Slashdot Mirror
Part Of The Patriot Act Shot Down
jtwJGuevara writes "In a victory today for the ACLU, (and many Slashdotters I presume) the section of the Patriot Act which gives power to the FBI to demand confidential financial records from companies as part of terrorist investigations has been ruled unconstitutional by a U.S. District Judge. Victor Marreo, the District Judge who made this ruling, states that the provision of the Patriot Act in question 'effectively bars or substantially deters any judicial challenge.'"
Sounds like a defense of CORPORATIONS rights, which are more and more behind the scenes, creating laws and running the country. We have separation of church and state - we need separation of business and state as well.
Under the provision, the FBI did not have to show a judge a compelling need for the records and it did not have to specify any process that would allow a recipient to fight the demand for confidential information.
Checks and balances is overrated anyway. I mean, those Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution several hundred years ago when there were no terrorists. Oh wait, didn't they act like terrorists against the British...?
I'd be willing to be that this one will see the Supreme Court. Hopefully they'll not overturn this extrordinarily wise decision.
I moderate Mr. Marreo +1 : Liberty.
Its an uphill battle against bureaucracy, against the thirst for more power and its fought by decent civil libertarians amidst others who are running the risk of being labeled as unpatriotic girly men by Fox news and the Republican party.
ACLU has been moderately successful in chipping away provisions of the Patriot Act, desperately trying to limit its broad sweeping powers acquired during the aftermath of Sept 11, when the notion of security drew a shadowy veil over our eyes and across measures of oversight and provided us with the promise of a secure land but taking away our freedom in its place. The people behind it were clever enough to threaten us with more attacks and a terrible outcome if these measures were not passed, but put nothing in place to provide oversight, nothing in place to limit its ever stretching arm, reaching out to our private lives.
Now, the Republican party is getting ready with "Patriot Act II" in response to the findings of the Sept 11 commission, but in stark contrast to what's required, has granted far greater power and reach to the security agencies while dramatically eroding constitutional protections and providing a fraction of added security.
Republicans now more than ever seem to be under the belief that they could throw any dissenting american in to prison and blow up anyone voicing their dissent outside the US and are on a collission course with the stark reality that while we may never die from a terrorist attack, we will surely feel the ever tightening grip of a police state.
Rapid Nirvana
I know that Kerry wrote some of the "financial crime" parts of the Patriot Act. I wonder if this was his? Does anyone know?
That's interesting, could you explain why? I was under the impression that the lower courts order would be binding unless the supreme court chose to override it.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Hopefully we will start to see more challenges against this kind of legislation. Like the old saying - you gave him an inch, he will ask for a foot, it does apply to both ways though.
:) or did it?
It's also lucky that the PA didn't give FBI the power to ignore unfavorable rulings
Uselessful technology (Air-Charged
It should be pointed out that the FBI can still demand confidential financial records without this provision of the "Patriot" Act. Basically, without this provision the FBI just needs to provide a reason WHY to a judge to get similar access to the same records. (Previously, it was all hush-hush.)
ACLU's site is getting hammered; the decision has also been posted on EFF's site:
http://www.eff.org/Privacy/Surveillance/Terrorism/ PATRIOT/20040929_NSL_Decision.pdf
(EFF's press release is here.)
"The terrorists have won", Ashcroft will croon...
If you are a lawyer, then you should know that if this gets upheld on appeals and the SCOTUS refuses to hear the case, then it stands...
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
IAALT (I Am A Lawyer Too), and this judgement is binding in his federal court's jurisdiction. It might just be his part of district two (which I think covers NY), or it might be all of district two (which I think covers NY and some surrounding states). It is good law there, until either overruled by the Supremes, or made the Law of the Land by the Supremes.
Hopefully on appeal the Supreme Court accepts this case.
More than just that, hope that someone else wins in November and appoints some less conservative individuals to take their seat among the other justices.
This is slashdot, call somebody a fascist or a pirate, roll around in it a while.
come for the naked robots, stay for the zombies
Please remind me of all the Dems that voted against the patriot act.
Thanks in advance.
darn activist judges, the laws name has word Patriot in it! Doesn't that in itself make it immune to judicial review? I mean it not like it's name is communist act or something.
Music today is so uninspiring it would make Martin Luther King want to watch Friends. The patriotic act is merely protecting shitty music, shitty movies, and other contemporary shit designed to make money. Who cares.
This is the Patriot act; not the DMCA.
We have separation of church and state - we need separation of business and state as well.
... Now thats a good idea! We can call it Citizen Protection Act.
... i'm dreaming...
While we're at lets make a law that puts some accountability on those that write laws later found to be unconstitutional.
Only within the appeals court's jurisdiction. For example, when the 9th Circuit Court rules that "Under God" is unconstitional, the precedent in that ruling only affects courts WITHIN the 9th circuit.
The loser needs to appeal it to the supreme court for it to affect the entire US.
This particular case only applies within the district court's jurisdiction. It hasn't been to an appeals court yet.
isomerica.net | Foonetic IRC
I think that George Tennet gave the most damning testimony against the PATRIOT Act during the 9/11 commission, and he didn't even realize it. In his closing arguments, he said that the US knew everything it needed to know to stop the 9/11 attacks, but everyone held a different piece of the puzzle but didn't want to share that piece with anyone else. The government doesn't need any more power to stop terrorism, they just need to get rid of the bureacracy, which is why this new intelligence office is total BS: they are trying to fight the problem of too much bureacracy with.....MORE bureacracy(yeah, I can't spell). Unfortunately both major political candidates think this the real way to reform intelligence......
Monstar L
Awww.... come on
You act as if the ACLU has an agenda that they are trying to disguise under the ploy of "Civil Liberties."
Oh, wait. They do.
Republicans now more than ever seem to be under the belief that they could throw any dissenting american in to prison and blow up anyone voicing their dissent outside the US and are on a collission course with the stark reality that while we may never die from a terrorist attack, we will surely feel the ever tightening grip of a police state.
You had something going there until this last bit of dribble.
I hardly think you can blame Republicans when 98 senators and 337 Representatives voted for the bill. Those senators of course included your beloved John Kerry.
Cannot the court subpoena the same records only with more time and difficulty involved?
-- Checking emails and kicking cheats `till the day I die.
I work in an academic library that's also a federal depository. I've had to deal first hand with the implications of this POS raping of our rights
I also live in a city where provisions of this act were (mis)used not to go after terrorists, but after "garden variety" criminals.
In making purchases off of the internet or at a store, I had to pick and choose what I wanted to buy with a CC. Afterall, in the hands of an overzealous prosecutor with an axe to grind, my purchase of the book/film for Lolita and The Tin Drum could be turned into "evidence" of my pedophilla or some other such rot. "Would it play well in Peoria" became my yardstick for all CC purchases. No really. I deal with a government that would inflict such craplaw as the Patriot Act on us with extreme paranoia.
(But, one part of me has a tiny twinge of sorrow at watching this act of justice delayed. It's mightily hard to be fiscally irresponsible when you've switched to a "cash diet" to make all your major purchases. It's going to be a little harder for me to be "good" now.)
OS X:*nix for the real world.
Wow, shorter and much more informative than the abcnews story. The wikipedia link for the patriot act is here.
-jim
There is a fine line to be found between protecting the rights of individuals and protecting the right of the People to be secure. The Patriot Act sought to define the line, giving the Executive more power to track these financial transactions, without scrutiny of the individual being investigated, and with limited oversight.
We need some kind of oversight, because the Executive may abuse the power. Not every executive will be as trustworthy as others in regard to protecting the rights of individuals.
One thing to consider, however, is that with judicial oversight, you can have another form of tyrany, where an overzealous judge prevents an Executive from doing his job to protect the People. We only have an appeals process for this, which hopefully results in a well-reasoned balance of rights. However, as the judicial confirmation process becomes more and more politicized, you can expect more and more partisans being placed in lifetime-tenured posts.
No judge is ever going to rule less power for the Judicial branch. I, for one, do not welcome our judicial overlords. Lex Rex.
There's no time to stop for gas, we're already late.
I don't see how the 2 issues contradict each other. Both viewpoints seem to adhere to the idea of separation of church and state. With regards to abortion, the ACLU believes the legality of abortion should not be threatened by an individual or groups religious beliefes interefering with the state's law making decisions. The same argument holds for the school voucher issue, just in reverse. The state's law making abilities should not favor a religious belief.
They're both consistent. Keep religion out of public legislation, whether it's laws that potentially support a religion (school vouchers) or laws that run afoul of some people's religious sensibilities (abortion.)
I seriously doubt you're a lawyer, because no lawyer I know would be so reckless as to make this statement. It's just plain wrong, and I hope anyone reading this thread will remember how dangerous it is to get a legal education on Slashdot.
This judge's ruling is binding within his jurisdiction. That means it's a settled issue within that district. This will undoubtedly be appealed to an appellate court, and once it hits the appellate level, the appeals court will re-examine the conclusions of law. The conclusions of fact, though, are supreme and cannot be re-examined by any court unless they are "as offensive to the senses as a three day old mackerel". (For non-lawyers, yes, that is the legal standard used. The precedent in question is a funny read.)
Once the appellate court rules on it, the judgement is binding within the appellate court's entire jurisdiction. At this point, the law is effectively dead. Other appellate courts will refer to this first appellate court in their own decisions, and it's overwhelmingly likely all Federal circuits will come to the exact same decision.
The Supreme Court accepts less than one percent of the cases appealed to it from the appellate court level. The cases it accepts tends, overwhelmingly, to be cases which have been handled in different ways by different appellate courts (a rare occurrence), or cases which it feels to possess unusual relevance to Constitutional law.
Russ Feingold. Wisconsin. The only one with enough balls in the whole Senate to vote against that hurtling turd.
Seriously, whenever I hear about any of the freedom-reducing provisions of the Patriot act, I can't help but ask myself, "What exactly do these people like about America? As for myself, I always felt very proud of our freedom, but these jokers keep taking it away bit by bit, and don't even appear to feel bad about it."
Bush calls the terrorists "freedom-haters", but ironically I see his administration as one of the biggest "freedom-reducers" in the past 20 years. Heck, under their own logic, by cutting our freedoms, aren't they giving the freedom-hating terrorists what they want?
Is having a free country hard? Yes. But as a country, don't we pride ourselves on doing the right thing, even if it's tough? I thought we did. Is there an alternative to the Patriot act that would preserve our safety and yet not place such restrictive burden on our freedom? I think there is, but it doesn't feel like we even tried looking for it.
P.S. Would the Patriot act have prevented 9/11? This is a guessing game, and it's hard to characterize such a giant bloated act, but most of the provisions under the Patriot act don't seem like they even begin to address the real problems that allowed 9/11 to happen. So ironically, we've given away a lot of freedom for a bunch of laws that wouldn't have made us safer.
In that case...
Take THAT baby Jesus!
Elrond, Duke of URL
"This is the most fun I've had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"-Sam&Max
In the house that would be:
0 1& rollnumber=398
_ li sts/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=107&session=1& vote=00313
Baldwin, Barrett, Blumenauer, Bonior, Boucher, Brown (OH),Capuano, Clayton, Conyers, Coyne, Cummings, Davis (IL), DeFazio, DeGette, Dingell, Farr, Filner, Frank, Hastings (FL), Hilliard, Honda, Jackson (IL), Jackson-Lee (TX), Johnson, E. B., Jones (OH), Kucinich, Lee, Lewis (GA), McDermott, McGovern, McKinney, Meek (FL), Miller, George, Mink, Mollohan, Nadler, Ney, Oberstar, Olver, Otter, Owens, Pastor, Paul, Payne, Peterson (MN), Rahall, Rivers, Rush, Sabo, Sanchez, Sanders, Schakowsky, Scott, Serrano, Stark, Thompson (MS), Tierney, Udall (CO), Udall (NM), Velazquez, Visclosky, Waters, Watson (CA), Watt (NC), Woolsey, and Wu
and in the Senate: Feingold
http://clerk.house.gov/cgi-bin/vote.asp?year=20
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call
I'm not sure that I'm reading your post right...perhaps I'm just misunderstanding your logic. Could you elaborate on how this is an inconsistency?
It seems to me that the ACLU is saying something like "we oppose laws based on someone's dogmatic morality". They're also appear to take on a position along the lines of "we oppose government funding of religious education". To me, their message seems pretty consistent that they fear the government imposing religion of any kind, in any way, and take a "slippery slope" attitude.
What does strike me as strange in the second link that you pointed out may have everything to do with my perceptions. I always imagined the ACLU as a pretty objective Libertarian organization. I was also under the impression that Libertarians would see the school vouchers as a step in the right direction -- allowing the people to choose (privatizing public schools and handing out vouchers in order to end the debate about religous education in schools...among other things). Perhaps I'm wrong in at least one of these assumptions.
-Turkey
I don't know whether to feel sorry for you or disgusted by your existance.
I suggest the former - you can at least spell that one.
The ACLU is not as consistant as many (myself included) would like. Ideally, they would be a politically neutral organization which fought for civil liberties in American government, but they are not. They have a distinctly liberal take on the matter, which is unfortunate.
That said, I'm a card-carrying member of the ACLU, and that's a recent change. I'll take their shakey stance on gun control and vouchers and a few other topics because I'm willing to trade my way out of having traded my way out liberty for the sake of security. That's a terrible problem to have to fix and choice to have to make, but I find myself in that position.
Republicans are not to blame, here. Look at the voting records, and you will find that this abomination of a law call the PATRIOT Act (caps not mine) had broad (almost unanimous) bi-partisan support.
I'll a) vote anti-incumbant on every slot in this election and b) support the questionable ACLU as a result. I wish that the uniparty had not forced my hand in this way, but obviously they had other priorities.
The EFF, on the other hand is more even-handed and I am a proud member, having just renewed recently.
PS: All that said, your particular argument does not hold up (the ACLU's position on vouchers is questionable, but not in the way you suggest). In the case of abortion, we have a policy (handed down from the constitution, as interpreted by the supreme court) that says that some particular thing is protected. The fac that it violates your religeon does not mean that you don't have to pay taxes that support it.
On the other hand, we don't have a policy that says that students should be taught church doctrin, and so there is no basis for forcing tax-payers to fund this thing that they are opposed to on the grounds of their faith (or lack thereof).
The argument FOR vouchers is not that you can be forced to pay for something that violates your faith, but that you AREN'T BEING FORCED TO DO SO. You're paying taxes that are being used for vouchers in the same way that some of that money is already paying for food stamps. Food stamps can be spent on Kosher food and that wacky Christian (no offense to Christians as a whole) soap with the tracts on it just as it can be spent on more "secular" foods.
Vouchers can be used for Catholic or Jewish or Bhuddist school in the same way. No one is being forced to fund a government program of faith-based doctrin, they are being forced to pay for the education that parents feel is most fit to their children.
Please note that I'm against school vouchers in most cases, but I wanted to make the point that the ACLU is arguing that point wildly incorrectly.
The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.
Source
You'll note that there is no distinction between governments or civilians. One could argue that a rebellion (and yes, the Founding Fathers were British citizens at the time) is a form of terrorism, as is destruction of property like the Boston Tea Party and other attacks on forts & munitions before the Revolution was official.
It still is a precident that can be sighted in cases outside this district. It is hardly a meaningless ruling.
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
I don't know why this was modded "Funny."
Contrary to what they want many peope to believe, the ACLU does not "defend the Constitution." They merely use it as a tool when it advances their agenda, and ignore it when it doesn't.
ACLU President Nadine Strossen said this about "constitutional rights" vs. "civil liberties":
source:
"Life, Liberty, and the ACLU: An Interview with Nadine Strossen"
Reason, October 1994
Is that the government uses it against NON-TERRORISTS.
Not only that, the government has used it against non-terrorists MORE THAN it has been used against terrorists.
It's a bad law, just like the DMCA, that gives the executive branch too much power without the benefit of the checks and balances of which our government is based.
I don't think this specific judgement is binding yet? The full version of the Reuters article linked in the slashblurb contains the line:
In his ruling, Marrero prohibited the Department of Justice and the FBI from issuing the national security letters, but delayed enforcement of his judgment pending an expected appeal by the government. The Department of Justice said it was reviewing the ruling.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Even though it was ruled unconstituional, it is still a law. Courts interprit law. They cannot wipe a law off the books. This is left to the legislative process. So they can continue to use this portion of the Patriot Act, it just won't hold any water in court. Unless however, a higher court throws out the ruling this court made and then it will be enforceable again. But still, if you want that portion out, you have to write it out of the law books.
There is no such right. There cannot be, because it is impossible to provide it, as long as people continue to meet each other. At some point you have to trust your neighbor not to try to kill you; in part, you rely on people being mostly reasonable, and in part, you earn the trust by behaving in a reasonable manner towards your neighbor.
IANAL, but I did read up on this case pretty heavily (the "Under God" one).
The Supreme Court ruled on the case, and overturned the appellate's decision on a technicality. The analysis I read (not my own) was that this could likely be used in another juristiction to force the issue directly to the supreme court on merits. Hence we have the (certainly unconstitutional and probably meaningless) Pledge Protection Act which is supposed to remove the issue of the Pledge from the eye of the court.
Now, it seems to me that this case is certainly going to be one which will go before the Supreme Court just because it is an important legal controversy.
My own opinion (layman) is that the Supreme Court will rule, as they did in case of Hamdi and the Guantamamo Bay detainees, that executive power cannot be removed from judicial oversight. Of course, they could also rule as they did in Padilla that the case was improberly brought before the court and send it back on a technicality. My layman's opinion though with the Padilla case is that Hamdi represents a strong enough precident to essentially challenge the constitutionality of Padilla's classification, so the technicality doesn't really give the government much wiggle room once the Habeus petition is properly filed.
Now to the case in question. Hamdi is of particular importance because in my analysis of how the court will rule (Layman's analysis IANAL, etc) because it exposes deep divisions within the Court with regard to the level of executive and legislative authority allowed within the framework of the War on Terror. In the opinion of the Court, even the fact that Hamdi was detained in the theater of operations of an armed conflict did not deny him the right to at least a minimum due process of law and some form of judicial check under Habeus petitions. Notably, the Opinion of the Court was only endorsed by 4 justices (Kennedy, O'Connor, Rehnquist, and Breyer) though Souter and Ginsberg's dissenting opinion eventually endorses the action of the court but under protest.
4 Justices in two dissenting oppinions in Hamdi actually held that the detention of Hamdi was in fact illegal, and that it was not enough to simply allow him to challenge his "enemy combatant" classification. The opinion of Souter and Ginsberg was that the detention was not properly endorsed by Congress and was therefore illegal. They did not, however, challenge the plurality opinion that Habeus Corpus and due process could be observed by merely giving Hamdi a chance to present an alternative view before the judiciary.
Scalia and Stevens dissented, arguing that *any* detention without charge or trial is a violation of due process and habeus corpus rights and can only be done in the event where Congress suspends Habeus.
Only Thomas suggested that the government should be able detain Hamdi indefinitely without trial.
The decision is available at the Supreme Court's Web site here. This link is included so that other laymen can read the opinions and reach their own conclusions.
If Hamdi is any indication of the court's responses to the question of judicial oversight in the war on terror, it seems that the 8-1 opinion is that the court *must* have strict oversight in such a way as to ensure that the Constitution and rights of the citizens are adequately protected. Of course, it could be vacated on a technicality, but this would still, I think, provide a powerful case for even individuals in other circuits. I don't at this time see the court doing anything differently.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
The USA-PATRIOT Act was not really built as a anti-terrorism act, but as a addon to the RICO statutes pre-9/11. After 9/11, they put a different wrapper on it and ramrodded it thru the houses. Even the media was snookered by the wrapper and the facade that was built up around it.
The law in question that got bobbed got a stargate fansite in the dip as I recall.. The posting's in slashdot's archives, but i've not the time to dig for it.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
IAAL (I Am A Lawyer) and this is entirely meaningless unless it is ruled by the supreme court. Hopefully on appeal the Supreme Court accepts this case.
You don't understand. Hopefully the USSC does NOT hear this case. If they refuse to hear it, the current ruling stands.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Well the parent post was not intended to be trolling, but it has been deemed such. I can only complain.
Yes, it is the neoconservatives who initially steered the Republican party so far to the right that questioning their direction or leadership was unpatriotic. But Republican party on a whole is clueless if they dont wake up and realize where they will end up in the near future. The party is so tunnel minded that they cant see beyond George Bush, heck, GW cant see beyond GW. Thats the folly. This country is not looking to its past at the mistakes made in foreign policy, it is looking to solve the problems in the present with narrow minded, short term solutions with no clear idea as to how to tackle the future. This administration is blatantly campaigning in fear hoping that the public wont realize they govern in obfuscation.
I blame the whole house for passing the Patriot Act. The Act itself was everything the Justice dept was salivating for the past few years, but never getting enough proponents to get safe passage. In the aftermath of Sept 11, there was enough fear, enough pseudo-patriotism in the air that to question the absence of oversight would have been deemed unpatriotic. And everyone fell under the notion that Patriot Act would ride in on a white horse and save the day. The sad truth is though initially flaunted as the cure for domestic terrorism, it is slowly but surely being used to spy on our own citizens with no judicial oversight at all. That is scary. And anyone who say otherwise has lived a sheltered existance their whole life which is about to be a memory. Slowly but surely our personal freedoms would erode, and we will look back on these days and wonder what went wrong..
Rapid Nirvana
In a victory today for the ACLU, (and many Slashdotters I presume)
How about "a victory for all of the United States" ?
What?
Maybe the political notes should go to politics.slashdot.org and not so much here, eh?
Do you think that you can actually isolate politics from this? Whoever wins in November will most likely be appointing at least one Supreme Court justice. Do you really think Bush would be picking nominees who feel that PATRIOT is unconstitutional? That would be one of those 'activist' judges....
I'd say if those who have moral reasons are also democrats (!), then they can abide by the democratic results.
As for those who have religious reasons -- what concern is that of the state? The USA is not a country that can inflict sharia, or any other religiously motivated laws, on its people.
Where's you from, bud?
Perhaps. But I do find it odd that Scalia and Rehnquist both talked a bit about retiring before September 11th and the patent disregard for the Constitution that the Bush Administration showed afterwards. Now I don't hear anything, and I wonder if they are afraid to retire...
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
The problem with the patriot act is that throws the intended checks and balances between the legislative and judicial branches of the govt. Finally somebody stepped up and layed that out in plain english. The patriot act does absolutely nothing to combat terrorism. Bin Laden's camel rider letter carrier is not likely to be intercepted via a FBI wiretap.
Got Code?
You were just as stupid yesterday, when you were an astrophysicist.
--
make install -not war
"In a victory today for the ACLU, (and many Slashdotters I presume) the section of the Patriot Act which gives power to the FBI to demand confidential financial records from companies as part of terrorist investigations has been ruled unconstitutional by a U.S. District Judge. Victor Marreo, the District Judge who made this ruling, states that the provision of the Patriot Act in question 'effectively bars or substantially deters any judicial challenge.'"
Now half you people actually shouldn't be posting in this thread, given how you've been incessantly bitching on how this is the Patriot Act was the beginning of Imperial America, how the system is broken beyond repair, etc, etc, etc. I know it's hard to swallow, but here's a lesson made painfully obvious by this story: THE SYSTEM WORKS. Here's another fact for you-- The founding fathers were obviously more itelligent than you give them credit for. The specifically designed a government around the concept of paranoia, a thought that is ofter lost among the blithering on how their ideas are too antiquated for our time when the first hint of turbulent weather blows our way. Because they were wiser than most of you, extremes such as these always manage to even out; see McCarthyism, Japanese camps in WW2, and any number of other "the sky is falling!" events that this country has somehow survived.
If I could reach past my last 25 posts, you'd be in for a nice, ripe "I told you so."
You need a FREE iPod Nano
(Poster then continues on to educate Slashdot readers on the "real" legal facts...)
Thanks for your legal advice!
Some cats swing, and others don't. Don't you be the kind that won't.
... if the goal of the terrorists was to uphold the Constitution, then I don't think that'd be so bad.
Something makes me think 'the terrorists' and Ashcroft have frighteningly similar opinions on -that-, though. Both would rather live in a theocracy...
The enemies of Democracy are
I will tell you what scares me, and it is not arbitrary imprisonment (I figure that is so unconstitutional that they won't dare do that one again without at a minimum Congressional authorization or better yet a full suspension of Habeus but if that happens, we might as well leave the country).
What scares me is the fact that the Bush administration is putting mechanisms in place which can be used to arbitrarily make your life miserable for whatever reasons the executive sees fit. These include no-fly lists, among other things. It scares me that these mechanisms could be used in ways which could effectively silence certain forms of political discourse.
I am not afraid that I might become the next Jose Padilla. I am afraid that I might become punished for talking about airport security, etc. and that I might be forbidden to fly or have other arbitrary sanctions put on my activities which may be difficult to challenge in court.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Here is the opinion.
I seriously doubt you're a lawyer, because no lawyer I know would be so reckless as to make this statement. It's just plain wrong
;) Being wrong doesn't seem to be a prerequisite for deciding not to make a statement.
Obviously, you haven't met many lawyers.
The court is already pretty far from conservative. Only two maybe three judges on it can be called that, most are fairly liberal. If you don't beleive me, look at all the rulings by the court in the last 6 years.
And a conservative court is one that would be more inclined to rule on the constitution, not current interpretations, in which case the Patriot act would go down pretty quickly. But as we saw with the upholding of McCain-Fiengold, which limits free speech, this court isn't our friend.
"Still, if we're going to fight a war we can't win, wouldn't it be better to fight one of the dangers that really do face us on a daily basis?"
:( Or at least some are trying....
You have an excellent point. But it appears that we CAN win a war on our liberty
I am conservative when it comes to economic and defense issues, and liberal with regards to social issues. A conservative libertain? I dont know... Anyways, that being said, Ashcroft makes me very uncomfortable. Everyone, whether they realize/admit it or not, has philosophical presuppositions from which they derive their ideas (ideology) concering morality, law, etc. I guess one could view the Constitution as our government's philisophical presupposition. I find myself having little confidence that Ashcroft sees/respects the division between his own ideology and that of the Constitution. Accurate or not, I for some reason I get the feeling that he wants to punish all the 'sinners', and have the rest praying on rice. There is no real evidence I can find to support this, but still, its just not the kind of 'vibes' I like to get from the Attorney General.
Link Here - interesting read.
You whelps knock it off? I'm trying to... uh...
What was I saying?
Doesn't matter, I'm going to sleeee......zzzzzzzzzzz
The Penguin Producer
And who do you think put those people in power in the first place?
The CIA (together with the British Secret Service) engineered a coup in Iran in 1953 to put the Shah in power after the elected leader Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh, was planning to nationalise oil interests.
http://www.payk.net/politics/cia-docs/main.html
And who do you think put those people in power and kept them there in the first place?
Leaving aside the thorny issue of solid US support for Israel over the last fifty years...
In 1949, the CIA engineered a military coup to oust Syria's elected leader, President Shukri Quwatli.
In 1953 (together with the British Secret Service) the CIA sponsored a coup in to put the Shah in power after the elected leader Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh, had nationalised western oil interests. Happily, oil production was returned to their rightful owners once the Shah was in control.
(as an interesting aside, 'Stormin' Norman Schwarzkopf's father was stationed in Iran as a CIA operative during this period)
http://www.payk.net/politics/cia-docs/main.html
Of course, we all know what happened to Iran after the people voiced their opinion on his repressive regime.
Again, the CIA has a track record of interfering in Iraq through the 1950s and 1960s - backing a coup in 1963 that overthrew the left-leaning Gen. Abdel-Karim Kassem in favour of the Baath Party of Saddam Hussein. When things didn't go quite as intended, they backed a palace coup in 1968 in which Saddam Hussein's cousin became president, eventually passing on power to Hussein in 1979.
It's well known that the US wasn't averse to helping out Saddam Hussein in his war with Iran throughout the 1980s.
Jordan's King Hussein rewarded with millions of dollars every year from a secret CIA fund for a period of 20 years from the 1950s onward in return for intelligence reports of the Middle East.
In August 1982, Bashir Gemayel (on both the CIA and Mossad payrolls since studying in the US in the seventies) was elected president of Lebanon with a covert payment of $10 million signed off by Ronald Reagan. Unfortunately, he was assassinated in September, but his brother Amin was sworn in as President. The Gemayel's Christian Phalangist malitia were responsible for the Sabra and Shatila massacres, by the way.
The US isn't alone in this. The British were meddling in the Middle East for most of the first half of the 20th century. Much of the region was a British Protectorate after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire following the First World War, when the Turks were allies of Germany. Winston Churchill is infamous for his ordering of the RAF to drop chemical munitions on Iraqi villages during insurrections against British-backed rule in the 1920s.
Returning to Saudi Arabia, the British were instrumental in assisting the House of Saud in a revolt against the Ottomans in 1902, and after a protracted civil war where they helped the al Sauds, were the first to recognise the expanded state of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932.
While the Al Sauds had gained power with British help, the Kingdom was poor, with very little infrastructure to speak of; until the discovery of oil by a joint operation between Texaco and Standard Oil of California (SOCAL-later renamed Chevron) in 1936. The oil companies built the basic infrastructure of a modern state, and to defend their installations, brought the US military in, establishing the base in Dharan in 1944, when commercial exploitation of the oil resources began in earnest.
The House of Saud is still in firm control of the country to this day, with American weapons and British military training. Their track record on human rights isn't particularly good.
Your point that 'No Arabian pledged allegiance to the United States' is particularly pertinent in this context - it might seem that many of the leaders of Arab nations have done precisely that on behalf of their citizens, often in
Savage just called it huge victory for ACLU scum and I'll not repeat what he called the hispanic judge who issued the opinion. Technical data on the judge can be seen here.
Nothing out of ordinary. Started at 17 as assistant to the mayor, New York City. Clinton appointee.
So it occured to me that the fundimental failing of our political process is fairly simple. It became obvious some time back that you cannot successfully legislate morals, so the people in power pandered and began legislating what I call "moralisim".
The legislation of Moralisim is what happens when you cannot pass a ban on a book, so you establish a "community standards" test to allow each community to decide to ban the book because it would be bad to "force them to accept the book." In Moralisim, if you can not achieve the ban, you ban banning the ban...
It's a back-handed logical trick, like arguing to authority, where you open up patchwork of recursively nested micro-fifes. Consider "Dry" neighborhoods in "Wet" cities in "Dry" counties. You get to a place where you can't ban the book, so you ban yourself from controlling the ban on books and leave it up your political constituents to "decide for themselves".
It produces little political kingdoms where vocal extremests and idealogues can stake out parts of the landscape for various dogmatic purposes.
It also "levels the playing field" in a way that isnt right, but that "sounds fair" to those who are not paying proper heed. This ersatz seeming fairness can then be used as "authority" unilaterally. It rases a cloud of uncertainty where any stupid thing becomes possible as an "act of the people" because all "rights" become beasts of equal prescidence.
Consider: I have the right to keep and bare arms, you have the right not to be gunned down at the Circle-K. These two rights do *not* hold equal precidence, the right not to be gunned down is ever-so-more significant. This does *NOT* however mean that the right to keep and bare arms is somehow "punctured" and suddenly goes away. The fact is that these two rights are not really in conflict because the responsable exercise of one doesn't lead enexorably to the violation of the other.
Compare this then to "smoking", you have the right to smoke and I have the right not to. Here the right not to smoke trounces the right to smoke. You are asked to step out side. It didn't have to be that way, if the smokers had always "smoked responsibly" by observing other peoples right to smoke, they would have stepped out side all along and there woudn't have to be bans. (They probably wouldn't throw polyester butts on the gound either were responsibility the watchword in smokers... 8-) But the refrain of "why do I have to leave, I have the right to somke" with the hidden codicil "anywhere I damn well please no matter what the consequences."
See, the responsibility has gone, along with most of the burden of dilligence and accountability, and so "rights" rule supreme.
This is the inevetable result of Moralist policies. Moralisim is the proverbial washing-of-hands. "We didn't rule on this, it is the will of our populous and our populous has that right." Nudge nudge, wink wink...
The PATRIOT Act is a natural outgrowth of the Moralist agenda. It supports a vacation of responsibility and accountability in the name of preserving the "right to safety." The penetration and disapation of the "right to privacy and due process", it says, must be spent as the inferior right because in the moralist realm whenever two rights come into conflict one must be supreme, a "true right" and one must be defeated utterly as not having really been a right at all.
What's actually kind of funny is that Moralisim is a revival of the old Might makes Right paradigm. We set our ideals up against one another to see which one will beat the other to death in a court of public spectacle.
So there is a hierarchy of rights, but only in the presence of responsibilities and accountabilities.
But it really _isn't_ any kind of balancing act. You are not supposed to pay for one right, like safety, by betraying another, like due process.
You are supposed to pay for rights with the currency of responsibility.
We harvest today the fruits of terrorisim becau
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
When even with the info lower level agents get ignored because "terrorist" actions are merely part of the plan? something like a "new pearl harbor" like event And which is it again, when you are "following orders", do you investigate, or shine it on because some "superior" individual has connections with those you are supposedly investigating, so vital information gets ignored on purpose? Why is it, when someone with the legal and law enforcement cred of David Schippers, successful impeacher of a freekin president, successful chicago area mob prosecutor, can't even get word to ashcroft (I'm sure you heard of that gent) about upcoming bad news scenarios despite repeated and exhaustive attempts? Why is that, an "unfortunate intelligence failure"? Or was it because it was ON PURPOSE. Ignored, avoided on purpose?
Sorry, I'll be way way WAY more impressed when some white guys in suits and uniforms get indicted by a grand jury for some charges up to and including murder and treason. You can talk about "additional powers" then, once you effectively use the ones you already have, and a LOT more of you come forward like the small handful of TRULY brave and honest agents have,and stop being chicken for your careers over the nations safety. Follow your oath, not your paycheck in other words. Use your brain for something more than to absorb "commands". You're an agent, they are supposed to QUESTION things, not just blindly follow orders, they are supposed to deal in data, not be part of a massive coverup that's destroying a nation and imperiling the entire planet.
Nuhremberg established the precedent, "following orders" is no excuse for helping along high crimes and misdemeanors, and being as it's the internet age and some decent info is available, there's no excuse for remaining so uninformed other than laziness and an uncaring attitude and blind obedience and brainwashing.
Oh, the links? There's hundreds more, THOUSANDS more,just use google, 9-11, government prior knowledge is a good start. I'm not going to do your work for you, and if you had been paying attention even just on slashdot you would have already seen quite a few of them dropped, in many articles and in many comments.
Educate thyself before wanting to make all the US people some "enemy" to "investigate". We have had enough of the surveil/command/CONTROL aspect of this and the recent past US "regimes" and their (mostly) *mercenaries*. Stop being a stooge for them killers and thieves.
Here, I'll give you an easy one. How did WTC building 7 manage to fall down? Here's another easy one, bush and company, including rice, swore to the 9-11 "investigative commission" that they had "no idea that planes could be used for hijacking and then used as weapons" and etc.. uh huh. How do you explain terrorist hijacking scenario drills, one being run the same day as the attacks then? A COINCIDENCE? You smelling a rat yet? I hope so, I really do.. we need more honest cops, less blind order followers. I hope you are one of the former.
The Skeletor I'm talking about is Giuliani. After seeing him on TV here in NYC for almost a decade, his grinning skull became indistinguishable from the other cackling menace, bent on dominating mankind with his cruel minions. As for Kerry, I'll take his "95%" of the Patriot Act over Bush's 110%. That's the choice we've got. The other choice is to keep active in politics until we get proportional voting, or some other way out of the Coke/Pepsi party duopoly. We do not have a choice to elect Badnarik, or me, because these other candidates aren't popular enough. The real mechanics of our winner-take-all elections mean picking from the two which will get within reach. Badnarik isn't one of those, and neither am I.
--
make install -not war
Right, I remember Kerry's heroic opposition to the Patriot Act...oh wait. Kerry has a horrible record on civil liberties. He supported the Clipper Chip and encryption bans (opposed by Ashcroft, of all people), thinks asset forfeiture is a great idea, and is enthusiastic about banks spying on their customers. My favorite line is this:
So yes, the Patriot Act gives unreasonable and easily abused powers to the government, but *he* wouldn't *dream* of abusing them like those meanie Republicans. I hear he also has several bridges available for purchase.
If you care strongly about civil liberties, you're pretty much down to the Libertarian or Green party, depending on your economic views. I'm firmly capitalist but I can't support the LP because of several of their other nutty positions, so I'm still not sure what I'll do. I may just leave the Presidential section blank as a form of "none of the above".
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
President Bush routinely tacks the following paragraph onto the end of almost every executive order, to attempt to evade judicial oversight of that order.
- This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or
benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity
by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies,
entities, officers, employees or agents, or any other person.
That appears at the end of every executive order issued this year, except the ones raising pay for senior politically appointed officials. Other presidents would do this occasionally for minor administrative matters, but Bush does it every time.