tagged w/ Civil Liberties
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– The Occupy Wall Street movement in Washington announced on Tuesday, just days before the three-day Conservative Political Action Conference is set to kick off on Thursday, that it is planning to send a clear message to the “gathering of bigots, media mouthpieces, corrupt politicians and their one percent elite puppet masters.”– The Occupy Wall Street movement in Washington announced on Tuesday, just days... more
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Did America INTENTIONALLY set out to MURDER this American Teen? The Obama Administration refuses to say yes he was the target or no he was not the target. Have we stooped so low as a nation that we ALLOW the Government to murder our children without DEMANDING answers?
http://youtu.be/8CqsZoSB4IsDid America INTENTIONALLY set out to MURDER this American Teen? The Obama... more
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The American Civil Liberties Union has issued "Liberty Watch 2012," its report card for presidential candidates on issues like surveillance, torture, gay rights and immigration. No one gets an A, including President Obama.
Obama, the only Democrat among the 10 candidates rated, got a perfect score - four "torches" - on only one issue, allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military, for his backing of the December 2010 law that repealed "don't ask, don't tell."
But he received lower marks on immigration, abortion rights and "closing Guantanamo Bay and indefinite detention," where his one-torch rating was attributed to backtracking on a promise to shut the prison for suspected terrorists and his support for holding their trials in military commissions.
'Surveillance state'
The ACLU gave Obama a zero rating in the category of "ending a surveillance state," citing his support for renewing the search and surveillance provisions of the Patriot Act.
The ACLU has praised Obama for banning torture and closing secret CIA prisons, but says he has refused to hold government wrongdoers accountable. The organization has gone to court on behalf of alleged victims of illegal wiretapping and CIA abductions during the Bush administration, lawsuits that Obama's Justice Department says threaten state secrets.
The nonprofit civil liberties group is officially nonpartisan and does not endorse political candidates. Its report focuses on issues of government power and minority rights that attract little attention in most presidential elections.
GOP candidates
The survey gave low ratings to most of the Republican hopefuls, marks they might want to trumpet in Tuesday's Iowa caucuses to appeal to conservatives who consider the ACLU a fighting word. Three candidates - Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann - received zero torches in all seven categories.
Romney, the ACLU noted, has endorsed Arizona's "show us your papers" immigration law, called for doubling the size of Guantanamo, backed waterboarding of terrorism suspects and supported a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. Santorum wants criminal prosecution of doctors who perform abortions, the survey said, and Bachmann has proposed amending the Constitution to eliminate citizenship rights for U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants.
Fellow Republicans Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry were given zeros on all issues but immigration, where both men's statements opposing wholesale deportations have angered hard-liners and have been seen as liabilities in the primary campaign.
Gingrich, the ACLU said, supports allowing youngsters brought to the United States by their parents to earn the right to citizenship by serving in the armed forces. The ACLU noted that Perry opposed a U.S.-Mexico border fence, said Arizona's immigration law "would not be the right direction for Texas," and signed a bill as governor in 2001 granting in-state tuition to illegal immigrants attending college.
Both candidates were given two torches on the issue, same as Obama. The president supports a path to citizenship for undocumented youths who enter the military or college, and he has challenged the Arizona law in court. But his administration increased deportations to record levels and expanded Secure Communities, which requires local authorities to forward arrestees' fingerprints to the federal government for immigration checks.
Highest ranking
The highest overall rating went to former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, a Republican-turned-Libertarian, who opposes the Patriot Act and - unlike Obama - supports the right of gays and lesbians to marry. Among the leading Republican candidates, libertarian-leaning Rep. Ron Paul also got a higher score than Obama despite low ratings in several categories.
The ACLU gave the Texas congressman high marks for opposing the Patriot Act and indefinite detention of suspected terrorists, condemning waterboarding and voting to repeal "don't ask, don't tell." But it criticized Paul's call for an end to "birthright citizenship" for children of illegal immigrants, his support of the law that denies federal marriage benefits to same-sex couples and his opposition to abortion.
Obama, endorsed by abortion-rights groups in 2008, was given three torches on "reproductive choice" by the ACLU, which cited his support for federal funding of Planned Parenthood and family-planning programs but also his bowing to Republican demands to ban funding for poor women's abortions in Washington, D.C., as part of legislation to prevent a government shutdown.
Obama also accepted restrictions on insurance coverage for abortion in the national health care law that passed in 2010.
Report card link
The survey can be viewed at www.aclulibertywatch.org/ALWCandidateReportCard.pdf.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/01/MNND1MJ7UO.DTL#ixzz1iQEHXZUT
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/01/MNND1MJ7UO.DTLThe American Civil Liberties Union has issued "Liberty Watch 2012," its... more
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New York prosecutors ask Twitter to reveal Occupy Wall Street man's tweets
Twitter agrees not to comply with subpoena from district attorney's office while protester's lawyer prepares rebuttal
The company has not complied with the subpoena from the New York district attorney's office.
Prosecutors have subpoenaed the Twitter records of an Occupy Wall Street protester who was arrested in October during a mass protest on the Brooklyn Bridge.
The 26 January subpoena from the Manhattan district attorney's office seeks "user information, including email address," along with three months' worth of tweets from @destructuremal, the Twitter handle for Malcolm Harris.
Harris, 23, a freelance writer and editor who lives in Brooklyn, said on Tuesday that Twitter sent a copy of the subpoena to him on Monday. He posted it on Twitter.
"When you get an email from Twitter Legal, you assume it's a phishing scam, trying to get your password," he said. "It turned out that it is a phishing scam, but it's from the prosecutors."
It is not clear what specific evidence prosecutors are after. But the subpoena is an example of posts on social media sites posing potential legal problems for authors.
Harris said his lawyer, Martin Stolar, would file a motion to quash the subpoena. Twitter has agreed not to comply with the subpoena while Stolar prepares the motion, Harris said.
A spokeswoman for the district attorney's office declined to comment.
The subpoena seeks Harris's tweets from 15 September – two days before the Occupy Wall Street movement began – to 15 December.
Harris is not sure what tweets could be fodder for prosecutors; Twitter's interface does not allow him to review all of his old tweets. Stolar was not available for comment.
A Twitter spokesman declined to comment on the case but confirmed that the San Francisco-based company's policy is "to notify users about law enforcement and governmental requests for their information, unless we are prevented by law from doing so", in order to protect users' rights.
Harris is one of hundreds of Occupy-related defendants whose cases are still winding their way through American courts.
A special courtroom has been set up to handle more than 1,800 cases in New York, the vast majority involving misdemeanour charges.
He was charged with disorderly conduct and is due back in court on 29 February.
Like a number of Occupy protesters, he has vowed to take the case to trial rather than accept a deal from prosecutors.
The National Lawyers Guild is representing many of the arrested protesters.New York prosecutors ask Twitter to reveal Occupy Wall Street man's tweets... more
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It’s been a difficult week in keeping up the howl. I had to step back and look for the bigger picture. And I am still looking for it and not sure I can find it right now.
Maybe, in some ways, I still tend to be a little naive. Yet, I find some comfort in the fact that I taught my children well.
I’ve always been open with my children about gays and lesbians. I taught them from a young age what it meant to be gay and that we should all accept one another. They grew up never caring who was gay and who wasn’t. It was just never anything they gave much thought too.It’s been a difficult week in keeping up the howl. I had to step back and look... more
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The Freedom of Information Act is intended to be one of the American citizens’ key checks against the fraud and corruption that inevitably happens in the corridors of power when information can be hidden behind a secrecy classification.The Freedom of Information Act is intended to be one of the American citizens’... more
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Do you love America? Are you against a one world economy and a one world government? Do you deeply love individual liberty? Do you believe in conspiracy theories? If you answered any of those questions affirmatively, then you are a potential terrorist according to a brand new Department of Homeland Security report that was just released in January 2012. The report is entitled "Hot Spots of Terrorism and Other Crimes in the United States, 1970 to 2008", and it was produced by the "National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism" for the Department of Homeland Security. As you will see detailed later on in this article, the most shocking part of this report is when it discusses the "ideological motivations" of potential terrorists. The report shamelessly attempts to portray red-blooded Americans that love liberty and that love their country as the enemy. Once upon a time, deeply patriotic Americans were considered to be the backbone of America, but today they are considered to be potential terrorists.Do you love America? Are you against a one world economy and a one world government?... more
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A federal appeals court Tuesday struck down California’s ban on same-sex marriage, clearing the way for the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on gay marriage as early as next year.A federal appeals court Tuesday struck down California’s ban on same-sex... more
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From its origin on the Oct. 15 Global Day of Action up until the ultimate eviction two months later, people from almost all walks of life congregated in Victoria Square.
Unionized workers, hippies, temporary refugees from the upper-middle class, pensioners, street kids from Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, anarcho-punks, suburbanites from the West Island or South Shore, Mile-End hipsters—and even some yuppies.From its origin on the Oct. 15 Global Day of Action up until the ultimate eviction two... more
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The ACLU yesterday filed a lawsuit against various agencies of the Obama administration — the Justice and Defense Departments and the CIA — over their refusal to disclose any information about the assassination of American citizens. In October, the ACLU filed a FOIA request demanding disclosure of the most basic information about the CIA’s killing of 3 American citizens in Yemen: Anwar Awlaki and Samir Khan, killed by missiles fired by a U.S. drone in September, and Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman, killed by another drone attack two weeks later.
The ACLU’s FOIA request sought merely to learn the legal and factual basis for these killings — meaning: tell us what legal theories you’ve adopted to secretly target U.S. citizens for execution, and what factual basis did you have to launch these specific strikes? The DOJ and CIA responded not only by refusing to provide any of this information, but refused even to confirm if any of the requested documents exist; in other words, as the ACLU put it yesterday , “these agencies are saying the targeted killing program is so secret that they can’t even acknowledge that it exists.” That refusal is what prompted yesterday’s lawsuit (in December, the New York Times also sued the Obama administration after it failed to produce DOJ legal memoranda “justifying” the assassination program in response to a FOIA request from reporters Charlie Savage and Scott Shane, but the ACLU’s lawsuit seeks disclosure of both the legal and factual bases for these executions).
Full Story: http://www.salon.com/2012/02/02/aclu_sues_obama_administration_over_assassination_secrecy/singleton/The ACLU yesterday filed a lawsuit against various agencies of the Obama... more
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If you thought SOPA and PIPA were bad, let us introduce you to their Big Brother, ACTA.
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It’s the day after the Fla. Republican primary as I write this. I’m writing at 9 in the morning before I listen to any of the paid yakkers spin and try to out clever each other. I don’t want to be influenced even a teeny bit by their nonstop “smarts”!It’s the day after the Fla. Republican primary as I write this. I’m... more
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New debate: When is medical marijuana “usable?”
Marijuana legalization could benefit economy, reduce debt
5-Story Marijuana Farm Is Raided in BronxNew debate: When is medical marijuana “usable?”
Marijuana legalization... more
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“When the poet stands at nadir the world must indeed be upside-down. If the poet can no longer speak for society, but only for himself, then we are at the last ditch.”— Excerpt from, The Time of the Assassins, a study of Rimbaud, by Henry Miller“When the poet stands at nadir the world must indeed be upside-down. If the poet... more
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,Worldwidehippies - It's funny how what look like choices often aren't, innit?
You go to make groceries and you find shelf upon shelf upon shelf full of 'different' products which, after you remove the packaging, are functionally indistinguishable from one another. It's a problem in our politics, too.,Worldwidehippies - It's funny how what look like choices often aren't,... more
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Oh, how I love the Irish. Sure, I’m biased, being half a Celt myself with legion cousins still living on the old sod. (Shout out to the Bradys and Caffreys in Ballyjamesduff!)Oh, how I love the Irish. Sure, I’m biased, being half a Celt myself with legion... more
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After a winter lull at Occupy camps around the country, protesters in Oakland, Calif., Washington D.C. and New York City appear to be gearing up for another fight as spring temperatures are on the horizon.After a winter lull at Occupy camps around the country, protesters in Oakland, Calif.,... more
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President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on December 31, 2011, allowing indefinite detention to be codified into law. As you know, the White House had threatened to veto an earlier version of the NDAA but reversed course shortly before Congress voted on the final bill. While President Obama issued a signing statement saying he had “serious reservations” about the provisions, the statement only applies to how his administration would use it and would not affect how the law is interpreted by subsequent administrations.
The statute is particularly dangerous because it has no temporal or geographic limitations, and can be used by this and future presidents to militarily detain people captured far from any battlefield.
Under the Bush administration, similar claims of worldwide detention authority were used to hold even a U.S. citizen detained on U.S. soil in military custody, and many in Congress now assert that the NDAA should be used in the same way again. The ACLU believes that any military detention of American citizens or others within the United States is unconstitutional and illegal, including under the NDAA. In addition, the breadth of the NDAA’s detention authority violates international law because it is not limited to people captured in the context of an actual armed conflict as required by the laws of war.
We are extremely disappointed that President Obama signed this bill even though his administration is already claiming overly-broad detention authority in court. Any hope that the Obama administration would roll back those claims dimmed today. Thankfully we have three branches of government, and the final word on the scope of detention authority belongs to the Supreme Court, which has yet to rule on the scope of detention authority. But Congress and the president also have a role to play in cleaning up the mess they have created because no American citizen or anyone else should live in fear of this or any future president misusing the NDAA’s detention authority.
The ACLU will fight worldwide detention authority wherever we can, be it in court, in Congress, or internationally.
Learn more about indefinite detention: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook.
https://secure.aclu.org/site/SPageServer?pagename=UN_email_sign_up&s_subsrc=bor_footer
http://youtu.be/pwyHuFTQeaUPresident Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on December 31,... more
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Dozens of police maintained a late-night guard around City Hall following daylong protests that resulted in 300 arrests. Occupy Oakland demonstrators broke into the historic building and burned a U.S. flag, as officers earlier fired tear gas to disperse people throwing rocks and tearing down fencing at a convention center.Dozens of police maintained a late-night guard around City Hall following daylong... more
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(FOX19) - It was the lead off question of the CNN Republican debate focusing on national security: Shouldn't we keep and even strengthen the Patriot Act?
A number of candidates answered the question. To analyze those answers, we are going to do this Reality Check in 2 parts.
Let's start with the question that was asked by Ed Meese of the Heritage Foundation. He asked at the debate, "At least 42 terrorist attacks aimed at the United States have been thwarted since 9/11. Tools like the Patriot Act have been instrumental in finding and stopping terrorists. Shouldn't we have a long range extension of the investigative powers contained in that act?
Former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman didn't really answer the question. For those who did, there were only two sides.
On one side, Texas Congressman Ron Paul says he is against what he calls the unconstitutional reach of the Patriot Act.
On the other side, all the other Republican candidates who essentially agreed with one another that the Patriot Act is not only necessary but needs to be made stronger.
"I'd look at strengthening it, because I think the dangers are literally that great," said Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich.
Texas Governor Rick Perry agreed, saying "We need to keep the Patriot Act and strengthen it if necessary and update it with new technologies as they come along."
The voice of dissension was Texas Congressman Ron Paul who said, "I think the Patriot Act is unpatriotic because it undermines our liberty…Today it seems too easy that our government and our congresses are so willing to give up our liberties for our security."
http://www.fox19.com/story/16214431/reality-check-patriot-act-part-1-has-the-patriot-act-thwarted-42-terror-attacks(FOX19) - It was the lead off question of the CNN Republican debate focusing on... more
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