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Court: Lawsuit Over NYPD Surveillance of Muslims Can Proceed (washingtonpost.com)
PolygamousRanchKid sends this report from the Washington Post:
A federal court said Tuesday that a civil rights lawsuit accusing police in New York City of improperly singling out Muslims for surveillance could proceed, reversing a lower court's decision last year to dismiss the case. In its opinion (PDF), a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit rejected the city's call to have the case dismissed and brushed aside any suggestion that media reports about the surveillance, rather than the surveillance itself, caused any harm.
The lawsuit claims that surveillance of Muslim people in New Jersey discriminated against them due to their religion. It was filed by Muslim Advocates, a legal advocacy group, and later joined by the Center for Constitutional Rights, another legal organization, on behalf of several New Jersey Muslims who say they were unconstitutionally monitored by the New York Police Department. ... Last year, the NYPD disbanded the unit involved in the surveillance activities, a move that Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) praised in a statement at the time as "a critical step forward in easing tensions between the police and the communities they serve."
The lawsuit claims that surveillance of Muslim people in New Jersey discriminated against them due to their religion. It was filed by Muslim Advocates, a legal advocacy group, and later joined by the Center for Constitutional Rights, another legal organization, on behalf of several New Jersey Muslims who say they were unconstitutionally monitored by the New York Police Department. ... Last year, the NYPD disbanded the unit involved in the surveillance activities, a move that Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) praised in a statement at the time as "a critical step forward in easing tensions between the police and the communities they serve."
You are off by nearly 1000 years, dude.
Think Charles Martel at Tours in 732, not John III Sobieski at Vienna in 1683.
See that "Preview" button?
> we stuck our fingers up at the IRA, carried on with our lives and continued to trust white people even if they were Irish or Catholic
(Northern) Irish Protestant here. The above statement isn't entirely true.
All within my own lifetime:
- White Irish Catholics were interned without trial (like Guantanamo) - citation
- They were tortured - citation
- They were falsely accused and imprisoned - citation
- Their legal representation was targeted by state actors - citation
- There was a "shoot to kill" policy in place for Irish terrorism - citation
- Civil rights marches (that included protestants) were attacked by state forces - citation
I'm not attempting to justify the IRA's campaign, nor even comment upon its legitimacy.
I do want to point out though, that profiling is (and probably always has been) used in these sort of scenarios (for right or for wrong).
Inter arma enim silent leges.
Since 9/11, the following non-islamic terrorist attacks have occurred inside the United States:
2001 anthrax attacks
2003 Ohio highway sniper attacks
2008 ELF arsons
2008 San Diego bombings
2008 Santa Cruz firebombings
2009 assassination of George Tiller
2010 IRS kamikaze attack
2010 Pentagon shooting
2010 hostage crisis
2012 Sikh temple shooting
2013 ricin letters
2013 LAX shootings
2014 Kansas City shootings
2014 Las Vegas shootings
2014 Austin consulate arson
2014 NYC police shootings
2015 Charleston shooting
Several of these were by radical Christian groups. Others had nothing to do with religion - white supremacist, anti-government and environmentalist groups seem particularly dangerous.