This is what Senator Barack Obama said of the Bush State Secrets doctrine while running for President in 2008 [and defending his own vote for telecom immunity]: I wouldn't have drafted the legislation like this, and it does not resolve all of the concerns that we have about President Bush's abuse of executive power. It grants retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that may have violated the law by cooperating with the Bush administration's program of warrantless wiretapping. This potentially weakens the deterrent effect of the law and removes an important tool for the American people to demand accountability for past abuses. Here, Glenn Greenwald explains, is the stunning reversal in recent Obama Administration DOJ filings on the issue: The Obama administration has, yet again, asserted the broadest and most radical version of the "state secrets" privilege -- which previously caused so much controversy and turmoil among loyal Democrats (when used by B...

Because we desperately need to be protected from naked people drinking coffee in their own homes : (Oct. 21) A Virginia man was busted for indecent exposure after he was caught in the buff. In his own home. Alone. Eric Williamson, 29, got up at 5:30 a.m. Monday and went to the kitchen to make some coffee. He was naked, but he was alone in the Springfield house, so he didn't think it mattered. Wrong. A woman and a 7-year-old boy were cutting through Williamson's front yard from a nearby path, according to WTTG-TV, Channel 5 in Washington. Through his front window, they saw Williamson having coffee in his birthday suit. Fairfax County police showed up and arrested him. Williamson said he had no idea anyone could see him, but police said they believed he wanted to be seen by the public, said WTTG, a Fox station. If convicted, Williamson could face one year in jail and a $2,000 fine. He plans to fight the charge. "If I stood and seemed comfortable in my kitchen, it's natu...

I kept looking for the violence, or even the potential violence. I kept watching the police move closer and closer. You have to watch the entire ten or eleven minutes to get the feel of the confrontation unrolling in real time.

This is the guy who got everything started with the firearms outside the venue in which President Obama was speaking in New Hampshire. You recall: the evidence that political violence and intimidation was being initiated by those who openly and peacefully carried handguns legally to demonstrations. This, on the other hand, is the mass demonstration Thursday in Pittsburgh prepartory to the G-20 Summit, wherein legions of police marched in with smoke and pepper spray to disperse the crowd: Here's how the Associate Press reported the news : PITTSBURGH — Police fired canisters of pepper spray and smoke at marchers protesting the Group of 20 summit Thursday after anarchists responded to calls to disperse by rolling trash bins and throwing rocks. The march turned chaotic at just about the time that President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama arrived for a meeting with leaders of the world's major economies. The clashes began after hundreds of protesters, many advocating ag...

One of my anarchist friends who visits and comments here occasionally, Planetaryjim, won't have a friend who is either a cop or a soldier, so much does he view them as oppressors rather than protectors of society. I don't go that far, but you have to admit that we are daily finding reasons not to trust law enforcement agents and agencies. Here are two timely examples: First, from Drug War Rant : You see, in New York, having a small amount of marijuana in your pocket is not an arrest-able offense. However, having it out in the open is. According to U.S. Supreme Court decisions, police are allowed to thoroughly pat down the outside of someone’s clothing looking for a gun, which is bulky and easy to detect. But police cannot legally search inside a person’s pockets and belongings without permission or probable cause. However, police officers can legally make false statements to people they stop, and officers can trick people into revealing things. So in a stern, authoritative voic...

From WFTV : KISSIMMEE, Fla. -- A man is suing the Kissimmee Police Department for an arrest over mints. When officers pulled Donald May over for an expired tag, they thought the mints he was chewing were crack and arrested him. May told Eyewitness News they wouldn't let him out of jail for three months until tests proved the so-called drugs were candy. May said he was just minding his business, driving home from work, when a Kissimmee police officer pulled him over near 192. "I don't know how it occurred," he said. May was pulled over for an expired tag on his car. When the officer walked up to him, he noticed something white in May's mouth. May said it was breath mints, but the officer thought it was crack cocaine. "He took them out of my mouth and put them in a baggy and locked me up [for] possession of cocaine and tampering with evidence," May explained. The officer claimed he field-tested the evidence and it tested positive for drugs. The officer sai...

... although that is a significant issue . Cambridge MA Police responded to a woman's report of "two black males with backpacks on the porch," with one "wedging his shoulder into the door as if he was trying to force entry," by arresting Dr. Gates inside his own home. [Turns out Dr. Gates and friend had locked themselves out.] Yes, Dr. Gates was irritable, and yes Dr. Gates probably initially refused to produce identification--again, within his own home. What's outrageously, police-state wrong about this is the only charge the Cambridge Police could come up with: He was arrested on a disorderly conduct charge after police said he "exhibited loud and tumultuous behavior." What the f**k? He got arrested for disorderly conduct inside his own home after he had provided the police with identification ? At which nanosecond after Dr. Gates proved he was the rightful owner of the home did the police officers have any legal standing whatever even to be i...

Remember what Rahm Emmanuel said about being one of the 1,000,000 Americans on the No-fly list: “if you’re on that no-fly list, your access to the right to bear arms is cancelled, because you’re not part of the American family; you don’t deserve that right. There is no right for you if you’re on that terrorist list.” Now, it seems that your right to purchase a car has also been cancelled--from Alphecca [a car salesman in real life]: A guy of middle-eastern decent (born in Afghanistan) wants to buy a car. We agree on the price, he fills out a credit-ap and we run it. Rock Star, as we say in the biz, 815 FICO score with 92% of his current credit available. Well employed at a famous medical school. Should be “No Problem” getting him financed, right? Wrong. His name brings up a flag on AMPAC, the American Patriot Act terrorist watch list. Well, his name is similar to other names on the list, so, banks are not allowed to loan money to him. It means he can’t get the car and I can’t get th...

Youssef Megahed was acquitted by a jury on charges of illegal possession and transport of explosives : Megahed came to the United States from Egypt in 1998 as a legal immigrant when he was 12. His problems started two years ago when, as an engineering student at the University of South Florida, he went on a road trip with a new friend, Ahmed Mohamed. The men were pulled over on a highway, near Charleston, South Carolina, for speeding. Police say they searched their vehicle and found PVC pipe with potassium nitrate inside, along with detonator cord inside one of Mohamed's bags. The government said the materials were "low explosives." Mohamed said they were materials for homemade model rockets. Youssef Megahed claimed he did not know that the materials were in the car. A search of Mohamed's laptop computer found research concerning rockets and propellants and how to manufacture them, as well as information about Qassam rockets -- crude rockets used by terrorists in the ...

Rachel Maddow introduces us to the Orwellian double-think that leads to police states if we do not pay attention:

Bagram. Extraordinary rendition. The CIA network of secret detention facilities on foreign soil. None of these issues has been acknowledged by the Obama administration. Not to mention this passage on the State secrets doctrine that somehow neglects to mention how many times the Obama DOJ has already invoked it in court: Now, along these same lines, my administration is also confronting challenges to what is known as the "state secrets" privilege. This is a doctrine that allows the government to challenge legal cases involving secret programs. It's been used by many past Presidents -- Republican and Democrat -- for many decades. And while this principle is absolutely necessary in some circumstances to protect national security, I am concerned that it has been over-used. It is also currently the subject of a wide range of lawsuits. So let me lay out some principles here. We must not protect information merely because it reveals the violation of a law or embarrassment to...

This was predictable: When aspects of the Pentagon 2010 budget were released last months, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates emphasized that it was a “fundamental overhaul” of the budget, and said it shifted spending priorities from wasteful, high-priced weapons programs in favor of fighting against insurgencies. Yet now that the budget has been unveiled, one of the most striking aspects is that it actually seeks a 5.6% spending increase for weapons procurement, with increases in some projects more than offsetting the previously revealed cuts in others . The shift increases the focus on unmanned drones and surveillance capabilities. All in all, the military budget will continue to grow, just in different areas than it had previously. Among those aspects seeing new record levels is the “black budget,” which includes all the classified and secret operations the military engages in. That will see $50 billion in 2010. Around 7.5% of all military spending is now secret. Britain, by contras...

...into admitting his assorted crimes .... Here is part of my answer to the folks who think that the government can simply be trusted with the power to conduct surveillance against our citizens and ignore their constitutional rights because they're a threat... Like evangelical home-schooled Christian Ashton Lundeby: Ashton Lundeby has been held in a Federal detention center in Indiana for 2 months without being charged with a crime or afforded due process. Federal Bureau of Investigation agents stormed his home that night, insisting that he had made several bomb threats from his computer including one to Purdue University on February 15 at 9:05 Central time (10:05 ET in North Carolina where Lundeby lives). Lundeby has multiple witnesses that will verify that he was at Union Chapel Church with his family until after 9 p.m. ET that evening. Union Chapel Church is 35 minutes from the family's Oxford, North Carolina home. On the way home that evening, the family stopped at a groce...

... is that there was no story. Here are the most important paragraphs from MSNBC in July 2008: White-supremacist groups have recruited 203 people who served in the U.S. military or who claim to have U.S. military backgrounds , according to a new report by the FBI. The unclassified FBI Intelligence Assessment, issued last week and obtained by NBC News, cautions that white-power extremists are trying hard to recruit active-duty soldiers and recent veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “White supremacist extremists hope to revitalize the white supremacist movement by exploiting antigovernment sentiment among opponents of the overseas conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan,” the FBI report states. It adds, however, that the effort is not going particularly well. “Although some veterans of these conflicts have joined the extremist movement, they have not done so in numbers sufficient to stem declines among major national extremist organizations, nor has their participation resulted i...

Some of our friends continue to try to move the bar to redefine certain political topics as extremism, connect them with violent actors, and call for government surveillance of ... quite frankly, some pretty ordinary citizens with different political views. The most recent example comes in a post that labels concerns over recent homeland security reports as Last week’s manufactured outrage over the DHS Threat Assessments deserves abit more information — especially as the remarkable dishonesty around all of this is being used to not just work the refs but to also try to normalize the violent rhetoric that they so like bullying people with. But the truly interesting part arrives in a comment (#5) by one of the multiple bloggers at the site [in other words, not a passerby]: In addition to violent rhetoric, the right wing nut bags are fond of “military” sounding jargon. Take a look at the email I got just this morning: SCCOR Member - Do you have an interest in helping the Resistance? Is t...

... because there are subtle re-framings of reality taking place all over the place. At odds: two DHS reports on extremist threats ( rightwing and leftwing ) and all the attendant chatter. Some of the most inaccurate and irresponsible of which is coming from our own beloved Delaware blogosphere. First, let's get the chronology straight: there are two DHS reports that have been leaked to the wider world: one on rightwing extremism (dated 7 April 2009 and leaked the following week) and one on leftwing extremism (dated 26 January 2009 and not leaked until the other one had caused such a furor). Here's what one local blogger picks out as significant about the two reports: There was a left-wing extremist report released in January, that we haven’t heard anyone whine about yet. Any thoughts as to why? Both of these reports were commissioned by BushCo, and were released after Bush left. The current energy that conservatives are putting into this misses the point of these docume...

.... like at least through puberty. Police in American Fork, Utah, are mulling felony charges against two fifth graders for ... showing their classmates dirty pictures. The two 11-year-olds got around the computer's filter by typing a keyword into the browser that wasn't on the filter's list of pornographic trigger words. In doing so, they pulled up pornography, multiple images that they then showed to at least nine of their classmates.... Prosecutors could charge the two with dealing harmful material to a minor, a second-degree felony, or they could decide to charge them with "providing an improper display," a class A misdemeanor. Police say the kids will more than likely face the felony charge. "It's serious for the kids, but you also have to look at the other side of this. Some of the kids who were brought over there, at least one of them, I believe, is having some trouble shaking that image from his mind," said American Fork police Lt. Darren Fal...

For all of our friends who placed so much immediate stock in the hopelessly flawed DHS report on Rightwing extremism , maybe it would be a cautionary suggestion to take a look at where else DHS and our Federally supported fusion centers are seeing potential domestic terrorism. The ACLU reports the following : A May 7, 2008 report entitled “Universal Adversary Dynamic Threat Assessment” authored by a private contractor that labeled environmental organizations like the Sierra Club, the Humane Society and the Audubon Society as “mainstream organizations with known or possible links to eco-terrorism” ; A potential abuse of authority by DHS officials who improperly monitored and disseminated the communications of peace activists affiliated with the DC Anti-War Network (DAWN) ; A report produced on February 19, 2009 by the North Central Texas Fusion System entitled “Prevention Awareness Bulletin” which described a purported conspiracy between Muslim civil rights organizations, lobbying gro...

Updated : Once you've read this, for a real laugh visit the Delawareliberal thread that (a) attempts to make something substantive out of this report; (b) features Cassandra intentionally missing/misrepresenting the point of this entire post; and (c) illustrating the blandness/blindness we've all come to expect from those who do not see that certain topics of legitimate political discussion are slowly edged toward the dangerous and extremist categories. Particularly revealing is the failure of DL posters to see any problem with the report's repeated insistence that returning disgruntled veterans are likely targets for extremist recruiting, which stops just an intellectual step short of recommending the profiling of discharged soldiers so that we can follow the potentially dangerous. My point below--that there is evidence of dissonant voices/dynamics in the DHS report is, sadly, pretty much beyond them. Next time, just for a few people, I'll try it with one-syllable ...

From Classically Liberal (which is not squeamish and doesn't use asterisks like I tend to do): Kathryn Fridge, 29, of La Marque, Texas was shopping at Wal-Mart with her mother. In a conversation between the two women Kathryn said "fuck." Her sentiments were understandable. A tropical storm warning had been issued and she and her mother were looking to buy batteries. But they found that the shelves had already been picked clean. In response to this unfortunate turn of events, Ms. Fridge expressed dismay by saying that the batteries were "fucking gone." Now Capt. Alfred Decker, moralistic buttwipe and La Marque assistant fire marshal, steps in and decides that because he gets to wear a uniform that he can issue a citation to Ms. Fridge for "disorderly conduct." Keep in mind that Capt. Asshole was issuing a citation, and arresting the woman, while a Tropical Storm was bearing down on the city. Apparently this moronic twat had nothing better to do in the ...