Quarantining dissent: How the Secret Service protects Bush from free speech. This is truly outrageous. As one of TalkLeft's smart readers (whom we know personally) points out:

It is patently unconstitutional to treat persons who support the Administration differently from persons who oppose it. (And any security rationale is absurd: under this approach Osama bin Laden could be on the President's motorcade route if he he was smart enough to hold a sign that says he supported Bush, while the Pope would be barred if he held up a sign opposing the war). And, as is typical with this Administration, they just don't seem to care. It's also scary to think that the President is being kept isolated from any sense that there is opposition to him. But then again, he doesn't read the news papers either.

The author of the op-ed is James Bovard. We recommend reading his new book:
Terrorism and Tyranny

Instead of fighting the terrorist menace, the Bush administration's cosmetic gestures reward incompetence and establish dangerous legal precedents.it all comes down to a trampling of personal liberty and an end to privacy as we know it. From airport security follies that protect no one to increased surveillance of individuals and skyrocketing numbers of detainees, the war on terrorism is taking a toll on individual liberty and no one tells the whole grisly story better than Bovard.

Eric Muller, UNC Law Prof and author of the lawblog IsThatLegal? is still following the Rep. Howard Coble story.

Nearly a year ago, Congressman Howard Coble (R-NC) triggered a controversy when he volunteered on a radio call-in program that FDR's incarceration of Japanese Americans in 1942 was the right thing to do at the time. Coble resurrected the old canard that Japanese Americans were jailed for their own protection: "Some of them probably weren't safe on the streets," he said.

Coble is now running for re-election, no one seems to care much about his comments, and Eric says Coble is unrepentent. We care. You should too. Go read Eric.

We received this by email today from "Vote by Issue - Democratic Primary 2004," a collaboration between WBUR.org and the PBS's Online NewsHour.

We see Vote by Issue as a kind of Internet Debate, and it represents
the best effort the candidates have made so far at serious discussion
of issues online. The quiz allows you to discover how much you know about the
candidates running in the upcoming 2004 Democratic Primary and learn
about the issues.

Each campaign was asked 14 questions on issues in the campaign
ranging from the Environment, to Iraq, to Civil Liberties. All of the Democratic candidates participated. The result is a tool to evaluate the campaigns without knowing the personalities of the candidates.

We think this is a useful tool, so we're spreading the word.

Rather than face court martials, three U.S. soldiers have been discharged from the military following a non-judicial hearing on charges they abused Iraqi prisoners. All were from Pennsylvania and are back there now.

The three soldiers, all from Pennsylvania, were scheduled to face courts-martial this month but opted instead to submit to a nonjudicial hearing, in which their conduct was judged by a commander without a jury, Lt. Col. Vic Harris said. Such hearings are common practice, he said. Brig. Gen. Ennis Whitehead III, the acting commander of the 143rd Transportation Command, found the three soldiers had maltreated prisoners at Camp Bucca, southern Iraq, on May 12. He demoted two of the soldiers and ordered that all three forfeit their salaries for two months.

Shades of 1970 and Vietnam....we say free them.

An Israeli military court sentenced five young men to a year in prison yesterday for refusing to serve in the army as long as the Jewish state occupies the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The five are part of a growing movement that the military has had to contend with since the Palestinian uprising began more than three years ago. Hundreds of soldiers, alleging human rights abuses against Palestinians, have refused to serve in the West Bank and Gaza including, just last month, 13 members of the crack Sayeret Matkal, the most storied unit in the Israeli military.

Five teenaged conscientious objectors (L to R), Matan Kaminer, Adam Maor, Haggai Matar, Noam Bahat, Shomri Zameret, stand in front of a military court in Jaffa, near Tel Aviv January 4, 2004, after being sentenced to one year in prison for refusing to serve in the Israeli army. The five were convicted last month for refusing an order to carry out obligatory service. REUTERS/Yossi Aloni

But the five are different from other dissenters in several ways. For one thing, they refuse to be drafted altogether, not just to serve in the occupied territories. In a country in which the military is more venerated than any other public institution, not serving can be one of the most alienating things an Israeli can do. And the five will pay a much heavier price than other dissenters, who typically have been ordered to spend about a month in detention.

The yearlong sentence the five received is in addition to the 14 months they have been locked up while awaiting trial.

The Arizona Star sides with Chief Justice Rehnquist in urging Congress to repeal the repeal the PROTECT Act:

Clearly, there is a disconnect between conservative members of Congress and some conservatives in the federal judiciary. Congress believes that when it comes to doling out sentences, one size fits all. Experienced jurists know otherwise. There is no evidence that judges who imposed lighter sentences abused their authority.

The emphasis in sentencing should be on justice, not on the retribution favored by mandatory sentencing adherents. A judge who has intimate knowledge of the case before him should be allowed the independence to impose what he considers the appropriate sentence. Federal court judges should be given more discretion in sentencing.

The Commercial Appeal of Memphis agrees:

The law, by attempting to enforce rigid adherence to sentencing guidelines, effectively puts more sentencing power in the hands of prosecutors, and it also strains the quality of official mercy.

Bill Von Poyck is on death row. He's waiting to hear if his last appeal will be granted. He's 48, and has been on death row for 16 years. He's written a memoir, Checkered Past, in which he writes of his squandered life.

Bill Van Poyck, a muscular, good-looking man with a mind that Florida criminal defense attorneys call ''brilliant,'' was raised in the well-to-do South Miami neighborhood of Pinecrest. In 1988, Van Poyck, now 48, was convicted of felony murder and sentenced to death -- not for killing anyone but for shooting at police from a speeding getaway car, after his friend, Frank Valdes, shot and killed Fred Griffis, a state prison guard in West Palm Beach. Now, Valdes is dead, killed by Florida prison guards, and Van Poyck is near the end of the line -- hoping the U.S. Supreme Court will hear his appeal.

At the end of the day, what does Van Poyck have to say about his life?

``I've squandered away my entire life. . . . I could have spent my life doing good and helping others. And yet I chose this. . . . How did I lose the good I once had? Slowly day by day. What do I have to show for my life at the end of the day? Nothing.''

Van Poyck gives all proceeds from the book -- about 150 copies have sold for $14.50 each -- to the prison ministry of Bernie DeCastro, who lives in Ocala and runs a 60-bed halfway house for convicts just out of prison. ''If you don't reach these guys and support them right away, they're likely to go back,'' DeCastro said.

Smile for the camera. Over here. Prints Please. Those are the instructions that will be greeting foreigners to the U.S. Monday. And every day after. And that will cause more and more flight delays for the rest of us. It's all part of United States Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology (US_VISIT).

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security says the goal of the US VISIT program is to track the millions of people who come to the United States every year on business, student and tourist visas -- and to use the information as a tool against terrorists.

....Critics say the broad-reaching program will cause unnecessary travel delays and may never prove to be effective. "There's so much information in such volumes that there's a limit to what any analyst can absorb," said Larry Johnson, an aviation security consultant.

Faiz Rehman, president of the National Council of Pakistani-Americans, points to the disruption in travel. "Without proper training, there will be long lines, there will be missed flights, there will be people who would be wrongly stopped," Rehman said.

The backlash has already begun. Authorites in Brazil have declared that all American visitors to Brazil will meet the same conditions.

Will the program work?

Tim Edgar, a critic of the program and legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said it will not take the place of improved intelligence gathering. "The problem with 9/11 is that we didn't know who the terrorists were," Edgar said. "We could have put them through this system and they would have gotten through without any problem."

What's it costing? Just $368 million.

For an interesting view, take a look at this article, At What Price Security from Liberal Slant.

A major thanks to TChris who posted some great stuff on TalkLeft yesterday while we gave our wrist a rest. If you haven't read his stuff, please scroll down and do so now. He's smart, articulate, writes really well and shares our views on just about every issue. Leave some comments, so he'll want to come back and post some more!

Avedon Carol of Sideshow , one of our favorite blogs, had her laptop swiped. She has a paypal button on her main page, it you can help her out, please do.

By TChris

The Vegas traveler should no longer rely on the axiom, "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas." When the FBI comes calling, Vegas hotels willingly disclose guest information. Seeking to compare hotel registration records to "a U.S. master list of suspected terrorists" in response to concerns associated with the elevated threat level during the holidays, the FBI encountered only one hotel that put up even token resistence. That hotel requested the issuance of a subpoena (known as a "friendly" subpoena), presumably to provide cover for hotel management if guests expecting anonymity were to complain.

As the ACLU points out, the free availability of private information to law enforcement agencies is troubling.

A representative of the American Civil Liberties Union said the demand for guest records, without any individual suspicion, infringed on the privacy of as many as 300,000 people "whose leisure activities are no one's business but their own."

The action also showed the FBI's expanded, post-Sept. 11 power to obtain personal records without judicial review or suspicion about an individual "may well be used to monitor ordinary Americans," said Timothy Edgar, the ACLU's legislative counsel.

The need for this sort of information might be legitimate, given a legitimate threat, but the ever-increasing power of law enforcement to obtain records that people generally regard as private, without judicial authorization, is unhealthy. Until that trend changes, remember ... nothing stays in Vegas any more.

By TChris

An AP story suggests that Michael Jackson may benefit from a case pending in a California appellate court. The trial judge in that case found that a county's failure to follow up when individuals receive but disobey a summons to report for jury service resulted in a jury that failed to reflect the racial diveristy of the county.

The lack of follow-up results in "a volunteer jury," said Los Angeles criminal defense attorney Steve Cron, who is familiar with the procedure. He said many Hispanics in the agricultural areas around Santa Maria are farm laborers who might not return the jury summons because they can't afford to take time off work for jury service.

The problem of courts failing to assure that jury pools reflect the demographics of the community is a familiar one to those involved in the criminal justice system. People who have fewer resources (such as day care or a permanent address) are less able to respond to a summons, skewing the jury to populations that do not reflect the community as a whole.

Whether the decision would benefit Jackson, even if ultimately favorable to the defense, is unclear.