ACLU Campaign Challenges Patriot Act

Nept sent in a pointer to this story about the ACLU starting a media campaign challenging the PATRIOT Act. Good to hear.

Comments

They've been busy.

[XorNand]

The ACLU is also challenging the involvement of the US military in the DC sniper case, as reported by CNN. The "depend the Constitution" ad campaign mentioned is $3.5M large, which includes a million dollars worth of TV ads in 10 markets

Whoot! Keep it up guys!

Re:They've been busy.

[AntiNorm]

Seems strange that they want to prevent the people who know how to stop snipers from helping. As long as the assistance is purely technical, I have no problem with it. Now if the military was setting up roadblocks and detaining citizenz, it'd be another matter.

There's a reason why they are preventing these military personnel from helping, and a good one too: the Posse Comitatus act. Basically, it prevents military personnel from doing most civilian law enforcement tasks except when authorized by Congress. Congress would essentially have to declare martial law in order for these people to be able to help out, and as scary as it may be, the current situation there does not warrant martial law.

Re:They've been busy.

[mesocyclone]

Too bad you didn't read the very article you referenced. It directly refutes your argument in this case.

Here is the relevant portion:

Posse Comitatus clarifications emphasize supportive and technical assistance (e.g., use of facilities, vessels, aircraft, intelligence, tech aid, surveillance, etc.) while generally prohibiting direct participation of DoD personnel in law enforcement (e.g., search, seizure, and arrests).

Re:They've been busy.

[mskfisher]

they did question a recently-discharged Marine who'd had sniper training...

but keep in mind that the shots that have been made so far aren't terribly difficult - it doesn't require formalized training. i'd say that most anyone could learn to hit a man-sized target at 100-150 yards with a few hours' practice.
this most recent shooting was a head shot, sure - but from 30-40 yards. that's practically point-blank, when dealing with a scoped weapon.
sure, there are techniques that are most easily picked up through directed training... but most people give this guy too much credit.
if the shots were 500+ yards on a windy day, then i'd start to assume the guy had some serious training under his belt.
urban sniping isn't that difficult. we're fortunate that not many people have undertaken it thus far.

Uppercase?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the name is an acronym for "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism", it should be called the USAPATRIOT act.

All uppercase, no space (because "U SAP AT RIOT" is just as good a decomposition).

Re:Yes!

[ztc]

That quote is taken a bit out of context. Depending on how you read into it, he may actually be saying that he believes its his job to ensure freedoms such as free speech endure (which the ACLU is exercising.)

The whole quote is:

"I'm glad I live in a country where the ACLU can criticize me and vigorously debate the issues," Ashcroft says. "I consider it my job as attorney general to make sure that this and all our freedoms endure."

Rep.'s against the (un)Patriot Act

[Anonymous Coward]

Props to these representatives for voting against the Patriot Act.

PCWorld?!

[yoshi_mon]

While looking to mod up some of the more rebellious posts in this thread, I was disappointed when I could not find anything that great. Then, like very good /.er, I decided to read the article after reading the thread and noticed that it comes from pcworld.com!?

You have got to be kidding me that the only outlet for reporting this is pcworld.com! Grated that the ACLU site had information on it, but with a 3.5 million dollar budget, do you think they could get a few of the major news organizations involved in this?

Maybe this is just the early stages where they are going after that small and oh so significant geek vote. And they are going to target the big boys next...but...PCWORLD.COM!? Oh well, here's to hoping.

Freedom... cherish it PSAs

[TheSHAD0W]

The "Campaign for Freedom" public service announcements were produced by the Ad Council; you can view the PSAs online at http://www.adcouncil.org/campaigns/campaign_for_fr eedom/.

another story at wired

[Wild Bill Hickock]

wired is also reporting the same story. click here to read it.

Who Is The Institute For Justice?

[SacredNaCl]

A libertarian public-interest think tank and law firm in Washington, D.C., the Institute for Justice has put itself in the forefront of the battle against racial preferences, desegregation orders, and affirmative action.

The Institute for Justice received substantial funding from
the Bradley Foundation.>
Which is also a backer of other far to the right organizations like the Heritage Foundation & the CATO Institute think tank.

It is also financed by the oil and gas fortunes of Fred G. Koch, a founder of the John Birch Society. David, a Libertarian, provides a significant amount of funding for the Cato Institute's $4 million annual budget. Koch Industries is now the second largest family-owned business in the U.S., with annual sales of over $20 billion. Forbes ranks David and Charles Koch among the 50 richest people in the country. Koch Industries has frequently been indicted for Environmental Crimes.

They also received substantial funding from the John M Olin Foundation . Ammunitions Manufacturer Olin gave considerable money to the Heritage Foundation and other far right causes.

The main activities of the Institute for Justice seem to be around school vouchers, the rights of companies to bust up unions, ending affirmative action, repeal of any laws regarding union contractors or minority contractors, fighting environmental legislation, and taking on eminent domain statues through the courts.

The collective agendas of those affiliated with them and their published works show their goal to be the complete privatization of all current government services.

Who's Who in the Institute

William H. Mellor
President and General Counsel. Mellor served as Deputy General Counsel for Legislation and Regulations in the Department of Energy during the Reagan Administration, a period that saw the steady erosion of government restrictions on Big Energy. From 1986 to 1991, he was President of the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, a right-wing think tank located in San Francisco that challenges environmental regulations, and was former Governor Pete Wilson's favored source of information regarding privatization and water rights. [From 1989 through 1998, the PRI received 8 grants totaling $337,500 from the Bradley Foundation.]

Clint Bolick

Vice President and Director of Litigation. Clint Bolick worked as an assistant at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission when U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was EEOC chairman. While working for the Landmark Legal Foundation, Bolick led the defense for the first Wisconsin school voucher program. [Between 1988 and 1992, the Kansas City, MO-based Landmark Legal Foundation received 10 grants from the Bradley Foundation totaling $592,700.]

When Wisconsin expanded its voucher program to include religious schools - the first state in the country to do so - Bolick defended the plan in court. While the State of Wisconsin officially defended the program, it was the Bradley Foundation that provided funding for the attorneys, who besides Bolick included the "independent" counsel Kenneth Starr. Starr, who made his living defending big auto and tobacco companies from consumer litigation, had also previously done work for Bradley.

Until Bolick began presenting himself as a defender of low-income African American schoolchildren, he had been most closely associated with attacks on affirmative action. He is the author of "The Affirmative Action Fraud: Can We Restore the American Civil Rights Vision?" published by the Cato Institute. It was Bolick who drafted a bill that would end all affirmative action programs on the federal level. And he had high praise for the landmark Hopwood vs. Texas decision, calling it "clearly another nail in the coffin of racial preferences."

-------------
It's always important to know who you get in bed with before you cut them a check. I'm not fully happy with any of these organizations. The ACLU fails to aggressively support a lot of things it claims to champion (such as ending the War On Drugs, or defending the rights of Gun Owners)and has taken some things too far to the left my taste. Even with the money coming in from Olin, Institute for Justice doesn't seem to be interested in those either.

Re:Who Is The Institute For Justice?

[neocon]

Remarkably little content given the length of your post. You do manage, however, to:

• Roll out the usual scare words like `far to the right' (used, laughably enough, to describe the Heritage Foundation, which is about as mainstream a conservative group as there is)
• Attempt to smear the Olin Foundations philanthropy by pointing out that Mr. Olin made his money in explosives manufacturing -- I suppose you must be terribly opposed to the Nobel Prize, then, eh?
• Attempt to smear the IJ's record by micharacterizing their position on a number of issues
• Question the support for school vouchers in the minority community, despite the fact that it is poor inner city communities who are most hurt by having their children trapped in failing schools -- one reason that groups like the Black Alliance for Educational Opportunity are some of the firmest supporters of School Choice
• Describe opposition to affirmative action as `racist' -- a dirty smear, and one that fails to explain how it could be racist to oppose race-based preferences.

So, in short, I'd have to say that your post tells us a lot more about your narrow biases and (amusingly) about how threatened you feel by groups like the IJ which are doing actual work for civil liberties then it tells us about the IJ itself.

Guns threaten the Government.

[Casualposter]

Indeed, the era of the US revolutionary war is long gone. But human nature has not one wit changed in the intervening decades.

If the English had not been armed then they would not have become American.

The US civil war was fought with many home-owned guns on both sides. The thought that an armed populace threatens a government with popular revolution is true. IF it is not then why have so many totalitarian goverments throughout history restricted the ownership of weapons? Or in some cases encouraged the populace to take up arms and practice with them to maintain proficiency? (Example: the requirement that English men over a certain age practice one time per week with the long bow?)

The government has control of its arsenal. And the people have their own arsenal. That is the barbaric foundation of peace among humans: we all recognize that we are all equally dangerous and therefore uneasily oppressed. Now we have to make nice and oppress using rules, and due process, and politicians. But in the end, the major arguments are solved with the death and destruction of combat. (Remember that the US Civil war was fought not over Slavery, as popular Union Propaganda stated, but over the rather dry question of the rights of the states verses the rights of Federal government. This was a political, governance question that ultimately had to be settled according the dictates of human behavior--war.)

The use of force has settled most of the major conflits in the world, one way or the other, through out history. Until human beings cease being human beings and evolve into something less violent, we will always need to be armed. Those less armed are enslaved by those more armed.

It's okay if you don't believe me; go read the tomes of history from the Hittites on up throught the modern era.

Why the abject hatred for the military?

[Technopuke]

After all, didn't the US military invent the internet that you are all benefitting from (MILNET)?

In just one year we have lost thousands due to terrorists because of America's "open arms". We've given freedom to everyone-- including the most malicious of terrorists and the Patriot Act was designed to not make that mistake again.

Citizens locked up for no reason? Get real. A small amount of people have been incarcerated unjustly because they fit the profile of someone considered a danger to humanity.

The greater risk is to continue the status quo and let jetliners full of screaming passengers detonate across the US.

At one point we could have laughed at the suggestion.

Re:Please explain

[Wyatt Earp]

If you find a shell casing, often it will tell you nothing other than the caliber.

AKs use a shorty 7.62 or 5.45 caliber round, there are about 45-70 million AKs world wide, so if you find that casing, you are still dealing with a haystack. Some American makers are switching to the AKs 7.62 beacuse the rounds are cheap.

ARs typically use a 5.56, as do other NATO standard battle rifles and Isreali made rifles. I'm going to ballpark a number here and say there are 15-35 million rifles out there firing a 5.56.

The shooter in the DC area is using either a 5.56 or a 5.45 caliber rifle, I've heard both on the news and the police have shown both an AR and an AK on the news as the weapon being used.

Now, a bullet will get you more information, but with the sheer numbers of weapons out there in the US-Canada-Mexico pushing the 300-400 million range, even if you get a bullet that you can run ballistics on chances are high than they won't be using something in your Database.

An example, I have a 54 year old Remington Model 8 in .300 Savage which fires great, it's not going to be in a Database since all the databases proposed are for licenced gun sales and new weapons.

As for the arguement that cars are licenced but guns aren't, well cars aren't meantioned in the Constitution now are they? If the 2nd Amendment is going to be infringed on, then why shouldn't we licence printing presses or computers? Both are capable of being used against the common good of the people.

Re:gun ownership privacy

[srmalloy]

So, where exactly in the second amendment does it say that "people could have armed militias?" Where does it say that the militia is there to "check" the government? The oh so short second amendment reads as follows.

A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed. - Ammendment II of the Constitution

Notice the "well regulated" part? Also, notice that "Arms" is a proper noun? That means that WE can decide what regulations to place upon gun ownership and militias and WE can decide what the definition of "Arms" is. Do fully-automatic machine guns and rocket-launchers count as "Arms?" They most certainly are, but them being prohibited doesn't counter the 2nd Am. because "Arms" is defined by the individual States and by Congress itself.

Unfortunately for your premise, you are misinterpreting the term 'regulate' as 'controlled, restricted, or governed by law or rule'. The Random House College Dictionary (1980) gives four definitions for the word "regulate," which were all in use during the Colonial period (Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Edition, 1989):

1. To control or direct by a rule, principle, method, etc.
2. To adjust to some standard or requirement as for amount, degree, etc.
3. To adjust so as to ensure accuracy of operation.
4. To put in good order.

The first definition, to control by law in this case, was already provided for in the Constitution. It would have been unnecessary to repeat the need for that kind of regulation. For reference, here is the passage from Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, granting the federal government the power to regulate the militia:

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

The third definition is also inappropriate, because regulation for accuracy or function is somethiing that is done to the arms, not the militia.
Alexander Hamilton, in the Federalist Paper No. 29, described clearly what a well-regulated militia entailed:

The project of disciplining all the militia of the United States is as futile as it would be injurious if it were capable of being carried into execution. A tolerable expertness in military movements is a business that requires time and practice. It is not a day, nor a week nor even a month, that will suffice for the attainment of it. To oblige the great body of the yeomanry and of the other classes of the citizens to be under arms for the purpose of going through military exercises and evolutions, as often as might be necessary to acquire the degree of perfection which would entitle them to the character of a well regulated militia, would be a real grievance to the people and a serious public inconvenience and loss.

The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Edition, (1989) defines regulated in 1690 to have meant "properly disciplined" when describing soldiers:

[obsolete sense]
b. Of troops: Properly disciplined. Obs. rare-1.

1690 Lond. Gaz. No. 2568/3 We hear likewise that the French are in a great Allarm in Dauphine and Bresse, not having at present 1500 Men of regulated Troops on that side.

The text itself also suggests the fourth definition ("to put in good order"). Considering the adjective "well" and the context of the militia clause, which is more likely to ensure the security of a free state, a militia governed by numerous laws (or just the right amount of laws [depending on the meaning of "well"] ) or a well-disciplined and trained militia?

Re:Other "questionable" acts

[Animats]

I guess that means Maher Arar's next class in advanced modem design will be cancelled.

He's a modem designer, or was before he was illegally deported.

Re:The "new" war.

[Charlton Heston]

Speaking of the Constitution...

The first action that "Old Ironsides" and her sisters were in was against the Barbary pirates in what is now Libya. These people were the terrorists of the early 1800's, and the problems they caused were enormous in that part of the world.

So the original poster's conjecture that terrorism is something new doesn't hold up with even the slightest examination of history. Our founding fathers were quite aware of terrorism. Some of them even were called terrorists by the government they were rebelling against.