A very unflattering portrayal of the Bush Administration appears in the Sunday London Observer. The article reports that both civil liberties groups and congresspersons accuse Bush and Cheney of a civil rights clampdown:

President George Bush is presiding over the most secretive administration in 'living memory', according to American civil rights groups and congressmen. Critics accuse him of orchestrating an unprecedented clampdown on freedom of information and the press. This has resulted in a dramatic increase in documents and proceedings being classified secret and an overall shutdown of the free flow of information over the government's political and legal conduct. They are also concerned over what they see as alarming restrictions on the Freedom of Information Act.

The article recounts a multitude of specifics to support the charge.

We find ourselves agreeing with columnist George Will that the Jury Room Is No Place for TV. The issue is allowing television coverage of a jury's deliberations in a death penalty case.

"In a society saturated by entertainment values, "the public's right to know" can be an excuse for voyeurism tarted up as a journalistic imperative. However, the public's fundamental right is to good government, and the function of juries is to produce justice, not entertaining journalism.

Here is some background on the case, which involves a request by Frontline, a show we much admire, to tape deliberations in a Texas capital murder trial - with the permission of the defense--and the reasons we oppose it.

Outgoing Illinois Governor George Ryan met with the families of 45 death row inmates, providing them an opportunity to tell him why their loved one's death sentences should be commuted to life in prison.

"In a private, emotional meeting in a Near South Side Chicago church, family members of 45 Death Row inmates one by one asked Gov. George Ryan to commute the sentences of their children, siblings and parents."

"How do you look a mother in the eye, especially when the system is broken?" the governor said Friday outside Old St. Mary's Catholic Church. "I have to wonder if he's really guilty."

He was there "strictly to listen," the governor said, before deciding whether to commute any of the 142 death sentences to life in prison without.

The Chicago Tribune has learned that the FBI used a cooperating individual to secretly tape a phone call to Illinois Governor George Ryan:

"Federal investigators secretly tape-recorded a telephone call of Gov. George Ryan's from a close confidant last April as part of the Operation Safe Road probe, the Tribune has learned."

"According to a source close to the investigation, Donald Udstuen, once part of Ryan's "kitchen cabinet" of prominent advisers, agreed to make the monitored call to the governor on the same day Udstuen began to work undercover for federal authorities."

Nothing incriminating was said during the call. Still, to use an undercover ploy to tape a Governor, any Governor, is not a routine matter.

The Better Rhetor has begun a campaign to dump Attorney General John Ashcroft. He's not coming from a vindicative point of view, but from a policy stance.

We have written post after post about how John Ashcroft is eviscerating our constitutional rights and civil liberties--with the support of Bush. For a list of over 40 of our posts critical of Ashcroft, go here.

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]

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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?