The San Francisco Chronicle has some warnings about the newly renamed Terrorism Information Awareness project:

THE PENTAGON'S plan to mine countless governmental and commercial databases is no less worrisome than it was earlier, after a soothing report to Congress and a name change for better public relations. The Defense Department's "Total Information Awareness" program has been rechristened "Terrorism Information Awareness," to offset the impression that the brainchild of former Adm. John Poindexter would compile electronic dossiers on all Americans. The Department of Defense describes it, rather, as an effort "to protect U.S. citizens by detecting and defeating foreign terrorist threats before an attack." "

....The Pentagon's high-tech research now would collect untold trillions of additional "dots" from all kinds of records and transactions, plus far-out data like the shapes of faces and the way people walk (gait analysis), to provide more anti-terrorist tools.

....Civil libertarians are concerned, with good reason, about whether this can be done without intruding on the privacy and other rights of all of us whose everyday lives will be under surveillance. That is why Congress blocked further spending on the system pending a further report from the Pentagon (submitted May 20) on safeguards for innocent citizens. The Department of Defense has an "oversight board" to assess "privacy and civil liberties impacts," and assures us of its "commitment to the rule of law."

All well and good. But Congress should continue to keep Poindexter and his electronic spy team on a short leash as they use our dental records and pedestrian patterns in their search for terrorists.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, dedicated to preserving our privacy rights in the digital world, has this analysis of the DARPA report on the Total Information Awareness Project. The actual report is available here.

Are any prison reformers out there? If so, we just received this email asking for information on how to address the following problem:

Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus Skin or Soft Tissue Infections in Lewis Facility in Arizona DOC is a highly contageous bacteria infection that is running rampant through Lewis Facility and being denied by the health care staff as being "spider bites". One inmate has had this stapf infection for over a year.

It is to epidemic propotions and they either deny it exists or try to treat it inadequately with non effective antibiotics to avoid the treatment needed - 4 days of IV antibiotic drip with the costly appropriate antibiotic, the cultures and blood tests required. In Sept, 2002, 928 inmates had MRSA in the LA County Jail system which were originally diagnosed as spider bites and subsequently found to be MRSA by the CDC.

Lewis Facility denies epidemic and has isolated or quarantined ZERO prisoners even from outside visitation. Please advise me of who to inform of this contagion that can break through this wall of prison health indifference to the needs of the inmates and surrounding community. Thank you.

CalPundit is depressed.

No more blogging today. No more news, no more TV, no more Republicans telling me that the only way for my country to prosper is to give ever more to the rich and ever less to the poor, to starve any government program that dares to help education, healthcare, the needy, or the elderly, and to base our role in the world solely on a mirage of military dominance so breathtakingly misguided that it would make Julius Caesar himself choke on his porridge. What is it that drives otherwise sane people to believe that these are the things that will make America great in the 21st century? Maybe I'll be back tomorrow. Maybe not. In either case, have a nice Memorial Day.

John Cole and Matt Yglesias respond. We provide this response under our hat of criminal defense lawyer:

Newt Gingrich and his "Contract on America" were only one step behind George Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft. The right wing now dominates this country. Liberal/progressive thought takes the back seat.

As criminal defense lawyers, we toil every day in the trenches known as courtrooms. We can't give up. We remember to stand erect (male lawyers would say "we puff up our chests,") and we repeat to ourselves, "I am proud to be a criminal defense lawyer," and we go in there and fight the good fight. We lose more than we win, but we know the scales of justice function like a pendulum, and someday, the scales again will tilt in our favor. Until then, staying silent is not an option.

Every person we fight for, no matter how heinous their alleged crime, is a human being. A human being with the right to dignity and with a past and a present, a person who can claim at least one person who loves him or her unconditionally, even if it's only their mother. We stay in the trenches and we fight for that client's ounce of dignity and spark of humanity.

The message here: Get out of bed. We don't have the luxury of being depressed. There is too much work to do. We have battles to fight and wars to win. We need you, Kevin, and those feeling the same way, to recognize there is power in numbers, and if you all go to sleep instead of hanging in here to fight the good fight with us, then all of us have lost.

Kevin, take Memorial Day off from blogging as you planned. But come back Tuesday will a renewed sense of purpose and spirt: We will win. We are fighting for good and what's right. We may not win today, or even tomorrow. But when that pendulum swings the other way, we will be victorious. Never give up. Each of us has a role to play and all of our voices are needed.

John Ashcroft is a non-elected official with pious, radical-right views who is now in the position to impose his wackiness on the rest of us. We can take him out--through the electoral process. We just have to get out the vote and defeat Bush. Please, do anything except stand mute.

We are proud to announce that bloggers are now being included in at least one Journalism class' final exam, and we are included: [ed: at the request of the journalism professor who saw this post this morning, we are deleting the course name and website]

Visit each of the following online commentaries, and list what the main proposition of the argument being made. Then state whether it is a proposition of fact, value, or policy. It may appear that there are several different propositions, but I am looking for the main, over-arching proposition. DEFEND your decision as to why it is which type (tell me why it is a proposition of fact, etc.).

1.) Who Pays These Idiots? (Matt Yglesias)

2.) Iowa Moves to Equalize Crack and Powder Cocaine Sentences (TalkLeft)

3.) lynch law (tacitus)

Anyone think they have the correct answer?

Israeli leaders have indicated they will back a U.S. plan for peace in the Middle East that includes the recognition of a Palestinian state-- with conditions.

The road map, drafted by the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations, calls for an immediate cease-fire, followed by a series of simultaneous confidence-building steps by the two sides, including the disarming and dismantling of Palestinian militant groups, the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a freeze on Jewish settlement expansion and the immediate dismantling of small settlement outposts established in the past two years. The plan calls for the creation of a "provisional" Palestinian state by the end of this year and a fully independent and sovereign state by 2005.

The "conditions" Israel are seeking include the relinquishment by Palestinians of the right to return to parts of Israel:

Most significantly, the cabinet members said that before the creation of a Palestinian state, Palestinian refugees had to give up their claim to a "right of return" to areas in Israel that they left during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. The road map does not specifically refer to the right of return but calls for a realistic solution to the refugee issue.

Apparently, the Palestinians refuse to acknowledge the condition.

A senior Palestinian official said that in the interest of pushing the road map forward, his government would simply ignore the Israeli conditions. "The Israeli cabinet wanted to make themselves feel better about the road map, so they decided they were going to accept the road map as they define it, which includes this condition that Palestinians have to give up the right to return," he said. "We are ignoring that condition because it is irrelevant, and it's not part of the road map, nor will it ever be."

It doesn't sound to us like there is a meeting of the minds here.

We have received a few e-mails from readers who advise they cannot post comments. All use aol (as do we). We have found that if we access the site through Internet Explorer while on aol, there is no problem.

Also, posting comments is sometimes slow. You only need to click once. We tend to block urls that post the same comment three or more times. If you have been blocked and your multiple posting of comments was an accident, email us the name you used when posting the comment and we'll unblock your url.

We started a new category tonight at the request of a reader, Foreign Affairs, to address issues in the middle east. We are not particularly knowledgeable in this area, so we expect most of our posts will consist of news rather than commentary, but you are all free to add your thoughts. Only anti-semitic and nasty comments will be deleted.

On the injustice front today, Reuters reports on the upcoming military tribunals and asks, Fair Trial or Kangaroo Courts?

Donald Rehkopf, co-chair of the military committee of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, called the planned military commissions ``an embarrassment to democracy.''

``This is a show. It's a kangaroo court of the worst sort,'' he said, describing the rules as crafted to guarantee convictions, compel guilty pleas and make it as easy as possible to get the death penalty.

``I was actually shocked at how one-sided these rules were,'' said Michael Ratner, president of the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights. ``Even a military tribunal I don't think has to be this biased and unfair toward the defendant.''

NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg has accepted blame for the death of a woman who died when the police raided her apartment by mistake and set off a flash grenade. The family has filed a $500 million lawsuit against the city.

In an interview outside the church before the funeral began, Representative Charles B. Rangel, Democrat of New York, who did not address the congregation, said that Ms. Spruill's death was part of a pattern of violence by police officers against members of minority groups. "This community sees far too many grenade-type incidents," Mr. Rangel said. "Grenades are not made for Harlem."

Lisa English is back at Ruminate This. Mary from The Watch did a superb job of covering for Lisa while her allergy-stricken eye healed.

Say hello to the Guerilla News Network (found via Skippy who's celebrating his anniversary this weekend) and K Marx the Spot by the folks at Bear-Left.

Wampum has made the move to MT and its own home here so update your bookmarks.

For longer reads, check out the San Francisco Chronicle and how women are losing freedom in the chaos of Post-War Iraq and On the Roads of Ruin by Peter Oborne in the Sunday Oberserver. Oborne recently returned from an extensive tour of Afganistan to see if the U.S. and Britain were living up to their promise to fund a rebuilding effort. He found the country deserted by the West and left to fend for itself against massive thuggery. David Neiwert of Orcinus has written a moving tribute to a dear uncle who recently passed away.

Oops, never mind, says the FBI.

A year ago, Crazy Tomato was a popular restaurant in Evansville, Indiana, near the Kentucky border. Then its owner, Tarek Albasti, and seven other Egyptian-born men were arrested by the FBI and accused of plotting terrorist attacks against the U.S. They became known as the "Evansville Eight."

Pictured in prison stripes, the men were splashed across the front pages, ridiculed and shunned even after their release by people who assumed their guilt. Whispers about flying lessons and money trails from Evansville to Egypt spread rapidly.

But the FBI said it had all been a mistake. And at a meeting last month with more than 100 people in the Muslim community here, the FBI offered a rare apology because suspicion about the arrests -- which resulted from a bogus tip -- hung over the men's heads for so long and disrupted their lives.

Read the whole article to see how little justification there was for arresting the men on material witness warrants and holding them in isolation for over a week.

As part of a national roundup in the weeks after the terrorist attacks, the "Evansville 8" were among 50 people held as material witnesses in maximum security jails without being charged with a crime. Thousands of more men from Middle Eastern countries were questioned, some arrested and detained, allegedly for links to terrorism, only to be let go or deported on immigration violations. Civil liberties groups protested that the arrests amounted to racial stereotyping.

Yes, the FBI apologized. But that still doesn't undo the damage to these men.

"The situation that happened to you was horrible," Thomas V. Fuentes, the FBI's agent in charge in Indiana, said during a meeting at the Islamic Center of Evansville. "On behalf of the FBI, I will apologize. . . ."

They were wrongly accused," FBI Agent Fuentes said in a later interview. "They have almost lost their business. This is something that has affected them in every possible way. Anybody being accused falsely of something that serious is like a teacher being accused of molesting a child. It's hard to come back from that. You can see . . . months later, the tears are still ready to flow."

A giant raspberry for the Chicago Tribune, which in an editorial Saturday, uses the Laci Peterson case as a springboard to call for greater attention to domestic violence as a leading cause of murder of pregnant women.

How is it domestic violence if her husband, who is presumed innocent, didn't do it? It is outrageous for a national newspaper to make Laci Peterson the poster child for this issue.

Greater awareness of spouse abuse and other domestic violence has helped many victims to improve their home life or relocate to a safer place. The Laci Peterson case underscores the need for a similar awareness about the danger that can rise up during what should be a time of joy.

Shame, shame on the Tribune.

The owner of a Utah chain of private "disciplinary academy" for teens has been arrested in Costa Rica and charged with violating the civil liberties of the students.

The academies are owned by the Utah organization, the World Wide Association of Speciality Programs and Schools, known as Wwasps, but are located in Costa Rica, Jamaica and Mexico. Parents pay $30,000 a year for the privilege of having their children learn discipline--and according to the charges--suffer physical and emotional abuse.