We got an e-mail last night asking us to read a message forum where some folks have been posting about being unfairly treated after being stopped at a roablock by state and federal law enforcement in Arizona . The forum directed us to the Roadblock Registry, a site "dedicated to the subject (and elimination) of roadblocks on public streets, roads and highways", sponsored by the National Motorists Association, "North America's most outspoken defender of drivers' rights." We like the site and are spreading the word about it.

The group's position on roadblocks is straight-forward.

"We oppose the use of roadblocks, period. The only justification for stopping citizens under a roadblock scenario is to warn them of an unseen peril that could cause injury or death to an unsuspecting motorist. So-called "sobriety check points," or seat belt checks, or the myriad of other excuses the government concocts to harass and intimidate its citizens through the use of roadblocks are, in our opinion unconstitutional and in direct contradiction to any honest definition of freedom."

Here is their mission statement:

"The goal of this web site is to permanently eliminate the use of roadblocks, no matter their purpose or sponsorship. Initially we will provide information on how to avoid roadblocks, by listing their locations (with your assistance). We will also develop a portfolio of information and court cases that will educate our visitors on their rights and the limitations the courts have placed on roadblock operators. Finally, through the National Motorists Association and the National Motorists Association Foundation we will promote legislation, support litigation, and sponsor publicity all aimed at eliminating the use of roadblocks for public policy and political agendas."

The site has a state-by-state listing of known and announced roadblocks, and invites readers to contribute their knowledge of others.

It also tells readers what their rights are when stopped for a roadblock. We aren't vouching for the accuracy of the information, and we don't give legal advice to the general public, but if you're interested in the topic, especially as roadblocks will be in high gear through New Years, you might take a look .

As to the unfortunate person who was stopped at the roadblock in Arizona, you can read his story here.

The Rocky Mountain News rocks today. First is an editorial supporting the revival of presidential pardons. Yesterday the News came out for free speech in the Virginia cross-burning case: "Once the government gets into the business of suppressing odious messages, where does it stop?"

The Boulder Daily Camera is on top of it as well, check out Civil Extremists: If Dissent is a Crime, Just Lock Us Up.

Press Release of the Wisconsin Green Party received from Pete Karas of the Progressive Racine Blog:

The Wisconsin Green Party today joined the Wisconsin American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in calling for the dismissal of all citations issued by the City of Racine at the November 2, 2002 Uptown Theatre Group's Haunted House Party. In addition, the Wisconsin Green Party also supports the local Green Party of Kenosha and Racine in their call for an independent investigation into the event.

According to media reports, the Racine police were notified by the United States Customs Office that the fundraiser, intended to raise funds to restore the historic Uptown Theater, was to be a "rave party", defined as a party known for a mix of electronic music and recreational drugs, including Ecstasy. Purportedly acting on this tip, the Racine police raided and shut down the fundraiser, arresting three people on drug charges.

The police also issued 441 attendees of the annual fundraiser citations for "being patrons or keepers of a disorderly house." Among the hundreds in attendance, only three were found to be in possession of illegal drugs. Each citation carries a penalty of $968. The City of Racine has since offered to reduce these fines to $100 and changed the charge to 'Disorderly Conduct'. A handful of the accused have accepted this offer; however, the vast majority of those ticketed have pleaded not guilty and demanded a jury trial. The Wisconsin ACLU has agreed to provide legal representation for all involved.

Jessica Thill, of the Wisconsin Green Party, today announced, "Reducing the fines and asking the accused to plead guilty to a lesser 'crime' ignores the fact that the Racine Police Department has violated the First Amendment rights of more than 400 citizens. The right to peaceably assemble is guaranteed to all of us, whether we listen to electronic music or conservative talk radio."

Thill then noted that a similar police action in Houston, Texas this August pompted public outcry that has since resulted in several police officer suspensions, two criminal indictments, and millions of dollars of lawsuits against the city of Houston.

"Simply put: the City of Racine needs to admit that they were in the wrong, and immediately dismiss these citations," said Pete Karas, a Green Party Member and Aldermanic candidate for Racine's ninth district. "In addition to the obvious civil rights violations, the cost to the taxpayers of almost 400 jury trials and the potential costs of civil lawsuits, if pursued, would be exorbitant. Instead of repeating the mistakes made in Houston earlier this year, we could be spending that money on legitimate efforts to sincerely address civil rights violations and drug abuse in our community."

The Wisconsin Green Party is also urging the City of Racine to appoint an independent special counsel to investigate the actions of the Racine Police Department and other City Officials in the handling of this event. This would hopefully help to prevent further violations in the future.

Here is the statement of the Green Party of Kenosha/Racine.

Via Skippy, who's been on a John Aschroft tear recently, a link to Lott's a Racist but Ashcroft's Okay? by John Aravosis. Among the criticisms of Ashcroft--his relations with Bob Jones University, Council of Conservative Citizens, Pat Robertson, Reggie White, Southern Partisan Magazine and Gun Owners of America.

We do our own tear of Ashcroft almost weekly--our latest, a long one, is here.

A report is due out shortly about a proposal by the Bush Administration for a system to monitor internet use.

"Stewart Baker, a Washington lawyer who represents some of the nation's largest Internet providers, said, "Internet service providers are concerned about the privacy implications of this as well as liability," since providing access to live feeds of network activity could be interpreted as a wiretap or as the "pen register" and "trap and trace" systems used on phones without a judicial order. Mr. Baker said the issue would need to be resolved before the proposal could move forward."

This is a giant monitoring system that Bush is proposing.

Internet service providers argue that its data-monitoring functions could be used to track the activities of individuals using the network.

An official with a major data services company who has been briefed on several aspects of the government's plans said it was hard to see how such capabilities could be provided to government without the potential for real-time monitoring, even of individuals.

"Part of monitoring the Internet and doing real-time analysis is to be able to track incidents while they are occurring," the official said.

The official compared the system to Carnivore, the Internet wiretap system used by the F.B.I., saying: "Am I analogizing this to Carnivore? Absolutely. But in fact, it's 10 times worse. Carnivore was working on much smaller feeds and could not scale. This is looking at the whole Internet."

The proposal is part of a final version of a report, "The National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace," set for release early next year.

Atrios and Ampersand (Alas A Blog) get it exactly right on the recent mass arrests of middleastern men in California --arrests that occurred when the men appeared as required to register in accordance with a new government regulation.

From Atrios:

"I know this is hard for many people to understand, but most violations of immigration law are actually no different than violations of traffic law. I don't mean violations of the "sneaking over the border" type, I'm talking about violations of the "line 17 on Form XV3-342-234-vv3-1 was incorrectly filled out" type or of the "the INS didn't send me my goddamn paperwork AGAIN" type. If the government wants to treat those things seriously, they have to first start doing their part.

Look, I've traveled and worked in other countries. And, when I did so at various times I was probably in violation of the equivalent types of things. Frankly, it's almost impossible to not be if some bureaucrat decides you are. I'm glad those governments didn't decide to arrest me."

Ampersand has a great wrap-up of what the other blogs are saying on this, inlcuding Long Story, Short Pier and E-Riposte.

Our prior post is here. We also reported on the origins of Ashcroft's foreigner registration program here.

Let's not overlook the surveillance these middle-eastern men are under. We want to prevent another terrorist attack as much as the next person, but round-the-clock surveillance without accountability or reporting on anything but the number of persons surveilled? Since it's being conducted under secret FISA court orders, there's no requirement the Government demonstrate the surveillance has been effective. P.S. no wonder the economy is in the tanks, can you imagine what this round-the-clock surveillance costs?

Professor Robert Slayton has a must-read op-ed piece in the Washington Post on what it meant when integration was a crime. The details of the laws that states enacted and the places they were implemented, are just shameful.

"Oklahoma required separate phone booths for white and black patrons. North Carolina and Florida not only segregated schoolchildren but insisted that their schoolbooks be segregated -- in Florida they even had to be stored in separate warehouses -- so that no white boys or girls could ever be contaminated by even the dream of racial contact. States enforced segregation in prisons and in homes for orphans, the deaf, the poor and -- my favorite -- the blind. People who could not even see color had to be separated by race."

"It was always clear, as well, that this was not just about physical separation but about keeping one group constantly ostracized, always humiliated. The Clarion-Ledger, Mississippi's leading paper, editorialized that, "If every negro" in the state "was a graduate of Harvard and had been elected class orator, he would not be as well fitted to exercise the rights of suffrage as the Anglo-Saxon farm laborer." In one small Delta community, the local postmaster made sure, before he boxed any mail for black residents, to mark out one word -- Mr., Miss or Mrs. -- so that no African American would ever be addressed by a title."

There's a lot more to the article, and Prof. Slayton's conclusion succinctly says it all:

"Running for president on a ticket of blind, absolute segregation was a nasty business in 1948; commenting favorably on that episode in 2002 should be unthinkable."

The ACLU has confirmed i t will represent everyone arrested in the Racine, Wisconsin raid in which hundreds were issued 'disorderly' house citations at the November 2nd Uptown Theatre fundraising party which featured techno music. The ACLU today issued a press release urging the city of Racine to drop the charges.

"Electronic music concerts provide a critical arena for artistic expression for the hired performers and audience members. The First Amendment stands as a clear barrier to any governmental effort to silence musical artists and to prevent their audience from participating in expressive association with them", stated Attorney Micabil Diaz, Legal Director for the ACLU of Wisconsin."

"We urge that the Racine City Attorney, to save the city the time and expense in prosecuting tickets that serve no purpose in any legitimate effort to curb drug abuse - tickets that because they were issued unconstitutionally - may even be counter productive", added Chris Ahmuty, Executive Director of the ACLU of Wisconsin."

Also posted is the ACLU's letter to the City of Racine (scroll down).

Pete Karas' Progressive Racine blog is an excellent source of updates on the raid. Information is also available at The Haunted Theatre.

Some of our prior posts on the Racine Raids are here and here. Instapundit has been all over the story as well-- here is one of his more recent posts that contains links to his earlier ones.

Today is the deadline in Attorney General John Ashcroft's controversial immigrant fingerprinting and tracking program. The American Civil Liberties Union "has called on the Justice Department to rethink the plan - which the ACLU says is full of holes - and advised immigrants to seek counsel before registering."

The program requires many citizens of five predominantly Arab or Muslim countries - Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Syria - to be fingerprinted at designated Immigration and Naturalization Service offices or face deportation.

"By January 10, 2003, citizens of 13 additional countries - Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Eritrea, Lebanon, Morocco, North Korea, Oman, Qatar, Somalia, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen - must also submit to registration. "

"Failure to register could lead to arrest and deportation of otherwise lawful visitors, according to the INS. Adding to the anxiety, some Arab and Muslim visitors with pending immigration petitions were detained when they came in to be fingerprinted."

"By all accounts, the INS’s problems are actually stemming from a surplus of information, not insufficient investigatory powers, the ACLU said. For instance, the INS failed to process more than 200,000 change of address forms, which are piling up in an abandoned limestone mine outside Kansas City, MO that doubles as the largest underground records facility in the world, putting hundreds of thousands at risk of wrongful arrest and deportation."

"This program appears to be a thinly veiled effort to trigger massive and discriminatory deportations of certain immigrants whose only mistake will be to fail to register because they are confused and afraid, not because they have violated any existing immigration law or pose any threat to the United States," said Lucas Guttentag, Director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project."

Justice Without Borders is one of a series of articles in the Los Angeles Times about Palestinians and Israelis who defy divisions.

Today's article is about the emergence of a group of Israeli attorneys specializing in human rights. Many of their clients are Palestinians, and they rarely win in court.

"For three decades, Leah Tzemel, an Israeli Jew, has been representing Palestinians in Israeli courts. The people she defends have ranged from terror suspects to refugees to the hapless and sometimes unwitting families of murdering militants."

"Her work and her extreme-left politics make Tzemel one of the most despised women in Israel. She has been accused of treason, physically attacked, and called a "Palestinian-loving whore."

"Despite it all, she continues to fight what is essentially a losing battle, and, in her view, defends the fundamental rights of even those her nation considers the enemy. Tzemel, 57, was the pioneer. Today, an entire cadre of Israeli attorneys has emerged to specialize in human rights and represent Palestinians. Human rights work has gained a modicum of prestige and respect, they say."

"I used to be the 'lawyer of Satan.' Now I'm a 'human rights defender,' " Tzemel said. She didn't change, she says, Israel did....

"Despite their strong beliefs, Tzemel, Sfard and other like-minded attorneys sometimes wonder whether they are doing more harm than good. Are they accomplices of a system that grants the appearance of justice without truly making it available? Are they allowing Israeli society to pay lip service to respect for human rights?"

"I love this place, and I still feel I make a difference, a very small one," Tzemel said. But at some point, she said, the mere act of going to court will be misleading and futile, and create a false sense of fair play. At that point, I will not do this anymore," she said.

There's lots more to the story, and it's quite interesting. (Note, the LA Times requires free registration).

Here's a synopsis of why civil libertarians are uneasy:

The U.S.A. Patriot Act has conferred huge concentrations of power on the executive branch.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act has made it easier for the federal government to access personal and business records, and relaxed authorization of Internet surveillance and wiretaps.

Hundreds of deportation hearings have been held in secret by the Immigration and Naturalization Service -- without a jury and without access by the defendants to legal counsel.

Attorney General John Ashcroft has given the Justice Department authority to monitor talks between detainees and their lawyers, without a court order -- despite constitutional guarantees of an unimpeded right to counsel.

Then there is the Terrorism Information and Prevention System (TIPS) that would have created about 11 million informants -- such as mail carriers, utility employees and others with unique access to private homes. Their mission was to help the Justice Department build yet another database containing names of persons not charged with any wrong doing.

And now, there is Poindexter and his Total Information Awareness Program which would create a huge database of our personal and financial records.

No wonder it's 1 AM and we're still up.

Good reading Saturday:

The Selective Conscience by New York Times op-ed columnist Bill Keller.

"Why, aside from their roots in the Vietnam antiwar movement, are human rights activists not more open to the idea that America can use its unmatched muscle for good? In large part because Republican administrations — in truth, Democratic ones as well — have paid human rights little more than lip service, and little even of that."

"The Bush administration's enthusiasm for human rights would be more believable if it were less selectively applied...."

"Finally, promoting freedom abroad will ring a little false as long as the administration is so often, so instinctively, scornful of freedom at home. The automatic recourse to preventive lockup, the lack of confidence in the criminal justice system, the casual regard for privacy and presumption of innocence, the obsessive secrecy — you don't have to be a libertarian to wonder how dearly this administration cherishes the values it promises to export."

The Death of Operation Tips by Nat Hentoff, Village Voice

Reflecting on how little media coverage there was of the provision in the Homeland Security Act that killed Operation Tips.

"Section 880. Prohibition of the Terrorism Information and Prevention System—Any and all activities of the Federal Government to implement the proposed component program of the Citizen Corps known as Operation TIPS (Terrorism Information and Prevention System) are hereby prohibited." (Emphasis added.)

Apparently, Dick Armey was successful in having Tips removed from the House version of the Homeland Security Bill, but Sen. Joseph Leiberman refused Sen. Patrick Leahy's request to remove it from the Senate version. After the bill was passed, Leahy issued this statement, which Hentoff says was ignored by the media:

"I am pleased the bill, in section 880, forbids the creation of Operation TIPS." Leahy noted that originally, the Justice Department had described the operation as "giving millions of American truckers, letter carriers, train conductors, ship captains, utility employees, and others a formal way to report suspicious . . . activity." Or, as the department's Web site put it, "potentially terrorist-related activity."

"If it hadn't been for Dick Armey, Operation TIPS would be well under way. Before the Senate passed the House version of the Homeland Security Bill, I called John Ashcroft's office and asked when the attorney general would honor Armey's principled removal of Operation TIPS from the House bill. I was told cheerily by an Ashcroft spokeswoman that "Operation TIPS is still a law, and we're going right ahead with it."

"Recently, a source inside the Justice Department told me that—contrary to what I originally wrote in this column—Operation TIPS not only wasn't Ashcroft's idea, but he was uncomfortable with the project. Being a team player, he never criticized this national-spying-corps plan publicly."

Hentoff then goes on to praise Ashcroft's prior history as a privacy protector, something we reported on here, although to us, it did not indicate that Ashcroft used to be a civil libertarian so much as he had done a politically expedient flip-flop.

In any event, Hentoff is now justifiably focused on Poindexter and the Total Information Awareness Program.

"Meanwhile, as described by Robert O'Harrow Jr. in the November 12 Washington Post, the emblem in Admiral Poindexter's Total Information Awareness office is a variation on the great seal of the United States: "An eye looms over a pyramid and appears to scan the world. The motto reads: Scientia Est Potentia, or 'knowledge is power.' "