by Last Night in Little Rock

As our Constitution and civil liberties are slipping from our grasp, we see that Attorney General Gonzalez on Monday ordered "ordered a side-by-side review of American and British counterterrorism laws as a first step toward determining whether further changes in American law are warranted." If you hated the USA PATRIOT Act, you will detest this.

Newly revised British counterterrorism laws, for instance, allow the authorities to hold a suspect for 28 days without charges, where American law generally requires that a suspect held in the civilian court system be charged or released within 48 hours.

The Northern Ireland terrorism courts have a three judge panel that acts like an international tribunal. The rules of evidence are seriously relaxed, there are no "constitutional protections," and suspects can be detained for lengthy periods without being charged. Britain has also enacted similar laws for the current terrorism threat.

General Gonzalez seems to have forgotten that we are in the United States, and we operate under a Constitution, along with its Bill of Rights, which were designed, in 1789 and 1791, respectively, to distance and protect us from the abuses of Eighteenth Century England. Whatever happened in the 225 years since, Twenty-first Century England may be regressing. Without a Bill of Rights, not much protects British citizens from arrests and detention without proof of probable cause. Their rights are purely statutory.

On CNN this morning I heard that the airliner bombing plot suspects were in a closed courtroom for a video appearance today to extend their incarcerations without being yet being charged with a crime. [Note: Nothing on CNN.com about this yet.]

Maybe Gonzalez will call this PATRIOT 3.0 and see if they can get it through the Republican led Congress before the 2006 election.

I think the flight diversion to Boston of the London plane bound for Washington will turn out to be no big deal, and not related to a terror threat:

Naccara said he did not believe any items she was carrying were the cause of the outburst. An airport spokesman, Phil Orlandella, previously confirmed broadcast reports that the woman was carrying Vaseline, a screw driver, matches and a note referring to al-Qaida, but backed off the statement. Naccara said it wasn't true.

``I don't know what she had on board with her, but we have been told she did not have a screw driver, she did not have any liquids such as Vaseline, and any notebook she may have had, it did not contain an al-Qaida reference,'' Naccara said. ``This is still playing out, of course.'' ``There was speculation in the beginning of all those items, but those have been proven untrue,'' he said. He said he had no information about matches.

A CBS video is here.

by TChris

With the ceasefire apparently holding (for now) in Lebanon, attention can return to Iraq, where gunfire has not ceased, and where daily killings are in fact increasing. The country is no longer at risk of a civil war; it's embroiled in one.

July appears to have been the deadliest month of the war for Iraqi civilians, according to figures from the Health Ministry and the Baghdad morgue, reinforcing criticism that the Baghdad security plan started in June by the new government has failed.

An average of more than 110 Iraqis were killed each day in July, according to the figures. ... The rising numbers suggested that sectarian violence is spiraling out of control, and seemed to bolster an assertion many senior Iraqi officials and American military analysts have made in recent months: that the country is already embroiled in a civil war, not just slipping toward one, and that the American-led forces are caught between Sunni Arab guerrillas and Shiite militias.

by Last Night in Little Rock

New Jersey's Attorney General Zulima Farber resigned Tuesday over an ethics complaint investigated by a special prosecutor as reported in the NY Times and on CNN.com. The picture on the NY Times website seems particularly telling.

The Attorney General of New Jersey is a unique appointed position of great power over the state's entire law enforcement mechanicism, which makes the alleged transgression appear worse than it might have been. But, in politics, appearance is reality.

by Last Night in Little Rock

Bill O'Reilly, of Fox News' O'Reilly Factor who was against sexual perverts on his show before it was popular, has apparently, at least in MSNBC's Tucker Carlson's view, proved himself to be a real sexual cretin, blaming a woman's rape and murder on her wearing a miniskirt and being inebriated, essentially saying that "she was asking for it." In Carlson's August 7th show, we see this:

CARLSON: Welcome back. Time now for "Beat the Press."

First up, FOX's Bill O'Reilly. On his radio show last week, O'Reilly discussed the rape and murder of 18-year-old Jennifer Moore. See if you can tell who he thinks is responsible for the killing of that New Jersey girl. Here he is.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

BILL O'REILLY, RADIO HOST: She was 5'2, 105 pounds, wearing a mini skirt and a halter top with a bare midriff. Now, again, there you go. So every predator in the world is going to pick that up at 2:00 in the morning. She's walking by herself on the west side highway, and she gets picked up by a thug, all right? Now she's he out-of-her-mind drunk.

(END CLIP)

Time for readers to take over. Here's a fresh thread for whatever's on your mind.

(Apologies in advance, this is a long one.)

Why do we need terrorists to destroy the cornerstones of democracy with bombs when governments are willing to do it themselves out of fear? Isn't that a sign that the terrorists have won? First the U.S. with its Patriot Act and warrantless NSA surveillance and now Britain, which is considering a new racial profiling program aimed at Muslims based on behavior, ethnicity, and religion.

THE Government is discussing with airport operators plans to introduce a screening system that allows security staff to focus on those passengers who pose the greatest risk.

The passenger-profiling technique involves selecting people who are behaving suspiciously, have an unusual travel pattern or, most controversially, have a certain ethnic or religious background.

Fox News reporter Steve Centanni and a cameraman from New Zealand were ambushed and kidnapped in Gaza today.

Masked Palestinian gunmen ambushed a car carrying a Fox News crew in Gaza City on Monday and kidnapped two journalists, according to witnesses and Fox. "We can confirm that two of our people were taken against their will in Gaza," Fox News said in a statement.....

The men and their bodyguard were parked near the headquarters of the Palestinian security services when two trucks filled with masked gunmen pulled up and boxed them in, the Fox employee said. The gunmen took the two reporters from the sports utility vehicle, which was marked "TV," and drove away, he said.

The pattern has been to release those kidnapped unharmed.

On the kids from Texas busted in Michigan Friday and being held by local Michigan prosecutors for terror offenses because they bought too many cell phonesat a Wal-Mart:

The FBI said Monday it had no information to indicate that the three Texas men arrested with about 1,000 cell phones in their van had any direct connection to known terrorist groups. Also, a prosecutor in a separate Ohio case said he can't prove a terrorism link to two men arrested after buying large numbers of cell phones and will drop terrorism charges against them.

Another case of racial profiling gone wild.

Update: Sen. Allen's campaign manager Dick Wadhams may have sunk the Senator. Macaca isn't a name for Siddarth's haircut since he doesn't have a mohawk, see original post below -- it's a name for a monkey with a mohawk. The Macaca monkey of Indonesia has a mohawk.

Sulawesi Macaques are covered with black hair that mixes with white on their shoulders and arms. Their most distinguishing feature is a short ruff of coarse hair on the top of the head that sticks straight up.

*******
Original Post:

What was Senator George Allen thinking today when at a campaign stop, he taunted a young university student of Indian descent who was filming Allen for rival James Webb's campaign, calling him "Macaca?

Received this by e-mail from the Decider's Last 1,000 Days and thought I'd pass it on:

• December 7, 1941 through May 8, 1945 (VE-Day) = 1,248 days

• March 19, 2003 (U.S. invasion of Iraq) through Friday, August 18, 2006 = 1,248 days

A new CBS poll shows President Bush's approval ratings haven't changed since the London terror threats became public:

The arrests in Britain have not helped President Bush's popularity so far, the CBS poll finds. His job approval remains exactly at 36 percent, where it was a month ago. Even the president's rating for handling terrorism - his strongest suit - remains unchanged at 51 percent.