Hamster today takes us to YellowTimes.Org and Political Science 101: Shredding the Magna Carta by John Brand. John Brand is "a Purple Heart, Combat Infantry veteran of World War II. He received his Juris Doctor degree at Northwestern University and a Master of Theology and a Doctor of Ministry at Southern Methodist University. D.Minn."

Dr. Brand includes the following:

"A benumbed Congress passed the USA Patriot Act the month following 9/11.

Many clauses of this Act deny constitutional rights. Under a Supreme Court guided by Constitutional principles rather than dogmatic ideologies, the Act would most likely be adjudged unconstitutional but with our current Supreme Court, all bets are off.

The fact that this administration would not think twice to deny civil liberties to citizens who stand in the way of its agenda is not earthshaking news - it is troublesome news, but not totally unexpected, since it does not seem to be out of character for this administration. After all, the appointment of an Attorney General who takes his marching orders from the moralism of his personal religion rather than the Constitution also foreshadows the direction of things to come."

The only thing we can think of to add is the online link to the Magna Carta--it doesn't seem to make the news much anymore.

Thanks to Matt Yglesias for posting the drug criteria used by the FBI in deciding who can and cannot work for them.

FBI Employment Drug Policies

You're toast if you answer "yes" to any of the following questions:

Have you used marijuana at all within the last three years?

Have you used marijuana more than a total of 15 times in your life?

Have you used any other illegal drug (including anabolic steroids after February 27, 1991) at all in the past 10 years?

Have you used any other illegal drug (including anabolic steroids after February 27, 1991) more than a total of five times in your life?

Have you ever sold any illegal drug for profit?

Have you ever used an illegal drug (no matter how many times or how long ago)while in a law enforcement or prosecutorial position, or in a position which carries with it a high level of responsibility or public trust?

We like Matt's question, not addressed by the policy:

"Suppose I never used drugs and I never sold them for profit but I have sold them at a loss. Do we want inept drug dealers working for the FBI? "

Breaking the Chains: People of Color and the War on Drugs

Afternoon of Thursday, September 26 through Saturday, September 28,2002.

Hyatt Regency Los Angeles at Macy's Plaza
711 South Hope Street
Los Angeles, CA

The Drug Policy Alliance (formerly the Lindesmith Center-Drug Policy Foundation) is proud to announce a groundbreaking event that will address the grievous impacts of the war on drugs on people of color.
Conference participants will learn about the discriminatory history of punitive drug policies, alternatives to current policy, and how to advocate for positive change.

The conference will begin with an opening reception on the afternoon of Thursday, September 26, 2002. A full day of conference events will follow on Friday, September 27, and the conference will wrap up on the
afternoon of Saturday, September 28.

Please visit Breaking the Chains for on-line registration up-to-date information

We nodded in agreement all the way through Frank Rich's The Waco Road to Baghdad in today's New York Times.

Here's a sample:

"The White House keeps saying that no decision has been made about Iraq, but of course a decision has been made. Richard Perle, an administration Iraq hawk, gave away the game in yesterday's Times: "The failure to take on Saddam after what the president said" would lead to "a collapse of confidence." Translation: If Mr. Bush doesn't get rid of Saddam after all this saber rattling, he will look like the biggest wimp since -- well, his father. "

"Democrats, as timid in challenging Mr. Bush on Iraq as they were in letting his tax cut through Congress, keep calling for a "debate." What world are they living in? Mr. Bush is no sooner going to abandon his pursuit of Saddam than his crusade to eliminate the estate tax. These are his only core beliefs. "

"The questions left to be debated now are who's going to pay for the war, who's going to be killed in it, who's going to police what could be a decade-long cleanup. (So far the answer to all three seems to be first and foremost: the go-it-alone Americans.)"

" The loudest voices asking these questions are almost exclusively Republican: Brent Scowcroft, Chuck Hagel, Henry Kissinger, even Dick Armey. "

We are posting this in its entirety. Stephen Bright is a saint for those on death row. And after reading this post, visit the Southern Center for Human Rights

STATEMENT REGARDING THE EXECUTION OF WALLACE FUGATE
by Stephen B. Bright

August 16, 2002 -- Wallace Fugate died today as a result of massive failures in Georgia’s legal system.

Mr. Fugate, a carpenter, was unable to afford a lawyer. So William Prior, a Superior Court judge, assigned two court-appointed lawyers who represented him no better than a couple of plumbers would have.

His death penalty trial lasted a mere two days- much shorter than many trials for petty crimes. The trial of Sidney Dorsey went on for six weeks and the State was not even seeking the death penalty.

Wallace Fugate’s sentencing hearing lasted just 27 minutes, about the length of a TV sitcom. But this was not a comedy. It was a tragic farce. No person would buy a house or a car based on a 27-minute presentation, but a jury sentenced Wallace Fugate to death on such a presentation.

In the last 30 years, there have been hundreds – perhaps thousands – of cases similar to Fugate’s in which Georgia prosecutors did not seek the death penalty. Some of those cases were resolved with verdicts of manslaughter and sentences of imprisonment with eligibility. But in another failure in the Fugate case, the Georgia Supreme Court conducted only a cursory proportionality review and did not look at any of the scores of far more aggravated cases in which death was not imposed.

The state and federal courts upheld Mr. Fugate’s conviction and sentence even though one of his lawyers was so ignorant of the law that he was featured in Harpers magazine.

The case ended with the Board of Pardons ands denying clemency on after a star-chamber proceeding in which it received unsubstantiated accusations and rumors about Mr. Fugate that he had no chance to deny.

Georgians should be aghast that this shoddy process – flawed from start to finish – lead to a person being killed in the name of the people of Georgia. This is not about whether one of for or against capital punishment. It is about basic fairness and equal treatment.

At one point during this case, the Assistant Attorney General representing Georgia said, "there might be a better way to do it, but better isn't the legal standard." – a shocking indictment of our system that determines whether a person lives or dies.

Today, the Georgia legal system has agreed that "close enough for government work" is acceptable. It has said that the rule of law and the right to a lawyer are meaningless for those who cannot afford to pay the price for a "real lawyer."

The killing of Wallace Fugate lessens us all.

Stephen B. Bright
H. Lee Sarokin Director
Southern Center for Human Rights
83 Poplar Street, N.W.
Atlanta, GA 30303-2122
www.schr.org
404/ 688-1202
fax 688-9440
sbright@schr.org

U.S. District Court Judge Robert Doumar directed the Government Friday to justify it's detention of Yaser Hamdi, the American born young man captured in Afganistan.

"Saying that he would not be a "rubber stamp" for the government," Judge Doumar ordered United States attorneys today to turn over all of Hamdi's statements as well as any documents supporting their argument that Hamdi should remain jailed without charges and access to a lawyer.

Doumar also ordered prosecutors to turn over "statements by Mr. Hamdi's captors, a detailed chronology of his capture and detention beginning with his surrender to the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan late last year, the criteria used to determine that he was an "unlawful enemy combatant," and the names and addresses of the people who made the determination. "

The Judge will review the documents privately, or "in camera" as it's called.

In his written order, Judge Doumar said,

"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."

Hamdi's lawyer, Federal Defender Frank Dunham, Jr. theorizes that the Government is using Hamdi as a test case to see just how far it can go.

But Judge Doumar is keeping prosecutors on a short leash and on previous occasions has expressed his dissatisfaction with their answers. The Government's submission to date has been a two page statement alleging that when Hamdi surrendered in Afganistan, he had a rifle in his possession.

Not enough said the Judge, and we whole-heartedly agree.

ConfluenceTheoryofTruth uses this quote in its blog banner, which we really can appreciate these days:

As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight. And it is in such twilight that we all must be aware of change in the air -- however slight -- lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.

Justice William O. Douglas, US Supreme Court (1939-75)

Last week we pointed to a letter published in the Baltimore Sun that was written by Dianne Davenport, a detainee at the Baltimore City Jail for Women. Her description of the treatment she and other women endure at the jail is horrific, and if you didn't read it last week, you should now, before it goes offline.

We are pleased to report that someone has listened to Dianne. U.S. District Judge Andre Davis today ordered all 570 of the women to be screened for illness within 24 hours. He also ordered the women of heightened risk from the excessive heat to be moved from the jail. Temperatures in the jail, built in 1859, have reached 110 degrees this summer.

Battling jails and prisons over conditions is tough duty. And Judge Davis' Order today was "a huge step," according to Raj Goyle, a Maryland ACLU attorney. Judge Davis also deserves credit for the swiftness of his ruling--the story first made the paper on August 1 when lawyers filed suit over the prison conditions. Dianne's letter appeared August 10, and today he made the ruling.

The private prison industry is doing quite well since September 11, says Alisa Solomon in this week's Village Voice.

"County jailers have long known that housing INS detainees pumps easy income into the coffers. Nearly 900 facilities around the country provide beds for the INS, and in interviews over the years, several county sheriffs and wardens have described such detainees as a 'cash crop.'

With the state prison population finally declining, "the only incarcerated populations sustaining reliable growth now are INS detainees and federal prisoners, many of them noncitizens."

Is there a problem with this? Two primarily:

"Like agriculture, restaurants, hotels, and other realms of American business, the prison-industrial complex now also looks to illegal immigrants as the most promising means of keeping them afloat. The danger, anti-prison activists say, is that the pressure to fill empty cells will add even more fuel to the demand to round up immigrants. "

In other words, echoes of "May we see your papers?"

Advocates are also concerned about the deals the feds may make with private prisons.

"They worry about bidding wars among potential jailers, who might be willing to further cut services to detainees in exchange for contracts. Many state and local providers, the advocates charge, already fail to meet the INS's own weak detention standards."

Advocates claim that "the profit motive undermines justice. We've seen that trying to keep costs low means setting up in isolated, rural areas, far from attorneys and support networks; avoiding expenses for special medical or dietary needs; attracting low-wage employees who aren't sufficiently professional."

The Moussaoui trial has been moved to January at the request of his standby lawyers. Moussaoui is still planning on representing himself, but the Judge has told the lawyers to get ready.

ABC News has a long piece today on the proposed federal RAVE Act. In case you aren't familiar with the Act, RAVE stands for "Reducing Americans' Vulnerability to Ecstasy."

The bill expands the federal "crack-house" statute, designed to prosecute anyone whose buildings are used as drug havens,including party promoters.

"Under the Senate bill, anyone involved with the planning of a rave who knows drugs are used, exchanged or made there could face criminal charges and be subject to a civil penalty of $250,000 or two times the gross receipts derived from each violation."

"The legislation's broad language may appear to encompass any nightclub or other venue where drugs may be present, but the act's title suggests that the real targets here are raves. "

We stand by our prevous description of the bill as "lunacy." And here is our earlier Action Alert if you want to make your opposition known.

Senator Joseph Biden (D-DE) is a principal sponsor. The bill will likely be taken up by Congress in October.

For some organizations with lots of info on the Rave Act, check out DanceSafe. If you want more info on ecstasy, try Myths and Facts About Ecstasy with lots of links.

Are you against our Government invading Iraq? We certainly are. And so apparently are many of the leading Republicans in Congress, the State Department and past Administrations.

If you are wondering what you can do about it, here's a petition you can sign from Democrats.com to make your views known.

Among the points contained in the petition:

"George W. Bush has no authority under the Constitution to invade Iraq. The Constitution requires Congress to declare war, but Bush believes he can simply ignore the Constitution, in direct violation of his sworn oath to 'protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.' If Bush insists on starting a war without an Act of Congress, then Bush should be impeached."

"We call upon all genuinely patriotic Americans to join us in declaring our opposition to a US conquest of Iraq."

And this from MoveOn , a nationwide network with more than 450,000 online activists:

"As President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld drive the nation toward a war with Iraq, everyone from their top generals to Henry Kissinger is urging them to reconsider. MoveOn is organizing constituent meetings with the offices of every Senator in which we can urge them to critically examining the rationale for a war.

Check in with MoveOn Friday, August 16 to register for a meeting in your state and join thousands in voicing your concern about an Iraq war.

For more anti-war resources, including links to activism sites, articles and commentary, don't miss the Nation's No Rush To War.

For some thoughtful analysis on why we should oppose this war, check out Daily Kos's "Not Your Father's Gulf War," and its sequel.