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I was a bit harsh in my post. I don't really dislike the ACLU, it just disappoints me off when an organization that supports liberty doesn't always support it. I think every amendment is as important as the others.

That being said, I support them in most every other situation and have donated to them.

From the ACLU website:

"Given the reference to "a well regulated Militia" and "the security of a free State," the ACLU has long taken the position that the Second Amendment protects a collective right rather than an individual right."

Finally, there is no evidence (I am aware of) that these orders are so bad.

http://www.aclu.org/safefree/nationalsecurityletters/

"The Justice Department's Inspector General has reported that between 2003 and 2006, the FBI issued nearly 200,000 NSLs. The inspector General has also found serious FBI abuses of the NSL power."

And that whole pizza delivery thing will be gone as soon as we start hearing someone answering the phone as

Thank you for calling Domino's Pizza. This is Agent Jentson speaking, how can I help you?"

Or maybe like this? http://www.aclu.org/pizza/

we're still an incredibly free and wealth country, and the vast majority of people are annoyed but still content.

Although I do agree some of what you said, I strongly disagree with the part which I quoted.

It appears that you are confusing individual freedoms with civil liberties .

Individual freedom is the ability to get in your car at 3 a.m. and drive 3 blocks to the convenience store to buy an unhealthy snack, to pick what you want to eat for dinner at the grocery store, to choose which movie you want to see with a friend, to stay in bed all day, etc. Yes, as a society we generally do have a great deal of individual freedom.

Civil liberties by contrast, are much different. Civil liberties are things such as your right to not have your property seized or searched without a court order, your right to vote, your right to petition the government, your right to peacefully assemble to protest the government, etc. ...and the all important Habeas corpus, your right to petition the government for unlawful imprisonment, which by the way, we did not have until just recently when it was restored by a Federal appeals court.

It is of civil liberties which we are speaking when we say that a society is free. When it comes to civil liberties in the United States, we are far from "free" to do as the Constitution allows.

Some examples:

The Protect America Act, The Real ID Act, The Patriot Act, the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, The Military Commissions Act, Free Speech Zones, Unconstitutional Wiretapping, etc. provide overwhelming evidence that we are in fact very far from being a free society.

"a free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate." -- Thomas Jefferson

"What a curious phenomenon it is that you can get men to die for the liberty of the world who will not make the little sacrifice that is needed to free themselves from their own individual bondage." -- Bruce Barton (1886-1967)

"The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do." -- Eric Hoffer (1902-1983)

CLICK IT!
"There has never been a more urgent need to preserve fundamental privacy protections and our system of checks and balances than the need we face today, as illegal government spying, provisions of the Patriot Act and government-sponsored torture programs transcend the bounds of law and our most treasured values in the name of national security." -- ACLU

MORE QUOTES:

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and hence clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." - Political commentator Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)

"Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposit

According to the ACLU, "The Watch List does not contain the names of the most wanted terrorists as the TSA does not want to share that information with the airlines." https://secure.aclu.org/site/SPageServer?pagename=travelsecurity_quiz6 Makes my brain explode thinking about it. Can anyone parse that so it would make sense?

http://www.aclu.org/safefree/extraordinaryrendition/22203res20051206.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition_by_the_United_States

http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/rendition701/timeline/timeline_1.html#

Having read up on Extraordinary rendition for an hour or so, I'm stuck with the conclusion that while Clinton should have yanked the reins, Bush broke out the whip. I know which one I'd rather have leading the country. Granted, neither would be best, but I know which I prefer, morally (hint: not Bush).

Yeah, the US loves free speech. That's why we set up fenced-in free speech zones at political conventions. And how about the fact that in two years the FBI has issued more than 143,000 National Security Letters, that include a provision that makes it illegal for the recipient of the letter to discuss the letter with anyone? America may love free speech, but its government, not so much.

http://action.aclu.org/site/PageServer?pagename=FJ_donationhome

https://secure.eff.org/site/SPageServer?pagename=DON_splash

https://www.naacp.org/contribute/contribute.php ...and just in case those donations aren't enough to protect your rights,

http://membership.nrahq.org/

Trouble is the list of suspected terrorists is quite large, and includes such deadly threats as Nelson Mandela, Cat Stevens, and Ted Kennedy.

The point of the 4th amendent is not at all debatable. We know exactly why it is there: because the British authorities had had the right to search any property in search of smuggled goods, and the good citizens of America decided they didn't want their new masters to have the same rights.

What is debatable is it's relevance to electronic communications. The answer is of course none, because the internet was unimaginable when it was written, even by such a prolific thinker as Benjamin Franklin. What actually needs to happen is for America to realise that semantic obessioning over the constitution is a diversionary tactic by the backers of these types of bills, and that the real laws are passed long before the press have stopped bitching about what "Unreasonable" means.

American Civil Liberties Union

You mean like the humans in the loop with the "terrorist watch list", the ones that tag little children and congressman and ww2 vets and so on for special security checks? The list with the "humans in the loop" that by some accounts say that there are a million terrorists floating around the US? Hundreds of thousands to a million and counting, they won't say for sure,. but those humans in the loop are..loopy, completly and utterly incompetent at best, dangerously fascistic at worst.

  If there were even *one hundred* actual terrorists in the US, really just one hundred active dedicated terrorists, we'd be hearing about attacks all the time, let alone a thousand or two thousand or hundreds of thousands. Do people really believe there are that many "suspicious terrorists" travelling around? It's complete and utter bullshit lies and any defense of it falls into the seriously fascist and pushed propaganda realms.

    They can't even get people removed who are obviously not terrorists right now, so where is any credible evidence at all that just adding more bogus "suspicious activity" from video cameras and computer algorithms everywhere is going to improve the situation? They are working on facial recognition, putting names to faces, now if you look "suspicious" on some camera feed, then get facially recognized, you could automatically go on some "potential enemies of the state" list, which is what the terrorist watch list really is? This stuff is designed to threaten, cajole, intimidate and condition people to accept a society of total surveillance and control by your "superiors". And that's it. And it's working unfortunately, people excuse it and start to go along with it, make excuses after excuse, poof, one generation from at least semi free people to total serfdom and a fascist police state without any hassle..

There is no evidence at all that "humans in the loop" are doing anything to improve this situation, and all the real evidence points to the "humans in the loop" being good tame little heel clickers and sieg heilers.

But I think "innocent man sent to jail" is very, very rare.

Not rare enough. And many are still inside.

what if one of the parties actually is evil?

Well, we ought to look into that then!

...when it comes to things like torture, indefinite detention without trial...

"Beginning in the early 1990s and continuing to this day, the Central Intelligence Agency, together with other U.S. government agencies, has utilized an intelligence-gathering program involving the transfer of foreign nationals suspected of involvement in terrorism to detention and interrogation in countries where -- in the CIA's view -- federal and international legal safeguards do not apply."
"The current policy traces its roots to the administration of former President Bill Clinton."
Source

...deliberate subversion of the Constitution...

...killing tens of thousands of human lives in unnecessary wars based on lies...

Oh God, just googling around and reading for good examples of Democrats doing these very things makes me want to kill myself, there's no hope for this country, especially if idiots like you really believe your-favorite-toy-party is any different from the "evil party" you so vehemently oppose. Perhaps we had a chance with Paul or with a Libertarian candidate (after all, their entire platform is fighting the evils you speak of), but fucking retards like you still cling to your prejudices about anybody who isn't a member of your party. You either 1: don't listen to new ideas, or 2: immediately interpret new ideas through your shit-colored glasses since it wasn't your favorite big-party liar who was espousing them. I don't have the strength to finish this post with good quotes and links, anybody who has the strength please take up the task for me. Some good ideas to start with: For wars, Vietnam (JFK), and Korea (Truman). For subversion of the Constitution, nearly every single bill passed through Congress in the last 100 years.

a self-locking exclusionary law. no way to prove any damages because - ITS ALL IN SECRET!

This is what's happened with Sibel Edmonds. She was a translator working for the FBI and after 911 she reported shoddy work done in the unit. After testifying in front of congress she was fired then the justice department slapped a gaging order on her. She wanted to sue the FBI over being fired but she had to get permission from the Justice Department to talk to a lawyer first.

How ironic is it that you have to have permission from someone to sue them first.

Falcon

Bullshit, the ACLU doesn't love the constitution, they love their specific pet bits of it. Always have.

Example?

The Second amendment:

"Heller Decision and the Second Amendment".

Falcon

>They're exactly the same

Not according to their voting records. The ACLU legislative scorecard shows Obama voting for civil liberties 80% of the time, McCain 17%.

You dare to mention the ACLU and the Constitution in the same sentence?

The ACLU doesn't give two shits about the Constitution, and they never have. Thanks to the ACLU's reaction to the D.C. v. Heller decision, many more people are finally realizing that the ACLU's true purpose is to champion causes of the Left, and nothing more.

Yes, Heller was a 5-4 decision. But the important point is that all 9 Justices (in the opinion and the dissents) agreed that the Second Amendment protects an individual, not a collective right. In other words, the ACLU's position that the Second Amendment protects a collective right was unanimously refuted by the Supreme Court.

The ACLU could've excused themselves from the whole Heller debate by pointing out that many organizations exist to defend Second Amendment rights. In other words, they could've simply said that they were going to leave the task of defending Second Amendment rights to already-capable hands. But no; the ACLU just couldn't resist weighing in on Heller by taking a dump on the Constitution--the very document they claim to so stridently defend.

The ACLU is beyond contempt. It serves only to intercept donations that, if not for ACLU's hypocritical existence, might have actually gone to organizations that do defend civil liberties, instead of to a muckraking mouthpiece of the Left. They do not deserve respect (let alone support) in any form.

ACLU already listed the plantiffs in their case. Let's not forget, the only reason for FISA was because the ACLU has already won, warrantless wiretapping is illegal.

If he votes against this bill, he loses far more votes in the middle of America (both the literal and political middle) than he's going to lose from the left (and the coasts) by voting FOR the bill.

I don't buy this at all.

I think people really overestimate public concern about terrorism. The general impression I've gotten based on day to day interactions and recent news coverage is that Americans are getting sick of the politics of fear of the past eight years, and polling confirms this.

At the same time you're probably underestimating the backlash from left in response to this vote. Either way, it's significant enough to merrit serious media coverage. Notice the number of articles this past week commenting on the backlash against obama from his former supporters, often with titles such as Obama's surveillance vote spurs blogging backlash.

Lastly, the assumption that the vote only alienates the left is bogus. Allow me to point you to this article documenting the results of a study conducted by a slightly right-leaning polling agency (the mellman group). Here's an excerpt to wet your appetite,

Voters overwhelmingly oppose key elements of the Bush Administrationâ(TM)s FISA agenda--voters oppose warrantless wiretaps, oppose blanket warrants, and oppose amnesty for telecommunication companies that may have broken the law. Large majorities across almost every demographic subgroup of American voters oppose all three of these proposals. Moreover, voters do not trust President Bush either on protecting the country from terrorism or on protecting our constitutional rights. As a result, Members who stand in defense of constitutional rights have little to fear from their constituents.

The issue here is not that Obama is afraid of alienating his grassroots and average-citizen supporters. Why he's doing it is definitely a question that needs to be answered, but lets not waste anymore time thinking it's because he cares what the average american voter thinks. My guess would be rather that he's afraid of alienating corporate sponsors. Even as a sell-out though, I'd still rather have him as president than McCain. The things McCain says just scare the shit out of me.

# Prohibits the government from invoking war powers or other authorities to supersede surveillance rules in the future.

The real problem is as the ACLU http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/35636leg20080612.html has said. We need more checks and balances on this issue. Anything that FISA does no one can question. But at least now NO ONE but FISA can do these kinds of wiretaps. This was the problem with the laws passed in 2006 and 2007 on this issue. They let the president authorize hidden widespread wiretaps. Now such laws are clearly forbidden.

http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/35636leg20080612.html

I think this amnesty bill has done more to show Barack Obama's TRUE colors than any other vote in his career.

... but looking at the other votes in his career compared to the alternative would still be wise.

Yes, its the ACLU and everyone seems to hate them... just #include <spinfilter.h> when reading the links.

I think this amnesty bill has done more to show Barack Obama's TRUE colors than any other vote in his career.

... but looking at the other votes in his career compared to the alternative would still be wise.

Yes, its the ACLU and everyone seems to hate them... just #include <spinfilter.h> when reading the links.

Don't make us get probable cause! Probable cause is for losers! And put the bumpers back into my bowling lanes!

I'm a big fan of sarcasm, but instead of going the bumper-sticker advocacy route, I'd suggest visiting the ACLU and clicking the Donate Now button. That way when someone slams you with a "What are you? A pinko liberal card-carrying member of the ACLU?", they'd be at least partially correct for a change.

Similarly, you can visit the EFF website and become a member. Don't know if they give you a card to carry, but the free T-shirt could be worn by any geek with pride.

While I expect some of the more egregious abuses of the current administration may end when it packs up its bags and heads out the door, I don't expect to see the trend they represent to subside, or that in the future, there will fewer stories on Slashdot and in the mainstream press where the ACLU, the EFF and similar groups aren't forced to take yet another action to protect our rights.

According to the courts, people can swap their votes so there's a double standard here. If the vote is only supposed to be yours or if it is available as barter for whatever service you see fit, even anothers vote, it is saleable.

http://www.aclu.org/votingrights/gen/32427prs20070806.html

Seems as if it is your right to vote, or not, you should be able to do what you want with it without the courts interference, if it is your wish. OR it should be required that each vote actually matter and be so respected that complete accountability be mandatory for voting so that each and every vote has an absolute guarantee of being counted.

I don't see either being the case as long as paper trails and recounts are questioned.

A saner course of action would be to vote for a small party, or express your disgust by not voting at all. Don't be part of the problem by keeping the duofascists in power.

actually, that's not the saner thing. That doesn't guarantee their defeat in the same way voting for their strongest opponent does.

Or, here's a crazy thought, instead of getting pissed enough over this to want the other guy to win out of spite, perhaps historical voting records regarding civil liberties for Obama and McCain would be useful. I'm very upset with Obama over this (Unity is all well and good, but not at the expense of the rule of law), but in no way is McCain a better choice where civil liberties are concerned.

Yes, that's the ACLU, and lots of people strongly disagree with them for various reasons. Just take their spin into account and make your own decision.

A saner course of action would be to vote for a small party, or express your disgust by not voting at all. Don't be part of the problem by keeping the duofascists in power.

actually, that's not the saner thing. That doesn't guarantee their defeat in the same way voting for their strongest opponent does.

Or, here's a crazy thought, instead of getting pissed enough over this to want the other guy to win out of spite, perhaps historical voting records regarding civil liberties for Obama and McCain would be useful. I'm very upset with Obama over this (Unity is all well and good, but not at the expense of the rule of law), but in no way is McCain a better choice where civil liberties are concerned.

Yes, that's the ACLU, and lots of people strongly disagree with them for various reasons. Just take their spin into account and make your own decision.

Who, unlike cameras, can come to the aid of the public - and run after any legitimate criminals.

Where the police want to do police work, surveillance cameras are unwanted because they're worse than useless. In fact, they're positively correlated to increases in violence. I don't know, but I suppose that when shoplifting becomes impossible because all the commercial areas are infested with video cameras, the same crooks resort to mugging, presumably when their victims are out of frame.

The implicit justification for the video surveillance system is security. But it is far from clear how the proliferation of video cameras through public spaces in D.C. would have any real impact on crime. In fact in England, where there are so many public cameras that they have stopped keeping count, incidents of violent crime have risen since the network was installed. Furthermore, in Oakland, CA, officials considered video surveillance for three years and rejected it. Police Chief Joseph Samuels, Jr., stated that his department had hoped to be "among the pioneers in the field of taped video camera surveillance" but ultimately found that "there is no conclusive way to establish that the presence of video surveillance resulted in the prevention or reduction of crime."

H.R. 6304 ensures the dismissal of all cases pending against the telecommunication companies that facilitated the warrantless wiretapping programs over the last 7 years. The test in the bill is not whether the government certifications were actually legal - only whether they were issued. Because it is public knowledge that they were, all the cases seeking to find out what these companies and the government did with our communications will be killed.

According to the ACLU's press release it passed. A sad day for your country, I suspect. http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/35740prs20080620.html

Just breaking Looking for link to roll call now.

McCain opposes the restoration of Habeus Corpus. Get your facts straight before you regret your decisions later.

Seems mostly aimed at what is discussed in the Fake Trade (http://www.channel4.com/video/the-fake-trade/index.html)

I think we can agree people manufacturing fake heart medicine is a bad thing; and that may have been the selling point.

However, "SEC. 511. LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT GRANTS." does the following:

"(a) Authorization- Section 2 of the Computer Crime Enforcement Act (42 U.S.C. 3713) is amended-- (1) in subsection (b), by inserting after `computer crime' each place it appears the following: `, including infringement of copyrighted works over the Internet';

I sure hope there aren't any congressmen who are violating the terms of CC or GPL. And can you imagine their outrage when their child downloads some songs and they have to forfeit that fancy new laptop? I mean, if enacted this will apply to congressmen, senators, even presidents, right?

Here are some links an asset forfeiture:

http://www.cjcj.org/pdf/civil_asset.pdf (PDF version)
http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:57xthSv8mJoJ:www.cjcj.org/pdf/civil_asset.pdf+%22asset+forfeiture+law%22+%22supreme+court%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us (HTML version)
http://www.cato.org/testimony/ct-rp061197.html
http://law.gsu.edu/library/index/bibliographies/view?id=64
http://www.aclu.org/crimjustice/searchseizure/10303leg19990802.html
http://www.fear.org/hadaway.html

Also, aside from writing your congressperson and senator, stop supporting the RIAA/MPAA and the like. Stop enabling these people by refusing to watch, listen, pay or even discuss any of their products.

Obama's voting record, from the ACLU's viewpoint:
http://action.aclu.org/site/VoteCenter?congress=110&repId=25424&session_num=0&page=legScore

And for fun, McCain's:
http://action.aclu.org/site/VoteCenter?congress=110&repId=122&session_num=2&page=legScore

Obama's voting record, from the ACLU's viewpoint:
http://action.aclu.org/site/VoteCenter?congress=110&repId=25424&session_num=0&page=legScore

And for fun, McCain's:
http://action.aclu.org/site/VoteCenter?congress=110&repId=122&session_num=2&page=legScore

There's precious little of the second world left.

As for the first world, I guess it depends how you define it. Shall I be a little more specific? According to the ACLU, the US is the only western industrialized nation to engage in capital punishment.

You're right, there are also some asian countries (like Japan) that also have CP and would be part of the first world. I'm not sure I'd say "many" though.

The ACLU Scorecard might be helpful. It doesn't contain some technical issues, and has a bit of fluff, but it's worthwhile anyway even for a general overview of a candidate's voting style.

Both of these candidates, however, are abstaining quite a bit in the recent votes to avoid alienating any swing groups.

Well the newsworthyness is lower for the Canadians who have been dealing with hyper-aggressive Americans since 2001. There were a number of obvious abuses of power that clued Canada in quick.
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/26684res20060906.html
and most of those were just against other Americans by their own government.
If they treat their own citizens like that, why would we expect them to respect the rights of another nations citizens. Particularly over things like privacy which has been long protected to a higher standard in Canada than the US.

Have you contacted the ACLU? You have a right to due process, you should fight for it.

Please follow the link and sign the ACLU petition and call your local representative. Domestic spying should be exposed and eradicated. The principle is more important than party politics.

IANAL, but it's not quite as black-and-white as "if not under arrest, get up and leave". Make sure you're always courteous, even when you KNOW you're right.

The ACLU has some hints about this:

    http://www.aclu.org/FilesPDFs/dwb%20bust%20card7_04.pdf

May take a while - a few months, a few years - but they can wait.

Once you've forgotten about this story, they'll go to work making it happen.

Support the EFF, ACLU, and GOA. :)

That's funny, because I've seen people protest right outside the White House, and right outside Congress all the time. They're never fenced in or any such nonsense.

Well, it certainly is comforting to have an experienced observer like you on the scene to give everyone the skinny about what's really going on in the country. However for people who prefer to have their reportage from people who don't have their heads in the sand they need only do the most basic Google searches. Here are a few of many, many examples and they don't even include all the abuses by local and state agencies, particularly those that need to justify their lucrative homeland security funding.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/01/04/INGPQ40MB81.DTL&type=printable http://www.aclu.org/freespeech/protest/11419res20030923.html http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/21/washington/21protests.html

And, oh, oh, Fox News so IT MUST be true!

Next time, try again, but without the lies so much.

Don't worry, that appears to be only one of several statements you have made that have come back to bite your ass today.

When did we lose the freedom to question our government?

This was certainly a pretty good attempt.

What a nice world you live in. See http://action.aclu.org/torturefoia/released/102405/3235.pdf - scan of official autopsy report. The victim was Iraqi soldier, not 'unlawful combatant'. Did they read him Geneva convention? No, just hanged from doorframe and beaten to death. So much for US military behaving as civilized people. By the way who are 'they' that killed civilians 9/11? Iraqi soldiers are just any convenient target?

This is my first of a series of diaries about prisoners murdered by US forces. It will tell the story of an Iraqi man who died hanging by his cuffed wrists from a door frame, gagged, and beaten to death by his US interrogators. As the Final Autopsy Report noted:

The remains are received clad in a white shirt, white pajama type pants, and white
undershorts. Feces covers the clothing from the waist down....There is gauze dressing on the left wrist. No other evidence of medical intervention is noted.... The right chest wall has fractures of ribs three through seven anteriorly and ribs six through twelve posteriorly. The left chest wall has fractures of ribs two through nine anteriorly and ribs seven through twelve posteriorly. There are fractures of the lateral aspect of ribs nine and ten on the left side. There is a horizontal fracture through the mid-portion of the body of the sternum."

Yes, our tax dollars are paying for this. Hung up by the wrists and beaten so badly that he not only had over 25 separate rib fractures, many slicing into his lungs, he also had a fractured sternum. The thick, solid bone protecting your heart.

It gets uglier over the fold. It's time to face reality.

• bewert's diary :: ::

UPDATE: Wow, top of the rec list. You care. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart. I have at least two more weeks of similar diaries, I want to make them happen, to get the facts, the horrible knowledge, out to the public in the leadup to Conyers hearings. Again, thank you all for the support. Together, we might be able to have an effect.

UPDATE 2: Some context, as much as I can glean:

The autopsy seems to have been performed as part of an Army CID investigation. I was done under the auspices of (from the header of the autopsy report):

ARMED FORCES INSTITUTE QF PATHOLOGY
Office of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner
1413 Research Blvd., Bldg. 102
Rockville, MD 20850
1-800-944-7912

The incident in question occurred in Al asad, Iraq on Jan. 9, 2004. The victim was a member of the Iraqi Army-the rank has been redacted. The autopsy was performed at BIAP Mortuary in Baghdad. After the autopsy,

ADDITIONAL PROCEDURES
Documentary photographs are taken by OAFME Photographer PH3 [redacted] USN
Specimens retained for toxicologic testing and/or DNA identification are: vitreous fluid, cavity blood, spleen, liver.urine, brain, bile, lung, kidney; and psoas muscle
The dissected organs are forwarded with body
Clothing and personal effects are released to the Army CID agents present at the autopsy

So it seems that it was an incident that was investigated as a crime. With more digging we might be able to find out more details, but right now I'm not sure who, what, or why. And this treatment is not condoned, as it resulted in death. As we know, it's considered torture only if major organ failure or death occurs.

UPDATE 3--This appears to the case of Abdul Jaleel.

From the Final Autopsy Report:

Circumstances of Death: Iraqi detainee died while in U.S. custody.

Authorization for Autopsy: Office of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner, lAW 10 USC 1471

Identification: Identification by accompanying paperwork and wristband, both of which include his nam