Democracy for Utah - Constitutional Rights

Get FISA Right

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 14:42:02 -0700

An active group of Obama supporters are planning their future strategy to return U.S. policy to its roots in our Constitution. From Joan Mokray:

There’s plenty of work to do on crucially related civil liberties issues and problems resulting from the ‘war on terror’. The Protect America Act and the PATRIOT Act, critical parts of which come up for renewal next year, reduce our privacy and our ability to express dissent, to get due process and equal protection. Consider National Security Letters, the discriminatory Attorney General surveillance guidelines, the Detainee Treatment Act, the Military Commissions Act, and on and on. We are people clearly concerned with the state of our civil liberties.

Palin claims VP is 'in charge of the U.S. Senate'

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 13:54:58 -0600

Please make it stop (ThinkProgress):

Yesterday, Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) sat for an interview with KUSA, an NBC affiliate in Colorado. In response to a question sent to the network by a third grader at a local elementary school about what the Vice President does, Palin erroneously argued that the Vice President is "in charge of the United States Senate":

Q: Brandon Garcia wants to know, "What does the Vice President do?"

PALIN: That's something that Piper would ask me! ... [T]hey're in charge of the U.S. Senate so if they want to they can really get in there with the senators and make a lot of good policy changes that will make life better for Brandon and his family and his classroom.

[...] ThinkProgress contacted Senior Assistant Paliamentarian Peter Robinson, who also disputed Palin's characterization of the Vice President's role:

In modern practice the Vice President doesn't really control the Senate. ... If anyone has a responsibility to try to govern the Senate, it's the responsibility of the two leaders.

Matheson votes in favor of telecom amnesty and warrantless wiretapping

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 12:24:19 -0600

Glenn Greenwald has the roll call.

With less than 24 hours to read — let alone understand — what they were voting on, the Democratic-controlled House just passed the "compromise" FISA/telecom amnesty bill by a vote of 293-129. [...] As always, Republicans supported the bill virtually in lockstep, while Democrats split (105-128). Barack Obama managed not to express a view one way or the other prior to the vote (and still hasn't). Nancy Pelosi spoke in favor of the bill, so the whole top layer of House Democratic leadership supported the bill.

Immensely disappointing. That whole "top layer" of the House leadership can expect well-funded primary challengers. Now we have to depend on the Senate Dems to hold the line, and they're the ones who caved first last time.

Taking the party back might take a little longer than expected.

Who are Democrats protecting with telecom amnesty?

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 21:20:15 -0600

House Democrats are poised to capitulate to the Bush administration and give the telecom companies retroactive immunity for warrantless eavesdropping. Glenn Greenwald has much more. The question is, why are certain Dems so eager to help these companies avoid the consequences of their lawbreaking? BonzoDogBand at Daily Kos has found a likely answer:

I just saw Jonathan Turley on [MSNBC's] Countdown, who concluded to Keith Olbermann that the FISA immunity compromise is happening most likely as a result of top Dems who themselves fear retribution for their complicity in Bush's illegal spying activities. [...]

So, this is all starting to make sense now; Jay Rockefeller is likely one of those Dems who could be found complicit in Bush's illegal spying activities.

Think about it; what else would make Rockefeller fight so hard for the FISA immunity provision? Money can do a lot of things, but not buy oneself out of prison.

Glenn and a wide variety of grassroots groups (including Ron Paul's libertarian supporters) are working to put pressure on House Dems such as Steny Hoyer who are pushing this bill. Contributions for this effort can be made through ActBlue.

Associated Press wants to charge blogs by the word for excerpts

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 14:16:35 -0600

Via Making Light:

The Associated Press, having already announced its intention to harass bloggers who publish snippets as short as 39 words from AP stories, has now published a web form through which intimidated parties can give the AP money in return for "permission" to publish as few as five words. [...]

The New York Times, an AP member organization, refers to this as an "attempt to define clear standards as to how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and Web sites can excerpt." I suggest it's better described as yet another attempt by a big media company to replace the established legal and social order with with a system of private law (the very definition of the word "privilege") in which a few private organizations get to dictate to the rest of society what the rules will be. [...]

Welcome to a world in which you won't be able to effectively criticize the press, because you’ll be required to pay to quote as few as five words from what they publish.

The reaction from blogs such as Daily Kos and AMERICAblog has been nothing but scorn, since the courts get to decide what constitutes "fair use," not media companies.

People for the American Way; April 13

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 15:25:05 -0600

From Rochelle Kaplan; Democratic Activist in utah:

Hi all,

Kathryn Kolbert, the amazing woman who is the new head of the PFAW, is coming to SLC, en route to SF

We decided to rent the back room of Squatters downtown, beginning at 6 PM on Sunday, April 13, so progressives could meet her and learn more about People for the American Way.

It was founded by Norman Lear.

http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/

House rejects telecom immunity; Matheson votes yes, Cannon and Bishop vote no

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 13:21:40 -0600

The Gavel:

The House has just passed the House amendment to the Senate amendment to H.R. 3773, to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to establish a procedure for authorizing certain acquisitions of foreign intelligence, and for other purposes, by a vote of 213-197-1. The revised House legislation to amend FISA grants new authorities for conducting electronic surveillance against foreign targets while preserving the requirement that the government obtain an individualized FISA court order, based on probable cause, when targeting Americans at home or abroad. The House bill also strongly enhances oversight of the Administration's surveillance activities. Finally, the House bill does not provide retroactive immunity for telecom companies but allows the courts to determine whether lawsuits should proceed.

Rep. Jim Matheson voted for the House bill; Cannon and Bishop (and every other Republican) voted against it (roll call). If you'd like to give Rep. Matheson some positive reinforcement, you can contact his office at (202) 225-3011 or via his e-mail contact form.

Obama on guns

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 10:52:23 -0700

Stephen Hayes in the Wall Street Journal, quoting a response from Obama at a Q&A session:

At Cornell College on Dec. 5, for example, a student asked Mr. Obama how his administration would view the Second Amendment. He replied: "There's a Supreme Court case that's going to be decided fairly soon about what the Second Amendment means. I taught Constitutional Law for 10 years, so I've got my opinion. And my opinion is that the Second Amendment is probably — it is an individual right and not just a right of the militia. That's what I expect the Supreme Court to rule. I think that's a fair reading of the text of the Constitution. And so I respect the right of lawful gun owners to hunt, fish, protect their families." [...]

"Like all rights, though, they are constrained and bound by the needs of the community. ... So when I look at Chicago and 34 Chicago public school students gunned down in a single school year, then I don't think the Second Amendment prohibits us from taking action and making sure that, for example, ATF can share tracing information about illegal handguns that are used on the streets and track them to the gun dealers to find out — what are you doing?" [...]

"There is a tradition of gun ownership in this country that can be respected that is not mutually exclusive with making sure that we are shutting down gun traffic that is killing kids on our streets. The argument I have with the NRA is not whether people have the right to bear arms. The problem is they believe any constraint or regulation whatsoever is something that they have to beat back. And I don't think that's how most lawful firearms owners think."

What a fabulous answer. Note how Obama gives an emotional, values-based reason for his support for certain gun regulations — "34 Chicago public school students gunned down in a single school year" — and then allies himself with "lawful firearms owners" against those responsible for "illegal handguns that are used on the streets." Someone's been reading Drew Westen.

Can I be a 'unitary citizen'?

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 11:49:32 -0700

Now that Democrats in the Senate have caved and given the telcos retroactive immunity from breaking the law, a reader at Talking Points Memo suggests that Bush's justification — the "unitary executive" — might have some other benefits:

I actually like the idea of a unitary executive, because it implies that there could be a unitary citizen. I have begun to consider myself a unitary citizen. I am allowed (by virtue of the definition of a unitary executive) to pick and choose the laws I would like to follow, kind of Thoreau like.

I also like the idea of retroactive immunity paired with the unitary citizen. I could decide not to follow a stupid law and then forgive myself afterwards.

Meeting the enemy

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 12:42:21 -0700

Former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, writing in the Washington Post in 2005:

Every Russian czar after Peter the Great solemnly abolished torture upon being enthroned, and every time his successor had to abolish it all over again. These czars were hardly bleeding-heart liberals, but long experience in the use of these "interrogation" practices in Russia had taught them that once condoned, torture will destroy their security apparatus. They understood that torture is the professional disease of any investigative machinery.

[...] Investigation is a subtle process, requiring patience and fine analytical ability, as well as a skill in cultivating one's sources. When torture is condoned, these rare talented people leave the service, having been outstripped by less gifted colleagues with their quick-fix methods, and the service itself degenerates into a playground for sadists. Thus, in its heyday, Joseph Stalin's notorious NKVD (the Soviet secret police) became nothing more than an army of butchers terrorizing the whole country but incapable of solving the simplest of crimes. [...]

So, why would democratically elected leaders of the United States ever want to legalize what a succession of Russian monarchs strove to abolish? Why run the risk of unleashing a fury that even Stalin had problems controlling? Why would anyone try to "improve intelligence-gathering capability" by destroying what was left of it? Frustration? Ineptitude? Ignorance? Or, has their friendship with a certain former KGB lieutenant colonel, V. Putin, rubbed off on the American leaders?

More the idea of religion than religion itself

Tue, 10 Jul 2007 15:59:19 -0600

Barbara O'Brien at Mahablog riffs on a comment by Susan Sontag, who suggested that American-style religion is "more the idea of religion than religion itself."

You may remember the Georgia congressman who sponsored a bill providing that the Ten Commandments would be displayed in Congress and in federal courthouses. Then when he was interviewed by Stephen Colbert, he could name only four of the Commandments, barely. I assume this wasn't just an act.

Obviously, the Ten Commandments have significance to this congressman apart from what they actually say. That significance may be pandering for votes. But in recent years I've seen several polls saying that about three out of four Americans think the Ten Commandments ought to be displayed in public buildings. However, according to Bill McKibben (quote above) only 40 percent of Americans can name more than four of them. [...]

I think many Americans regard the Ten Commandments as something like a tribal totem. They want it placed in institutions of power, like schools and courthouses, as a symbol of their tribal dominance. Think of it as territorial marking. And this is just as true of the hard-core fundamentalist as it is for the "cultural" Christian who has read most of the Left Behind books but doesn't know the Beatitudes from spinach. [...]

Sontag said that, when George Bush said Jesus was his favorite philosopher, "Bush didn't mean, and was not understood to mean, that, if elected, his administration would actually feel bound by any of the precepts or social programs expounded by Jesus." She's right. We all understood that, even before we knew Bush very well, and isn't that remarkable?

Social conservatives realize they've been lied to about 'partial birth' abortions

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 16:31:03 -0600

We've discussed the framing aspect of the so-called "partial birth" abortion procedure previously here, and how this term was deliberately created to be misleading on several levels. Now, according to the Washington Post, right-wingers like Brian Rohrbough, president of Colorado Right to Life, are finally realizing that "partial birth abortion" doesn't mean at all what they thought it meant:

"All you have to do is read the [Carhart] ruling, and you will find that this will never save a single child, because even though the justices say this one technique is mostly banned — not completely banned — there are lots of other techniques, and they even encourage abortionists to find less shocking means to kill late-term babies," he said. [...]

In Rohrbough's view, partisan politics is also involved.

"What happened in the abortion world is that groups like National Right to Life, they're really a wing of the Republican Party, and they're not geared to push for personhood for an unborn child — they're geared to getting Republicans elected," he said. "So we're seeing these ridiculous laws like the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban put forward, and then we're deceived about what they really do."

Barbara O'Brien at Mahablog has more on this topic. The overall point here is that the GOP seems to be incapable of being honest about its own positions, even with its own base. In reality, the so-called "partial birth" abortion bill banned only one specific abortion technique, but it was more useful for the GOP to suggest that the bill would prevent all late-term abortions — because that's what would bring in more donations and votes for Republicans. It never seems to occur to them that their lies will be found out. I sincerely wonder at this point if the national GOP is even capable of purging this tendency of expedient lying.

Was NSA wiretapping program used on Democrats?

Thu, 17 May 2007 09:38:14 -0600

TPMMuckracker has the summary:

When the warrantless wiretap surveillance program came up for review in March of 2004, it had been running for two and a half years. We still don't know precisely what form the program took in that period, although some details have been leaked. But we now know, courtesy of [James] Comey, that the program was so odious, so thoroughly at odds with any conception of constitutional liberties, that not a single senior official in the Bush administration's own Department of Justice was willing to sign off on it. In fact, Comey reveals, the entire top echelon of the Justice Department [including John Ashcroft] was prepared to resign rather than see the program reauthorized, even if its approval wasn't required. They just didn't want to be part of an administration that was running such a program.

digby connects the dots:

Remember: Watergate was about bugging the Democratic National Committee. The "3rd rate burglary" was to replace an illegal bug that had been planted on the telephones of prominent Democrats.

The lesson of Watergate for the chagrined Republicans was that they needed to be more forceful in assuming executive power and they needed to be more sophisticated about their campaign espionage. This is what they've done.

Hey, maybe we could get John Ashcroft under oath and ask him why he was going to resign rather than reauthorize the original NSA wiretapping program.

Legal intel methods foil alleged terrorist attack on Fort Dix

Tue, 08 May 2007 10:21:47 -0600

Star-Ledger (New Jersey):

Federal investigators last night arrested six Islamic radicals who were planning a heavily armed attack against soldiers at Fort Dix as part of a jihad against America, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office. [...]

The bust came after several of the suspects were lured by a secret informant to a meeting with an arms-seller, according to the complaint. [...]

The six had been under FBI surveillance for 15 months and prepared for their alleged plot by shooting paintball guns and real weapons in Gouldsboro, Pa., 30 miles southeast of Scranton, officials said. [...]

As they allegedly prepared for the attack, the men watched videos depicting armed assaults of U.S. military personnel at an undisclosed location, according to the complaint, which cited a federal witness who infiltrated the group.

Note that warrantless wiretaps, torture, and invading a country that hadn't attacked us were not necessary to stop this plot. Also note that we're supposedly fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here. That plan seems not to be working as intended.

Senate Dems put GOP in a double bind on guns

Fri, 04 May 2007 10:23:09 -0600

thereisnospoon at Daily Kos:

I have to say that Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) is a genius. He has created an extraordinary wedge to use against the Administration and its gun-crazy Republican allies with S. 1237, introduced on May 1st, officially (and brilliantly) titled the "Denying Firearms and Explosives to Dangerous Terrorists Act of 2007". The bill essentially gives the Attorney General the direct authority (above and beyond the Brady Bill) to prevent those on terrorist watch lists from purchasing firearms. [...]

This leads to a double-bind for the GOP — if they support the bill, they do the following:

Betray their rabidly pro-gun base in favor of federal power to prevent gun ownership, and

Give the Democrats a legislative anti-gun victory in the wake of the shootings at Virginia Tech.

If they oppose the bill, they:

Deny the Executive [Branch] authority in an issue of national security, and

Put themselves on record as saying that dangerous firearms should be in the hands of known terrorists.

This no-win situation is due to a GOP base that simultaneously believes (1) the Executive Branch can ignore any law to fight the War on Terror, and (2) the 2nd Amendment gives Americans the unfettered right to own guns. So what happens when the Executive decides to overrule the 2nd Amendment? Guess the GOP base never bothered to think that through.