by TChris

Free speech doesn't extend to Hezbollah -- or to those who help Hezbollah speak. That's the lesson learned by a New Yorker who provides satellite broadcasts to customers. The broadcasts include Christian evangelists and, until recently, the Hezbollah station Al Manar.

Javed Iqbal's home and storefront were raided by federal agents, and now he's behind bars, held on a ridiculously high bail -- $250,000 -- for allegedly providing "material support for terrorism." Does "supporting terrorism" include rebroadcasting programming that's available in much of the rest of the world?

"It appears that the statute under which Mr. Iqbal is being prosecuted includes a First Amendment exemption that prevents the government from punishing people for importing news communications," Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement. "Such an exemption is constitutionally necessary, and the fact that the government is proceeding with the prosecution in spite of it raises serious questions about how free our marketplace of idea is."

Immigration and Customs Enforcement got a little more egg on its face last week when it was disclosed it had deported a U.S. citizen. True, the man didn't know he had become a citizen at age 15. But, the law says the burden of proof is on the government when it comes to deportation. And shame on the prosecutor who continued to argue for his deporation after the information came to light.

Duarnis Perez became an American citizen when he was 15, but he didn't find out until after he had been deported and then jailed for trying to get back into the country. He was facing his second deportation hearing when he learned he was already a U.S. citizen. Still, federal prosecutors fought to keep him in custody.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Sara Lord, who prosecuted Perez, declined comment when asked if the government would appeal. In a brief, she argued Perez was at fault for not knowing his status, saying he "cannot base his failure to discover the circumstances on the alleged omissions of others."

The federal judge hearing the case was having none of it:

by TChris

For reasons explained here and here, Lt. Ehren Watada refused to deploy to Iraq. He'd rather lose his liberty than his sense of morality.

A separate question is whether he should be also face punishment for criticizing the president's decision to go to war. In an amicus brief, the ACLU of Washington argues that Watada did not sacrifice his right to right to speak out on core issues of public policy by enlisting in the military.

In addition to charges against Lt. Watada for refusal to report to duty, the military is seeking to penalize Lt. Watada for statements he made to reporters expressing his objections to the United States' involvement in the war in Iraq (see below). He is being charged with violating two articles of the Uniform Code of Military Justice: Article 88, which prohibits use of "contemptuous words" against the President and other top governmental officials; and Article 133, which prohibits "conduct unbecoming an officer" - that is, behavior which dishonors or disgraces an officer or "seriously compromises the officer's character as a gentleman."

by Last Night in Little Rock

Yesterday, President Bush signed into law a 907 page pension law that has a little known proviso: Anyone can inherit a 401(k) without paying taxes on it. Before, only spouses could do so. The LA Times has the story today:

A little-noticed provision in a pension law signed Thursday by President Bush will for the first time allow anyone to inherit a 401(k) nest egg without immediately paying taxes on the windfall, a benefit that in the past was reserved for spouses.

Gay advocates and other observers described the measure as a significant shift in how the government treats domestic partners who are not married, even though the provision was not written specifically for same-sex couples.

With this change, Congress is acknowledging that improvements can be made to our laws that address financial inequities and impediments that same-sex couples face," said James M. Delaplane Jr., an attorney and specialist on pension benefits. "There's no doubt about it."

The legal change is an obscure element in a new 907-page law affecting pensions and workplace-based retirement accounts. Proponents of the overall package hailed it as a long-sought effort to stabilize a system of retirement benefits that has grown porous. Many traditional pension plans are teetering on a base of shaky funding, and many companies are cutting back on future commitments.

"Americans who spend a lifetime working hard should be confident that their pensions will be there when they retire," Bush said as he signed the Pension Protection Act of 2006.

The obvious intent was to remove tax penalties and enable 401(k) holders to pass the corpus to anyone they wanted. Congress knew exactly what it was doing. This was in the works for three years.

by Last Night in Little Rock

The NSA's broad wiretapping program that sweeps into its purview non-terrorism suspects, including journalists, lawyers, and scholars, was declared unconstitutional by U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor of the Eastern District of Michigan. The opinion appears here. It was a resounding defeat for the Bush Administration.

CNN.com summarizes as follows:

by Last Night in Little Rock

As our Constitution and civil liberties are slipping from our grasp, we see that Attorney General Gonzalez on Monday ordered "ordered a side-by-side review of American and British counterterrorism laws as a first step toward determining whether further changes in American law are warranted." If you hated the USA PATRIOT Act, you will detest this.

Newly revised British counterterrorism laws, for instance, allow the authorities to hold a suspect for 28 days without charges, where American law generally requires that a suspect held in the civilian court system be charged or released within 48 hours.

The Northern Ireland terrorism courts have a three judge panel that acts like an international tribunal. The rules of evidence are seriously relaxed, there are no "constitutional protections," and suspects can be detained for lengthy periods without being charged. Britain has also enacted similar laws for the current terrorism threat.

General Gonzalez seems to have forgotten that we are in the United States, and we operate under a Constitution, along with its Bill of Rights, which were designed, in 1789 and 1791, respectively, to distance and protect us from the abuses of Eighteenth Century England. Whatever happened in the 225 years since, Twenty-first Century England may be regressing. Without a Bill of Rights, not much protects British citizens from arrests and detention without proof of probable cause. Their rights are purely statutory.

On CNN this morning I heard that the airliner bombing plot suspects were in a closed courtroom for a video appearance today to extend their incarcerations without being yet being charged with a crime. [Note: Nothing on CNN.com about this yet.]

Maybe Gonzalez will call this PATRIOT 3.0 and see if they can get it through the Republican led Congress before the 2006 election.

by TChris

Voters in Kansas dealt another defeat to extremists who believe that public education about the origins of life should be faith-based rather than science-based.

Conservative Republicans lost control of the State Board of Education on Tuesday only nine months after they had enacted science standards expressing doubt about evolutionary theory. Critics saw the standards as an attack on evolution, and Kansas received international ridicule as a result.

The conservative board majority was 6-4 going into this year's election, and moderate Republicans unseated one conservative incumbent and captured a seat held by a retiring conservative in Tuesday's primary elections. That left the balance of power at 6-4 in favor of moderates who believe the standards should reflect mainstream scientific views - and treat evolution as a well-established theory.

Two conservative Republicans who held off moderate challengers in the primary may still lose to science-friendly Democrats in the general election.

Here's an example of how tougher punitive immigration bills can be misapplied:

Prosecutors in Arizona have charged two volunteers who say they tried to save the lives of three sick migrants stranded in the desert with felony charges of transporting illegal immigrants. If convicted, Daniel Strauss, of Manhattan, and Shanti Sellz, of Iowa City, Iowa, both 24, could face up to 15 years in federal prison and a half-million-dollar fine.

...in court papers, the Border Patrol contended the work of the faith-based group No More Deaths was encouraging migrants to cross illegally into the United States. The agency also contended group leaders were warned volunteers could be arrested. The leaders dismissed the arguments as absurd.

Daniel Strauss had this to say:

by TChris

Documents suggest that New York City Mayor Bloomberg lied when he denied that politics played any part in his decision to deny protesters access to the Great Lawn in Central Park during the 2004 Republican Convention. The Bloomberg administration claimed to be "motivated by a concern for the condition of the expensively renovated Great Lawn or by law enforcement's ability to secure the crowd," even though documents produced in a lawsuit show that the police preferred to have protestors gathered together in that location.

Those documents ... suggest that officials were indeed motivated by political concerns over how the protests would play out while the Republican delegates were in town, and how the events could affect the mayor's re-election campaign the following year. ...

[T]he documents, which are part of the lawsuit brought by the National Council of Arab Americans and the Answer Coalition, an antiwar civil rights group, indicate that politics and appearances were at the center of the administration's strategy and that Mr. Bloomberg was more intimately involved in the discussions over demonstrations in the park than he said.

by TChris

Had these folks been wielding signs that supported the president, do you suppose they would have been arrested?

Christine Nelson showed up at the Cedar Rapids rally with a Kerry-Edwards button pinned on her T-shirt; Alice McCabe clutched a small, paper sign stating "No More War." What could be more American, they thought, than mixing a little dissent with the bunting and buzz of a get-out-the-vote rally headlined by the president?

Their reward: a pair of handcuffs and a strip search at the county jail.

Authorities say they were arrested because they refused to obey reasonable security restrictions, but the women disagree: "Because I had a dissenting opinion, they did what they needed to do to get me out of the way," said Nelson, who teaches history and government at one of this city's middle schools.

Suppressing dissent has become the standard practice during Bush's presidency.

by TChris

A legal challenge to AT&T's cooperation with the Bush administration's warrantless eavesdropping program survived dismissal today, as U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker rejected the administration's oft-repeated claim that any scrutiny of its domestic spying programs would endanger national security.

"It might appear that none of the subject matter in this litigation could be considered a secret given that the alleged surveillance programs have been so widely reported in the media,'' Walker said.

Walker also wrote that he did not see how allowing the lawsuit to continue could threaten national security.

"The compromise between liberty and security remains a difficult one,'' Walker said. "But dismissing this case at the outset would sacrifice liberty for no apparent enhancement of security.''

by TChris

After finding excuses for five straight years to skip the NAACP's annual meeting, President Bush decided to attend this year's event, already underway. He'll speak to the gathering on Thursday.

Every president for the past several decades has spoken to the group. Until now, Bush had been the exception.

"The Decider" decided to miss Julian Bond's speech. It would have been harder for him to endure than Stephen Colbert's roast (Google video).

Bond recounted a recent meeting with Bush, during which he invited him to make the mile trip from the White House to the convention.

He then harshly criticized the administration, slamming it for the war in Iraq, for abusing civil liberties, using the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks as an excuse, and implementing an economic policy that gives to the rich and takes from the poor.

"They have continued an assault on our civil liberties and civil rights, orchestrated a mass transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top, increased poverty every year they've been in office, created dangerous deficits, substituted religion for science, ignored global warming and wrecked environmental protections," he said of the current administration.