Law

"The powers not delegated to the United
States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by
it to the States, are reserved to the States
respectively, or to the people."

"The authorities are in God’s service and to these duties they devote their energies.”" -- Romans 13

Bush signs bill overhauling
eavesdropping rules
President Bush signed a bill Thursday that
overhauls rules about government
eavesdropping and grants immunity to
telecommunications companies that helped the
U.S. spy on Americans in suspected terrorism
cases.

Ashcroft in Conference
Months later, at the House Judiciary
Committee hearing at which John Ashcroft
testitifed, the ranking minority member, John
Conyers of Michigan, accused him and the Bush
administration of assuming the "role of
legislator, prosecutor, judge, and jury."

The attorney general claimed, in his
testimony, that the president does have the
power to arrest citizens on any American
street, designate them "enemy combatants,"
and imprison them indefinitely, without
access to lawyers or their families.

Don’t Cry For The Telcos -
Bush & Cheney Are The Only Ones
That Are Dying For Immunity
this is potentially an explanation for why
even the Democratic Congressional leadership
has been compliant in ramming through passage
of immunity; they don't want the public to
find out that they signed off on massive
liability to be paid out of taxpayer's
pockets.

YouTube - 20080211 Senator Dodd quotes
Glenn Greenwald on FISA 8:30pm

Kidnapping Not a Crime, Claims Bush
Justice Department
Continuing its recent spree of criminality in
the alleged pursuit of law enforcement, the
Bush Justice Department formally advised a
British Court last week that it is fully
entitled to kidnap foreigners (i.e., Britons)
off the street around the world and carry
them off to secret prisons. The claim was
formerly thought to relate to terrorists. But
no longer. Now the Bush Justice Department
asserts the right to kidnap anyone it
suspects of a crime.

Man wants his $400K back from the FBI
Ricks, who is retired from Ohio Steel
Foundry, said he always had a safe at home
and never had a bank account.

American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio Legal
Director Jeff Gamso said Ricks has a tough
road ahead, not impossible, but tough to get
back his money.

"The law of forfeiture basically says you
have to prove you’re innocent. It’s terrible,
terrible law," he said.

The law is tilted in favor of the FBI in that
Ricks need not be charged with a crime and
the FBI stands a good chance at keeping the
money, Gamso said.

Constitutional scholar: 'At least six
identifiable crimes' possiblein CIA tape
affair
"I think it's more than an inference at this
point, which is one of the reasons there's a
call for a special prosecutor," he
said. "There are at least six identifiable
crimes here, from obstruction of justice to
obstruction of Congress, perjury, conspiracy,
false statements, and what is often
forgotten: the crime of torturing suspects.

Added Turley, "If that crime was committed it
was a crime that would conceivably be ordered
by the president himself, only the president
can order those types of special treatments
or interrogation techniques."

None Dare Call It Treason
6. Perhaps nothing Scalia et al. did revealed
their consciousness of guilt more than the

total lack of legal stature they reposed in
their decision. Appellate court decisions,
particularly those of the highest court in
the land, all enunciate and stand for legal
principles. Not just litigants but the courts
themselves cite prior holdings as support for
a legal proposition they are espousing. But
the Court knew that its ruling (that
differing standards for counting votes
violate the equal protection clause) could
not possibly be a constitutional principle
cited in the future by themselves, other
courts or litigants. Since different methods
of counting votes exist throughout the fifty
states (e.g., Texas counts dimpled chads,
California does not), forty-four out of the
fifty states do not have uniform voting
methods, and voting equipment and mechanisms
in all states necessarily vary in design,
upkeep and performance, to apply the equal
protection ruling of Bush v. Gore would
necessarily invalidate virtually all
elections throughout the country.

Freedom of Information Act strengthened
Congress struck back yesterday at the Bush
administration's trend toward secrecy since
the 2001 terrorist attacks, passing
legislation to toughen the Freedom of
Information Act and increasing penalties on
agencies that don't comply.

If they fail to meet the 20-day deadline,
agencies would have to refund search and
duplication fees for noncommercial
requesters. They also would have to explain
any redaction by citing the specific
exemption under which the deletion
qualifies. Nonproprietary information held by
government contractors also would be subject
to the law.

CNN.com - Most jurors didn't want to make bomber a martyr - June 12, 2001
-- Five jurors said life in prison is a
greater punishment because his freedom would
be severely curtailed.

Happy Holidays
From the Lawrenceburg
Indiana Police Department

AT&T, other telecoms
buy victory in lawsuits
UPDATE II: Asserting the type of strong
leadership that has been missing almost
entirely from the Democratic presidential
candidates and the party's leadership, Chris
Dodd just announced that he will place a
Senate "hold" on any FISA bill that contains
telecom amnesty

The NYT weighs in, and
I think we have it Backward
It is backwards to complain about sleazy
corporate lobbyists illegally corrupting
government officials to bend the rule of law
about surveillance. Through the looking
glass, it is sleazy government lobbyists
illegally corrupting corporate officials to
bend the rule of law about surveillance.

Former CEO Says U.S. Punished Phone Firm
"Mr. Nacchio made inquiry as to whether a
warrant or other legal process had been
secured in support of that request," Stern
said. "When he learned that no such authority
had been granted and that there was a
disinclination on the part of the authorities
to use any legal process, including the
Special Court which had been established to
handle such matters, Mr. Nacchio concluded
that these requests violated the privacy
requirements of the Telecommunications Act."

Joe Klein's defense of warrantless
eavesdropping and telecom amnesty
Read what they write about government
surveillance and the only argument one
finds, literally, is that our Leaders
need more power because they want to
protect us.

King-George-gate: Myths v. Realities
Bush's supporters are left with just one
legally unsustainable claim justifying Bush's
illegal and unconstitutional actions - that
Bush is above the law and does not have to
defer to the Constitution, the Judiciary or
to Congress

Tomgram: Bush's Free World and Welcome to It
Order 17 is a document well worth reading. It
essentially granted to every foreigner in the
country connected to the occupation
enterprise the full freedom of the land, not
to be interfered with in any way by Iraqis or
any Iraqi political or legal
institution. Foreigners -- unless, of course,
they were jihadis or Iranians -- were to be
"immune from any form of arrest or detention
other than by persons acting on behalf of
their Sending States," even though American
and coalition forces were to be allowed the
freedom to arrest and detain in prisons and
detention camps of their own any Iraqis they
designated worthy of that honor.

Considering Mr. Mukasey
As a judge, he was too deferential to the
government. In the case of Jose Padilla, who
was accused of participating in a dirty bomb
plot, he ruled that the president may detain
American citizens indefinitely as “enemy
combatants.” His dangerously narrow
reading of the Constitution was rightly
reversed by a federal appeals court.

In a 2004 Wall Street Journal op-ed article,
Mr. Mukasey denounced the “hysteria” of
Patriot Act critics, and lashed out at the
American Library Association for trying to
protect patrons’ privacy. He also made the
dubious claim that based on the structure of
the Constitution, the government should
“receive from its citizens the benefit of
the doubt.” And writing in The Journal
this year, he promoted the truly awful idea
of a separate national security court that
would try suspected terrorists.

What happens to private contractors who kill Iraqis? Maybe nothing
Another potential avenue for prosecution is
the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction
Act of 2000, or MEJA, which applies to
civilians. Originally written only to cover
civilian employees of the Department of
Defense and contractors working for the DOD,
it was changed after the Abu Ghraib scandal,
which involved contractors not working for
DOD, to cover persons "employed by or
accompanying the Armed Forces outside the
United States." But even that definition
might be too narrow to apply to the
Blackwater employees in question. Those
employees, State Department spokesman Sean
McCormack confirmed in an interview with
Salon, work for the State Department, not the
DOD. "[They] report to our diplomatic
security office in Baghdad."

Horton says he believes that "Blackwater is
preparing to make the argument, if they ever
get in the crosshairs of this, that they are
there with a Department of State diplomatic
contract and, therefore, MEJA doesn't apply."

I Know What You Did Last Summer
We know that the Democrats thought they had a
deal until McConnell, who is supposed to be
nonpartisan, went back to the White House and
got fresh marching orders to squelch
reasonable judicial oversight by the FISA
court. And we know that the administration's
new position was that the attorney general
(the disgraced Alberto Gonzales) should have
the sole authority to spy without a warrant
on any American talking to a foreigner, even
if it's you and the guy from Mumbai fixing
your printer.

A Push to Rewrite Wiretap Law
It would also give the attorney general sole
authority to order the interception of
communications for up to one year as long as
he certifies that the surveillance is
directed at a person outside the United States.

House Approves Wiretap Measure
The 227 to 183 House vote capped a
high-pressure campaign by the White House to
change the nation's wiretap law, in which the
administration capitalized on Democrats'
fears of being branded weak on terrorism and
on a general congressional desire to act on
the measure before an August recess.

Reclaiming Citizenship, History, and Faith
Other sections of Brinkman's HB 284 are
similarly easy to understand.

Sec. 5101.55. (A) All abortions are
prohibited in this state.

Harriet Miers's Contempt of Congress Are
Conservatives About To Neuter Congress, While
Claiming Full Legal Justification for this
Separation-of-Powers Violation?

...conservatives now believe that a strong
president is one who protects his
prerogatives. This point of view counsels,
too, that a president need not worry at all
about low approval ratings; indeed, high
approval ratings would signal a weak
president, who had not used his or her powers
effectively

DOJ Losing Ground In Wiretap Fight
Nominated by President George H.W. Bush in
1989, Walker has made headlines for ordering
a convicted felon to wear a placard reading,
"I AM A MAIL THIEF. THIS IS MY PUNISHMENT."

Walker is presiding over the class action
Hepting v. AT&T Corp. Filed in February by
the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the
mighty plaintiffs firm Lerach Coughlin Stoia
Geller Rudman & Robbins on behalf of AT&T
customers in California, the suit accuses the
telecom company of illegally providing the
NSA with the contents of its customers'
communications. It also alleges the company
illegally turned over to the government other
customer data that could be searched by
databases for communications patterns.

Judges OK warrantless monitoring of Web
use / Privacy rules don't apply to Internet
messages, court says
Federal agents do not need a search warrant
to monitor a suspect's computer use and
determine the e-mail addresses and Web pages
the suspect is contacting, a federal appeals
court ruled Friday.

Unimpeachably Impeachable
How about electronic eavesdropping
on Americans without the court
warrant required by law.

This offence has the additional advantage of
precedent. It was included in the second (of
three) Articles of Impeachment voted against
President Richard Nixon by a 28 to 10 vote in
the House Committee on the Judiciary on July
27, 1974. The charge was “electronic
surveillance of private citizens” in
violation of the law.

Bush's offices reportedly refused probe
A federal watchdog agency planned to inspect
the president's executive offices in the
White House in 2005 for evidence of suspected
leaks of classified information, but it was
rebuffed by Bush administration officials,
congressional investigators have been told.

Is Dick Cheney Trying to Create
His Own 4th Branch of Government?
Under his argument, if Mr. Cheney is not
subject to executive branch security
requirements, surely he must be subject to
Senate rules.

Justice Dept. wants stricter sentencing
The Bush administration is trying to roll
back a Supreme Court decision by pushing
legislation that would require prison time
for nearly all criminals.

The Justice Department is offering the plan
as an opening salvo in a larger debate about
whether sentences for crack cocaine are
unfairly harsh and racially discriminatory.

Working for the Clampdown
“Martial law” is a euphemism for military dictatorship.
When foreign democracies are overthrown and a junta
establishes martial law, Americans usually recognize
that a fundamental change has occurred. Perhaps
some conservatives believe that the only change when
martial law is declared is that people are no longer
read their Miranda rights when they are locked away.
“Martial law” means obey soldiers’ commands or be shot.

JURIST - Forum: No Unlawful Enemy
Combatants at Guantanamo
Lawful enemy combatants are protected against
inhumane treatment by the Third Geneva
Convention on prisoners of war. Unlawful
enemy combatants are protected against
inhumane treatment by Common Article Three.

Of course, before the OLC opinions are made
public, they should be redacted so as not to
reveal important but secret NSA
capabilities. But those redactions shouldn't
be extensive, and should not obscure the
basic legal analysis that is the critical
basis for the conduct of the Executive branch
in some of its most dubious activities.

Bipartisan bill bans warrantless
wiretapping of US citizens
Members of Congress from both parties
succeeded on Friday in passing legislation
that restricts the wiretapping of US citizens
by the National Security Agency without
warrants.
The amendment also makes clear that only an
explicit change in the law can provide an
exception to FISA.

Has Bush Committed Impeachable Acts?
President Bush uses the international law of
warfare selectively, saying it applies when
it suits his purposes but does not apply when
it does not suit his purposes.

NYC Bar Chides Government on Guantanamo - Examiner.com
The Bush administration is trying to evade
responsibility for problems at the Guantanamo
Bay prison by falsely blaming defense lawyers
for the trouble, the New York City Bar says.

The group's president leveled the criticism
in asking Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
to abandon a Justice Department proposal to
limit lawyers' access to the nearly 400
detainees.

Bush event volunteers
say they did nothing wrong
Casper and Klinkerman's lawyers said the
government has the same rights as a private
corporation when its officials speak.

Judge rejects Padilla torture argument
In her ruling, Cooke said the dismissal
motion wasn't backed up by case law and
failed on legal grounds because prosecutors
aren't using any evidence collected during
Padilla's time in the brig.

To rule otherwise would "effectively provide
a defendant with amnesty for any uncharged
crime so long as he government violated the
defendant's due process rights at some prior
point," she wrote.

Letters: The people who
claim the surge is working
"We went to the U.N. very early in this
conflict and got ourselves declared official
occupiers, so we could establish a "Coalition
Provisional Authority" and manage the oil
money.

Doesn't anybody remember that? Occupiers have
responsibilities under International
Humanitarian Law that we never had in either
World War,

Bush's long history of tilting Justice
Over the last six years, this Justice
Department has ignored the advice of its
staff and skewed aspects of law enforcement
in ways that clearly were intended to
influence the outcome of elections.

It has notably shirked its legal
responsibility to protect voting rights. From
2001 to 2006, no voting discrimination cases
were brought on behalf of African American or
Native American voters. U.S. attorneys were
told instead to give priority to voter fraud
cases, which, when coupled with the strong
support for voter ID laws, indicated an
intent to depress voter turnout in minority
and poor communities.

U.S. urged to abandon
trials by military tribunals
"The military commissions will be convened
following a trail of illegality, with those
to be tried arbitrarily detained and
ill-treated for years," Amnesty said in a
report titled "Justice Delayed and Justice
Denied."

The group said it was especially concerned
the trials could end in executions. It called
on other states "not to provide any
information to assist the prosecution in
military commission trials, even in cases
where the death penalty is not sought."

My National Security Letter Gag Order
The Justice Department's inspector general
revealed on March 9 that the FBI has been
systematically abusing one of the most
controversial provisions of the USA Patriot
Act: the expanded power to issue "national
security letters." It no doubt surprised most
Americans to learn that between 2003 and 2005
the FBI issued more than 140,000 specific
demands under this provision -- demands
issued without a showing of probable cause or
prior judicial approval -- to obtain
potentially sensitive information about
U.S. citizens and residents. It did not,
however, come as any surprise to me.

The president's oh-so-noble
reliance on "executive privilege"
Bush followers are gearing up to solemnly
lecture us all on how profoundly vital
"executive privilege" is and how terrible it
is that Democrats are trying to invade it by
demanding that political advisor Karl Rove
and Harriet Miers testify under oath. But
that, of course, is not what they were saying
-- at all -- when Clinton attempted to use
that doctrine to prevent the compelled
testimony of his aides.

The Army and the Constitution:
Time for Congress to Step In
There is little support in history for the
view that, once the Congress called an armed
force into existence, the issue of its
maintenance would fall within the Executive
authority. As Alexander Hamilton noted in
Federalist No. 69, the President’s
constitutional power as Commander in Chief
relates to the command and direction of
military forces; it does not extend to
“the . . . regulating of fleets and
armies.” And the Supreme Court has taken
the view that constitutional text means what
it says. The Court concluded in Loving
v. United States, 517 U.S. 748 (1996), for
example, that the Executive has the power to
regulate the conduct of members of the
military, but he may do so only so long as
those regulations do not conflict with
Congressional enactments.

How Congress might rein in US war policy
Yet on Tuesday congressional Democratic
leaders removed from a military spending bill
for the war in Iraq a provision requiring
that Bush gain approval from Congress before
making any move against Iran. Conservative
Democrats, as well as some other lawmakers,
had objected that this provision might lessen
US negotiating leverage, as well as possibly
embolden Iran to be more regionally
aggressive.

The provision's removal shows how difficult
it may be for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D)
of California and Senate majority leader Reid
to keep Democrats together in the coming
debates over further Iraq restrictions.

S. 4
To make the United States more secure by
implementing unfinished recommendations of
the 9/11 Commission to fight the war on
terror more effectively, to improve homeland
security, and for other purposes.

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES
JANUARY 4, 2007
(pdf)

I am not a state secret
Why, then, does the American government
insist that my ordeal is a state secret? This
is something beyond my comprehension. In
December 2005, with the help of the American
Civil Liberties Union, I sued former CIA
Director George Tenet along with other CIA
agents and contractors for their roles in my
kidnapping, mistreatment and arbitrary
detention. Above all, what I want from the
lawsuit is a public acknowledgment from the
U.S. government that I was innocent, a
mistaken victim of its rendition program, and
an apology for what I was forced to
endure. Without this vindication, it has been
impossible for me to return to a normal
life.

The U.S. government does not deny that I was
wrongfully kidnapped.

The Pentagon’s Power to Arrest, Torture,
and Execute Americans by Jacob
G. Hornberger
The president and the Pentagon now wield the
omnipotent power to arrest, torture, and
execute any American they label an “enemy
combatant.” It is impossible to overstate
the significance of this power. It has
totally upended the relationship of the
military and civilian in the United
States. The assumption of this particular
power easily constitutes one of the most
monumental revolutions of liberty and power
in history. It is a revolution that every
American must confront now, not later. If
people wait until later to confront the
expanded use of this power, it will be too
late, because by that time it will be too
dangerous to do so.

Canada's top court strikes
down anti-terror measures

Making Martial Law Easier
A disturbing recent phenomenon in Washington
is that laws that strike to the heart of
American democracy have been passed in the
dead of night. So it was with a provision
quietly tucked into the enormous defense
budget bill at the Bush administration’s
behest that makes it easier for a president
to override local control of law enforcement
and declare martial law.

Bush signs US pre-texting law
The legislation makes it illegal for
individuals to fraudulently represent
themselves as others in order to obtain
phone records. Penalties include a maximum
of 10 years in prison and $500,000 in fines.

No opposition votes were lodged in either US
parliamentary houses, receiving unanimous
approval in the House of Representatives and
in the Senate.

Vermont takes the lead and calls
for U.S troop withdrawal from Iraq

Gonzales says the Constitution doesn't
guarantee habeas corpus / Attorney general's
remarks on citizens' right astound the chair
of Senate judiciary panel

Gonzales says the Constitution doesn't
guarantee habeas corpus Attorney general's
remarks on citizens' right astound the chair
of Senate judiciary panel

Gonzales acknowledged that the Constitution
declares "habeas corpus shall not be
suspended unless ... in cases of rebellion or
invasion the public safety may require it.''
But he insisted that "there is no express
grant of habeas in the Constitution.''

Specter was incredulous, asking how the
Constitution could bar the suspension of a
right that didn't exist

Baghdad Year Zero (Harpers.org)
the conventions stipulate that an occupier
must abide by a country's existing laws
unless “absolutely prevented” from
doing so. They also state that an occupier
does not own the “public buildings, real
estate, forests and agricultural assets”
of the country it is occupying but is rather
their “administrator” and custodian,
keeping them secure until sovereignty is
reestablished.

The War Powers Act of 1973
Within sixty calendar days after a report is
submitted or is required to be submitted
pursuant to section 4(a)(1), whichever is
earlier, the President shall terminate any
use of United States Armed Forces with
respect to which such report was submitted
(or required to be submitted), unless the
Congress (1) has declared war or has enacted
a specific authorization for such use of
United States Armed Forces, (2) has extended
by law such sixty-day period, or (3) is
physically unable to meet as a result of an
armed attack upon the United States. Such
sixty-day period shall be extended for not
more than an additional thirty days if the
President determines and certifies to the
Congress in writing that unavoidable military
necessity respecting the safety of United
States Armed Forces requires the continued
use of such armed forces in the course of
bringing about a prompt removal of such
forces.

The Truth About Our Institutions
We should not blame civil liberties for our
lack of preparedness, but we can blame
officials for routinely using threats of
emergency as an excuse to curtail domestic
civil liberties.

A judicial victory for the Leader
The first court decision (.pdf) to interpret
and apply the legislative atrocity known as
the "Military Commissions Act of 2006" was
issued yesterday in the case of Hamdan
v. Rumsfeld. The decision was a major victory
for the Bush administration's attempt to vest
the President with the power to imprison
individuals -- even for life -- without
according them any meaningful opportunity to
contest the validity of their imprisonment.

Bush's anti-terrorism law upheld
District Judge James Robertson rejected a
challenge by Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a former
driver of Osama Bin Laden.

Mr Hamdan's case prompted the Supreme Court
to strike down the government's policy on
detainees last year.

But Mr Bush later signed a new law that
established military commissions to try enemy
combatants.

granma.cu - The prison industry in the
United States: big business or a new form of
slavery?

Here in New York, the 1973 Nelson Rockefeller
anti-drug law provides for a mandatory prison
sentence of 15 years to life for possession
of 4 ounces of any illegal drug.

Narrowing the Definition
of 'Unlawful Enemy Combatant'
The MCA defines an unlawful enemy combatant
as follows:

"A person who has engaged in hostilities or
who has purposefully and materially
supported hostilities against the United
States or its co-belligerents who is not a
lawful enemy combatant (including a person
who is part of the Taliban, al Qaeda, or
associated forces).

The Dodd bill amends the definition as:

"An individual engaged in hostilities as
part of an armed conflict against the United
States who is not a lawful enemy
combatant.’

Policymakers on torture take note --
remember Pinochet
The United States has led the world in
promoting international human rights laws. It
played a leading role in negotiating a global
convention that would outlaw the use of
torture in any circumstances.

The convention sets up an elaborate
enforcement mechanism. The United States and
the 140- plus other countries that have
joined the convention agree to take certain
actions if any person who has committed
torture is found on their territory.

The President's designs on the
lame duck Congressional session
The House had hastily passed Heather Wilson's
version of the "Terrorist Surveillance Act,"
but the Senate had no time to vote on it
prior to adjournment. As a result,
warrantless eavesdropping continues to be
criminal in this country (even though the
President continues to engage in it).

For that reason, enactment of a warrantless
eavesdropping bill remains a top priority for
the President -- probably even more important
to him now than even before the election --
because such a bill would not only gives him
legal authority to eavesdrop with no judicial
oversight, but it also would help protect
himself against the legal consequences of
having repeatedly broken the law. It is worth
remembering that a federal court has already
ruled his eavesdropping program to be both
unconstitutional and in violation of the
criminal law, and another judge, the highly
respected District Court Judge Gerard Lynch
of the Southern District of New York, is
likely to issue a ruling soon on the same
issues in the absence of Congressional
legislation legalizing the program.

The Avalon Project : General Orders No. 100
INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE GOVERNMENT OF ARMIES
OF THE UNITED STATES IN THE FIELD
Prepared by Francis Lieber, promulgated as
General Orders No. 100 by President Lincoln,
24 April 1863.

Art. 16.
Military necessity does not admit of cruelty
- that is, the infliction of suffering for
the sake of suffering or for revenge, nor of
maiming or wounding except in fight, nor of
torture to extort confessions. It does not
admit of the use of poison in any way, nor of
the wanton devastation of a district. It
admits of deception, but disclaims acts of
perfidy; and, in general, military necessity
does not include any act of hostility which
makes the return to peace unnecessarily
difficult.

Reporters Offered Look Inside
Combatant Status Review Tribunals
In an interview room, officials explained,
the detainees meet with a personal
representative, a military officer assigned
to assist them through the process. In the
interview room, detainees are shackled, and
a guard sits outside the door.

Detainee participation in the process has run
the gamut from crumpling up the documents
presented to asking animatedly to help
prepare their defense. No detainees have been
hostile to their personal representative, but
some have refused to participate, the
officials said.

The room is small, brightly lit, with a
light-blue carpet and lightly colored paneled
walls. "We wanted (the detainees) to
understand that this is a different process,"
an official said. "This is something new."

Lies in the Service of Evil
I return to the eternal favorite example of
all the secret (and some brazenly boastful)
sadists and moral obscenities posing as human
beings in our midst. I refer to those
individuals who seek to justify torture by
use of the "ticking bomb" scenario.

Active-Duty Troops Launch Campaign
to Press Congress to End U.S. Occupation
of Iraq
65 Members to Send "Appeals for
Redress" Under the Military
Whistle-blower Protection Act

John Yoo on Court-Stripping
In today's Wall Street Journal [thanks
to Howard Bashman for the link], John
Yoo correctly emphasizes that the primary
impact of the Military Commissions Act
is, as Jack has explained, to attempt
to eliminate any judicial checks on the
Executive's conduct of the conflict
against Al Qaeda

Cassel: The Lynne Stewart Guilty Verdict
Stretching the Definition of "Terrorism" To
Its Limits
The Sixth Amendment's right to counsel cannot
be served while the government is a third
party present at attorney-client meetings.

Another problematic aspect of the Stewart
prosecution is how far the definition of
support for terrorism was stretched. Stewart
never provided any financial support,
weaponry -- or any other concrete aid -- for
any act of terrorism. No act of terrorism is
alleged to have resulted from her actions.

Is protection from threats
the highest political value?
The Bill of Rights contains all sorts of
limitations on government power which make us
more vulnerable to threats that can kill
us. If there is a serial killer on the loose
in a community, the police would be able to
find and apprehend him much more easily if
they could simply invade and search
everyone's homes at will and without
warning. But the Fourth Amendment expressly
prohibits the police from doing that -- it
requires both probable cause and a judicial
warrant before they can do so -- even though
that restriction makes it more likely that we
will be victimized, even fatally, by
criminals.

Nick's Blog: Compromise On Torture?
There's a century or so of case law defining
what outrages on human dignity mean
Mr. President, and you would look it up if it
served your cause. It doesn't of course, and
even a cursory glance at our laws would yank
away any fig leaf of legality propping up our
dubious "alternative interrogation
techniques."

Risky Business
Last Saturday the United States Congress
passed a port security bill that carried an
amendment banning Internet gambling. This was
a huge mistake, not because Internet gambling
is a good thing (it was already illegal, in
fact), but because the new law is either
unenforceable or -- if it can be enforced --
will tear away the last shreds of financial
privacy enjoyed by U.S. citizens.

Bush's Policy: Rounding up ALL Dissenters
Employed exclusively against Republicans,
the Sedition Act was used to target congressmen
and newspaper editors who criticized President
John Adams.

Subsequent examples of laws passed and
actions taken as a result of fear-mongering
during periods of xenophobia are the
Espionage Act of 1917, the Sedition Act of
1918, the Red Scare following World War I,
the forcible internment of people of Japanese
descent during World War II, and the Alien
Registration Act of 1940 (the Smith Act).

Make the Industrial Hemp Farming Act Law
In January, more than 2000 RAN supporters in
California wrote their Assembly Members to
support the Industrial Hemp Farming Act--a
bill that would lift the ban on one of the
most economically and ecologically promising
alternatives to industrial logging. Last
week, it passed the California state Senate.

The agreement would grant Congress'
permission for Bush to convene military
tribunals to prosecute terrorism suspects, a
process the Supreme Court had blocked in June
because it had not been authorized by
lawmakers.

During those trials, coerced testimony would
be admissible if a judge allows and if it was
obtained before cruel, inhumane and degrading
treatment was forbidden by a 2005 law.

U.S. war prisons legal vacuum for 14,000
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan declared
last March that the extent of arbitrary
detention here is "not consistent with
provisions of international law governing
internment on imperative reasons of
security."

Meanwhile, officials of Nouri al-Maliki's
4-month-old Iraqi government say the
U.S. detention system violates Iraq's
national rights.

Amarillo Globe-News: Texas News:
Threat-makers charged with making false
report 07/24/02

Wednesday, July 24, 2002
4:12 a.m. CT

Threat-makers charged with making false report

The Associated Press

SAN ANTONIO (AP) - Charges against two of the
three men arrested this month after allegedly
threatening to blow up San Antonio-area
military bases have been downgraded to making
a false report of a future crime.

Jadallah Abdalla, 21, and his cousin Ribhi
Abdalla, 25, face the new charge, Bexar
County District Attorney Susan Reed said
Tuesday.

The War Powers Act of 1973
"Within sixty calendar days after a report
is submitted or is required to be submitted
pursuant to section 4(a)(1), whichever is
earlier, the President shall terminate any
use of United States Armed Forces with
respect to which such report was submitted
(or required to be submitted), unless the
Congress (1) has declared war or has enacted
a specific authorization for such use of
United States Armed Forces, (2) has extended
by law such sixty-day period, or (3) is
physically unable to meet as a result of an
armed attack upon the United States. Such
sixty-day period shall be extended for not
more than an additional thirty days if the
President determines and certifies to the
Congress in writing that unavoidable military
necessity respecting the safety of United
States Armed Forces requires the continued
use of such armed forces in the course of
bringing about a prompt removal of such
forces."

Free Press : NSA Has Massive
Database of Americans' Phone Calls
"had been intercepting, without warrants,
international communications for more than
20 years at the behest of the CIA and other
agencies. The spy campaign, code-named
“Shamrock,” led to the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act"

"Music, unlike commercials, does not express
any verifiable truths" - Rap, Rock, and
Censorship (Mathieu Deflem)

Senator Byrd is correct to equate Bush with Hitler Octogenarian Senator Robert Byrd of West
Virginia made the equation in the context of
Bush's attack on Senate procedures which
might slow or halt his on-going attempt to
pack the courts with extreme right-wing
fanatics. Byrd said Bush's moves to destroy
time-honored Senate rules parallel Hitler's
ramming fascist legislation through his
gutted Reichstag. "Hitler never abandoned the
cloak of legality," said Byrd. "He recognized
the enormous psychological value of having
the law on his side. Instead, he turned the
law inside out and made illegality legal."
March 7, 2005

Constitutional showdown?
Last week, Sen. Arlen Specter, who heads the
Judiciary Committee, introduced a bill that
would allow Congress to challenge a signing
statement that disputed the words or meaning
of a statute.

Blank Check to Spy
Arlen Specter says his surveillance bill
wouldn't give the administration
unwarranted power. He's wrong.

Power of the Pen
The fact that Bush would claim a unilateral
right to engage in what could become a
full-scale civil war in Colombia vivifies
that his boundless power stems from his job
title—not from any conflict with al-Qaeda
or other “Islamofascists,” as he likes
to call them.

Bush’s signing statements also imply that
he considers the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878
—which prohibited using the U.S. military
for domestic law enforcement—null and void.

Bush personally nixed the
OPR investigation. And it's
juicier than you think.

Ordinarily, there's the defense that
subordinate officers are relying in good
faith on a determination made by the
president. But there's also supposed to be
good faith by the president in making the
determination. That is, the determination
should reasonably comport with the state of
the law. Can it really count as a "good
faith" determination when it's made not on
the basis of the current state of the law,
but rather with the express intent of
avoiding prosecution?

FCC approves Net-wiretapping taxes
Injecting additional uncertainty is whether
the FCC's action is legal. It represents what
critics call an unreasonable extension of
CALEA--which was designed to address
telephone features such as three-way calling
and call waiting--to the Internet.

Bush challenges hundreds of laws
President cites powers of his office
President Bush has quietly claimed the
authority to disobey more than 750 laws
enacted since he took office, asserting that
he has the power to set aside any statute
passed by Congress when it conflicts with his
interpretation of the Constitution.
April 30, 2006

Gonzales calls for mandatory Web labeling law
Web site operators posting sexually explicit
information must place official government
warning labels on their pages or risk being
imprisoned for up to five years, the Bush
administration proposed Thursday.
April 20, 2006

AlterNet: Rights and Liberties:
Bush's Unprecedented Arrogance
Bush's Unprecedented Arrogance
By John Dean, FindLaw.com.
April 5, 2006.

The NSA Warrantless Domestic Surveillance
In 2002 the President issued an Executive
Order authorizing the National Security
Agency (NSA) to wiretap phone and email
communications involving United States
persons within the U.S., without obtaining
a warrant or court order pursuant to the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of
1978 (FISA), which prohibits unauthorized
electronic surveillance.

Federal lawyers try to seize gold
caps from drug suspects' teeth
TACOMA, Wash. (AP) - Talk about taking a bite
out of crime.

Government lawyers tried to confiscate the
gold tooth caps known as "grills" from the
mouths of two men facing drug charges, saying
the dental work qualified as seizable
assets. The feds had the suspects in a
vehicle headed to a dental clinic by the time
defence lawyers persuaded a judge to halt the
procedure.

Forfeiture law in the American colonies
evolved from the practice of deodands to the
seizure of property following a conviction of
treason. This became the precursor to our
modern criminal forfeiture laws. Among the
earliest laws enacted by the infant nation,
Congress enacted Article III, Section 3 of
the U.S. Constitution, which speaks to
forfeiture: "The Congress shall have power to
declare the punishment of treason, but no
attainder to treason shall work corruption of
blood, or forfeiture except during the life
of the person attained."

AT&T Forwards ALL Internet
Traffic Into NSA Says EFF
EFF's evidence regarding AT&T's dragnet
surveillance of its networks includes a
declaration by Mark Klein, a retired AT&T
telecommunications technician, and several
internal AT&T documents. This evidence was
bolstered and explained by the expert opinion
of J. Scott Marcus, who served as Senior
Technical Advisor for Internet Technology to
the Federal Communications Commission from
July 2001 until July 2005. -April 6, 2006

EFF's Class-Action Lawsuit Against
AT&T for Collaboration with Illegal
Domestic Spying Program

Did Bush Lie to Fitzgerald?
By Robert Parry
April 7, 2006

Evidence Suggests White House Conspiracy
"During this time, while the President was
unaware of the role that the Vice President's
Chief of Staff and National Security Adviser
had in fact played in disclosing Ms. Wilson's
CIA employment, defendant implored White
House officials to have a public statement
issued exonerating him," the filing
states. "When his initial efforts met with no
success, defendant sought the assistance of
the Vice President in having his name
cleared."
April 6, 2006

Analysis: Hamdan and a few
minutes in the Senate

The President and the Courts
Since the Republican majority has decided to
allow President Bush to usurp Congress's role
in matters of national security, the battle
to save the constitutional balance of powers
moves to the judiciary. A critical test of
judicial independence will come this month,
when the Supreme Court hears arguments in a
case that has become a focus of Mr. Bush's
imperial vision of the presidency.

A Reconsideration of Trial by Jury
by Wendy McElroy

A trip down right-wing memory lane
What "conservatives" used to say about the
Limits of the Federal Government, the Dangers
of Surveillance Powers, and Investigations
into Alleged Governmental Law-breaking

One of the most truly extraordinary
spectacles to witness is the way in which so
many self-proclaimed conservatives have shed
their core defining "principles" in order to
justify and defend the ever-expanding powers
of the Federal Government under the Bush
Administration. Throughout the 1990s,
conservatism was defined by its fear of
expansive powers seized by the Federal
Government -- particularly domestic law
enforcement and surveillance
powers. Conservatives vigorously opposed
every proposal to expand government
investigative and surveillance power on the
ground that such powers posed intolerable
threats to our liberties. -March 11, 2006

Update 8: Gonzales: NSA Program Doesn't Need a Law
By Katherine Shrader, 03.08.2006

"A Slightly After-The-Fact Quality"
by georgia10
In response to a lawsuit filed by the
Electronic Privacy Information Center, the
ACLU, and the National Security Archive, the
government has released a minuscule amount of
information about the illegal domestic spying
program. (See the documents here.) Part of
the handful of documents disclosed is a
series of emails between a former Associate
Deputy Attorney General David Kris and
Courtney Elwood, Attorney General Gonzales's
Chief of Staff. The correspondence, taking
place after the story broke in the New York
Times, reveals a behind-the-scenes scramble
to find legal footing for the program.
March 9, 2006

Democrat Says Spy Briefings Violated Law
Ms. Harman wrote in her letter that the law
allowed briefings to be limited to the eight
leaders only in cases of covert action. The
National Security Agency program does not
qualify as a covert action, which the law
says does not include activities whose
"primary purpose is to acquire intelligence,"
she wrote.

A window into the Bush Administration's
legal manuevering
The Patriot Act made many significant
changes to FISA--changes which were made
permanent by this bill--but there is one
crucial provision that has not changed; FISA
still clearly states that its procedures
"shall be the exclusive means by which
electronic surveillance . . . may be
conducted." In other words, the President
has once again reaffirmed the validity of
a law which expressly criminalizes the type
of warrantless surveillance which his
administration has been conducting for
four and a half years. -March 10, 2006

Gonzales Says NSA Criticism Misleading

Last week, Gonzales sent leaders of Congress
a 42-page legal defense of warrantless
eavesdropping which suggests that the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act is
unconstitutional if it prevents the NSA's
warrantless eavesdropping. -January 24, 2006

On NSA Spying: A Letter to Congress
By Beth Nolan, Curtis Bradley, David Cole,
Geoffrey Stone, Harold Hongju Koh, Kathleen
M. Sullivan, Laurence H. Tribe, Martin
Lederman, Philip B. Heymann, Richard Epstein,
Ronald Dworkin, Walter Dellinger, William
S. Sessions, William Van Alstyne

Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
(FISA) was passed in 1978 as Public Law
95-511 and has since been amended several
times. FISA represented a compromise between
the civil liberties community and the
Executive intended to authorize lower
standards for foreign intelligence
surveillance while requiring outside judicial
oversight and other safeguards.

Church Committee Reports
These 14 published reports of the Church
Committee contain a wealth of information
on the formation, operation, and abuses
of U.S. intelligence agencies. They were
published in 1975 and 1976, after which
recommendations for reform were debated in
the Congress and in some cases carried out.

The National Security Agency
and Fourth Amendment Rights
October 29 and November 6, 1975

Judge in Scooter Libby, Sibel
Edmonds cases is redacted in action

Congress split on wiretap hearings
December 23, 2005

Alito defended officials from wiretap suits
Dec. 23, 2005

Secret Spy Court to Get Secret
Briefing on Secret Secrets
[shhh...]

Power We Didn't Grant
By Tom Daschle
December 23, 2005

Cheney argues for Nixon-era powers
Watergate eroded presidential clout
VP comments fuel firestorm in U.S.
December 21, 2005

Sold chemicals used to gas
Kurds, Dutch man jailed
December 23, 2005

Clash Is Latest Chapter in Bush
Effort to Widen Executive Power
Speaking with reporters traveling with him
aboard Air Force Two to Oman, Cheney said the
period after the Watergate scandal and
Vietnam War proved to be "the nadir of the
modern presidency in terms of authority and
legitimacy" and harmed the chief executive's
ability to lead in a complicated, dangerous
era. "But I do think that to some extent now
we've been able to restore the legitimate
authority of the presidency."
December 21, 2005

Where’s the Outrage?
Bush’s defense of his phone-spying program
has disturbing echoes of arguments once used
by South Africa’s apartheid regime. Why
Americans should examine the parallels.

"Bush and Cheney regard Congress and the
judiciary as obstacles, not as equal
branches of government."

Judges on Surveillance Court
To Be Briefed on Spy Program
December 22, 2005

Experts say wiretap fight may taint cases

Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 ("FISA")

The Constitution Versus Itself
December 19, 2005

Gonzales: Congress Gave President
The Authority To Spy On Americans
December 19, 2005

Judge in Scooter Libby, Sibel Edmonds cases

How Congress Has Assaulted Our
Freedoms in the Patriot Act
...the Patriot Act not only permits the
execution of self-written search warrants on
a host of new subjects, it rejects the
no-criminal-prosecution protections of its
predecessors by requiring evidence obtained
contrary to the Fourth Amendment to be turned
over to prosecutors and mandating that such
evidence is constitutionally competent in
criminal prosecutions.

Once-Lone Foe of Patriot Act Has Company
December 19, 2005

...Bush scrapped the version of his weekly
radio address that he had already taped -- on
the recent elections in Iraq -- and delivered
a live speech from the Roosevelt Room in
which he lashed out at the senators blocking
the Patriot Act as irresponsible and
confirmed the NSA program.

On Hill, Anger and Calls for Hearings
Greet News of Stateside Surveillance

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a member of
the intelligence and judiciary committees,
called the program "the most significant
thing I have heard in my 12 years" in the
Senate and suggested that the president may
have broken the law by authorizing
surveillance without proper warrants.
December 17, 2005

Bush spying claims come at bad time
December 16, 2005

The U.S. government already grants itself the
legal privilege of using "any ... chemical
agent or biological agent on a civilian
population" for "any ... research activity"
or "Any law enforcement purpose" in U.S. Code
Title 50, Section 1520a, Subsection b.

Britain's war crimes?
Lord Steyn has told Channel 4 News that, if
it's proved that the US IS flying detainees
around the globe to secret 'black sites' and
the British authorities are aware of it, then
they are as guilty as if they were committing
the offence themselves. -December 6, 2005

Habeas Corpus Revoked
November 11, 2005

"They had this phony drug war -- the major
contribution of Bush is that he further broke
down the lines established under the
Constitution and the Posse Comitatus Act of
the military and the police not performing
the same function and allowed more and more
military involvement in drug policing.
Therefore, corrupted further the ability of
these few honest agents, that were trying to
do something about the drugs, to actually
stop them."

Fascism Watch II: No habeas for
them, no habeas for us, no problem
November 15, 2005

In 1997, Alberto Gonzales wrote a memo for
then Gov. Bush to justify non-compliance with
the Vienna Convention. The Vienna Convention,
ratified by the Senate in 1969, was "designed
to ensure that foreign nationals accused of a
crime are given access to legal counsel by a
representative from their home country."

"In 1886, . . . in the case of Santa Clara
County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company,
the U.S. Supreme Court decided that a private
corporation is a person and entitled to the
legal rights and protections the
Constitutions affords to any person. Because
the Constitution makes no mention of
corporations, it is a fairly clear case of
the Court's taking it upon itself to rewrite
the Constitution."

Scholar says Bush has used obscure
doctrine to extend power 95 times

These two men are experts on rendition: one
invented it, the other has seen its full
horrors

Community Broadband Act of 2005
(Introduced in Senate)

The separation of powers doctrine does not
require federal courts to stay all private
actions against the President until he leaves
office.
...
Stevens, J., delivered the opinion of the
Court, in which Rehnquist, C. J., and
O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, Souter, Thomas,
and Ginsburg, JJ., joined. Breyer, J., filed
an opinion concurring in the judgment.

TREASONGATE: The Controlling Law - Big
Trouble For The White House Staff.
July 28, 2005

TREASONGATE: The Controlling Law, Part 2:
THE DEATH PENALTY, 18 USC 794 and the shift
from GWOT to GSAVE -August 05, 2005

Treasongate: A Flame-ing Lie, It Seems
'What was she going to say in that article -
"A source I can't recall (and a former Hill
staffer) said that Valerie Plame works in the
CIA"?' -October 16, 2005

90-day detention of suspects 'unlawful'
Government plans to detain and question
suspected terrorists for up to three months
are likely to prove unlawful, according to a
recently-retired senior judge."
October 10, 2005

While conservatives like to say they believe
in reading the Constitution strictly, the
Miers team had to rely on what it called a
"broad and inclusive" reading of the
Constitution to ensure that Bush made it to
the White House. Miers' co-counsel argued
that, whatever the 12th Amendment might have
meant when it was adopted in 1804, the
provision's meaning had evolved over
time. -Oct. 7, 2005

From frozen Alaska to the lab: a virus
39,000 times more virulent than flu
· Tight security to prevent
'select agent' escaping
· Publication of its genetic
code raises fears of misuse
October 6, 2005

TREASONGATE: A NEW CONSTITUTIONAL
DISCOVERY:Pardons May Be Voided For
Criminal Prosecutions Flowing From
"Cases of Impeachment"
September 13, 2005

In Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld, a three-judge panel
upheld the use of military tribunals to try
detainees held at the U.S. base in Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba. But the decision didn't stop
there. Roberts and a second judge also ruled
that the Geneva Convention - which guarantees
basic human rights - does not protect alleged
Al Qaeda members.

The court said Congress has given the
president authority to order the jailing of
anyone anywhere for as long as he wishes, as
long as he claims it's connected to the war
on terrorism.

All suspects have rights, barristers'
chief says -September 12, 2005

Court Rules U.S. Can Indefinitely Detain Citizens
Ruling Comes in the Case of 'Enemy Combatant'
Jose Padilla -September 9, 2005

Tight Constraints on Pentagon's Freedom Walk
Event Remembering 9/11, Troops to Be Kept
'Sterile,' Limited to Preregistered
-September 9, 2005

Hunger strikers pledge to die in
Guantánamo -September 9, 2005

Clarke: Europe must trade civil
liberties for security

Judges Question Lack of Prisoner Rights
Detainees in Cuba Want Ability to Fight
'Enemy Combatant' Claims in Court

Patriot Act Support Shrinks with Increased Info
August 29, 2005

Don’t Tie My Hands While I Torture You

At Public Hearing Today, ACLU to Argue for
Release of Photographs and Videos Depicting
Detainee Abuse -August 30, 2005

CHP won't confiscate medical marijuana

Lockyer reiterates that Prop. 215 permits usage
August 30, 2005

TREASONGATE: US COURT OF APPEALS: "Special
Counsel's Showing Decides The Case"
August 26, 2005

Hands Off Habeas
August 19, 2005

The bill, pushed in the Senate by Jon Kyl
(R-Ariz.) and in the House by Daniel
E. Lungren (R-Calif.), would be an
unmitigated disaster.

In defiance of centuries of Anglo-Saxon
common law, the Bush administration claims
that the president has the power to render
any individual an "un-person" with respect to
the protection of the law by designating him
an "enemy combatant." Those thus designated
may be imprisoned, without legal recourse of
any kind, for as long as the president sees
fit, and be treated in any manner the
president deems suitable. -August 8, 2005

While the Constitution does provide for the
suspension of habeas corpus (which would
permit emergency detention of suspects), that
power is assigned exclusively to
Congress. Rather than enacting legislation to
permit such summary detentions, Congress in
2000 had passed a law called the
"Non-Detention Act" expressly forbidding the
summary imprisonment of American citizens.

Eleven Senate Democrats voted this past week
for the corporate-written Central American
Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) - that
constitutes about a quarter of all Senate
Democrats. These turncoats are:

Making War on the American Public
...the legal doctrine Yoo helped compose is
this: The President, and those who act on his
behalf, are entitled to do anything to anyone
as long as it is done in the name of fighting
terrorism. -July 27, 2005

Judge rules against parts of Patriot Act
Senate passes reauthorization of anti-terrorism law

Separate legislation, passed in June in the
House, would end the government’s easy access
to library and bookstore records by making
law enforcement revert to traditional search
warrants.

That measure, attached to a fiscal 2006
spending bill, has drawn a veto threat from
the White House. -July 29, 2005

Specific International Laws
Violated by Iraq Invasion

US War Crimes Act of 1996

The House voted Thursday to extend
permanently virtually all the major
antiterrorism provisions of the USA Patriot
Act after beating back efforts by Democrats
and some Republicans to impose new
restrictions on the government's power to
eavesdrop, conduct secret searches and demand
library records.

Clues on how Roberts might act on high court

His record while at a federal appeals court,
though sparse, shows a resistance to limits
on presidential power. -July 22, 2005

House votes to make Patriot Act permanent
The U.S. House of Representatives voted
Thursday to make most of the USA Patriot Act
permanent, rejecting attempts to constrict
government surveillance.

The legislation approved in Thursday's vote
would make permanent 14 of the 16 provisions
in the USA Patriot Act set to expire at the
end of this year, The New York Times
reported.

Patriot Act renewed and toughened
The USA Patriot Act was renewed and toughened
today, making permanent the US government's
unprecedented powers to investigate suspected
terrorists. -July 22, 2005

Bush sees London attacks as reason for
Patriot Act -July 21, 2005

US CODE TITLE 50/CHAPTER 15/SUBCHAPTER IV

§ 421. Protection of identities of certain
United States undercover intelligence
officers, agents, informants, and sources

Thank You, Mr. President
Last week, John Roberts wrote
Bush a blank check.

Situations calling for martial law have occurred at least three times since
1984, once under President Reagan and twice under President Bush I in 1990 and
1992. Although each time the situation fell short of martial law, each time it
came perilously close.

Upsetting Checks and Balances: The Bush
Administration’s Efforts To Limit Human
Rights Litigation

A bill making alarming progress in committee
would effectively strip federal courts of
most review power and shift it to the
attorney general. That's right: the chief
prosecutor of the United States would become
the judge of whether state courts behave
fairly enough toward defendants appealing
capital convictions.

In the USA, the curtain opened on new
anti-terror follies Wednesday when three
Senate committees, in blustery response to
the London bombings, voted to extend the
power of the FBI under the Patriot Act to
obtain library records without a subpoena.

EU split over anti-terror phone
data logging rules

Calif. Guard Unit's Possible Spying Probed
-July 7, 2005

Congress likely to define war detainees
June 20, 2005

Next month, the European Parliament will vote
on the vital question of whether to allow
patents covering software, which would
restrict every computer user and tie software
developers up in knots.

"Read the Bills Act of 2005"
Make Congress Read the Laws It Passes

Bush Urges Congress to
Keep Patriot Act Intact

On 1 July 2003 the USA announced the
withdrawal of military assistance to 35
states who are parties to the Rome Statute
and have refused to sign an impunity
agreement with the USA. On 8 December 2004,
the USA went even further, withdrawing
economic support from states that still
refuse to sign impunity agreements. The
withdrawal of this economic funding threatens
to undermine counter-terrorism efforts, peace
process programs, anti-drug trafficking
initiatives, truth and reconciliation
commissions and HIV/Aids education, and
threatens states such as Jordan, Ireland,
Cyprus, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela and South
Africa.

The Court, Federalism, and the Free Market
June 07, 2005

Federal authorities may prosecute sick people
whose doctors prescribe marijuana to ease
pain, the Supreme Court ruled Monday,
concluding that state laws don't protect
users from a federal ban on the drug.

Under the Constitution, Congress may pass
laws regulating a state's economic activity
so long as it involves "interstate commerce"
that crosses state borders. The California
marijuana in question was homegrown,
distributed to patients without charge and
without crossing state lines.

The ruling in Gonzales v. Raich (pdf)

The Supremacy Clause and Federal Preemption
The issue: How should courts determine
whether a federal law preempts state law?

Justice John Paul Stevens, writing the 6-3
decision, said that Congress could change the
law to allow medical use of marijuana.

Hussein to Be Tried On 12 Counts in Iraq
Trial Likely to Start Within 2 Months
June 6, 2005

First Court Case of Hussein Stems
From Killings in Village in '82
The Americans favored trying at least some
Hussein aides first, saying doing so would
help build up a pattern of "command
responsibility" that led conclusively to him.
June 6, 2005

Legislation would give FBI power to monitor mail
May 27, 2005

States May Disobey Driver's License Rules
May 10, 2005

FBI PROTECTS OSAMA BIN LADEN’S “RIGHT
TO PRIVACY” IN DOCUMENT RELEASE

Judicial Watch Investigation Uncovers FBI
Documents Concerning Bin Laden Family and
Post-9/11 Flights

FBI Whistleblower Case Closed to Public
Thursday, April 21, 2005

The Padilla Ruling Is a Victory for Freedom
If the Pentagon's power to arrest Americans
for terrorism and punish them without federal
court interference is upheld by the courts,
the floodgates will be open to omnipotent
military power in America. American life will
never be the same again. Life will be
transformed by such power in ways
unimaginable. No one will be safe from
military arrest, including newspaper editors,
government critics, and dissidents.

The Bush administration is aggressively
wielding a rarely used executive power known
as the state secrets privilege in an attempt
to squash hard-hitting court challenges to
its anti-terrorism campaign.

How the White House is using this privilege,
not a law but a series of legal precedents
built on national security, disturbs some
civil libertarians and open-government
advocates because of its sweeping
power. Judges almost never challenge the
government's assertion of the privilege, and
it can be fatal to a plaintiff's case.

Mr. Ashcroft's rules, with their criminal
penalties, violate the Sixth Amendment, which
grants all persons the right to consult with
a lawyer in confidence. Ms. Stewart can't
effectively represent her clients - no lawyer
can - if the government listens to and
records privileged conversations between
lawyers and their clients.

Habeas Data:
The Latin-American Response
to Data Protection

The Real ID Act or Real National ID Act will
impose a Soviet-style internal passport on
law-abiding American citizens.

Parents protest school mandate
that students wear radio ID tags

Of Dog Sniffs and Packet Sniffers
Feb 10, 2005

In 1973, a post-Vietnam War Congress wanted
to ensure that no future president could send
troops into battle without just cause and
congressional oversight. Consequently, it
passed a law, known as the War Powers Act,
which permits the president to introduce the
military into combat “where imminent
involvement in hostilities is clearly
indicated by the circumstances.” Congress
was very determined that this requirement be
met before sending troops overseas, as is
evidenced by the fact that this verbiage
appears in the act four times.

Alberto Gonzales should not be the Attorney
General of the United States. He should be
considered a war criminal and indicted by the
Attorney General. This is a suggested
indictment of Alberto Gonzales for war crimes
under Title 18 U.S.C. section 1441, the War
Crimes Act. --19 January 2005

The 108th Congress: An Analysis

Jesselyn Radack was an attorney in the
Justice Department's Professional
Responsibility Advisory Office during the
Lindh case. She raised legal and ethical
objections over the questioning of Lindh
without his lawyer and revealed misconduct by
Department of Justice officials.

As a result, Radack was pushed out of her job
at the Justice Department, fired from her
next job, put under criminal investigation
and put on the no-fly list. She joins us on
the phone today from Washington DC.

If Bush continues to roll back human and
civil rights - and the installation of
Alberto Gonzalez as America's chief law
enforcement officer is very much a part of
his campaign to do so - we may be facing a
"Pastor Niemöller moment" sooner than most of
us could have imagined.

Members of Congress who objected to voting on
legislation without first reading it amended
the Patriot Act to include a “trigger”
which provided that, upon the request of any
member of Congress, the debate that never
took place before voting would commence
sometime afterward.

When Congress adopted the Intelligence Reform
Act, it secretly squeezed in what I refer to
as an addendum to the Patriot Act, also
without debate, by making changes to elements
of the 2001 Patriot Act.

`Trusted Computing' FAQ
- TC / TCG / LaGrande / NGSCB /
Longhorn / Palladium / TCPA
Version 1.1 (August 2003)

The paper trail disclosed to date, however,
clearly establishes that Gonzales played a
central role in three major policy documents:
the original November 2001 presidential order
establishing military commissions that
allowed terrorism suspects to be secretly
charged, tried, and even executed without
basic due process protections; the January
2002 claim that the president had the
constitutional authority to deny the Geneva
protections, some of whose provisions
Gonzales described as ”quaint” and
obsolete”, to detainees in the war in
Afghanistan; and the August 2002 Justice
Department memo that contended the president
has ”commander-in-chief authority” to
order torture and proposed potential legal
defences for U.S. officials who may be
accused of torture.

Legal tide turning on detainee issue
Shifting opinion threatens nominee
January 3, 2005

Special Report on the Trial
of President Saddam Hussein
- November Update
by Dr. Curtis F.J. Doebbler, member of the
Legal Team representing Saddam Hussein

They Say They Can Lock You
Up for Life Without a Trial

Were not states' rights the key to the
defense of slavery? How without a strong
central government could slavery have been
ended?

The president of the United States is subject
to death penalty under US law for that crime
– alone. I mean that’s a grave breach
of the Geneva Conventions, Geneva Conventions
say explicitly and unambiguously that
hospitals must be protected, hospitals and
medical staff and patients must be protected
by all combatants in any conflict. You
couldn’t have a more grave breach of the
Geneva Conventions than that.

There’s a War Crimes Act in the United
States passed by a Republican Congress in
1996, which says that grave breaches of the
Geneva Convention are subject to the death
penalty. And that doesn’t mean the soldier
that committed them, that means the
commanders. They weren’t thinking about
the United States of course, but take it
literally, that’s what it means.

And then they went onto explain why they
carried out this war crime in the general
hospital. New York Times explained calmly
that it was done because the US command
described the Fallujah general hospital as a
propaganda outlet for the guerrillas because
they were reporting casualties.

Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell has
requested a protective order to prevent him
from being interviewed as part of an unusual
court challenge of the presidential vote.
December 27, 2004

FBI Whistleblowers: A Short List
- Coleen Rowley
- Sibel Edmonds
- Jane Turner
- VS The FBI

The new Intelligence reform bill is a more
stunning attack on the Bill of Rights than
the Patriot Act. Most people have no idea how
dramatically their "inalienable" rights have
been savaged, or to what extent the Congress
has sold them out.

The Crime that Created Police
Jonathan Wilde: Detective, Entrpreneur, Martyr
by Michael Gilson De Lemos

Dec. 15 - Several former high-ranking
military lawyers say they are discussing ways
to oppose President Bush's nomination of
Alberto R. Gonzales to be attorney general,
asserting that Mr. Gonzales's supervision of
legal memorandums that appeared to sanction
harsh treatment of detainees, even torture,
showed unsound legal judgment.

National Homeland Security
Initiated Two Years Ago
09/23/2001

A congressional advisory panel reports that a
national strategy is needed to defend against
terrorist attacks, but some plans would have
us give up our civil liberties.

Police Need Not Say Why Arrest
Made: U.S. High Court Overview
Bloomberg | December 14 2004

The justices, voting 8-0, threw out a suit
against Washington state police officers who
stopped a motorist and then told him he was
being arrested for tape-recording their
conversation. Although the recording was
legal, the high court said the arrest was
valid because the man could have been
arrested instead for impersonating a police
officer.

In an opinion for the court, Justice Antonin
Scalia said the officers didn't have to
provide a reason for arresting the man at
all, as long as they had probable cause to do
so.

National ID Cards:
New Technologies, Same Bad Idea
September 28, 2001

Ron Paul Denounces National ID Card

Torture and Death
Alberto Gonzales's record as
assistant chief executioner
under George Bush in Texas
December 3rd, 2004 7:25 PM
Nat Hentoff

Evidence gained by torture can be used by the
U.S. military in deciding whether to imprison
a foreigner indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba, as an enemy combatant, the government
concedes.

Five days after 9-11, the TIA office was
fully functional. Asked if that means the
program was ready to rollout previous to
9/11, the source familiar with the program
and privy to top-secret government
contractors said, "of course."

If, as Bush asserts, terrorism suspects,
Taliban, and Muslim mujahedeen fighters not
in uniform deserve no protection under the
laws of war and may be jailed and tortured at
presidential whim, then what law protects
from abuse or torture all the un-uniformed
U.S. Special Forces, CIA field teams, and
those 40,000 or more U.S. and British
mercenaries in Iraq and Afghanistan
euphemistically called "civilian
contractors"?

U.S. House rejects proposed
new overtime pay rules
September 10, 2004

Privacy, Piracy and Due Process in
Peer-to-Peer File Swapping Suits
A Federal District Court
Strikes a Good Balance
By Anita Ramasastry
December 2004

FindLaw Special Coverage
War on Terrorism

Case No. 03-5273
Ellen Mariani et al., Plaintiffs, v.
George W. Bush et al., Defendants.
NOTICE OF INTENT TO LODGE
VERIFIED CRIMINAL COMPLAINT:
18 U.S.C. 4, 1964(a), 3231.

...against Mr. Donald H. Rumsfeld, for his
evident complicity in ordering a deliberate
and premeditated stand-down of U.S. military
fighter jets on the morning of September 11,
2001

February 2, 2004 A.D.

TSA – Bullies at the Airport
by Rep. Ron Paul, MD

Beware of "Junk Lawsuits" Hype:
Citizens' right to hold corporations
accountable is the real target
by Jeff Milchen

Official: Gonzales is likely Ashcroft replacement
Formal announcement could come Wednesday
Wednesday, November 10, 2004

Gonzales argued that the Geneva Conventions
were "obsolete" and that by disregarding them
the administration would substantially reduce
its vulnerability to "criminal prosecution
under the War Crimes Act," which he noted
could incur a death sentence.

If enacted, the Constitution Restoration Act
will effectively transform the United States
into a theocracy, where the arbitrary
dictates of a "higher power" can override
law.

Judge Halts War-Crime Trial at Guantánamo

"The war on terrorism threatens to destroy
the very values of a democratic society
governed by the rule of law," Tashima told a
conference at the Japanese American National
Museum in Los Angeles.

The only two situations where the UN Charter
permits the use of armed force against
another state is in self-defense, or when
authorized by the Security Council. Iraq had
not invaded the U.S., or any other country,
Iraq did not constitute an imminent threat
to any country, and the Security Council
never sanctioned Bush's war. Bush and the
officials in his administration are
committing the crime of aggression.

For all the legal constraints the
Constitution puts on the government, we
rarely recognize the ironic byproduct of
those constraints: the subcontracting of
coercion to the private sector.

Is Bush the Law?
Can the commander in chief 'detain' the
constitution indefinitely all by himself?

Thanks to mortality, three or four spaces are
likely to open up in the next four years on
the nine-person Supreme Court. The next
president will get to pick whether those
judges are liberals or conservatives.

On June 21, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that
citizens no longer have the right to remain
silent when questioned by the police. That
“the state’s interest in protecting
police and investigating crime” takes
priority over the constitutional rights of
citizens.

US plans to send terrorist
suspects abroad to be tortured

9-11 widow cites attorney-presidential
conflicts, threat in estate court petition to
judge

Judge Blocks U.S. From Secret Searches
Key Part of Patriot Act Ruled Unconstitutional
Internet Providers' Data at Issue

When I first read articles by authors who
were exposing the Dominionists’ intention
to extend the death penalty to cover
“crimes” like adultery, rebelliousness,
homosexuality, witchcraft or effeminateness,
I found the death penalty extension goal to
be laughable. It couldn’t be done in
America.

There are now more than 20,000 names on the
no-fly list, some which are aliases,
according to a homeland security source who
is not allowed to release such numbers. There
are several thousand names on the selectee
list, according to the source.

Although the Privacy Act of 1974 prohibits
the government from keeping dossiers on
Americans unless they are the specific target
of an investigation, the government
circumvents the legislation by piggybacking
on private-sector data collection.

Rep. Porter Goss, President Bush’s nominee
to head the CIA, recently introduced
legislation that would give the president new
authority to direct CIA agents to conduct
law-enforcement operations inside the United
States—including arresting American
citizens.

Last week, the American Library Association
learned that the Department of Justice asked
the Government Printing Office Superintendent
of Documents to instruct depository libraries
to destroy five publications the Department
has deemed not "appropriate for external
use." The Department of Justice has called
for these five these public documents, two of
which are texts of federal statutes, to be
removed from depository libraries and
destroyed, making their content available
only to those with access to a law office or
law library.

The topics addressed in the named documents
include information on how citizens can
retrieve items that may have been confiscated
by the government during an investigation.

The most sinister characteristic of this
secret government is that it consists
entirely of executive branch officials, in
complete violation of the separation of
powers which is the heart of the US
constitutional system. No one in the other
two branches of government, the legislative
and judicial, was included in the plans or
even aware of them. In the event such an
emergency government were to emerge, it would
be an openly dictatorial regime, consisting
solely of executive branch officials
exercising military and police powers,
without any legislative oversight or judicial
check on their actions.

Officials have successfully spun this DOJ
report as a minor facet of the torture
scandal, but it is far more. The report
claims that in war, the president can do
anything he pleases, he "enjoys complete
discretion in the exercise of his
commander-in-chief role."

Never before has the US government claimed so much power.

What keeps this from being just another
political laugh is, the report was not
written by politicians, it's the work of
career attorneys from every branch of
the armed forces - Army, Navy, Air
Force, Marines and Coast Guard - in
consultation with attorneys in the
Justice Department. This means the
fascism revealed in the report is not a
flash-in-the-pan political whim, it is
systemic, entrenched in the bureaucracy.

You have much more to fear from the Bush
doctrine of preemptive and unlawful arrests
than you think.

An arrested person's right to freedom if
no charges are brought, and the right to a
trial by a jury if they are, were so
fundamental that the framers wrote them
directly into the text of the original
Constitution. They were there from the
beginning, while Americans still waited for
the Bill of Rights to guarantee their freedom
to worship and to assemble and all the rest.

In Amman, Jordan, lawyers claiming to
represent Saddam expressed outrage they were
not at his side for the hearing. ... At one
point, according to a commentary by Arab
broadcaster Al-Jazeera, Saddam asked the
judge whether he would be tried under laws
from his rule.

Court: E-mail providers can read messages
Ruling has huge implications for online
privacy rights

POW status provides protection only for the
act of taking up arms against opposing
military forces, and if that is all a POW has
done, then repatriation at the end of the
conflict would be required. But as Article 82
of Third Geneva explains, POW status does not
protect detainees from criminal offenses that
are applicable to the detaining powers'
soldiers as well. That is, if appropriate
evidence can be collected, the United States
would be perfectly entitled to charge the
Guantanamo detainees with war crimes, crimes
against humanity, or other violations of
U.S. criminal law, whether or not they have
POW status.

Preemptive War and International Law

Francis Boyle, professor of international law
at the University of Illinois, said the
Security Council has no authority to exempt
the United States from the laws of war,
including and especially the Geneva
Conventions, since they constitute jus cogens
- peremptory norms of international law that
can never be derogated from.

A conviction based on a tortured confession
isn't justice. It's theater.

If we're ever going to get our freedom back,
we've got to understand how we got into this
mess. People need to understand that the
armed forces exist to support and defend
government, not to be the government. Faced
with intractable national problems on one
hand, and an energetic and capable military
on the other, it can be all too seductive to
start viewing the military as a
cost-effective solution. We made a terrible
mistake when we allowed the armed forces to
be diverted from their original purpose.

Prelinger Archives

JurorsRule.com

Sadly, this is hardly the first time such
legislation has been misused. For instance, a
September 27 New York Times article, which
was based on a DOJ report, detailed literally
hundreds of non-terrorism cases for which the
USA PATRIOT Act had been used to prosecute
drug cases, murder investigations, money
smuggling/laundering and document forgery.

DNA profiles from hundreds of thousands of
juvenile offenders and adults arrested but
not convicted of crimes could be added to the
FBI (news - web sites)'s national DNA
crime-fighting program under a proposed law
moving through Congress.

The oldest Freedom of Information Act
requests that are still pending in the
federal government date back to the late
1980s, before the collapse of the Soviet
Union.

Under a case decided by the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, United
States v. Cruz, simply walking alongside the
wrong acquaintance can trigger "reasonable
suspicion."

Most Americans would be shocked, I think, if
they realized that they could be classified
as an "enemy combatant," taken off the
street, imprisoned indefinitely and not be
given the opportunity to call a lawyer. But
you can, my friends. At least one federal
appellate court has established that
precedent.

As part of their war on terrorism, Bush
officials are calling upon Congress to relax
or repeal the law that forbids the military
to get involved in civilian law
enforcement. Their target is the Posse
Comitatus Act of 1878, which says, in effect,
that soldiers cannot ride in posses or, more
precisely, arrest and try civilians. The law
was adopted to end military rule in the South
and to prevent federal troops from
suppressing labor unions or chasing criminals
as they used to chase fugitive slaves.

« The actions, not to mention values, of a
police officer ought to be dedicated to
keeping the peace, not engaging in war. On
the other hand, a soldier is trained to
inflict maximum damage on the enemy,
including death. It is this confusion of
roles which now begins to threaten the civil
liberties of the citizenry, and everyone
ought to be worried about it. »

A History of Secret Human Experimentation
according to healthnewsnet

Justice Dept. Drafts Sweeping
Expansion of Anti-Terrorism Act

Center Publishes Secret Draft of
"Patriot II" Legislation

By Charles Lewis and Adam Mayle

(WASHINGTON, Feb. 7, 2003) --
The Bush administration is preparing a bold,
comprehensive sequel to the USA Patriot
Act passed in the wake of September 11,
2001, which will give the government
broad, sweeping new powers to increase
domestic intelligence-gathering,
surveillance and law enforcement
prerogatives, and simultaneously
decrease judicial review and public
access to information.

The Center for Public Integrity has
obtained a draft, dated January 9,
2003, of this previously undisclosed
legislation and is making it available
in full text (12 MB).

USAPATRIOT redux

SOME SUGGESTED
NETCAM ETHICS

FindLaw
U.S. Code as of: 01/23/00
Section 4001. Limitation on detention; control of prisons

(a) No citizen shall be imprisoned or otherwise detained by the
United States except pursuant to an Act of Congress.

(b)(1) The control and management of Federal penal and
correctional institutions, except military or naval institutions,
shall be vested in the Attorney General, who shall promulgate rules
for the government thereof, and appoint all necessary officers and
employees in accordance with the civil-service laws, the
Classification Act, as amended, and the applicable regulations.

(2) The Attorney General may establish and conduct industries,
farms, and other activities and classify the inmates; and provide
for their proper government, discipline, treatment, care,
rehabilitation, and reformation.

Just like this war,
The USA PATRIOT Act Was Planned Before 9/11
by Jennifer Van Bergen
t r u t h o u t | 20 May, 2002

American Justice on Trial: Who Loses in
the Case of Military Tribunals?
(page 4)
Center for Constitutional Rights
"Under the Order, persons may be detained indefinitely without being
charged or brought to trial, and convictions and sentences by a
military commission, including "life imprisonment or death," can be
reviewed only by the same officials who made the initial determination
to charge the person accused: the President or the Secretary of
Defense."

A Year Later: It's Happening Here
Milestones on the Road to a Military Government in the United States
by Bill Christison
former CIA political analyst
September 7, 2002
Sites that are strongly critical of candidates but
do not urge voters to take action are exempt from
federal rules.

God, Death and Justice Scalia
Monday, August 12, 2002
The Washington Post
Mr. Scalia -- a devout Catholic -- aligns himself with the moral views
of St. Paul, whom he paraphrases as saying "that government
. . . derives its moral authority from God. It is the 'minister of
God' with powers to 'revenge,' to 'execute wrath,' including even
wrath by the sword (which is unmistakably a reference to the death
penalty)." This view of government, the justice acknowledges, was
complicated by the emergence of democracy. But, he insists, "The
reaction of people of faith to this tendency of democracy to obscure
the divine authority behind government should not be resignation to
it, but the resolution to combat it as effectively as possible."

Report: Millions Behind Bars in U.S.
Sun Aug 25, 4:52 PM ET
By JONATHAN D. SALANT, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - One in every 32 adults in the United States was
behind bars or on probation or parole by the end of last year,
according to a government report Sunday that found a record 6.6
million people in the nation's correctional system.

FBI wants to track your Web trail

By Lisa M. Bowman
Special to ZDNet News
June 6, 2002, 4:00 AM PT

Remember they legalized "web surfing" this year?
They meant monitoring your web connections.

Ex-U.S. officials warn that U.S. policies threaten repression

LINDA DEUTSCH, AP Special Correspondent
Tuesday, Jul

Books News NetVideo Suffrage Law
9/11 netradio PNAC Dominion Special
Agent
Wright

Books	News	NetVideo	Suffrage	Law
9/11	netradio	PNAC	Dominion	Special Agent Wright

Law

Bush signs bill overhauling eavesdropping rules

Ashcroft in Conference

Don’t Cry For The Telcos - Bush & Cheney Are The Only Ones That Are Dying For Immunity

YouTube - 20080211 Senator Dodd quotes Glenn Greenwald on FISA 8:30pm

Kidnapping Not a Crime, Claims Bush Justice Department

Man wants his $400K back from the FBI

Constitutional scholar: 'At least six identifiable crimes' possiblein CIA tape affair

None Dare Call It Treason

Freedom of Information Act strengthened

CNN.com - Most jurors didn't want to make bomber a martyr - June 12, 2001

Happy Holidays

AT&T, other telecoms buy victory in lawsuits

The NYT weighs in, and I think we have it Backward

Former CEO Says U.S. Punished Phone Firm

Joe Klein's defense of warrantless eavesdropping and telecom amnesty

King-George-gate: Myths v. Realities

Tomgram: Bush's Free World and Welcome to It

Considering Mr. Mukasey

What happens to private contractors who kill Iraqis? Maybe nothing

I Know What You Did Last Summer

A Push to Rewrite Wiretap Law

House Approves Wiretap Measure

Reclaiming Citizenship, History, and Faith

Harriet Miers's Contempt of Congress Are Conservatives About To Neuter Congress, While Claiming Full Legal Justification for this Separation-of-Powers Violation?

DOJ Losing Ground In Wiretap Fight

Judges OK warrantless monitoring of Web use / Privacy rules don't apply to Internet messages, court says

Unimpeachably Impeachable

Bush's offices reportedly refused probe

Is Dick Cheney Trying to Create His Own 4th Branch of Government?

Justice Dept. wants stricter sentencing

Working for the Clampdown

JURIST - Forum: No Unlawful Enemy Combatants at Guantanamo

Bipartisan bill bans warrantless wiretapping of US citizens

Has Bush Committed Impeachable Acts?

NYC Bar Chides Government on Guantanamo - Examiner.com

Bush event volunteers say they did nothing wrong

Judge rejects Padilla torture argument

Letters: The people who claim the surge is working

Bush's long history of tilting Justice

U.S. urged to abandon trials by military tribunals

My National Security Letter Gag Order

The president's oh-so-noble reliance on "executive privilege"

The Army and the Constitution: Time for Congress to Step In

How Congress might rein in US war policy

S. 4

I am not a state secret

The Pentagon’s Power to Arrest, Torture, and Execute Americans by Jacob G. Hornberger

Canada's top court strikes down anti-terror measures

Making Martial Law Easier

Bush signs US pre-texting law

Vermont takes the lead and calls for U.S troop withdrawal from Iraq

Gonzales says the Constitution doesn't guarantee habeas corpus / Attorney general's remarks on citizens' right astound the chair of Senate judiciary panel

Baghdad Year Zero (Harpers.org)

The War Powers Act of 1973

The Truth About Our Institutions

A judicial victory for the Leader

Bush's anti-terrorism law upheld

granma.cu - The prison industry in the United States: big business or a new form of slavery?

Narrowing the Definition of 'Unlawful Enemy Combatant'

Policymakers on torture take note -- remember Pinochet

The President's designs on the lame duck Congressional session

The Avalon Project : General Orders No. 100

Reporters Offered Look Inside Combatant Status Review Tribunals

Lies in the Service of Evil

Active-Duty Troops Launch Campaign to Press Congress to End U.S. Occupation of Iraq

John Yoo on Court-Stripping

Cassel: The Lynne Stewart Guilty Verdict Stretching the Definition of "Terrorism" To Its Limits

Is protection from threats the highest political value?

Nick's Blog: Compromise On Torture?

Risky Business

Bush's Policy: Rounding up ALL Dissenters

Make the Industrial Hemp Farming Act Law

U.S. war prisons legal vacuum for 14,000

Amarillo Globe-News: Texas News: Threat-makers charged with making false report 07/24/02

Threat-makers charged with making false report

The War Powers Act of 1973

Free Press : NSA Has Massive Database of Americans' Phone Calls

Constitutional showdown?

Blank Check to Spy

Bush signs bill overhauling
eavesdropping rules

Don’t Cry For The Telcos -
Bush & Cheney Are The Only Ones
That Are Dying For Immunity

YouTube - 20080211 Senator Dodd quotes
Glenn Greenwald on FISA 8:30pm

Kidnapping Not a Crime, Claims Bush
Justice Department

Constitutional scholar: 'At least six
identifiable crimes' possiblein CIA tape
affair

AT&T, other telecoms
buy victory in lawsuits

The NYT weighs in, and
I think we have it Backward

Joe Klein's defense of warrantless
eavesdropping and telecom amnesty

Harriet Miers's Contempt of Congress Are
Conservatives About To Neuter Congress, While
Claiming Full Legal Justification for this
Separation-of-Powers Violation?

Judges OK warrantless monitoring of Web
use / Privacy rules don't apply to Internet
messages, court says

Is Dick Cheney Trying to Create
His Own 4th Branch of Government?

JURIST - Forum: No Unlawful Enemy
Combatants at Guantanamo

Bipartisan bill bans warrantless
wiretapping of US citizens

Bush event volunteers
say they did nothing wrong

Letters: The people who
claim the surge is working

U.S. urged to abandon
trials by military tribunals

The president's oh-so-noble
reliance on "executive privilege"

The Army and the Constitution:
Time for Congress to Step In

The Pentagon’s Power to Arrest, Torture,
and Execute Americans by Jacob
G. Hornberger

Canada's top court strikes
down anti-terror measures

Vermont takes the lead and calls
for U.S troop withdrawal from Iraq

Gonzales says the Constitution doesn't
guarantee habeas corpus / Attorney general's
remarks on citizens' right astound the chair
of Senate judiciary panel

granma.cu - The prison industry in the
United States: big business or a new form of
slavery?

Narrowing the Definition
of 'Unlawful Enemy Combatant'

Policymakers on torture take note --
remember Pinochet

The President's designs on the
lame duck Congressional session

Reporters Offered Look Inside
Combatant Status Review Tribunals

Active-Duty Troops Launch Campaign
to Press Congress to End U.S. Occupation
of Iraq

Cassel: The Lynne Stewart Guilty Verdict
Stretching the Definition of "Terrorism" To
Its Limits

Is protection from threats
the highest political value?

Amarillo Globe-News: Texas News:
Threat-makers charged with making false
report 07/24/02

Free Press : NSA Has Massive
Database of Americans' Phone Calls

Bush personally nixed the
OPR investigation. And it's
juicier than you think.

AlterNet: Rights and Liberties:
Bush's Unprecedented Arrogance

Federal lawyers try to seize gold
caps from drug suspects' teeth

AT&T Forwards ALL Internet
Traffic Into NSA Says EFF

EFF's Class-Action Lawsuit Against
AT&T for Collaboration with Illegal
Domestic Spying Program

Analysis: Hamdan and a few
minutes in the Senate

A window into the Bush Administration's
legal manuevering

The National Security Agency
and Fourth Amendment Rights

Judge in Scooter Libby, Sibel
Edmonds cases is redacted in action

Secret Spy Court to Get Secret
Briefing on Secret Secrets

Sold chemicals used to gas
Kurds, Dutch man jailed

Clash Is Latest Chapter in Bush
Effort to Widen Executive Power

Judges on Surveillance Court
To Be Briefed on Spy Program

Gonzales: Congress Gave President
The Authority To Spy On Americans

How Congress Has Assaulted Our
Freedoms in the Patriot Act

On Hill, Anger and Calls for Hearings
Greet News of Stateside Surveillance

Fascism Watch II: No habeas for
them, no habeas for us, no problem

Scholar says Bush has used obscure
doctrine to extend power 95 times

Community Broadband Act of 2005
(Introduced in Senate)

From frozen Alaska to the lab: a virus
39,000 times more virulent than flu

Justice Dept. Drafts Sweeping
Expansion of Anti-Terrorism Act

Center Publishes Secret Draft of
"Patriot II" Legislation

SOME SUGGESTED
NETCAM ETHICS

American Justice on Trial: Who Loses in
the Case of Military Tribunals?

God, Death and Justice Scalia
Monday, August 12, 2002
The Washington Post