vice President Cheney’s recent trip to New Mexico, residents were allowed in to hear his Albuquerque speech only if they signed a loyalty oath swearing they “endorse George W. Bush for reelection of the United States [sic].”
- PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — “I want you to stand, raise your right hands,” and recite “the Bush Pledge,” said Florida state Sen. Ken Pruitt. The assembled mass of about 2,000 in this Treasure Coast town about an hour north of West Palm Beach dutifully rose, arms aloft, and repeated after Pruitt: “I care about freedom and liberty. I care about my family. I care about my country. Because I care, I promise to work hard to re-elect, re-elect George W. Bush as president of the United States.”
These folks have a problem deeper than bad policies.
I Want My Country Back
The Supreme Court declined to hear a case where welfare recipients are forced to submit to WARRANTLESS searches of their homes.
Disgusting
John Edwards and Chris Dodd Want to Repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”
Edwards is saying that, “‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ did not become wrong. It was always wrong.“, and Dodd is saying, “”The time to put an end to the military’s ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy has come“.
Clinton and Obama?????
***Crickets****
Courts Allowing Electronic of Suspects Without Probable Cause
Welcome to 1984, only 23 years late.
The feds are increasingly using the enhanced 911 services to track people’s movements, and most of the judicial precedent at this point is saying that they do not need probable cause to get a court order, it is noted that, “Such requests run counter to the Justice Department’s internal recommendation that federal prosecutors seek warrants based on probable cause to obtain precise location data in private areas”, so we get
In one case last month in a southwestern state, an FBI agent obtained precise location data with a court order based on the lower standard, citing “specific and articulable facts” showing reasonable grounds to believe the data are “relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation,” said Al Gidari, a partner at Perkins Coie in Seattle, who reviews data requests for carriers.
Which means that the agents think that all they need to show is that they want the information.
US Charging Bilal Hussein in Iraqi Court with Secret Evidence
They have held the award winning photographer for more than 19 months, and now they are finally charging him in a process that his employer, the AP calls a sham. The AP claims, and I’m inclined to agree that these charges are because he got pictures that the military did not want:
Tomlin said the AP has faced chronic difficulties in meeting Hussein at the Camp Cropper detention facility in Baghdad and its own intensive investigations of the case—conducted by a former federal prosecutor, Paul Gardephe—have found no support for allegations that he was anything other than a working journalist in a war zone.
This is just disgraceful.
Senate Surveillance Bill Still Sucks Like 1000 Hoovers All Going At Once.
The House version is better, for example, the FISA coiurt is not involved in foreign to domestic conversations, just the Attorney General, or the DNI, so apparrently, it is ok for the senate for our privace to be at the whim of people Like Abu Gonzalez.
FISA Bill Update: House Passes, Senate Telco Immunity Up to Harry Reid
The house passed their, not quite so nauseating version 227-189, which sounds like an almost party line vote.
As to the senate version, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted out a version without telco immunity, but did not formally strip it from the version from the Intel Committee, so Harry Reid gets to decide which one hits the floor.
Call Harry Reid’s office: (202) 224-3542.
Sensitive Guantanamo Bay Day to Day Gulag Manual Leaked
The 238+ page document, “Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedures”, dated March 2003, was leaked and the whole document (pdf) is now at available at wikileaks.org.
Among the revelations:
- Detainees prohibited access (or possibly concealed, it is unclear) to the Red Cross in violation of US treaty obligations, and the word of George W. Bush and senior members of his cabinet.
- Control of the availability toilet paper as a disciplinary tool. (WTF????)
- Routine use of dogs in the compound soley for the purpose of intimidation.
Nice gulag you have there, Bushie.
House Looks to Pass Only Mildly Nauseating Wiretap Bill
It extends wiretapping further than I would like, but it requires at least some court review, and has no Telco immunity.
It looks like it will pass, the rule for the bill just passed, largely on party lines 224-192.
Spanish cartoonists fined for royal sex mag cover
As I noted 4 months ago, a Spanish satire mag El Jueves got into legal trouble for publishing a cartoon showing the Spanish Crown Prince and his wife en flagrante delecto, the caption, “Do you realise that if you get pregnant . . . It will be the closest thing to work I’ve done in my life?” on the cover.
The two cartoonists have now been fined €3000 each. If I were them, I’d appeal to the European court of human rights.
Making fun of the royals should be a basic human right.
Mukasey Restarts Warrantless Wiretap Inquiry at DoJ
I’m pleasantly surprised. Bush is screwed. He wanted this guy, he threw a tantrum over it, and now he has him, and it appears that he will actually do his job with this.
Hopefully he fries the lizards, including the pukes at AT&T, who did this, but I’m fearing that this is just an attempt to forestall a congressional investigation by creating an ongoing DoJ one.
Here is hoping that the pleasant surprise continues.
Another Specter Weasel
Of course, the Very Serious People™ are claiming that it’s a compromise, but it’s a weasel.
You see, his “compromise” would make the Federal Government, as opposed to the telcos, the defendants. This allows for wholesale classification, foot dragging, sovereign immunity, and all the other tricks which would guarantee that nothing would come out.
Seriously, this sort of crap is why our government is so f*^%ed up.
Charges against Jena 6 defendant reduced
The prosecution dropped the attempted murder charge.
At the end of the day, the only just resolution will be that the Jena 6 have their charges dropped, and the racist cracker DA goes to jail.
Breaking News, John Negroponte is a Moron
Here is a guy who takes our money, and as opposed to going after terrorists in the north, has spent it on gold plating his military machine to go after India in the south, but according to John Negroponte, he is indispensable.
The Pakistani military has spent the past 60 imagining the glory of der tag*, and Musharraf is very much a part of this dysfunctional and anti-Democratic culture.
Of course, the current alternative, Benazir Bhutto, is remarkably corrupt, even by the standards of Pakistani politics (Yes, I know, “corrupt even by the standards of Pakistani politics”, is hard to wrap one’s head around).
*The German Imperial Navy, in the days before World War I, constantly longed for der tag, the day, when they would confront the British Navy.
AT&T/NSA Hoovered the Entire Bloody Internet
Mark Klein is an American hero.
For those of you who don’t know, Mark Klein is a retired technician at AT&T, and he was responsible for running wires to a splitter for the benefit of Room 641A of 611 Folsom Street, the secret room set up by the NSA at AT&T’s offices in San Francisco. He is Now lobbying congress not to grant retroactive immunity to the Telcos over the illegal NSA spying.
“That was my ‘aha!’ moment,” Klein said. “They’re sending the entire Internet to the secret room.”
The diagram showed splitters, glass prisms that split signals from each network into two identical copies. One fed into the secret room, the other proceeded to its destination, he said.
“This splitter was sweeping up everything, vacuum-cleaner-style,” he said. “The NSA is getting everything. These are major pipes that carry not just AT&T’s customers but everybody’s.”
The illegal wiretapping that most telcos did on behalf of the NSA was far more extensive than previously revealed.
This was not targeted at foreign calls routed through the US. Nor was it calls where one party was overseas. The NSA is actively collecting ALL THE DATA going through AT&T internet exchange point. Everything. Every email, every google query, every music download, every IP telephone call (and BTW, pretty much all long distance telephone calls at some point use TCP/IP these days.)
They took everything.
The telcos are claiming that they need immunity, because they were just being good citizens, and that they were not clear on the law.
There is one problem with argument, as Mr. Klein noted on Olbermann, THESE ENTITIES WROTE THE LAWS INVOLVED. They were heavily involved in drafting the laws at every step of the way.
They knowingly broke the laws, and they did because they saw the example of Qwest, where the government retaliated by denying and pulling contracts, and they chose to break the law because it was profitable.
Weapons of Mass Digestion*
Your tax dollars at work.
FBI Hoped to Follow Falafel Trail to Iranian Terrorists Here
By Jeff Stein, CQ National Security Editor
Like Hansel and Gretel hoping to follow their bread crumbs out of the forest, the FBI sifted through customer data collected by San Francisco-area grocery stores in 2005 and 2006, hoping that sales records of Middle Eastern food would lead to Iranian terrorists.The idea was that a spike in, say, falafel sales, combined with other data, would lead to Iranian secret agents in the south San Francisco-San Jose area.
The brainchild of top FBI counterterrorism officials Phil Mudd and Willie T. Hulon, according to well-informed sources, the project didn’t last long. It was torpedoed by the head of the FBI’s criminal investigations division, Michael A. Mason, who argued that putting somebody on a terrorist list for what they ate was ridiculous — and possibly illegal.
…
If Mudd and Hulon are still working for the FBI, something is deeply wrong.
*That title is not my idea. It comes from the guy who runs MyNuMo, who, like everyone on the bloody internet, writes better than I do.
Rudy Licked Pornography…Won’t That Make the Pages Stick Together
Quote of the day: Touting his accomplishments as mayor Tuesday while on the campaign trail in New Hampshire, Giuliani crowed, ‘I took a city that was known for pornography and licked it to a large extent, so I have my own set of qualifications.’
Rudolph Guiliani: Smut licker.
What Glenn Says
Glenn Greenwald has a good essay on Chris Dodd and his opposition to the surveillance state, Chris Dodd’s leadership vs. Clinton and Obama’s game playing, and I believe that it is more to reinforce what I said in my earlier post about Dodd, and how his stands on civil rights are to a large degree a part of the family DNA.
Of course, Greenwald puts it better than I could, so go and read it.
Chris Dodd Dated Princess Leia
The New York Times has some interesting insights into Chriss Dodd.
Mr. Dodd, who had a very public bachelorhood after his first marriage ended (dates with Bianca Jagger and Carrie Fisher) before settling down in 1999 with a wife, Jackie Marie Clegg
So he dated Princess Leia, but more significant is his fathers work as a prosecutor at the Nuremburg trials.
His issues with torture and warrantless wiretapping really stem from his experience with his father, who he clearly admired greatly, and a very large part of his work on civil right is about living up to what he considers his fathers heroism at Nuremburg.