In an online chat Monday with the Washington Post, Jay Stanley of the ACLU explains why CAPPS II, the Government plan to track airline passengers, is unwise and unfair:
We oppose the so-called CAPPS II program for several reasons. It will be a tremendous invasion of our privacy. It will put the government in the unprecedented position of rating every American who flies on whether they are "trusted" or not. And it will not make us safer.
....Experience has shown that trying to catch wrongdoers by investigating everyone is a poor way to stop them. The US should focus on improving its intelligence on the ground, and improving physical security. Most of the additional security that we've gained since 9/11 is probably due to improved security at the gate, to locking cockpit doors, to air marshals, and to the fact that in the next hijacking, no one on the plane is going to sit back and wait to land in Cuba. The marginal improvement in security brought by this vast, unwieldy, intrusive system will not be worth it.
Here's a name to remember: Acxiom
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Say hello to the new group political blog The American Street, brainchild of Kevin Hayden of Reach M High Cowboy. Guest bloggers include David Neiwert of Orcinus, skippy the bush kangaroo, Dave Johnson of Seeing the Forest, Luis Toro of Colorado Luis, Mary Ratcliff of Pacific Views, the left coaster and others. We'll be an occasional contributor, our first post is here--in which we agree with those who say the burden of proof in a death penalty case should be raised to beyond all doubt.
Also say hello to left i on the news and angry bear.
The ACLU is is siding with Rush Limbaugh:
The American Civil Liberties Union took sides with Rush Limbaugh on Monday by complaining that Florida investigators violated the conservative radio host's rights when they seized his medical records. The odd coupling of the civil liberties group and the broadcaster beloved for bashing came in a criminal probe of Limbaugh's admitted use of prescription painkillers, in which authorities in Palm Beach County used a search warrant to seize files from his doctors.
In a friend-of-the-court petition to Florida's Fourth District Court of Appeal, the ACLU said investigators violated Limbaugh's constitutional right to privacy when they took the records in a raid rather than notifying Limbaugh and using a subpoena, which would have given Limbaugh the right to object before the seizure.
The ACLU and Rush are right on this one. Here is the ACLU's press release.
The Supreme Court has refused to consider a case involving the Bush Administration's secrecy of more than 700 cases in which Arabs or Muslims were picked up after 9/11--none of whom were charged with a terrorist crime.
Most were eventually deported for immigration violations. The government refused to disclose whom it held and why. The court's action, taken without comment, was a victory for the Bush administration. Civil liberties and media organizations had sought access to the names and other basic information about the detainees.
The case is Center for National Security Studies v. Justice Department, 03-472.
Blogger Jim Gilliam asks whether former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill should receive whistleblower protection with respect to the announced investigation into O'Neil's tendering of 19,000 pages of documents to author Ron Suskind.
We are off to Vail, before continuing on to Eagle for court on Monday afternoon. We'll be back here Monday night. In the meantime, if you've got something to say, be our guest. Small favor, watch the language and try to be civil. You catch more bees with honey than vinegar.
Iowa looks like it's still an open contest:
Iowa's largest newspaper endorsed North Carolina Sen. John Edwards for the Democratic presidential nomination while three other Iowa newspapers went for Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry in weekend editions
Posted on Sun Jan 11, 2004 at 05:30:15 AM EST
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More and more top level execs are choosing trials over plea bargains. Why? Sometimes they have no one to rat out above them. Sometimes the sentence concessions aren't enough. Many of them don't believe they did anything wrong.
In 2002, 86% of defendants charged in federal court pleaded guilty. That may be changing in 2004. Between steeper guidelines for financial crimes, Ashcroft's memos directing prosecutors to charge the most serious offense possible and available deep pockets to finance a top-notch defense, it makes sense to say to the Government, "Prove it."
First up: Martha Stewart; Frank Quattrone (retrial following mistrial); Rigas Family(Adelphia); and Scott Sullivan (WorldCom). Still on the fence: The Fastows (Enron).
Kevin Phillips' new book, "American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush," has just been published by Viking Penguin. Read his op-ed today in the Los Angeles Times, The Barreling Bushes.
The premise:
Four generations of the dynasty have chased profits through cozy ties with Mideast leaders, spinning webs of conflicts of interest
The introduction:
As early as 1964, George H.W. Bush, running for the U.S. Senate from Texas, was labeled by incumbent Democrat Ralph Yarborough as a hireling of the sheik of Kuwait, for whom Bush's company drilled offshore oil wells. Over the four decades since then, the ever-reaching Bushes have emerged as the first U.S. political clan to thoroughly entangle themselves with Middle Eastern royal families and oil money. The family even has links to the Bin Ladens — though not to family black sheep Osama bin Laden — going back to the 1970s.
How these unusual relationships helped bring about 9/11 and then distorted the U.S. response to Islamic terrorism requires thinking of the Bush family as a dynasty. The two Bush presidencies are inextricably linked by that dynasty.
Read the rest of the op-ed, then order the book:
American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush
Dave Neiwart of Orcinus has an excellent analysis of reaction on the right to Bush's immigration reform plan :
The uproar over George W. Bush's proposal for immigration reform has revealed a significant rift within the American right -- namely, between its corporatist element, whose primary interest lies in exploiting the low wages that immigrants provide, and its ideological element, which sees immigrants as part of a brown tide on the verge of permanently swamping the majority white culture.
The Bush plan comes down squarely on the side of the corporatists -- unsurprisingly, since those interests throughout his administration have held sway in nearly every aspect of governance. That in turn has spurred the intense anger of the ideological right, who are hotly denouncing Bush's "betrayal of America."
Update: Janice Fine, a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute, tells us the three serious flaws of Bush's plan:
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As world criticism mounts against the U.S. policy of holding detainees at Guantanamo for 2 years without charges or trials, a disturbing fact emerges:
While Washington has promised tribunals, it also continues to expand the prison. Eventually it will have 1,100 cells, raising further questions of what the future holds for the mission.
There are still 660 prisoners at Guantanamo, including 3 teenage boys. While 88 have been released, new arrivals have taken their places.
Johan Steyn, one of a panel of judges who sit in Britain's House of Lords, recently said holding the tribunals in Cuba would be a "monstrous failure of justice."
....Some U.S. lawmakers also have raised concerns about prolonged delays in the detainees' cases. Others say holding tribunals outside the jurisdiction of U.S. courts would make trials unfair.
Many critics say the United States has abandoned its judicial principles in its zeal to prevent another terrorist attack on its soil. "You have people sitting there for two years with rights under international law being utterly ignored by the administration," said Jamie Fellner, U.S. director of Human Rights Watch.
There have been 34 suicide attempts by the prisoners--including one this week.
Guantanamo turns 2 years old today. How depressing.
In New Jersey, one of the few states that has refused to supply clean needles to heroin addicts, the majority of new AIDS cases result not from sex but from sharing needles.
To Joseph F. Vitale, a Democrat from Woodbridge who sponsored the unsuccessful bill in the Senate, New Jersey is dancing on the edge of public health disaster. "You have thousands of people who use needles regularly, and they share them with their friends," Mr. Vitale said. "In the end, what happens is the spread of AIDS has reached critical levels."
The Health Department estimates that nearly half of the state's intravenous drug abusers are already infected with H.I.V. and even more with the potentially deadly hepatitis C.
New Jersey has the 5th highest AIDS rate in the country. It is the only state where the drug use is the predominant cause of the disease. As long the state's citizens continue to elects legislators with beliefs like this one about needle laws, it's likely not going to change:
Some think it is wrong for the Legislature to take action that condones illegal drug use and are uncomfortable with the message that such a messure would send. "I don't believe the government should encourage illegal behavior and I believe that is what this law would do," said Assemblyman Michael J. Doherty, a Republican from Warren County.
[Title of post from Neil Young's song, The Needle and the Damage Done]
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