San Francisco police officers improperly searched two girls last year and violated the rights of a 14-year-old boy they arrested, according to departmental charges that could cost five officers their jobs. The internal charges -- signed this month by Acting Chief Alex Fagan -- stem from a confrontation between police and three youths in Hunters Point that outraged the city's African American community.
"One more appeals court vacancy has been filled with a judge who can spend the rest of his life trying to turn back the clock on Americans' rights, liberties, and legal protections," said Ralph G. Neas, president of People For the American Way. "Today the Senate failed in its obligation to protect Americans from a federal judiciary dominated by right-wing ideologues. But senators will have many more opportunities to take a stand, because the Bush administration continues to nominate judges who are not committed to preserving the protections of our Constitution."Senator Edward Kennedy said Monday, "Jeff Sutton "has been the most visible advocate in the right-wing movement to weaken the basic civil rights that have bought our country closer to equal opportunity for all citizens."
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A final vote is scheduled Tuesday in the Senate over Bush judicial nominee Jeffrey Sutton, whom many decry as a judicial activist. However, Ted Kennedy is quoted as saying that he thinks the vote will go Sutton's way, so it's probably a done deal.
For more on Sutton and objections to him, visit PFAW and ADAWatch.
Lynne Stewart is a guinea pig--a chance for the Bush administration to see how far it can push its evisceration of the Bill of Rights. The attack on attorney representation is only one of a staggering number of its post-9/11 assaults on the Constitution, but it's one of the most important. Invariably, the least sympathetic among us--the accused terrorists and the radical lawyers--are the first to lose basic rights. The rest of us follow.Ashcroft is dictating that the Government can pry into the attorney-client privilege all it wants. While this is bad for lawyers, it's worse for clients. First comes the inch-- Lynne Stewart, then comes the mile--the rest of us.
On October 31, 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft issued an emergency regulation, 66 Fed. Reg. 55062, allowing the monitoring of attorney-client conversations when the Attorney General has "reasonable suspicion" to "believe that a particular inmate may use communications with attorneys or their agents to further or facilitate acts of violence or terrorism." The order recognizes that these communications would "traditionally be covered by the attorney-client privilege." 28 C.F.R. § 501.3(d).
Here are the reasons why defense lawyers and others consider this regulation to be unconstitutional and ethically improper.
President Bush Monday named 15 more nominees to fill judicial vacancies. Feminists are blasting Bush's choices of women nominees, saying they are "nothing but Scalia in a skirt."
Visit People for the American Way for more on the judicial nominees, and Civil Rights.Org for a primer on how our civil rights and constitutional freedoms are at risk due to Bush's court-packing scheme.
A sharply divided U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a law requiring that legal immigrants who commit certain crimes in this country be detained in prison while awaiting deportation hearings.By a 5-4 vote, the high court sided with the U.S. Justice Department and rejected a constitutional challenge to a 1996 law that provides for mandatory detention of criminal immigrants while authorities attempt to deport them.
"We hold that Congress, justifiably concerned that deportable criminal aliens who are not detained continue to engage in crime and fail to appear for their removal hearings in large numbers, may require that (such) persons ... be detained," Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote for the majority in the 20-page opinion .
Federal and state courts authorized a total of 1,358 wiretap applications, down 9 percent from the 1,491 applications in 2001. ........Wiretaps were most frequently authorized to investigate violations of drug and gambling laws....Of the wiretaps authorized in 2002, 77 percent (1,052 wiretaps) cited drug offenses as the most serious offense under investigation.[link via Paper Chase]
Some more commentary on Rick Santorum and his comments on homosexuality:
Hendrik Hertzberg in the New Yorker, Dog Bites Man.
Cathy Young in the Boston Globe, Santorum's Odious Comparisons. [Links via SCOTUSblog]
Mark Mumford in the San Francisco Chronicle: Sex Tips From Rick Santorum in which the noxiously homophobic Republican senator answers your naughty e-mail
Cluster bombs are large weapons that contain dozens and often hundreds of smaller submunitions. They come in over 200 models and can be delivered from the air or the ground, releasing "bomblets" or "grenades" respectively.Because of the wide dispersal pattern of their bomblets, cluster munitions can destroy broad, relatively "soft" targets, such as airfields and surface-to-air missile sites. They are also effective against targets that move or do not have a precise location, such as enemy troops or vehicles.
...It is precisely the qualities that make cluster bombs militarily desirable that make them so dangerous to civilians.
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The notion that the Feeney Amendment represents a power grab by the Justice Department is supported not only by the substance of the amendment itself, but also by the procedure through which it was adopted. The amendment was appended to the Amber Alert Bill while that bill was in conference committee; it went through none of the ordinary process of hearings and committee deliberation. Input from judges and the members of the Sentencing Commission was not sought; Justice, on the other hand, had its fingerprints all over the proposal. Since September 11, the Justice Department has taken numerous steps to expand and consolidate its power. In the Patriot Act, in the Jose Padilla case, in numerous other instances the Department has taken steps to limit or eliminate judicial oversight of its actions. The Feeney Amendment is part and parcel of this enterprise. It's too much to hope for a presidential veto--the Amber Alert Bill is popular, and the president is unlikely to object to an amendment to that bill sought by his own Justice Department. But Congress should revisit the issue in the near future--and it should do so in a more deliberative, orderly fashion.
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According to the ABA, some 5,000 unaccompanied immigrant children were detained in the United States in 2001 alone. Some come to this country seeking asylum for the same reasons that adults do, but many are abandoned, orphaned by war, or brought here by smugglers. And unfortunately, despite facing deportation, they don't have the right to counsel -- which is where volunteer legal help comes in.
On Wednesday, a Richmond, Va., public housing project will be at the center of a national debate on the scope of the First Amendment and the government's power to regulate behavior on land it owns. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments over a strict visitation policy at the development that city officials say is necessary to stamp out crime. Opponents say it violates rights to free speech, free association and due process.
Posted on Mon Apr 28, 2003 at 11:14:37 PM EST
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Prosecutors did not dispute that Mr. Malvo asked, "Do I get to see my attorneys?" and later said, "My attorneys told me not to say anything to the cops until they got there." But they said those statements fell short of the clear demand for a lawyer needed to halt questioning. Detective Boyle said she told Mr. Malvo that he could see his lawyers but that she first wanted to ask a few questions. She advised him that federal charges had been dropped and that he was facing new charges in Virginia and continued questioning him.
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