Texans voted to amend their state constitution yesterday to ban gay marriage. The amendment passed overwhelmingly. Texas follows 18 other states that have done the same.

Like every other state except Massachusetts, Texas didn't permit same-sex marriages previously, but the constitutional amendment was touted as an extra guard against future court rulings.

That's what this is all about. Decreasing the power of the judiciary. We are supposed to have three equal branches of Government. By abusing the constitutional amendment process, we are weakening our independent judiciary.

This is the radical right at work. They herd people like sheep into believing their evangelical brand of bigotry.

The LA Times reports that the IRS has sent a warning letter to a church with a vocal anti-war rector, threatening to rescind its tax exempt status. Crooks and Liars , Seeing the Forest and Cookie Jill at Skippy have more.

The cat's out of the bag. Who urged New York City to begin conducting searches of subway riders' bags? Richard Clarke.

Mr. Clarke, a former counterterrorism adviser to two presidents, received widespread attention last year for his criticism of President Bush's response to the Sept. 11 attacks, detailed in a searing memoir and in security testimony before the 9/11 Commission.

Unknown to the public, until recently, was Mr. Clarke's role in advising New York City officials in helping to devise the "container inspection program" that the Police Department began in July after two attacks on the transit system in London.

The Washington Post reports that the FBI has been obtaining and reviewing records of ordinary Americans in the name of the war on terror through the use of national security letters that gag the recipients.

"The FBI now issues more than 30,000 national security letters a year, according to government sources, a hundredfold increase over historic norms. The letters -- one of which can be used to sweep up the records of many people -- are extending the bureau's reach as never before into the telephone calls, correspondence and financial lives of ordinary Americans. "

What's a national security letter?

by TChris

U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman in Manhattan will begin hearing evidence today in a challenge to New York City’s random search of bags carried by subway riders.

The New York Civil Liberties Union, which brought the lawsuit on behalf of several subway riders, said in court papers filed last week that its own survey from Aug. 25 to Sept. 16 of 5,500 subway turnstile entrances found a total of 34 searches underway. It said the search program in the 468 subway stations serving 26 train lines "has no meaningful value in preventing the entry of explosive devices into the system by the terrorists the NYPD is attempting to thwart."

The City counters that random searches deter terrorism because a terrorist will never know whether he’ll be searched. The risk of being searched is so low, however, that only the most timid of terrorists would worry about detection. Balanced against their negligible benefit, the random search of bags carried by individuals who have done nothing to raise a suspicion of wrongdoing is an unnecessary offense to the privacy of passengers.

by TChris

Caving to the petition of local religious leaders and to concerns voiced by a Civic Center sponsor, the Jamestown, North Dakota mayor and city council voted to cancel a male revue -- the "Thunder from Down Under" -- that had been booked to perform at the city's Civic Center. The sponsor complained that the male strippers were engaged in pornography, while a minister called the show "the absolute wrong thing for Jamestown to bring in."

What would be the absolute right thing for Jamestown to bring in?

One council member who opposed the cancellation noted the Ministerial Association did not oppose a recent Ultimate Fighting show featuring what the councilman called "guys trying to beat each other's brains out."

by TChris

Who polices the police? At the FBI, the answer is: nobody.

The FBI has conducted clandestine surveillance on some U.S. residents for as long as 18 months at a time without proper paperwork or oversight, according to previously classified documents to be released today.

The FBI has violated "laws and directives governing clandestine surveillance" at least 287 times in the past three years. As domestic spying increases, the lack of effective oversight magnifies the threat to civil liberties.

by TChris

Boston College's Center for Human Rights and International Justice opens next week. It hopes to use an interdisciplinary approach to tackle issues of human rights and social injustice around the world.

by TChris

The Big Brothers in Washington are perturbed that it's so difficult to spy on your email. By means of an unfunded mandate, they're working to make it easier.

The federal government, vastly extending the reach of an 11-year-old law, is requiring hundreds of universities, online communications companies and cities to overhaul their Internet computer networks to make it easier for law enforcement authorities to monitor e-mail and other online communications.

...

The 1994 law, the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, requires telephone carriers to engineer their switching systems at their own cost so that federal agents can obtain easy surveillance access.

An FCC order, instigated by the Justice Department, extends the law's reach "not only to universities, but also to libraries, airports providing wireless service and commercial Internet access providers."

The AP reports that Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff has declared open war on undocumented residents.

Atrios responds:

There's nothing necessarily wrong with a general policy of expelling illegal immigrants, aside from the cost of course, although it's important to remember that plenty of illegals have perfectly legal children and/or spouses. But I don't look forward to living in a "show your papers please" society.

Me neither. Nor should local police be used to enforce immigration laws. As to how Chertoff intends to accomplish his goal, here's the predictable answer. More jails.

by TChris

A NY Times editorial calls attention to a ruling last week by the European Court of Human Rights overturning a British law that prohibits prison inmates from voting. The ruling reflects a greater respect for democracy than we see in the U.S., where incarcerated offenders are rarely permitted to vote, and where many states disenfranchise felons (sometimes permanently) even after they've been released from prison.

Why does the U.S. care less than other countries about the right of these citizens to vote?

Of the nearly five million people who were barred from participating in the last presidential election, for example, most, if not all, would have been free to vote if they had been citizens of any one of dozens of other nations. ... This issue deserves a full hearing in the United States, which shows less regard for the rights of prisoners and ex-offenders than just about any of its peers.

by TChris

The Air Force Academy, after being sued for proselytizing cadets, announced that it rescinded an obviously unconstitutional “code of ethics [for chaplains] that endorsed the practice of evangelizing military service members who are not affiliated with any specific religion.”

The code of ethics - issued by the Air Force Chaplain Service in January 2005 - includes the statement: "I will not actively proselytize from other religious bodies. However, I retain the right to instruct and/or evangelize those who are not affiliated."

Unaffected by the Academy’s action is a similar code of ethics authored by the “National Conference on Ministry to the Armed Forces, a private organization of religious bodies that provides chaplains to all of the military services.”