The Conscience of Abe’s Turn freedom of speech, defense, and life

Nine secret, Bush-era documents that the Obama administration released this week demonstrate the hubris of a powerful government and the danger posed by it.

Some of these documents are among the dozens of memos that the ACLU has been suing the Department of Justice to release. To echo Glenn Greenwald from last year: “Yet again, the ACLU has performed the function which Congress and the media are intended to perform but do not.”

One of the legal opinions, written in October 2001 by John Yoo, a lawyer with the Office of Legal Counsel, one who needs a Conscience, argued that the Fourth Amendment does not apply to military activities inside the United States. That is, the federal government thought it could get away with illegal searches and seizures and spying on innocent U.S. citizens, all without a warrant, as long as it could make it look like part of a military operation.

Yoo also advised that “First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war,” without saying specifically how that might play out, adding that the fight against “terrorism may require even broader exercises of federal power domestically.”  read more »

Brian Wilson on his radio show at WSPD yesterday talked with Jim Bovard about a recent Washington Post article about sending U.S. troops to the U.S. “The U.S. military,” according to the Post, “expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe.”

Domestic emergency deployment may be “just the first example of a series of expansions in presidential and military authority,” or even an increase in domestic surveillance, said Anna Christensen of the ACLU’s National Security Project. And Cato Vice President Gene Healy warned of “a creeping militarization” of homeland security.  read more »

Chris Anders of the ACLU, reporting on the Guantánamo hearings of Ibrahim al-Qosi and Mohammad Hashim a couple weeks ago, noted that there is death in the air there… the death of Guantánamo itself:

[E]veryone notices that attendance is way down. A couple of military personnel shut off the power in empty tents here in “Camp Justice.” As the only representative of a human rights group this week, my bed is the only one occupied in my six-bed tent. And the media pool is now down to just one reporter. It seems that all that is left to be done is for the new president to pull the plug on the whole operation on January 20.

“But,” explained Suzanne Ito in another post, “we’re not tossing out the orange ribbons just yet. Our work is not done. We need to keep up the momentum on this issue, and show President-elect Obama that he has our support to shut Guantánamo down on Day One. With an executive order, he can close Gitmo and shutter the military commissions system.”

Then CNN reported that a federal judge ordered that 5 prisoners at Guantánamo be released, because they were not “enemy combatants,” or at least the government could not demonstrate that they were.

The smell of death in the air, and this day, it’s a sweet, refreshing aroma.

-TimK

At first, I didn’t know what to do with this blog post. It’s about the Sea-Smurfs. That is, about CCMRF teams (pronounced “C Smurf”), which stands for “CBRNE Consequence Management Response Force.” And as everyone knows, CBRNE clearly and obviously refers to “Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear or high-yield Explosive.” And as you can probably figure out by now, this has something to do with the military.

Benjamin Friedman posted on the Cato Institute’s blog an article asking “Should We Fear Sea-Smurfs?” That’s kind of hard to answer if you don’t know what they are. I’ve read the article, and I’m still not sure I know what they are. Maybe no one knows. Maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

Briefly, a CCMRF is a team of soldiers trained to perform police duties. Just what we need to make our police forces more civil, huh? But will they be unleashed on the unsuspecting American public?

Sea-smurfs can then do tasks short of law enforcement, including cleaning up after attacks. If terrorist attacks qualify as an insurrection, troops could perform law enforcement tasks in their aftermath. That might explain why the Sea-Smurfs received law enforcement training, but the Army denies that the training was related to domestic duties. It is good that the ACLU is trying to figure what exactly is intended.

Even if this mission is legal, however, it does not make it wise. Homeland defense activities like storms and terrorist attacks are the job of local and state authorities, and in extreme cases, the National Guard. Historically, these forces have been sufficient.

-TimK

The photographs show detainee abuse by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. In September, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ordered the government to release the photos as part of an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit seeking information on the abuse of prisoners held in U.S. custody overseas. Now, the Bush administration petitioned to appeal the order.

“This petition is a transparent attempt to delay accountability for the widespread abuse of prisoners held in U.S. custody abroad by keeping the public in the dark,” said Amrit Singh, staff attorney with the ACLU. “These photographs demonstrate that the abuse of prisoners held in U.S. custody abroad was not aberrational and not confined to Abu Ghraib, but the result of policies adopted by the highest-ranking officials in the administration. The immediate release of these photos is critical to bringing an end to the Bush administration’s torture policies and for preventing prisoner abuse in the future.”  read more »

Stories like this are the reason why we have reason for optimism in this country. This story is also one of the reasons why the ACLU is listed under “The Conscience of America,” because they inform of us police-state-like actions in the U.S. and use the tools at their disposal to stop them.

In 2005, it was reported that Bush had told the NSA it could warrantless surveillance of Americans. The ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act request to get government documents about this spying-on-Americans program.

The government ignored them. Tactic 1: If the people ask you for internal documentation that would make you look bad, pretend you didn’t hear them.

So the ACLU sued.  read more »

The ACLU is decries that Oregon voters chose to increase mandatory minimums for drug users.

Now, mandatory minimums are generally misguided, and anti-drug laws indeed have a whole host of problems. But for our purposes, one the worst problems is that every time the government mounts a new offensive against consensual acts (like drug use), innocent people end up getting caught in the middle. So much for living in a free country.

May the Lord have mercy on the voters of Oregon, because they’ve just given their own government another weapon it can use against them.

Another good one from the ACLU. And having just read Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother, this report reminds me that I’m not the only modern novelist basing his fiction on real life.

(Compare Abe’s Turn Episode 2.)

-TimK  read more »

WEBWIRE – Monday, October 06, 2008

Washington, DC – New FBI guidelines governing investigations were released today after being signed by Attorney General Michael Mukasey. The American Civil Liberties Union quickly blasted the Department of Justice and FBI for ignoring calls for more stringent protections of Americans’ rights. The guidelines replace existing bureau guidelines for five types of investigations: general criminal, national security, foreign intelligence, civil disorders and demonstrations. The ACLU has been vocal in its disapproval of the overly broad guidelines, citing both the FBI’s and DOJ’s documented records of internal abuse.  read more »

(This post is a follow-up to yesterday’s post, “Update on Helena-West Helena Police State: They could be ripping off my book for their press releases.” Catch the whole true story from the beginning, starting here.)

Cited in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Northwest Edition yesterday, also found at ArkansasOnline and other sources:

“Under the old curfew, everyone was subject to some minimal intrusion,” [Mayor James] Valley said. “Now, if people are sitting out in their yard talking, it’s not going to be a big deal. But if they are out drinking or smoking a blunt, that’s going to be a problem.”

Valley and Scott said police officers will continue stopping and questioning people in the saturation zones, just as they did in the first curfew zone. As long as a person has a “legitimate reason” for moving through the saturation zone, Valley said, he’ll be allowed to pass.  read more »