Nat Hentoff thankfully will not let up on the Yaser Hamdi case. Read his new column in the Village Voice titled, George W. Bush's Constitution: Does It Take a Lifetime to Question a Man? Hentoff begins,

The imprisonment of "enemy combatant" Yaser Esam Hamdi in a naval brig in the United States is not a matter of concern to most Americans, since they do not know of Mr. Hamdi's isolation from the Bill of Rights, and might not care if they did. But the Supreme Court will ultimately decide whether George W. Bush's Constitution will replace—in significant parts—the Constitution that most Americans are also not familiar with.

He quotes from the excellent amicus brief filed on behalf of Hamdi by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL):

Another point, this one entirely ignored by the media, is in an amicus brief to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers: [The government claims] that Mr. Hamdi 'surrendered' not to U.S. forces, but to a group of counter-insurgent Afghanis popularly called the 'Northern Alliance.' However, [the government then proceeds] to repeatedly claim that Hamdi was 'captured'—an important distinction when evaluating his legal status vis-à-vis the United States and under international law. One who surrenders before engaging in 'combat' can hardly be classified as a 'combatant' logically, much less legally."

Hentoff ends his column with

I will follow this case through the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals and then, I expect, to the United States Supreme Court. Those nine men and women will decide whether the essential liberties in the Framers' Constitution have been removed by George W. Bush. It's a pity the Democratic Party cares much less about civil liberties than about Bush's tax cuts.

Hentoff is no liberal, but he is a staunch supporter of civil liberties, and we appreciate his dedication to the preservation of constitutional rights for all persons.

The issue in the Hamdi case essentially concerns the detaining of American citizens as so-called "enemy-combatants" when no criminal charges are brought, when Congress has not officially declared a war, and when they have not been declared "prisoners of war." Is it legal for the President, as chief executive, on his own to withold basic constitutional rights from these people, such as the right to consult with a lawyer?

The Judge in the case, Richard Doumar, has previously opined in a written order,

"This case appears to be the first in American jurisprudence where an American citizen has been held incommunicado and subjected to an indefinite detention in the continental United States without charges, without any findings by a military tribunal, and without access to a lawyer."

The Government may be using Hamdi as a test case to see just how far it can go. Let's hope the courts keep them on a tight leash.

"The Indiana Supreme Court temporarily blocked a new state law Friday requiring sheriffs to post photographs and addresses of convicted sex offenders on the Internet. The state Sheriff's Association had planned to begin posting the pictures and information by Monday, but the justices put the law on hold until they can decide whether it is constitutional."

What's wrong with the law?

"The Indiana Civil Liberties Union claims the law violates the rights of sex offenders, who already are listed in a registry that does not include photos and addresses. Other critics have said the changes would make it more difficult for offenders to find jobs and would expose them to harassment, violence and identity theft."

We'll track this one as we very much hope the law is struck down. Enough is enough already --we have become a nation of voyeurs and snoops.

We strongly oppose sex offender registration programs that provide information about an offender to the public via the Internet. What business does a web surfer in Oregon have looking at the record of a sex offender in say, Miami? If they have a legitimate reason to know, let them contact a law enforcement agency in Miami and get the information.

Not all convicted sex offenders are violent rapists or child molesters who society needs to be protected from. There should be some way of discerning those who are not and relieving them of the burden, stigma and economic consequences of lifetime registration laws and lifetime probation. For these offenders, once they've done their time, let them be. If they re-offend, they can be charged anew and sentenced to longer sentences due to having a prior conviction.

One of the primary purposes of sentencing is rehabilitation. Society has just as strong a need for rehabilitation as it does for punishment and deterrence, those being the other legitimate sentencing factors. (Retribution is not a legitimate sentencing factor.) Low-level sex offenders are going to be released some day--isn't it better if they have a means of supporting themselves when they get out? Oppressive and overly intrusive registration laws bring shame and humiliation which decreases self-confidence and causes isolation, neither of which is good for someone trying to re-enter society. They also keep the offenders from obtaining meaningful work--too many employers won't hire someone with a sex offense on their record.

Keep these offenders from obtaining work and take away their dignity and guess what they will do to survive? Right...they'll re-offend by committing an economic crime and it becomes a vicious cycle.

It's time to break the cycle, and thank goodness we still have an independent judiciary that can declare laws like the one in Indiana unconstitutional. We doubt we'll even have that after Bush packs the federal courts with his right-wing judicial activists.

[edited to add words in italics for clarity]

[comments now closed]

Kos of Daily Kos, exhausted from the debut of the wonderful Political State Report this week, has "Billmon" subbing for him tonight. Billmon has a brilliant and very, very funny post called The Shape of Things to Come looking back at 2003. Yes, 2003. Go read and enjoy.

Welcome to Digby, who started the new year with his new left blog Hullabaloo. Digby isn't starting from scratch, he's been posting in the comments section of other big bloggers for months, and won the Koufax award this week for "Best Commentor."

Another liberal blog we just came across that we like a lot is The ReachM High Cowboy Network Noose (The Noose, for short) based in Oregon.

We also want to extend a special thanks to Patrick Nielsen-Hayden of Electrolite, Jay Caruso of the Daily Rant , Lisa English of Ruminate This, and Toby Sackton of Let It Begin Here. They have been extremely supportive of us in recent weeks, and we very much appreciate their comments. They also have great blogs, and if you are not already regular readers of them, you should be.

Hamster's back after his holiday vacation, he's a must-read every day for both news and views.

And congratulations to Skippy who reached 50,000 visitors today and always makes us smile.

From the April, 2002 BBC Series War and Protest - The U.S. in Vietnam (1972 - 1975):

An estimated total of 2,122,244 people were killed during the war in Vietnam. Of these, 58,169 were Americans. Of those Americans, 11,465 were teenagers. An estimated 3,650,946 additional people were wounded, of whom 304,000 were Americans. 153,329 Americans were categorized as 'seriously' wounded. That total includes 10,000 amputees.

An estimated 444,000 North Vietnamese and 220,557 South Vietnamese military personnel and 587,000 civilians were killed.

6,727,084 tons of bombs were dropped. This is about two-and-a-half times the total tonnage dropped on Germany during World War II.

3,750 fixed wing aircraft and 4,865 helicopters were lost.

18 million gallons of poisonous chemicals were poured on Vietnam.

The dollar cost of the United States involvement in the war in Vietnam is estimated at $140 billion.

According to the Oxford Companion to American Military History:

The American movement against the Vietnam War was the most successful antiwar movement in US history. During the Johnson administration, it played a significant role in constraining the war and was a major factor in the administration's policy reversal in 1968. During the Nixon years, it hastened US troop withdrawals, continued to restrain the war, fed the deterioration in US troop morale and discipline (which provided additional impetus to US troop withdrawals), and promoted congressional legislation that severed US funds for the war. The movement also fostered aspects of the Watergate scandal, which ultimately played a significant role in ending the war by undermining Nixon's authority in Congress and thus his ability to continue the war. It gave rise to the infamous 'Huston Plan'; inspired Daniel Ellsberg, whose release of the Pentagon Papers led to the formation of the Plumbers; and fed the Nixon administration's paranoia about its political enemies, which played a major part in concocting the Watergate break-in itself. Based on that, one of the lessons to be learned as a result of the experience of the United States in Vietnam would seem to be that popular opinion can, in fact, change policy at the highest levels of power. Enough people, saying 'This is wrong', loudly enough and long enough, can make a difference.

We don't need a draft. We need people to speak up against a pre-emptive war in Iraq. We need to convince our elected officials in Congress to pass a bill limiting Presidential action in Iraq and Korea and elsewhere without Congressional approval, as the Senate did in 1970 with respect to Cambodia.

A federal judge has found that Kansas City police illegally searched a man's home for drugs in a case that defense lawyers say raises questions about hundreds of other searches in the county. The case involves no-knock warrants. The Judge in suppressing the drug evidence held, "However, there is no blanket exception to the knock and announce requirement in a drug investigation." She cited past federal court rulings that require police to give specific reasons to justify no-knock searches, such as a suspect's violent past."

In another case, a Kansas jury returned a $2 million verdict against the Kansas City police for their actions in a drug search. The search victim's lawyer, David Smith, author of the leading text book on forfeiture laws, said the verdict "could affect many other criminal cases and result in a wave of civil lawsuits against police. The Kansas City Police Department can't circumvent the Constitution."

Our congratulations to David Smith.

Update: Check out this great investigative series in the Kansas City Star from 1999-2000 called Taking Cash into Custody : A Special Report on Police and Drug Money Seizures.

This came in on the AP Wire this afternoon:

"The government wants detailed information about every person who comes to or leaves the country by plane or boat, and for the first time will require U.S. citizens to fill out forms detailing their comings and goings. Under rules proposed Friday, the information would be sent electronically to the government for matching against security databases."

See. first they go after the "other people," then they come for us.

Maybe we are hypersensitive, since the article reports that the ACLU is not concerned about the new rules. "The American Civil Liberties Union, which has criticized many of the administration's anti-terrorism information-gathering efforts, said these rules should not impinge on people's privacy. "We don't see a huge downside," said spokeswoman Emily Whitfield."

But we don't see why the Government should be able to enter where we've been and where we are going into a database. What's next? Will they check it against your income tax returns to see if you reported enough income to justify the travel? Will they use the data to begin an investigation of who you met with overseas?

Our good friend Max disagrees with us on the Draft. He's for it--because he thinks it might reopen the discussion about whether the President should have the power to declare war. [Update: Max modified his position here.]

As a downside to the draft, he says there might be a comeback of Country Joe and the Fish. So once again, two liberals disagree. We love Country Joe and the Fish, and back in October, reprinted the lyrics to the Feel Like I'm Fixing to Die Rag in a post titled War is Not the Answer.

Max also doesn't think that the draft during the Vietnam War had anything to do with anti-war activism. We again disagree. But since there seems to be a lot of disagreement among readers in the comments sections to various blogs on the topic, we encourage everyone to go here and read this series from the BBC containing a succinct and well-documented chronicle of anti-war efforts. The link is to 1969-70, but after reading, scroll down and you will find the links for the other years during the period of 1965-1975.

We responded to Max in his comments section that we cannot support risking the lives of this country's youth to make a political point. They should not be used as pawns in the war debate. For anti-war liberals to support a draft where people would be forced to go to war makes no sense to us--it's a classic cutting your nose off to spite your face, as one of our readers said in the comments section to our earlier post.

One last thing, if Country Joe doesn't grab you, check out Arlo Guthrie's long version of Alice's Restaurant. KBCO, our great radio station in Boulder, used to play it every Thanksgiving at noon (into the 90's at least). The lyrics are too long to print here, but if you click on the more button below, we have included those to the second half about reporting to the draft board on Whitehall Street in New York City--(the first half has to do with Arlo's arrest for littering, at the end it all ties together.)

Daily Kos brings us the unsettling news reported on Political Wire that ultra-conservative Utah Senator Orin Hatch is seeking a Supreme Court nomination from President Bush. And that Bush is leaning towards appointing Clarence Thomas as Chief Justice. Taegan Goddard reports:

"Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orin Hatch ® "has been spreading the word" that "perhaps it's time his name should be sent to" his committee as the next Supreme Court nominee, the Washingtonian reports. "Hatch has surfaced in the past as a potential Supreme Court nominee. If anything works against him now, it will be his age -- 68." But his "renewed interest in the court has confounded judge pickers at the White House. They worry that if they choose someone else, the powerful chairman might not be helpful."

"There's more: "It now looks like Clarence Thomas, and not Antonin Scalia, would replace" Chief Justice William Rehnquist. "The juxtaposition of Thomas's breaking his usual silence to deliver an impassioned lecture against cross-burning and Senator Trent Lott's remarks on the virtues of the 1948 segregationist Dixiecrats was not lost on President Bush. He now believes that elevating Thomas would be the most dramatic way to return his party to being the party of Lincoln and not the party of Lott."

For more, go to the Washingtonian and scroll down the left-side column.

[Thanks to SK Bubba for noticing we mispelled "Court" in the title, it's fixed."

"The Pentagon has ordered some units of the 45,000-member U.S. 1st Marine Expeditionary Force to deploy from California to the Gulf region to join thousands of other American troops preparing for a possible war with Iraq, defense officials said on Friday."

"Spokesmen at 1st Marine Expeditionary Force headquarters in Camp Pendleton, Calif., confirmed that an order to deploy "elements" of the big force was received this week, but would not say how many or exactly when and where they would go."

"...The Army is already beginning to deploy more than 11,000 soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Division in the state of Georgia as well as hundreds of engineers and intelligence specialists from Germany to the Gulf in a new year surge of troops, warplanes and ships in case President Bush orders an invasion of Iraq. Nearly 60,000 U.S. military personnel are in the Gulf and that number could double in coming weeks."

The Judge in the San Diego murder case of Danielle van Dam, just sentenced David Westerfield to death as the jury had recommended. We wrote about this last night. He will go to San Quentin within 10 days. He gets an automatic appeal to the California Supreme Court.

Filter, the Tech News Column of the Washington Post reports today on their Readers' Favorite Blogs (TechNews.com). Thanks to Mad Kane , who nominated us, TalkLeft was listed as one the readers favorites. So was Jim Cappozola's Rittenhouse Review. We're very flattered, thanks, Madeleine!