New York is abandoning its longtime practice of putting the mentally ill in lockups

"Officials at state psychiatric hospitals in New York ordered social workers this week to stop sending discharged patients to locked units in private nursing homes. The move ends a six-year-old practice that was supposed to help scale back the state's costly psychiatric system but has raised civil rights concerns."

Don't credit Governor Pataki though. He has been unresponsive. The change comes about as a result of the Department of Justice, which began a review of the lockup facilities on October 6, after reading a report in the New York Times. The goal of the review was to "determine whether conditions violate federal laws that protect the rights of people who are institutionalized or have disabilities."

Where is Maher Arar? Canada doesn't know what happened to its citizen after the U.S. deported him to Syria, a country he hasn't lived in since he was a teenager.

"It has been 21 days since Monia Mazigh last spoke with her husband. She has just one question for the people responsible for deporting the Ottawa man to Syria without the federal government or his family being notified. Where is Maher Arar, and what has happened to him?"

"Mr. Arar, 32, was deported to Syria on Oct. 7 or Oct. 8 from Kennedy Airport in New York during a stopover on his way home to Montreal, officials at the Department of Foreign Affairs revealed yesterday. The Canadian government was not contacted about Mr. Arar's case until after he had been deported, on Oct. 10."

"Mr. Arar, who holds dual Syrian-Canadian citizenship, has not set foot on Syrian soil in 16 years. The thought that her husband is back in the country he chose to leave pains Ms. Mazigh. "Just the idea is a torture for him," she said. "Syria is not a democratic country. Anything can happen there. "The proof: I don't know where he is and I have no contact with him."

"Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham admitted yesterday that Canada has no idea where Mr. Arar is being held. And in a statement yesterday, Syrian Ambassador Ahmad Arnous denied any knowledge of Mr. Arar's whereabouts. "We have no information regarding Mr. Arar, only what we know from the Canadian press," said Mr. Arnous. "It's a matter between the Canadian government and the American government."

"In a speech yesterday, Mr. Graham said Canada has "registered our protest to the United States. Our position is that a person travelling on a Canadian passport is a Canadian citizen and has a right to be treated as a Canadian citizen."

Law Professor Glenn Reynolds (aka Instapundit) has a provacative new article up today on Fox News called The Next International Right . The lead-in to the article sums up the Professor's thesis:

"The international community has a dismal record of preventing or stopping genocide or punishing those responsible; the victims of genocide tend to be unarmed civilians; the best way to prevent genocide is to ensure that civilian populations are armed."

Using Rwanda, Cambodia and the Congo as examples, Prof. Reynolds says "it is nevertheless an arresting reality that not one of the principal genocides of the twentieth century, and there have been dozens, has been inflicted on a population that was armed."

According to law professor Daniel Polsby and criminologist Don Kates, the meaning of this is that "a connection exists between the restrictiveness of a country's civilian weapons policy and its liability to commit genocide."

Prof. Reynolds argues that human rights groups "should be prepared to endorse a new international human right: the right of law-abiding citizens to be armed."

Like we said, it's a provactive column, and well worth a read. We're still thinking about it, although we're having a little trouble leaping from a Second Amendment right to bear arms to an international recommendation that citizens of all nations arm themselves as a precaution against genocide. Our conception of a "right" is an entitlement we choose to exercise, rather than a duty we feel obligated to perform. For some reason, the idea of an international recommendation to arm ourselves seems like the latter.

We have to agree with Jeffrey Rosen in his New Republic article Civil Right reminding us that it is the libertarian ultra-conservatives like outgoing Representatives Dick Armey and Bob Barr who have advocated most stronglyfor our civil rights since September 11. The Democrats have not. But that is nothing new over the past few decades. We wrote about this issue two months before the 1996 elections when Barr opposed expanded wiretap legislation proposed by Clinton. (See, Partisan Politics vs. The Bill of Rights, published in The Champion.)

As everyone knows, politics makes strange bedfellows. It is good strategy for us to form coalitions with groups from the opposite end of the political spectrum when an issue arises that we both support. We are glad Barr was defeated because of his ultra-right wing views on drug offenders and the death penalty. But we appreciate his views on civil liberties and privacy and the extent to which he went to protect them. As Rosen points out,

"...the alliance between the libertarian right and the civil libertarian left remains vital even if it has little obvious grassroots support. At a time of national trial, this alliance has done more to check executive overreaching and to defend individual liberty than the big-government liberals running the Democratic Party, who have been all too happy to respond to demands by the public and the president for security above all."

Matthew Yglesias, one of our favorite bloggers who we read every day and almost always agree with, is having second thoughts about Rosen's article. He says, "I think this concern for civil liberties sometimes goes too far and one might even want to call it “paranoid”.

We believe our civil liberties must be assiduously protected. Once they start to slip, they go quickly. Once we remove them for one group, it becomes easier to do it for the next group. Once we begin making exceptions for catostropic events, the exceptions will become the rule.

We don't believe in giving an inch on core constitutional rights. The Second Amendment is only one away from the Fourth. As the old saying goes, give them an inch and they'll take a mile."

We'd also like to point out that not all Democrats in Congress are weak on civil liberties. In particular, Colorado's Dianna DeGette and Mark Udall have been constant supporters. If you know of others, feel free to put them here in the comments section.

Senior law enforcement officials have told the New York Times that the FBI is tracking hundreds of muslims in its search for terrorist plots within the U.S.

"The surveillance campaign is being carried out by every major F.B.I. office in the country and involves 24-hour monitoring of the suspects' telephone calls, e-mail messages and Internet use, as well as scrutiny of their credit-card charges, their travel and their visits to neighborhood gathering places, including mosques."

"The campaign, which has also involved efforts to recruit the suspects' friends and family members as government informers, has raised alarm from civil liberties groups and some Arab-American and Muslim leaders. The men are suspected of ties to Al Qaeda or other groups affiliated with Osama bin Laden's terrorist network."

"Still, the F.B.I. has acknowledged that it has no evidence of any imminent terrorist threat posed by the so-called sleeper cells connected to Al Qaeda."

Nor is there any evidence of a sleeper cell in the U.S. with capablilities like the one that committed the attacks of September 11.

Law enforcement officials also concede now that the threat of Jose Padilla, the suspected "dirty bomber" was blown out of proportion. "Justice Department officials have backed away from their initial suggestion that they had compelling evidence linking him to a plot to build an explosive radiological device known as a dirty bomb."

Terrorism experts estimate that ten to twenty thousand Muslims trained at Al Qaeda camps. The U.S. is trying to identify all of them. So far, they have identified several hundred around the world who they believe might pose a threat.

"Some law enforcement officials say that when they have detected Qaeda loyalists in the United States since Sept. 11, they have tended to be hapless malcontents and not disciplined terrorists. "They are hangers-on and wannabe terrorists for the most part," said one official, adding, in reference to the leader of the Sept. 11 plot, "Mohammed Atta wouldn't have asked most of these guys to take out his trash."

The electronic surveillance has been accomplished through FISA court orders. FISA orders allow wiretapping and e-mail seizures for intelligence gathering purposes and do not require compliance with the stricter standards of the Fourth Amendment that is required in criminal investigations. In other words, there is no requirement that probable cause be estbablished that the person to be intercepted is involved in criminal activity.

We share the disappointment of the Washington Post in a speech Attorney General Ashcroft gave to federal prosecutors this week about the Justice Department's terrorism policies and their effect on civil rights.

"He expressed dismay that secret detentions and "military detentions of unlawful enemy combatants" -- which is to say locking up American citizens without trial or access to lawyers -- might be controversial. And he made clear that criticism will not deter him: "History instructs us that caution and complacency are not defenses of freedom: caution and complacency are a capitulation before freedom's enemies -- the terrorists."

The Post opines that caution and complacency are not the same and while caution is desirable, complacency is a danger.

"But caution in approaching such a diminution of liberty is a virtue. It reflects caution, not complacency, to ask that the Justice Department account honestly to Congress and, as much as possible, to the public about the changes it seeks. It reflects caution to hope that members of Congress deliberate seriously before changing the rules of surveillance and detention. It is not complacency to consider how effective those changes are likely to be relative to their impact on American liberty -- to seek, in other words, a balancing of risks and dangers without having to fear attack from the administration for allegedly endangering security."

"Mr. Ashcroft's disdain for such qualities is troubling. Zeal to fight the forces of evil can be recklessly deployed; it can misfire against the innocent; and it can, in doing so, cause dangerous threats to go undetected."

Law Professor Glenn Reynolds, aka Instapundit has written a really good column this week for Fox News called Stop in the Name Of 'Bots.

His premise is this: "Nowadays, it seems as if more and more law enforcement is being done by machines. Unfortunately, they don't seem to be up to the job. And the humans don't want to take responsibility, either."

Prof. Reynolds takes off on a variety of snooping methods, from traffic cameras that snap our pictures to catch us in moving violations to the record companies that have software robots crawling the internet to locate copyright infringers to FBI agents using their software robots to roam the internet searching for people who have opened internet files with kiddie porn in them.

We whole-heartedly agree with the Professor that "When the power to enforce the law is delegated to software employed by people who don't -- or can't be bothered to -- understand it, no one is safe."

Go read the whole article, and follow his links, particularly the one to the Wired article on Adam Vaughn, one click you're guilty.

On Tuesday, the U.S. fully implemented its controversial program of requiring visitors from certain countries to register and be fingerprinted.

"The U.S. government will fingerprint, photograph and register tens of thousands of foreign visitors in an anti-terrorism policy that has angered Arab groups and some nations."

"The program was launched in part on Sept. 11, a year after the attacks on New York and Washington and put fully into effect around the world on Tuesday, with immigration officials focusing on citizens of certain countries or those who fit a specific profile. They include nationals of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Syria, five countries designated by the United States as 'state sponsors of terrorism,' " according to Justice Department spokesman Jorge Martinez.

"The new program, announced by Attorney General John Ashcroft in June, outraged lawmakers and Arab and rights groups in the United States."

A memo from the I.N.S. last month said the program would apply to "all people who have made unexplained trips to the five 'state sponsors of terrorism' or to North Korea, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Yemen, Egypt, Somalia, Pakistan, Indonesia or Malaysia."

And this is just the beginning of a larger program which intends to have all foreign visitors registered by 2005.

Despite past promises to support such legislation, California Governor Gray Davis has vetoed a bill that would have allowed undocumented immigrants who are long-time residents of the state to obtain driver's licenses.

Critics charged Davis put "politics ahead of public safety." Under the terms of the vetoed bill, illegal immigrants could obtain drivers' licenses if "they passed all driving tests, underwent criminal background checks, were applying for legal residency and could prove they were employed and had lived in California for at least 15 months in the last three years."

"Davis had promised last year to sign such a measure and had worked on a compromise for months, but said in his veto message that "the tragedy of Sept. 11 made it abundantly clear that the driver's license is more than just a license to drive; it is one of the primary documents we use to identify ourselves."

The bill's sponsor, Gil Cedillo, argues that there are nearly one million illegal immigrants in California, and that by denying them drivers' licenses, the state is creating "a class of uninsured and untrained drivers."

In other legislative action, the Governor signed into law a bill authorizing people who have already served their sentences but were convicted on the basis of false evidence to apply to the court to have their convictions overturned. This is meant to apply to the two dozen or so persons who were convicted upon testimony by officers involved in the Ramparts scandal.

The University of California at San Diego has ordered a student organization to delete hyperlinks to an alleged terrorist Web site, citing the recently enacted USA Patriot Act.

"School administrators have told the group, called the Che Cafe Collective , that linking to a site supporting the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) would not be permitted because it violated federal law. "

"In a letter to the Che Cafe Collective, UCSD University Centers Director Gary Ratcliff said the hyperlink violated a law that bans "providing material support to support terrorists." Ratcliff warned that the student organization would face disciplinary action if it did not immediately remove the link to FARC."

We found this item via BestoftheWeb, a conservative Wall Street Journal blog, which has this to say about the policy (after denouncing the students as "idiots" and their actions as "deplorable", language we've deleted in the part of the post we agree with below):

"...a link to a Web site--as we did in the previous paragraph--is not "material support"; it is merely information. It is not illegal... to speak in favor of terrorist organizations, so long as one does not cross the line into actual incitement or conspiracy. In the UCSD case, the civil libertarians are right."

Former U.S. Attorney Paul Coggins (Northern District of Texas) has written a terrific and very funny op-ed piece in the Texas Lawyer called Year of the Rats in which he takes U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft to task for trying to make spies out of all of us.

"We will have white-collar, blue-collar and no-collar spies. Spies in all shapes, sizes and colors. Everyone will be eligible to eavesdrop -- postal workers, truck drivers, plumbers, utility company employees and lawyers. Well, maybe not lawyers. I spy. You spy. We all spy on each other."

"At least, that was the master plan behind the administration's Terrorism Information and Prevention System (TIPS) program, as originally hatched by the U.S. Department of Justice. Leave it to killjoys on the right (Republican Dick Armey) and the left (the American Civil Liberties Union), however, to recoil from the prospect of the friendly plumber surreptitiously checking out our bookshelves and video libraries for suspicious material...."

"Bombarded by howls of protest from all quarters, Congress balked at Ashcroft's attempt to deputize one-half of the citizenry and place the other half on "double-secret probation." Although Congress has, for the past year, swallowed the administration's every line (and line item) that invoked the war on terrorism, Congress choked on TIPS. "

There's a lot more, go read the whole thing.

Al Gore is sounding pretty good to us today, as he accuses Bush of eroding our freedom:

"Gore's Thursday comments came at a fund-raising breakfast for Delaware attorney general candidate Carl Schnee. "

"Gore said "highly questionable" decisions are being made in the criminal justice system under Attorney General John Ashcroft. "

"What's going on nationally, with the attack on civil liberties, with American citizens in some cases just disappearing without right to counsel, without access to a lawyer, I think that is disgraceful," he said. "

"I think we need to stand up for our principles in this country and stand up for what this nation represents, even as we face the terrible dangers that we have to confront in the world today," he added. "

Gore also decried any efforts to portray Democratic critics of the administration's homeland security plans and possible war with Iraq as unpatriotic or unconcerned about national security."

Keep it up, Al. We might get back behind you. And if you add your support for a moratorium on the death penalty, you'll have us and a lot of others, for sure.