The ACLU unveiled "Mapping the FBI" today, a project documenting surveillance abuses and racial profiling by the FBI, particularly in Muslim communities.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is collecting racial and ethnic information and “mapping” American communities around the country based on crude stereotypes about which groups commit different types of crimes. Nationwide, the FBI is gathering reports on innocent Americans' so-called “suspicious activity” and sharing it with unknown numbers of federal, state and local government agencies.

The ACLU has posted all the supporting documents, and they are searchable by numerous categories. [More...]

Three former detainees at Guantanamo and/or Afghan detention facilities, and one current Guantanamo detainee got a Canadian justice of the peace to file their lawsuit against George Bush alleging torture. A hearing date has been set for Jan. 12. The Complaint, called a Private Prosecution, and supporting sworn documents are here. The factual and legal basis for prosecuting Bush under the Canadian Criminal Code and Convention Against Torture begins on page 20.

The detainees are: Hassan bin Attash, Sami el-Hajj, Muhammed Khan Tumani and Murat Kurnaz:

[E]ach endured years of inhumane treatment including beatings, chaining to cell walls, being hung from walls or ceilings while handcuffed, lack of access to toilets, sleep, food and water-deprivation, exposure to extreme temperatures, sensory overload and deprivation, and other horrific and illegal treatment while in U.S. custody at military bases in Afghanistan and/or at the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay.

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ICE Agent and deportation officer Jason Lowery was arrested in Arizona after taking police on a high speed chase as he tossed "bundles" of marijuana from his government vehicle. It was a government sting operation.

A U.S. immigration officer in Arizona was arrested on drug charges after leading authorities on a high-speed chase as he tossed bundles of marijuana from his government truck, state troopers said on Wednesday.

Jason Lowery, a deportation officer with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, was taken into custody on Tuesday in southern Arizona following a 45-minute pursuit that ended when his vehicle flipped, troopers said. Lowery, 34, suffered minor injuries.

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Bon Jovi has opened his "pay what you can" JBJ Soul Kitchen in Red Bank, N.J. The menus offer upscale, gourmet food with no prices listed. Instead, an envelope is left on the table where diners can leave any amount, or nothing.

"This is not a soup kitchen," [Bon Jovi] emphasizes. "You can come here with the dignity of linens and silver, and you're served a healthy, nutritious meal. This is not burgers and fries.... If you can't afford to eat, you can bus tables, you can wait tables, you can work in the kitchen as a dishwasher or sous chef," he said.

...."If you come in and say, 'I'm hungry,' we'll feed you," Bon Jovi said. "But we're going to need you to do something. It's very important to what we're trying to achieve....This is not an entitlement thing......This is about empowering people because you have to earn that gift certificate.""

The restaurant's website is here. The details are here.

Muammar Gaddafi has been killed by fighters in Libya.

[His death] was announced by several officials of the National Transitional Council (NTC) and backed up by a photograph of a bloodied face ringed by familiar, Gaddafi-style curly hair.

"He was killed in an attack by the fighters. There is footage of that," the NTC's information minister, Mahmoud Shammam, told Reuters.

Herman Cain on Feb. 23, 2011 said he would sign federal legislation that protects the sanctity of life

I am a firm believer in the dignity of life and support a ban on partial birth abortion. If I were president, I would sign legislation that would protect the sanctity of life. Additionally, I would be in favor of any legislation that would encourage adoptions as a loving and safe alternative to abortion.

Herman Cain at the Value Voters Summit:

• "I believe in life from conception, no exceptions."

• "I would have asked the Department of Justice to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act"

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Mediate reports on Herman Cain's statements on abortion rights to CNN's Piers Morgan:

[I]t’s not the government’s role — or anybody else’s role — to make that decision. Secondly, if you look at the statistical incidents, you’re not talking about that big a number. So what I’m saying is, it ultimately gets down to a choice that that family or that mother has to make. Not me as president. Not some politician. Not a bureaucrat. It gets down to that family. And whatever they decide, they decide. I shouldn’t try to tell them what decision to make for such a sensitive decision.

Rick Perry is smiling today.

Kevin Drum points us to this Washington Monthly article that unearths a 1994 clip of Herman Cain questioning President Bill Clinton on the employer mandate proposal in the President's health care proposal. Drum focuses on Cain's SOP of making stuff up and Clinton's political skills:

I was actually struck by Cain's embrace of the concept of predatory pricing, an antitrust concept much derided by conservatives. Cain, then the CEO of Godfather's Pizza, said:

It's time for Survivor, Harry's Law and America's Next Top Model.

Via TMZ, here's Lindsay Lohan's glowing Probation Report. What does the Judge care if she does her service at The Red Cross instead of the program she specified? Time to let up on Lindsay. I doubt she'll go back to jail in November, but the press is already having a field day. Worst headline: "Pack Your Prison Panties, Lindsay, You’re Going Back to the Big House." (By a men's site that claims to love and respect women.)

Here's an open thread, all topics welcome.

Secure Communities by the Numbers: An Analysis of Demographics and Due Process, a new report the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy of the University of California-Berkley, analyzes data from ICE on the Secure Communities program, received through a FOIA lawsuit and finds numerous problems. Among them:

Approximately 3,600 United States citizens have been arrested by ICE through the Secure
Communities program.

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Earlier, it was reported that the DEA informant in the Viktor Bout case was paid $1.5 million. Scratch that, it was $8 million and rising. Former Guatemalan soldier and drug dealer turned DEA informant, Carlos Sagastume, testified yesterday in the trial of accused arms dealer Viktor Bout.

Sagastume testified his supplier in Guatemala got busted and Mexican police took him to Mexico, where he was freed after paying a $60,000 "ransom." He then contacted the U.S. embassy offering to be an informant for the DEA. The DEA brought him to the U.S. in 1998 and he's been working as a paid informant for them ever since. He's made over 150 cases and says it's the best paying employment he's ever had.

He testified that he has been paid $1.6 million by the DEA and $7.5 million by the State Department. He said he raked in $250,000 from the Bout case alone, and hopes to earn more money from the case.

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Kevin Drum continues to project his fear of Rick Santelli on to the rest of us:

[T]he Republican responses are a grim reminder of just how bad the politics of housing are. Voters may say they hate bailing out the banks — and they do! — but they hate bailing out the profligate next-door neighbors even worse. No politician in America seriously wants to risk voter wrath by doing that.

Drum has trotted out this nonsense consistently since Santelli called for "a thousand tea parties." He's been consistently wrong on this throughout. Obama and Dems gain no votes from the Tea Party - who are merely the same right wing Republicans that we all know. This is the type of Third Way/DLC thinking we thought had already been thoroughly discredited. Drum's thoughts lead to the path of Dem defeat - half baked policies like HAMP.

Speaking for me only