by TChris

If Iraq is our next Vietnam, will Pakistan be our next Iraq?

The US envoy to Afghanistan has angered Pakistan by warning the country that it must eliminate "terrorist sanctuaries" near their common border or US forces will have to step in. In a speech Monday at a private Washington think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Zalmay Khalilzad said that if Islamabad doesn't solve the problem then "we [the US] will have to do it ourselves."

In other words, according to Khalilzad, if Pakistan doesn't root out terrorists on its soil, the "U.S.-led anti-terrorism coalition might send its troops to destroy them." Not a shining example of diplomacy.

Pakistani officials, already hampered by anti-American sentiment, are angered by what appears to be a threat to unleash the U.S. military on Pakistan. Information Minister Sheikh Ahmed Rashid said "We do not need anybody in our territories ... These kind of irresponsible statements can create political problems for us." Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Masood Khan says that Khalilzad "is clearly out of his depth" and "should desist from making such statements that can only cause misunderstandings."

Update: The State Department stepped on Khalilzad by assuring Pakistan that the U.S. will not invade Pakistan's borders with U.S. troops. At least, not until after the election.

Worse Than Watergate by John Dean.

Dean tells Bill Moyers why Bush should be impeached.

Don't miss Tom Englehardt's Into the Shadows in today's Mother Jones. Connecting the dots, he takes on:

Guantanamo, the prison camps of Iraq, the holding areas of Bagram Air Base and Diego Garcia, the grim torture cells of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Thailand and other compliant lands...

and concludes,

...to make these the destination of choice for American justice is already to acknowledge Osama Bin Laden's triumph. Such a world mocks what should mean most to us. It indicates what, in a crunch, we value most. It threatens to become the starting point for a new (classified) constitution, a new no-calls legal system.

NORML has just launched "Smoke the Vote." Here's five things you can do to help:

• Register to Vote
• Tell Your Friends
• Volunteer for Change
• Stay Informed
• Donate to the Working Assets Voter Registration Fund

Grass roots activism is alive. Support it. Live it. It's your world to change.

In a stinging defeat for Colorado's Republican Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave, the Colorado House will refuse to support her proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Colorado already has a law banning gay marriage, but the House wisely believes the Constitution should be left alone. According to Rep. Mark Lawson of Durango:

There are enough votes in the House, where Musgrave served for four years, to kill the resolution supporting the amendment....I'd like nothing more than to send a message to Congresswoman Musgrave that her own state doesn't support her effort," Larson said, pointing out that the state law already contains a ban on gay marriage.

The best line from Rep. Larson:

"The Constitution gives freedoms, it doesn't take them away."

And check out this letter to the Editor in the Rocky, via the RMPN:

Musgrave represents the small, vocal, right-wing, fundamentalist branch of Christianity. She hardly represents mainstream Christianity and doesn't represent anyone who knows that our Constitution is the basis for our rights in America and not the Bible. (Unfortunately, George W. Bush can't comprehend the principle of separation of church and state, either.)

Her personal bigotry, and that of her co-sponsors can be the only reason for her proposed amendment, as she has never given a coherent, logical explanation for it. Hopefully, the citizens of her district will replace her with a representative who will address the real issues facing Colorado and America such as jobs, the economy, health care, education, and getting us out of the mess in Iraq.

by TChris

Did you leave your lawyer's business card on your car's dashboard next to a plastic Jesus? Don't exceed the speed limit, or the officer who pulls you over to write a ticket may want to search your car to determine whether you're a terrorist or drug dealer.

In a friend-of-the-court brief filed with the United States Supreme Court, the Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police argued that police should be allowed to use dogs to sniff any vehicle stopped for a traffic violation. Prohibiting the sniffing, they say, "threatens to undermine the government's war on terror, which relies on canines to sniff vehicles and luggage for narcotics and explosives at large gatherings or at transportation centers such as our nations' airports."

But why do the police have any reason to think that a guy who is stopped for driving 37 in a 35 mile-per-hour zone is a terrorist or drug dealer?

[M]any police agencies have developed anti-drug programs in which officers are trained to read the faces of drivers they pull over and to inspect their cars for such telltale signs of possible drug dealing as zippered plastic bags and lawyers' business cards, the police chiefs' brief explained. Police are trained to view even religious paraphernalia with a jaundiced eye because it is "sometimes used to divert suspicion," the brief noted.

The Supreme Court has already ruled that sniffing luggage in an airport doesn't constitute a search, but the question here isn't whether a search occurred, but whether a detention for a traffic violation was impermissibly lengthened so that officers could bring a dog to the scene after the driver refused to consent to a search of the car. Why did the officer want to search? Because the driver said he was driving from Las Vegas to Chicago, but was wearing a business suit.

If clothing, business cards, facial expressions, and religious paraphernalia can justify lengthening the time it takes to write a ticket so that a dog can sniff a car, there's no stopping point to the creative reasons officers will find to intrude on the privacy of drivers. Claiming that drug dogs are fighting the war against terrorism is a cheap attempt to win support for a policy that increases police power beyond the limits of the Fourth Amendment.

by TChris

The view that an offender who paid his debt to society should be given the chance to return to a productive life has been supplanted by what seems to be society’s unquenchable thirst for vengeance. Years of “tough on crime” policies have replaced forgiveness and rehabilitation with unending punishment. To many, there is no such thing as a "reformed" criminal or an "ex" offender. One mistake now defines a man for the rest of his life.

A new study, soon to be released on the web, demonstrates the need for change.

The new study, from the Legal Action Center, a criminal justice policy group, identifies laws in all 50 states that hamper former offenders' ability to re-enter society. These excessively punitive laws, which must be modified or repealed before ex-convicts have a real chance at jobs, homes and mainstream lives, bar them from scores of professions that require state licenses but are unrelated to their crimes.

A new Pew Research poll finds Bush losing support in Iraq:

Four in 10, or 40 percent, approve of the way Bush is handling Iraq, while 53 percent disapprove. That's down from six in 10 who approved in mid-January, according to the poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press . Bush's overall job approval is at 43 percent, a low point for his presidency, down from 56 percent in mid-January. In the new poll, 47 percent disapproved of Bush's job performance. Bush's job approval soared to 90 percent after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and remained in the 70s for almost a year after that.

Oregon was supposed to be a pushover for Nader. But he failed to garner enough signatures to make it on the ballot. Are his days numbered? Will he withdraw after meeting with Kerry? Right now he says he's going to try again to get on in Oregon.

The ACLU is ready to sue the Government over its no-fly list. The class action lawsuit will involve 7 plaintiffs, among them, a minister, a college student, a member of the military. A press conference is scheduled for Tuesday.

We missed this a few months ago from Mother Jones, The Lie Factory, by Robert Dreyfuss and Jason Vest:

Only weeks after 9/11, the Bush administration set up a secret Pentagon unit to create the case for invading Iraq. Here is the inside story of how they pushed disinformation and bogus intelligence and led the nation to war.

It seems even Congress is reading their report now. Here's a little more, but go read the whole thing.

Congrats to Public Defender Dude, whose blog posts have been chosen for a new book, "The Best of the Blogs" Please Don't Eat Your Co-Worker:

Hey everyone, I can't believe someone likes my stuff this much, but they've made a book about the "Best of the Blogs" entitled "Never Threaten to Eat Your Co-Workers" (click here to see it on Amazon). This book is really cool, it includes a bunch of the best of different bloggers, and they say they've picked out the best bloggers out of something like 30,000 different pages. Now, I can't imagine that I'm in the top 10 out of 30,000, 30 perhaps, but 30,000? Nonetheless, this is what they say, and they've even published a book to prove it. Please go to their website and check it out, and if interested, go to Amazon and buy a copy. If you want, we can arrange it that I sign it for you, if you're interested. Let me know what you think. The editor, Alan Graham, is guest hosting the blog boingboing.net, so if you're interested, you can read there about it as well. The whole purpose of this book is to act as a "giant slayer" against the big media. Let's do our part. I hope you buy and like the book.