This video featuring Hillary Clinton,produced a few weeks ago by the State Department, is yet another example of the differences between a Republican and Democrat Administration. Can you imagine it coming from a Secretary of State appointed by Romney or Gingrich?

The media's obsessive focus on Iowa is beyond annoying. Who cares which Republican wins? What matters is keeping a Democrat in the White House and gaining enough of a Democratic majority in Congress to reduce the need to compromise and capitulate. Whether it's civil liberties, Medicare or the war on drugs, Republicans are always worse. They really don't deserve the attention they have been getting lately.

President Obama's re-election campaign released this video today, outlining five ways for Obama to win 270 electoral votes in 2012.

While the 9th Circuit upheld the consitittuionality of telecom immunity for warrantless wiretapping in one case today, in another case, it ruled a complaint against the NSA and Government officials for conducting "a communications dragnet of ordinary citizens" can proceed. The case is Jewell vs. NSA, and the opinion is here.

The complaint by plaintiff Carolyn Jewell and others (the case is a potential class action) alleges that the NSA attached surveillance devices to AT&T's network, diverting communications into "SG3 Secure Rooms" at AT&T facilities around the country, creating "an unprecedented suspicionless general search" throughout the AT&T network. The suit alleged the NSA and other government defendants performed or aided and abetted the scheme. (AT&T was not sued in the case.)

The district court had dismissed the case holding the plaintiffs didn't have standing to challenge the scheme, but the 9th Circuit disagreed and reversed. [More...]

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals today upheld the constitutionality of FISA's grant of immunity to telecom companies assisting the Government in terrorism investigations. The opinion is here.

The statute is § 802 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (“FISA”), 50 U.S.C. § 1885a, known as the FISA Amendments Act of 2008.

The complaints were filed in the wake of news reports in December 2005 that President Bush had issued an order permitting the NSA to conduct warrantless eavesdropping. Under a program known as the Terrorist Surveillance Program (“TSP”), the NSA “had obtained the cooperation of telecommunications companies to tap into a significant portion of the companies’ telephone and e-mail traffic, both domestic
and international.”

[More...]

Here are the personal residences of the top Republican candidates. Better photo viewing here.

House with the most mirrors: Newt Gingrich.

In 2008, the media did a similar feature on the homes of Democratic candidates.

Lots of end of year stuff to take care of. Here's an open thread, all topics welcome.

From Wired: The year intellectual property trumped civil liberties.

Update: ICE launches a hotline and new form for detained individuals "to ensure that individuals being held by state or local law enforcement on immigration detainers are properly notified about their potential removal from the country and are made aware of their rights."

... detained individuals can call if they believe they may be U.S. citizens or victims of a crime. The hotline will be staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week by ICE personnel at the Law Enforcement Support Center. Translation services will be available in several languages from 7 a.m. until midnight (Eastern) seven days a week. ICE personnel will collect information from the individual and refer it to the relevant ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) Field Office for immediate action.

The new form, available here, instructs law enforcement they may not hold a detainee more than 48 hours after the individual would have otherwise been released.

On December 14, the Suffolk District Attorney issued a subpoena to Twitter for information related to Occupy Boston and some members of Anonymous. The ACLU moved to quash on First Amendment grounds. Today, the judge upheld the subpoena.

Twitter released the subpoena to the account holders of those named, @p0isAn0n @OccupyBoston #BostonPD #d0xcak3, who in turn posted it online. You can read it here. The subpoena also sought “IP address logs for account creation and for the period December 8, 2011 to December 13, 2011."

In this pastebin press release, an Anonymous member or supporter posted the reasons the subpoena was invalid.

More here.

It's good that Twitter provided the subpoena to the affected account holders. It's bad that a judge has upheld a subpoena for a hashtag. The ACLU has said it may appeal.

The Colorado Department of Revenue joined the short list of two other states asking the DEA to reclassify marijuana as a Schedule II controlled substance. Marijuana is currently a Schedule I controlled substance, a classification reserved for substances deemed to have no medicinal value or a high potential for abuse. From the DEA website:

Substances in this schedule have a high potential for abuse, have no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, and there is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision. Some examples of substances listed in schedule I are: heroin, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), marijuana (cannabis), peyote, methaqualone, and 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (“ecstasy”).

State law required the Director to write the letter. House Bill 1284, the 2010 law with regulations for medical marijuana, specifies the duties of the state licensing authority. It includes this provision:

"The state licensing authority shall....

....In recognition of the potential medicinal value of medical marijuana, make a request by January 1, 2012, to the federal Drug Enforcement Administration to consider rescheduling, for pharmaceutical purposes, medical marijuana from a schedule I controlled substance to a schedule II controlled substance.

[More....]

Stratfor, the intelligence site hacked by persons who self-associate as AntiSec and members of Anonymous, has just issued this notice to its members, offering them a year of identity theft protection services from a company named CSID. The text is below: [More...]

I got an e-mail this morning from the New York Times saying I had canceled my subscription and could renew at a discount. So did 8 million others in their database. Only, I didn't cancel anything. I tried calling the Times and the phone lines were busy (3 different ones.) I can't remember the last time I got a busy signal calling someone.

Turns out, it was a mistake. To make it worse, the Times first told people on Twitter the e-mail wasn't from them: [More...]

I'm swamped. J too from the looks of it.

Open Thread.

Big stories for today: The the Zetas' radio network and the ongoing hacking of credit card and email databases by those identifying themselves as members of Anonymous/AntiSec or related groups.

Both are more interesting than which Republican will win the Iowa caucuses, but since we've had no politics posts all day, here's an open thread, all topics (politics or not) welcome.

Update: Also interesting, this article about fears over tiger prawns (giant shrimp) invading the Gulf of Mexico.