Civil Liberties

We have been plagued by stories of computers that contain our personal information being stolen this year. Now we have a study out that shows how little privacy we have here in the United States:

U.S. privacy protections rank among the worst in the democratic world, a London-based privacy organization said Wednesday.

Privacy International ranked 36 nations around the globe, including all European Union nations and other major democracies, and determined that in categories such as enforcement of privacy laws, the U.S. is on par with countries like China, Russia and Malaysia.

Overall, the U.S. was determined to be an "extensive surveillance society,” the second-lowest rating in the study.

This is something that has happened under the watch of George Bush. He has pissed on the graves of our forefathers and worked to destroy what we once stood for. What for? In the name of revenge. He has used 9/11 and terrorism for his little revenge to go after Saddam. He could care less if Osama ever gets caught. Hell I bet he wishes we would have another 9/11, so long as it is after the elections and he don't have to worry about actually explaining himself to congress. That would give him a way to strip even more liberties away and start more wars. Make no mistake - George Bush is the gravest threat to this country that it has ever faced!

The Boston Globe takes a big look today at what is happening in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division:

The Bush administration is quietly remaking the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, filling the permanent ranks with lawyers who have strong conservative credentials but little experience in civil rights, according to job application materials obtained by the Globe.

The documents show that only 42 percent of the lawyers hired since 2003, after the administration changed the rules to give political appointees more influence in the hiring process, have civil rights experience. In the two years before the change, 77 percent of those who were hired had civil rights backgrounds.

In an acknowledgment of the department's special need to be politically neutral, hiring for career jobs in the Civil Rights Division under all recent administrations, Democratic and Republican, had been handled by civil servants -- not political appointees.

But in the fall of 2002, then-attorney general John Ashcroft changed the procedures. The Civil Rights Division disbanded the hiring committees made up of veteran career lawyers.

So what has this done to the actual experience level of civil rights law?

Hires with traditional civil rights backgrounds -- either civil rights litigators or members of civil rights groups -- have plunged. Only 19 of the 45 lawyers hired since 2003 in those three sections were experienced in civil rights law, and of those, nine gained their experience either by defending employers against discrimination lawsuits or by fighting against race-conscious policies.

Meanwhile, conservative credentials have risen sharply. Since 2003 the three sections have hired 11 lawyers who said they were members of the conservative Federalist Society. Seven hires in the three sections are listed as members of the Republican National Lawyers Association, including two who volunteered for Bush-Cheney campaigns.

But wait! The Republicans always claim they do more for civil rights and are not the racists that people claim they are. So this can't be all that bad - can it?

At the same time, the kinds of cases the Civil Rights Division is bringing have undergone a shift. The division is bringing fewer voting rights and employment cases involving systematic discrimination against African-Americans, and more alleging reverse discrimination against whites and religious discrimination against Christians.

``There has been a sea change in the types of cases brought by the division, and that is not likely to change in a new administration because they are hiring people who don't have an expressed interest in traditional civil rights enforcement," said Richard Ugelow, a 29-year career veteran who left the division in 2002.

Yeah screw voter rights and screw discrimination against African-Americans. Bush and his cronies has to protect the white Christians in this country, because we know they are the ones truly kept down by the man.

Remember the outrage when Howard Dean said that the Republican Party is predominately a white Christian party? Well here is further proof that Dr. Dean was in fact speaking the truth.

The Bush administration and the neo-cons are shoving things like religion down our throats. They are going against the true meaning of America and democracy. Remember why the pilgrims came here?

So there you do have it. bush does hate black people. Consider the way he flaunts Condi around. She is nothing more than his token. This article proves that.

When you got someone like Pat Robertson saying the following, the end of the world must be near:

The Rev. Pat Robertson, a noted Republican famous for lambasting leftist groups, turned his criticism to the Republican Party in his speech at the Third Annual Virginia Federation of Teenage Republicans Convention on Saturday afternoon.

The founder of the Christian Broadcast Network charged the Republican Congress as "abandoning" fiscal responsibility, noting among other things the $223 million for the construction of a bridge connecting Alaska's Gravina Island to Ketchikan (also dubbed "the Bridge to Nowhere").

"This is our government at work, and unfortunately it is run by Republicans," he said.

"This is our government at work, and unfortunately it is run by Republicans," he said.

Robertson was among several Republican figures who spoke to a group of about 40 people at the convention held at the Prince William County Government Center.

In light of the NSA wire-tapping revelation, which he called a "tool of oppression," Robertson admonished the Bush administration for "encroaching on" Americans' personal liberties.

Well George has officially lost all of his support and with his party facing the challenge of their political lives to maintain control of Congress this fall, you can ALMOST bet something will happen. Of course there are those robots who feel Bush never does any wrong so they will just ignore it and ignore the foundation of our country.

The NSA thing is getting bigger than anyone could every imagine:

A little-known spy agency that analyzes imagery taken from the skies has been spending significantly more time watching U.S. soil.

In an era when other intelligence agencies try to hide those operations, the director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper, is proud of that domestic mission.

He said the work the agency did after hurricanes Rita and Katrina was the best he'd seen an intelligence agency do in his 42 years in the spy business.

"This was kind of a direct payback to the taxpayers for the investment made in this agency over the years, even though in its original design it was intended for foreign intelligence purposes," Clapper said in a Thursday interview with The Associated Press.

All of the sudden that movie "Enemy of the State" seems to be coming to life.

Meanwhile Verizon is now being sued for possible violations of their privacy policy:

Two New Jersey public interest lawyers sued Verizon Communications Inc. for $5 billion Friday, claiming the phone carrier violated privacy laws by turning over phone records to the National Security Agency for a secret government surveillance program.

Attorneys Bruce Afran and Carl Mayer filed the lawsuit Friday afternoon in federal district court in Manhattan, where Verizon is headquartered.

The lawsuit asks the court to stop Verizon from turning over any more records to the NSA without a warrant or consent of the subscriber.

That is precisely what the administration, the GOP and its mouthpieces would say if a Democrat was talking about this:

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter said Thursday he is considering legislation to cut off funding for the Bush administration's secret domestic wiretapping program until he gets satisfactory answers about it from the White House.

"Institutionally, the presidency is walking all over Congress at the moment," Specter, R-Pa., told the panel. "If we are to maintain our institutional prerogative, that may be the only way we can do it."

Specter said he had informed President Bush about his intention and that he has attracted several potential co-sponsors. He said he's become increasingly frustrated in trying to elicit information about the program from senior White House officials at several public hearings.

The amendment amounted to a warning to the White House from a powerful but frustrated Senate chairman.

Now I agree with Specter's assessment of the situation but I can not agree with him making it. The problem is that Specter is playing politics on this. When he had Gonzalez before him to testify he should have sworn him in. Instead he turned a blind eye to our Constitution and put faith in his "party", the party of corruption. In turn there are now numerous questions from Gonzalez's session that are unclear and possibly answered falsely. If Specter means what he is saying then he will reopen those hearings, call all the top officials from the DOJ and NSA in and swear every single one in. Wake up - this is only the very basis of our nation we are talking about.

These damn Christians just have to keep up their bogus claims that their religion is "under attack". Here is the latest from these claims:

Ruth Malhotra went to court last month for the right to be intolerant.

Malhotra says her Christian faith compels her to speak out against homosexuality. But the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she's a senior, bans speech that puts down others because of their sexual orientation.

Malhotra sees that as an unacceptable infringement on her right to religious expression. So she's demanding that Georgia Tech revoke its tolerance policy.

With her lawsuit, the 22-year-old student joins a growing campaign to force public schools, state colleges and private workplaces to eliminate policies protecting gays and lesbians from harassment. The religious right aims to overturn a broad range of common tolerance programs: diversity training that promotes acceptance of gays and lesbians, speech codes that ban harsh words against homosexuality, anti-discrimination policies that require college clubs to open their membership to all.

The Rev. Rick Scarborough, a leading evangelical, frames the movement as the civil rights struggle of the 21st century. "Christians," he said, "are going to have to take a stand for the right to be Christian."

Now if for some unknown reason a court would side with Malhotra then this country will have succeeded in undoing all the good it has done since the days of Martin Luther King. Not only would gays and lesbians be under attack but this would clear the way for people to be under attack because of the color of their skin, the language they speak and even who they pray to. Yup - if this case passes then I have the right to get in the face of these bible thumping, fairy tale believing Jesus freaks and make fun of them.

Rev. Scarborough is using this to promote the "war on Christianity". That is really no shocker there but he better damn well realize if something like this succeeds it will also hurt his religion. He also better accept the fact that a country that allows intolerance on a regular basis will be the setting for a modern day Sodom and Gomorrah. It will get to the point that people just will not care and with even less law to govern them, it will come common place for people to get attacked simply because you don't like how they look.

 What is amazing is that its always the same ones you hear making this "war on religion" claim. What we need is the true Christians out there, the ones that realize they don't have to reaffirm their religion publicly 24/7, to gain a voice in this debate. They need to tell people like Rev. Scarborough that he is using his so called "God" for strictly financial gains. That is the only reason these idiots do this. Like the big push for the "war on Christmas", which was to sell books, the "war on Christianity" is to gain public attention, get more people in the pews and fill the collection plates even more. Congratulation Rev. Scarborough - you have effectively made God and Jesus your whores and you are one of their pimps.

The warrentless tapping issue is still growing:

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales suggested on Thursday for the first time that the president might have the legal authority to order wiretapping without a warrant on communications between Americans that occur exclusively within the United States.

"I'm not going to rule it out," Mr. Gonzales said when asked about that possibility at a House Judiciary Committee hearing.

The attorney general made his comments, which critics said reflected a broadened view of the president's authority, as President Bush offered another strong defense of his decision to authorize the National Security Agency to eavesdrop without warrants on international calls and e-mail messages to or from the United States.

And more and more Republicans are turning against the Kremlin White House on the issue:

Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., the Wisconsin Republican who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee and one of the administration's staunchest allies, accused the administration of "stonewalling."

"Mr. Attorney General, how can we discharge our oversight responsibilities if every time we ask a pointed question, we're told that the answer is classified?" Mr. Sensenbrenner asked. "Congress has an inherent constitutional responsibility to do oversight. We are attempting to discharge those responsibilities."

[...]

Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has proposed that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court have a role in ruling on the legitimacy of the program. In the past, Mr. Gonzales and the administration have avoided discussing what they consider hypothetical possibilities in the face of Democrats' accusations that Mr. Bush has asserted unbridled authority to fight terrorism.

Interesting that the Republicans, who are facing an increasingly rough election run, are now starting to question the issue more. Will someone tell me where in the hell it says the President has the authority to ignore our constitution?

Well it looks like the Pentagon has an excuse for spying on peace activists:

The Pentagon said on Wednesday a review launched after revelations that it had collected data on U.S. peace activists found that roughly 260 entries in a classified database of possible terrorist threats should not have been kept there.

But the review reaffirmed the value of the so-called Talon reporting system on potential threats to Pentagon personnel or facilities by international terrorists, said Bryan Whitman, a senior Pentagon spokesman. He said the Pentagon was putting in place new safeguards and oversight intended to prevent improper information from going in the database.

Whitman said "less than 2 percent" of the more than 13,000 database entries provided through the Talon system "should not have been there or should have been removed at a certain point in time."

So why were they listed in any database in the first place? Is our government now in a practice of keeping tabs on those who do not agree with their policies? If that is the case then every Republican should be listed in there from the Clinton years.

This is a problem with the cyber age - it is too damn easy to place blame on others. It can be a computer error or a data entry error. It doesn't matter which excuse they want to use the question still needs to be asked - If they were in the wrong database then what database should they have been in?

Joe Lieberman: Loves Our Leader; Hates Grandmothers

Keeping America Safe from Raging Grannies

Domestic spying on anti-war groups forces ACLU into action

( via The People's Republic of Seabrook)

It's time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge that he will be the commander in chief for three more critical years and that in matters of war we undermine the president's credibility at our nation's peril.

- Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-CT)

In the four-plus years since the 9.11 attacks, much time, effort, and money has been expended in the effort to keep our country safe from terrorism. We've gone to war in Afghanistan, created our own home-grown terrorist threat in Iraq so we could claim to be fighting terrorism, and we've ramped up the propaganda/fear machine in this country to almost unsustainable levels. All this time, though, it would appear that our government is only just now beginning to recognize that the gravest and most significant threat to our nation's security: Seattle's Raging Grannies. Yes, America, while our attention has been focused on swarthy, unwashed men espousing violent, radical Islam, here at home a collection of seemingly benign grandmothers bearing beatific smiles and plates of oatmeal cookies poses an even more significant risk to our safety and Our Way of Life.

Man...who would have thought that the biggest threat was right here at home, baking cookies under our collective nose?

Monica Zucker and three other members of Seattle's Raging Grannies, a peace group of older women who dress in outrageous hats and sing protest songs, lifted up their voices in response Tuesday to recent Seattle P-I disclosures that they were in federal anti-terrorism files.

"Oh, we're a gaggle of grannies, urging you off of your fannies," they sang at a news conference in the downtown Seattle offices of the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington.

Acting on behalf of the Raging Grannies and 10 other peace groups across the state, the ACLU of Washington is demanding to know whether and why federal government anti-terrorism units are spending time and money spying on peace organizations.

The local ACLU is using the Freedom of Information Act to seek information on any surveillance from the Defense Department, the FBI and the Seattle Joint Terrorism Task Force.
Instead of wasting so much time and effort tracking radical Islamofascists in far-flung inhospitable countries, our glorious defenders of the Homeland's security could have stayed right here at home. At least they might have gotten some decent cookies out of the deal, eh?

"The government should not spy on groups engaging in peaceful political protest. The FBI should focus its efforts on actual threats and not target people because of their political views," said Kathleen Taylor, state ACLU executive director.

To those who say domestic spying is a price they are willing to pay for security, Taylor echoed critics, in and out of government, who say too much useless information gums up anti-terrorism intelligence rather than helping it.

"You can't find a needle in the haystack by adding more hay," she said.

The ACLU filed the request on its own behalf, Seattle Raging Grannies and other nonviolent religious and political anti-war groups statewide:

The American Friends Service Committee; Peace and Justice Action League of Spokane; People for Peace, Justice, and Healing; Pierce County Truth in Recruiting; Seattle Peace Chorus; Sound Nonviolent Opponents of War; United for Peace of Pierce County; Vancouver For Peace; Western Washington Fellowship of Reconciliation; and the Yakima Valley Peace Advocates Network.

This smacks of Cold War-era fear mongering all over again, doesn't it? Much like it did then, the government is using an external agent (then: Communism...now: the war on terrorism) to justify working to stifle dissent. No reasonable person would suggest that tracking peaceful protest groups is even tangentially related to Homeland Security. What it IS all about is silencing dissent through intimidation. Thankfully, most of these groups are not easily intimidated and they're well aware of their Constitutional free speech rights.

Representatives from local peace organizations mentioned in federal law enforcement files said it raises other concerns for them.

"In a time of war, when we are told it will be endless war, for my government to be spending to investigate the Peace Chorus is stunning, an incredible waste of money," said Martha Baskin, a member of the Seattle Peace Chorus.

Indeed, but we never know when these sorts of currently "peaceful" organizations will turn to violence in an attempt to realize their peaceful goals, do we? No, in the never ending war against dissent terrorism, one never really knows where the next threat or the next attack is coming from. So, the next time your grandmother offers you a plate of cookies, you might just want to think twice about the motives behind those cookies. Is it love...or something much more sinister? Such is the nature of the Evildoers who would threaten Our Way of Life....

A shocking blow to our way of life was discovered last year. That was when Bunnatine Greenhouse was fired from her job as the procurement officer for the Army Corp of Engineers. While the government tries to rationalize their decision by calling it "poor performance", Mrs. Greenhouse's employee files tell a different tale.

Greenhouse was continuously commended for doing an excellent job in her tenure with the corp. So if the was the case then what made the government decide her performance was substandard all of the sudden? The only thing that changed was Greenhouse testifying to a Senate committee about the suspicious contracts Halliburton had been rewarded for reconstruction in Iraq.

This incident is a serious blow to any one who works for the U.S. government that wants to make right on some wrongs. Greenhouse was not out self promoting, she was out trying to get a serious problem corrected. Of course when the vice-President is the former CEO of Halliburton, that is just not acceptable.

Well imagine this, Bush says he is not "obligated" to follow the oversight provisions in the new Patriot Act:

When President Bush signed the reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act this month, he included an addendum saying that he did not feel obliged to obey requirements that he inform Congress about how the FBI was using the act's expanded police powers.

The bill contained several oversight provisions intended to make sure the FBI did not abuse the special terrorism-related powers to search homes and secretly seize papers. The provisions require Justice Department officials to keep closer track of how often the FBI uses the new powers and in what type of situations. Under the law, the administration would have to provide the information to Congress by certain dates.

This is the exact same thing he did on the torture bill - he added an addendum saying he is not obligated to follow it. Amazing. How about an addendum stating you don't have to follow the constitution? That is basically what this is. Bush's actions are ones that any fourth grade social studies student would know is wrong. He is nothing short of being a dictator now.

Knight Ridder has broken open a story that spans over a couple big scandals. Those scandals are Randy Cunningham and the spying on anti-war activists:

A Pentagon intelligence agency that kept files on American anti-war activists hired one of the contractors who bribed former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif., to help it collect data on houses of worship, schools, power plants and other locations in the United States.

MZM Inc., headed by Mitchell Wade, also received three contracts totaling more than $250,000 to provide unspecified "intelligence services" to the White House, according to documents obtained by Knight Ridder. The White House didn't respond to an inquiry about what those intelligence services entailed.

MZM's Pentagon and White House deals were part of tens of millions of dollars in federal government business that Wade's company attracted beginning in 2002.

MZM and Wade, who pleaded guilty last month to bribing Cunningham and unnamed Defense Department officials to steer work to his firm, are the focus of ongoing probes by Pentagon and Department of Justice investigators.

I guess it all boils down to this - if you want someone to do something illegal you better find someone already breaking the law. The corruption from this administration never stops.

Texas cities competing to increase gay tourism

TEXAS: WE'RE SO MUCH MORE THAN STEERS AND QUEERS

Raw Story has uncovered some very serious information regarding the government spying on people:

Documents released today by the American Civil Liberties Union reveal that the Federal Bureau of Investigations has indeed monitored political groups solely on the basis that they opposed a U.S.-led war.

According to a memo written in 2002, the FBI launched a classified investigation into the activities of Pittsburgh's Thomas Merton Center after becoming concerned that the group held "daily leaflet distribution activities in downtown Pittsburgh and [was] currently focused on its opposition to the potential war on Iraq." The memo aimed to summarize the investigation's results.

This is horrible. The Bush administration will stop at nothing when it comes to pissing away our civil liberties. Every time he goes out and talks about how "we are spreading democracy around the world" he should just be booed. We need democracy at home and he sure as hell don't care about that.

The plan by Senate Republicans to step up oversight of the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program would also give legislative sanction for the first time to long-term eavesdropping on Americans without a court warrant, legal experts said on Wednesday.

Civil liberties advocates called the proposed oversight inadequate and the licensing of eavesdropping without warrants unnecessary and unwise. But the Republican senators who drafted the proposal said it represented a hard-wrung compromise with the White House, which strongly opposed any Congressional interference in the eavesdropping program.

Read the rest of this at the New York Times.

This is really scary. Since when can Congress write legislation that goes against the Constitution without doing it in the form of an amendment? I suspect the first tests of this in the courts will not come out favorably for Congress. Of course now that Bush has stacked the Supreme Court anything is possible there.

Like I have said before. Communism isn't dead. It is just in the process of being reborn here.