by TChris

Khaled el-Masri was a victim of the CIA's rendition program. TalkLeft described him as "a Lebanese-born German who was pulled from a bus on the Serbia-Macedonia border in December 2003 and flown to Afghanistan, where he said he was beaten and drugged. He was released five months later without being charged with a crime." It turned out to be a case of mistaken identity.

The U.S. eventually admitted its mistake to Germany. But Germany may not have clean hands in Masri's kidnapping and detention.

[O]n Monday in Neu-Ulm near Munich, the police and prosecutors opened an investigation into whether Germany served as a silent partner of the United States in the abduction of ... Khaled el-Masri ....

by TChris

Recoiling from the open government philosophy of the Clinton administration, intelligence agencies have reclassified more than 55,000 documents since 1999 that had previously been declassified and, in some cases, published by the State Department.

But because the reclassification program is itself shrouded in secrecy -- governed by a still-classified memorandum that prohibits the National Archives even from saying which agencies are involved -- it continued virtually without outside notice until December.

Historians worry that the reclassification program will prevent them from accessing materials once available at presidential libraries and the National Archives. Some reclassification decisions may be based on the historian's nemesis: "an old bureaucratic reflex: to cover up embarrassments, even if they occurred a half-century ago." Some historians see "a marked trend toward greater secrecy under the Bush administration, which has increased the pace of classifying documents, slowed declassification and discouraged the release of some material under the Freedom of Information Act."

by TChris

Speaking out:

Hyim Jacob Ross chained himself to a park bench in Oakland on Monday in what he said was the start of a five-day fast to protest the prevalence of inequality and injustice in America when the country is spending so much on a war.

Ross, a musician, teaches music at Coronado Elementary School in Richmond and ethics, spirituality and inter-personal communication at two synagogues in the East Bay.

"The war in Iraq is putting our nation into incredible debt and draining enormous financial, social, economic, industrial and political resources," said Ross, who is in early 30s and was born in San Francisco and raised in Oakland.

Ross isn't part of an organized protest. He's trying to make a difference, and he has a use-them-or-lose-them attitude about his First Amendment rights.

by TChris

The LA Times calls attention to another of the Bush administration's unkept promises.

Initially proposed by the bipartisan commission that investigated the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board was created by the intelligence overhaul that President Bush signed into law in December 2004.

More than a year later, it exists only on paper.

Foot-dragging, debate over its budget and powers, and concern over the qualifications of some of its members -- one was treasurer of Bush's first campaign for Texas governor -- has kept the board from doing a single day of work.

What's taking so long?

by TChris

Fill your tank today. You can bet that gas prices will be higher tomorrow.

Oil prices rose 2.6 percent today after a series of violent attacks by militants in the Niger Delta that shut down nearly a fifth of Nigeria's oil production.

UPDATE: The president assures us that he's on top of the whole energy thing. Don't even worry about it. You'll be driving a battery powered car before you know it. Heck, don't even pay attention to how much ExxonMobil siphons out of your wallet this winter, because we're "on the threshold of new energy technology that I think will startle the American people." Any day now, Bush tells us, we'll see "some amazing breakthroughs" with, you know, energy stuff, like solar panels that'll give you more energy than you need. And this will all happen, um, really soon.

Today's version of the Bush administration's energy policy: just wait for something good to happen.

by TChris

The ACLU of Virginia wants George Mason University to make amends for its disgraceful interference with Tariq Khan's right to free expression.

Khan, a Pakistani-American and a U.S. Air Force veteran, was arrested on September 29, 2005 at a GMU student center after positioning himself several feet from a military recruiting table. He wore a small sign reading "Recruiters Tell Lies" taped to his chest and held leaflets to give to individuals who requested them.

Despite harassment from fellow students, Khan remained quiet. When told by a GMU official that he needed a permit to "table" in the area, Khan responded that he was not using a table, but merely standing quietly and expressing his opinion.

After refusing to move, Khan was handcuffed by campus police, dragged to a police vehicle, and transported to a Fairfax County police facility where he was booked for trespass and disorderly conduct.

Not surprisingly, the charges were dropped. Khan, after all, was engaging in constitutionally protected activity.

by TChris

Pennsylvania state senator Stewart Greenleaf recognizes that a "tough on crime" legislature should also be a "let's get it right" legislature. "If if we're going to have tough sentences," he says, "then we also have to make sure we're not going to convict innocent people." Good idea.

A partial step toward that goal is his proposed Innocence Commission Act. A Commission of "prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges, corrections officials, police, victim advocates and others" would review cases in which DNA exonerated the wrongly convicted and "suggest changes to state laws, court procedures or police practices that might cut the error rate." Some suggestions, right off the bat:

The state could require police interrogations to be taped, improve independent oversight of crime labs or further streamline access to post-conviction DNA testing. State courts could let experts testify about how eyewitnesses can be wrong.

by TChris

Paul Butler explains why he worked as a federal prosecutor.

"I was hired to be a black prosecutor, and I was a damned good one," the George Washington University professor said Thursday in the Law School's Martin Luther King Jr. Lecture.

He also explains why he quit.

"I didn't go to law school to put black people in prison," Butler said.

What changed? Butler started listening to hip-hop. More prosecutors -- and anyone else who wants to understand how the criminal justice system is frequently perceived -- should give it a try.

by TChris

Requiring registration as a sex offender is an extreme measure that subjects the registered individual to shame and mistreatment while limiting employment, housing and rehabilitative opportunities. If sex offender registration makes sense at all -- and there's little empirical evidence that it protects society -- it should be reserved for the worst offenders who are most likely to reoffend.

In places like Michigan, where the legislative desire to appear "tough on crime" overcame rationality, some kids are forced to register because they had consensual sex with a friend.

What a great city. I haven't seen a newspaper or tv, or read my e-mail since last Wednesday. Here are some quick Amsterdam takes:

The coffeehouses. There are a lot of them. I went inside this one just to snap a picture of the merchandise.

Drugs are not legal in Amsterdam. There is a policy of tolerating marijuana and hashish use, which allows the businesses to be licensed and taxed. What's interesting is that there is almost no visible police presence in the city, despite having a red light district and so many coffeehouses. I haven't seen a policeman yet and very few police cars. Obviously, permitting the use of pot has not resulted in the city becoming a haven for criminals or terrorists.

larger version

by TChris

Another Republican senator has publicly disagreed with the president's insistence that he's entitled to unreviewable power to spy on Americans. Lindsey Graham:

"I am adamant that the courts have some role when it comes to warrants. If you're going to follow an American citizen around for an extended period of time believing they're collaborating with the enemy, at some point in time, you need to get some judicial review, because mistakes can be made."

While the president maintains he has the authority to bypass courts when he orders the government to engage in domestic surveillance, he's no longer so adamant that the law doesn't need to be changed. His new, improved, flip-flopped position: Congress should retroactively approve everything he's done. Gosh, Mr. President, if you already had the legal authority to engage in domestic surveillance, why do you need retroactive congressional approval?

At least the president is consistent about one thing: he doesn't want Congress to investigate his abusive circumvention of FISA.

by TChris

A number of military lawyers have objected to the Bush administration's aggressive use of coercive techniques to interrogate detainees. The administration, of course, refused to listen. It continued a policy of cruel mistreatment while assuring the public that detainees were all treated humanely.

Writing in the New Yorker, Jane Mayer tells the story of Alberto Mora's effort to persuade the Pentagon to obey the law. As general counsel of the Navy, Mora challenged the administration's "disastrous and unlawful policy of authorizing cruelty toward terror suspects." Crucial to the story is a 22 page memo (pdf) marked "secret."

It reveals that Mora's criticisms of Administration policy were unequivocal, wide-ranging, and persistent. Well before the exposure of prisoner abuse in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, in April, 2004, Mora warned his superiors at the Pentagon about the consequences of President Bush's decision, in February, 2002, to circumvent the Geneva conventions, which prohibit both torture and "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment." He argued that a refusal to outlaw cruelty toward U.S.-held terrorist suspects was an implicit invitation to abuse. Mora also challenged the legal framework that the Bush Administration has constructed to justify an expansion of executive power, in matters ranging from interrogations to wiretapping. He described as "unlawful," "dangerous," and "erroneous" novel legal theories granting the President the right to authorize abuse.