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Lawyer Arrested for Wearing Peace T-Shirt in Mall

Bump: We wrote this at 9:20 Tuesday night, but are bumping it to today since so many of you have written us about it and news keeps developing.

Update Here are the e-mail addresses for the City Managers of Guilderland, NY (the town where the mall is). Tell them what you think.

runionk@townofguilderland.org
guild200@nycap.rr.com

(email addresses courtesy of Mike in the comments section)

Update: Instapundit has lots more, including why he doesn't think there's a first amendment violation here--and tips on how to contact the mall tand stores in it o express your opinions about this.

If we didn't read it on CNN's website, we wouldn't believe it. A lawyer was arrested late Monday and charged with trespassing at a public mall in the state of New York after refusing to take off a T-shirt advocating peace that he had just purchased at the mall.
According to the criminal complaint filed Monday, Stephen Downs was wearing a T-shirt bearing the words "Give Peace A Chance" that he had just purchased from a vendor inside the Crossgates Mall in Guilderland, New York, near Albany.

"I was in the food court with my son when I was confronted by two security guards and ordered to either take off the T-shirt or leave the mall," said Downs.

When Downs refused the security officers' orders, police from the town of Guilderland were called and he was arrested and taken away in handcuffs, charged with trespassing "in that he knowingly enter(ed) or remain(ed) unlawfully upon premises," the complaint read.

Downs said police tried to convince him he was wrong in his actions by refusing to remove the T-shirt because the mall "was like a private house and that I was acting poorly.

"I told them the analogy was not good and I was then hauled off to night court where I was arraigned after pleading not guilty and released on my own recognizance," Downs told Reuters in a telephone interview.
Kevin at Getting In the Game has more.

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ACLU Press Release on Patriot Act II and CAPS II

An ACLU press release today responds to Ashcroft's Senate testimony. The ACLU opposes recent Government surveillance bills for the right reason: they strip citizens of civil liberties with no assurance they will make us any safer.

The two programs included in today's testimony were the Patriot Act II and CappsII. Caps II establishes a blacklist for airline passengers.

The ACLU has a new ad program targeting these bills and others that push for expanded surveillance powers.

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Ashcroft Considering Limiting Women's Asylum Claims

Just when we thought Attorney General Ashcroft couldn't get any further out there with his radical right policies limiting individual rights, he gets even worse. Now he's about to go after abused women immigrants. He is considering reversing regulations that allow abused women to obtain asylum in the U.S.
Ashcroft is also considering new gender-persecution regulations for asylum-seekers instead of a proposed set that was left hanging in the final days of the Clinton administration.

The law allows asylum only for foreigners who can show they face persecution in their home countries because of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. Before leaving office, Reno vacated the board's decision [in a case involving a Guatamalan woman, Rodi Alvarado, described below] and proposed regulations that would allow battered women to be granted asylum as members of a social group if they can show government complicity in their suffering. President Bush suspended this and all other pending regulations upon taking office.

The Lawyers Committee for Human Rights and other immigrant and women's groups say they fear Ashcroft intends to issue new regulations that would severely restrict women fleeing gender-based persecution, such as honor killings and sexual slavery as well as domestic violence, from obtaining asylum. In a letter to Ashcroft on Thursday, 48 House Democrats and one independent urged him to abandon any such plans.
The regulations that Reno proposed were the result of the case of a Guatamalan woman, Rodi Alvarado, who fled to the U.S. "after her husband repeatedly raped her, whipped her with electrical cords, broke windows and mirrors with her head, and vowed to kill her if she tried to leave him."
An immigration judge granted her asylum in 1996, finding that the 10 years of abuse Alvarado suffered and the persistent failure of Guatemalan authorities to protect her entitled her to relief. The Immigration and Naturalization Service appealed and the Justice Department's Board of Immigration Appeals reversed that decision in 1999. The board did not question Alvarado's credibility, but said in a 10-to-5 ruling that neither the beatings nor her opinions about them qualified her for asylum.
After Reno's regulations were proposed, Alvarado's case went back to the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) for reconsideration--with instructions to wait until the regulations were acted upon. But the regulations weren't acted upon, and Alvarado's case has been hung up in legal limbo-land--until now. It seems Ashcroft has decided to personally review the case and reconsider her grant of asylum. And it seems he doesn't intend to sign off on Reno's regulations--they would have to be approved by both Ashcroft and Tom Ridge of Homeland Security to become actual "rules"--instead he is considering his own gender-persecution regulations, which will likely result in Ms. Alvarado being forced to return to Guatamala.

But, there's more. As we reported in January, Ashcroft has decided to halve the number of appointees on the Board of Immigration Appeals, from 23 to 11. The Washington Post article today states that all five BIA members Ashcroft has dropped in accord with his planned reduction are Clinton administration appointees and three were dissenters in the Alvarado case.

The Board of Immigration Appeals hears the cases of foreigners who contend they face torture, death or other "travails" if they are returned to their home country. The 23 member board reviews the cases of 220 immigration judges around the country. In January, there was a backlog of 56,000 cases, and Ashcroft decreed the board must get current by March 25.

The board handles 30,000 - 40,000 cases a year. It is the last resort for most immigrants facing deportation, as only a few thousand have been able to appeal to the federal courts. In January, there was strong criticism of the board because in attempting to reduce its backlog as Ashcroft directed, it was deciding cases literally within minutes. As T. Alexander Aleinikoff, a law professor at Georgetown University and former Immigration and Naturalization Service general counsel said "We are already seeing results: Many, many cases are decided at a speed that makes it impossible to believe they got the scrutiny a person who faces removal from the United States deserves." (Jan. 5, L.A. Times, no longer on line).

Ashcroft has become a one-man steamroller, crushing constitutional and human rights that have been the hallmark of this country for 200 years. He, Bush and Rumsfeld, have embarked on a non-stop drive to instill the fear of terrorism in the heart of every American. They have formed a virtual "axis of aggrandizement" (our phrase) that if allowed to proceed unchecked, will be impossible to reverse within our lifetimes. Their cabal extends from insisting Congress enact laws like the Patriot Act, to executive branch decisions like declaring U.S. citizens to be enemy combatants and denying them due process, to packing the federal judiciary with right wing extremists and judicial activists.

Someone needs to stop this train.

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Bush and the Silence of Free Speech

From Politics in the Zeros:
Bush announces "Constitution update" committee

"The President today announced the formation of a special task force to determine how the Constitution could be "streamlined and modernized" to protect citizens from "the increasing possibility of terrorism".

Sure to come under scrutiny are troublesome areas dealing with freedom of speech and assembly; which, according to a advisor close to Mr. Bush, are "sloppily written, too broad in scope, handcuff the police, and allow the evildoers to escape."

While some may deem this to be controversial, the advisor continued; "we also need to seriously examine whether trials are always neccessary once a person has been arrested, especially if we claim national security interests and do not divulge why they were arrested or where we are holding them."
Are you sure that was satire? This op-ed by Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark talks about Bush's push to silence free speech
During the barely two years of his presidency, George W. Bush has revealed an unprecedented, uncompromising obsession for war that threatens peace and economic stability around the world. ....

President Bush has authorized and approved assassinations, summary executions and murders — and boasted of them, in his State of the Union message in January. "All told, more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries, and many others have met a different fate ... let's put it this way, they are no longer a problem for the United States and our friends and allies."

He has authorized and condoned bribery, coercion and retaliation to obtain his war ends.

Fundamental human rights and civil liberties protected by international law and the U.S. Constitution have been violated within the United States against both citizens and aliens and abroad by illegal arrests, secret detentions, false criminal charges, and interference with rights to assemble, protest and speak.

He has drastically undermined U.N. authority, threatening it with irrelevancy, coercing it to follow his command and acting independently and in defiance of the U.N. Charter.
Ramsey Clark met with Saddam Hussein last week. He notes that the Bush Administration criticized Dan Rather's recent interview with Saddam. And he asks,
How are the people of the world to accept these threats? Are they terrorism as prelude to genocide?

President Saddam Hussein told Dan Rather, "We will die in Iraq."

If death is by U.S. violence, what will come after?

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Indiana Airplane Monitoring Residents

The FBI has acknowleged using a Cessna airplane flying over Indiana to monitor residents and businesses it believes might have a terrorist connection.
An airplane that raised questions in this college town is being used by the FBI to monitor people who might have terrorist connections, agency officials acknowledged.

The FBI denied knowledge of the plane earlier this week after aviation officials disclosed that the aircraft was conducting law enforcement surveillance....

Agent Thomas V. Fuentes said the FBI issued the denial because a reporter asked if the airplane is doing electronic surveillance, which it is not. Fuentes and agent James H. Davis said the FBI is not aware of any threat to Bloomington or the state, but is watching many foreign nationals.

Besides individuals, they said, the aircraft is monitoring vehicles and businesses particularly those open late at night from which faxes or e-mails can be sent.

Residents in this city of 69,000 have seen the white, single-engine Cessna 182 at least since Feb. 19 making passes overhead about noon, in the late evening and after midnight.
Just think, we're not even at war yet. We shudder to think what's in store for non-citizens (make that all of us ) once it begins.

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California Settles Racial Profiling Lawsuit

California has settled a long-standing racial profiling lawsuit.
The California Highway Patrol has agreed that its officers will no longer pull over drivers and ask to search their vehicles merely on a hunch they might be carrying drugs or some other contraband, it was announced Thursday.
The agreement is part of the settlement in the federal lawsuit that the ACLU brought against the state over its policy of stopping of minority motorists without just cause--a practice referred to as "DWB" or "driving while black." The settlement is particularly significant because it also contains an agreement by the California Highway Patrol to cease asking for consent to search cars and to stop using minor traffic offenses as a pretext to search for drugs. California is the first state to agree to stop these practices.
The ACLU contended in its lawsuit that giving officers the discretion to seek consent when they did not have probable cause to search resulted in a disproportionate number of motorists of color being subjected to extensive searches, and was a critical component of racial profiling," the ACLU said in a statement. Under the terms of the settlement, the CHP admitted no wrongdoing and agreed only to pay $875,000 in legal fees.
While the CHP maintains the lawsuit failed to establish "a pattern or practice of racial profiling", the ACLU says that through the lawsuit it was able to determine that
intended or not, Latinos were three times as likely to be searched by CHP officers than whites in the agency's Central and Coastal Divisions; African-Americans were approximately twice as likely to be searched in those divisions.

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Flex Your Rights!

What a great resource! Check out Flex Your Rights aimed at helping you know and protect your rights during police encounters. We really like the graphic too.
[link via Dan Dodson, Media Affairs Director for NACDL]

Mission Statement: "Flex Your Rights is a nonprofit, educational organization working to train individuals to protect their civil liberties during police encounters. To do this we use creative and interactive teaching methods to provide a hands-on understanding of how the protections afforded by the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution can apply to real-life police encounters. "

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ACLU Ads Target Ashcroft

If you can get a paper copy of Tuesday's Washington Post or New York Times, you will see full page ads by the ACLU targeting Attorney General John Ashcroft's insatiable demand for increased surveillance and intelligence gathering powers.
"This new advertisement highlights the serious concerns shared by an unlikely alliance that includes groups and individuals as ideologically disparate as the ACLU and well-known conservative Bob Barr." The ad describes examples of the slew of new intelligence gathering and law enforcement powers either asserted unilaterally by the Administration or granted to the President by Congress since September 11, 2001. It also warns against the proposed Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, the Department of Justice's follow-up wish list of expanded powers not granted in the original USA PATRIOT Act.
If you don't have access to the paper, you can view the ad here.

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Random Airport Car Inspections Begin

Sorry, but we think random stops and searches of vehicles en route to the airport is overkill, and we have substantial doubts about its efficacy, fairness and constitutionality. Today, it's Atlanta and Denver announcing the institution of the stops:
"Starting Monday, police will randomly pull over cars heading to the Denver International Airport terminal for inspection. Sally Convington says the inspections, asked for by the Transportation Security Administration, shouldn't cause any unusual delays for most travelers. Anyone going to levels four, five, or six will be subject to the random inspections. Since the nation moved to Orange alert status, any car parked in the parking garage or lot is subject to a search by authorities."
The policy is the result of an Order issued by the Transportation Security Administration, the federal agency in charge of airport safety. It has instructed local police to begin looking through cars and trucks approaching airport terminals for weapons or explosives.

We think they are going too far. The reference to Denver's "levels four, five or six" are to the passenger pickup, passenger drop off (ticketing) and baggage claim levels. So if we go to drop someone off, they now can pull us over and search our car, without an individualized reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing. We don't think so.

Roadblocks are legal ways state and federal law enforcement protect U.S. borders and assure highway safety. But they are only allowed under the law for specific reasons, such as to search for illegal aliens and to check for sobriety - not to ferret out crime.

Officials are being close-mouthed about details of the policy, which has understandably drawn the ire of civil libertarians.
''They said to give us any details at all, even the broadest parameters of this program, would jeopardize security,'' said Barry Steinhardt, director of the American Civil Liberty Union's Technology and Liberty Program, ''as if Osama bin Laden was sitting in a cave somewhere in Pakistan worrying about whether or not (U.S. officials) are advising the airport authorities to adhere to the constitution.''
The policy is already in effect in San Antonio, Philadelphia, San Jose, Oakland, San Francisco and elsewhere. Not in Seattle though--authorities there have refused to go along with the privacy invading plan:
In Washington, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport officials have rejected the inspections, saying the state constitution prohibits police searches that aren't based on suspicious behavior. ''On a public roadway in the state of Washington, a police officer needs something 'articulably suspicious' to search a car,'' said Sea-Tac spokesman Bob Parker. ''We're trying to find a way to all get to the same place, which is as safe an airport as we can make it. If (federal officials) mandate this and show us a way that it's legal under our state constitution, then we're good to go.''
At least one law professor thinks the program will pass court muster:
Constitutional scholars agree that high courts have historically granted law enforcement officials the authority to take action to protect public safety in populated settings like an airport terminal. ''I'm confident that the courts will say the necessity of avoiding bombs detonating at airports would justify this kind of search,'' said Santa Clara University law professor Gerald Uelmen. ''In this era of concern for terrorism, I'm confident the courts would strike the balance in permitting these kinds of intrusions based on public safety and necessity.''
Where is the showing that public safety requires this action--or that it will make us any safer? What are the statistics on people dropping explosives off at the airport? We haven't read of many--if any. This is definitely pushing the envelope, and we have strong doubts the policy will be executed in a truly non-discriminatory manner.

So what should you do if you see flashing lights behind you en route to the airport? Well, we don't give legal advice here, but we'll tell you what we intend to do if they pull us over. We will stop as we approach the roadblock, or pull over if reqested. We will comply with a demand to show our driver's license or proof of citizenship. We will not answer questions about where we are traveling or why we are going to the airport. We will refuse to consent to a search of our car. If they still want to search it, it will be without our approval. We think the police do not have the right to search our car unless, while we are stopped, unless specific facts develop that lead them to believe criminal activity is afoot. If we feel our right to privacy was violated, we will write a letter to the head of the local police department outlining the name of the officer, his badge number and our belief that he requested or performed an illegal search.

To avoid making a bad situation worse, we will make our refusal to waive our rights or consent to a search very clear. Then we will be cooperative and not stand in their way, even if we think they are violating the law or our rights. If we get charged with a crime based upon what they find in our car, our lawyer will challenge their actions in court.

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Who's Minding the Civil Rights Store?

Louis Fisher, author of "American Constitutional Law" (5th edition, 2003), writes in an op-ed in today's Los Angeles Times, Who's Minding the Courts on Rights?
Times of war and emergency jeopardize civil liberties. Ironically, it is precisely at such moments, when we most need independent judges to check executive abuse, that judicial safeguards are weakest. Protections must therefore come from outside the courts. That has been the pattern in the past, and it appears, thus far, to be the record after the Sept. 11 terror attacks on New York and the Pentagon. Whatever moxie exists in the courts is likely to come from district judges or circuit courts, which are then typically reversed on appeal.
Fisher reviews the cases of Hamdi, Padilla, John Walker Lindh and others, and reminds us, protecting our civil rights ultimately is the responsibility of the citizenry...and the press.
Writing for the New York University Law Review in 1962, Earl Warren, then-chief justice of the United States, warned that courts are unreliable in time of war or emergency, and that "other agencies of government must bear the primary responsibility for determining whether specific actions they are taking are consonant with our Constitution." In a democracy, "it is still the Legislature and the elected executive who have the primary responsibility for fashioning and executing policy consistent with the Constitution." Moreover, "the day-to-day job of upholding the Constitution really lies elsewhere. It rests, realistically, on the shoulders of every citizen," Warren said.
Or in the words of Sixth Circuit Judge Damon Keith in the case holding deportation proceedings must be open to the public,
"In our democracy, based on checks and balances, neither the Bill of Rights nor the judiciary can second-guess government's choices. The only safeguard on this extraordinary governmental power is the public, deputizing the press as the guardian of their liberty."
Judge Damon's warning in that case, you may recall, was "Democracies die behind closed doors." Fisher has a new book out this spring, "Nazi Saboteurs on Trial: A Military Tribunal and American Law". We hope he puts to rest the Government's contention that In Re Quirin serves as precedent for the current round of detentions without counsel and access to the courts.

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Libraries and the Patriot Act

Many people, including lawyers, are not aware of the changes the Patriot Act (2001 edition) made in increasing the Government's power to access business records--including those of readers at the public library.
What most lawyers and members of the public may not realize -- but what librarians have to live with every day -- is that § 215 of the Patriot Act actually incorporates and extends the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. The act now allows the FBI to make searches of libraries for readers' records. It further states, "No person shall disclose to any other person ... that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has sought or obtained tangible things under this section."

While FISA, with its secret intelligence courts, previously gave the FBI the power to execute search-and-gag orders, it was always within the context of foreign counterintelligence, and thus rarely used. "The gag provision was understandable and manageable because it was fairly narrowly applied," Barber says.

The Patriot Act extends FISA's powers to any criminal activity, and has made New Jersey librarians some of the most cautious people in the country."
Here is Section 215 of the Patriot Act:

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Dearborn Stifles Dissent

Oliver Willis lets us know the repressive fifties are back--at least in Dearborn, Michigan, where the schools are stifling dissent.

We give high marks to the student who didn't bow to authority and chose to go home rather than change his shirt.

From Kevin, over at Getting In the Game: "It was even for an assignment! That principal should be demoted, this is ridiculous, and unhealthy for the educational environment when a student is told to go home because he was into his assignment enough to make a statement about it?"

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