by TChris

In a victory for individual expression over the interests of big business, Mattel's lawsuit against artist Tom Forsythe for copyright and trademark infringement has come to an end. Mattel didn't like the way Forsythe photographed his Barbie dolls (posed nude in provocative stances next to household appliances). Forsythe says he was making a point about "Barbie's power as beauty myth" and "crass consumerism." Mattel, on the other hand, hoped to wield its financial might to protect Barbie's honor.

Art won -- and won big -- as a federal court, after a series of appeals, not only ruled in Forsythe's favor but concluded that Mattel's failure to recognize protected parody resulted in a frivolous lawsuit. The court ordered Mattel to pay Forsythe more than $1.8 million in attorney's fees.

A 'Romeo and Juliet' law is under attack in Kansas by the ACLU. What's that? It's a law prohibiting consensual sex between teenagers. In Kansas, the penalties are vastly greater for same-sex participants. Matthew Limon, a developmentally disabled teen, is serving a 17 year sentence for an offense that would have resulted in a 15 month term had his partner been a female:

In February of 2000, Limon and another male teenager were both students at the same residential school for developmentally disabled youth in Miami County, Kansas. A week after Limon’s 18th birthday, he performed consensual oral sex on the other teenager, who was nearly 15 years old – three years, one month and a few days younger. Because Kansas’s so-called “Romeo and Juliet” law gives much lighter sentences to heterosexual teenagers who have sex with younger teens but specifically excludes gay teenagers, Limon was sentenced to 17 years in prison. A heterosexual teenager with the same record would serve no longer than 15 months for the same offense.

...Under the Kansas “Romeo and Juliet” law, consensual oral sex between two teens is a lesser crime if the younger teenager is 14 to 16 years old, if the older teenager is under 19, if the age difference is less than four years, if there are no third parties involved, and if the two teenagers “are members of the opposite sex.”

Background on the case is here, which includes this description of the law:

by TChris

Some jurisdictions make it a crime to utter a public profanity (at least if the profanity disturbs or might disturb others) -- laws of dubious constitutionality that some courts have nonetheless upheld. Dick Cheney is leading the way toward a new defense to such charges: profanity as therapy, a form of self-defense or medical necessity.

Cheney admits he "probably" tossed the F-word at Senator Leahy this week, but says he "felt better afterwards." Good for him. And good for all the criminal defense lawyers who can now say in a closing argument: "If the Vice President can say that word in the Senate chamber as a stress reliever, how can my client be guilty of disorderly conduct for saying the same word? Isn't he entitled to a little therapy too?"

A big thanks to Dick Cheney for making clear a fact we've always known: even Republicans swear, and it's not a big deal -- making it an effing shame that people sometimes get charged with a crime for using language that others find disagreeable.

by TChris

July 2 will be the 40th anniversary of the day the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law. This landmark legislation was designed to end racial discrimination in employment and in public accommodations.

By putting pen to the Civil Rights Bill, Johnson sealed the doom of the Democratic Party in the South. But he opened the doors not only of restaurants and hotels but also expectation and opportunity to Americans of every race, color and religion.

A day worth celebrating.

by TChris

As TalkLeft has reported, the police in New York have been slow to issue permits to those who wish to protest the Republican National Convention -- although NYPD claims it will begin issuing permits next week. It's much easier for the police to protest than it is for ordinary folk, as they're proving in Boston, where 300 officers are picketing outside a meeting of the U.S. Conference on Mayors. That's a picket line that John Kerry, an invited speaker, won't want to cross for fear of losing the police union's endorsement. Let's hope NYPD officers learn from their Boston colleagues that protest is actually a good thing, not something to be discouraged or foiled.

by TChris

If you've ever attended a protest in Denver, you might want to browse through a new archive of "spy files" created by the Denver police. Among the peaceful protestors catalogued by the Denver police over the last half century: "a Franciscan nun, Amnesty International and more than 100 public school students."

The Denver Intelligence Bureau collected files on 10,000 people and 1,000 groups before ending the practice in response to an ACLU lawsuit. The ACLU argued that spying on protestors chilled the exercise of their First Amendment rights and served no legitimate law enforcement purpose.

Big Brother times ten. Here's another excessive privacy intrusion made in the name of the war on terror: Britain will be given access to U.S. databases, including those with DNA and fingerprints of foreigners:

British police will almost certainly be given access in the near future to US intelligence databases containing DNA samples, fingerprints and digital images of thousands of foreign nationals seized around the world by the US as terror suspects. As the war on terror increasingly comes to rely on biometric technology - the use of physical characteristics unique to individuals such as iris pattern, DNA and fingerprints to verify identify - western police and intelligence agencies are drawing up plans for sophisticated biometric databases which would allow them to share sensitive information.

Here's what the FBI says--biometrics is the future.

by TChris

It's strange to think that citizens need to ask their government for permission to exercise their constitutional rights, but New York City insists that demonstrators obtain a permit before they protest the Republican National Convention. Problem is, New York hasn't issued any permits.

Leslie Cagan of protest group United for Peace and Justice said the group applied for a permit more than a year ago but has not yet been granted permission. The city "has yet to do anything in terms of issuing permits guaranteeing not only that we are able to protest but, more importantly, that we are able to exercise our constitutionally protected right to assemble, to march, to rally, to make our voices heard," Cagan said.

Tuesday was the deadline to apply for a "protest permit." About 15 groups have applied for permits, but none have been granted. The New York Civil Liberties Union plans to take New York to court if the permits aren't issued.

Michael Isakoff reports in the June 21 issue of Newsweek:

Without any public hearing or debate, NEWSWEEK has learned, Defense officials recently slipped a provision into a bill before Congress that could vastly expand the Pentagon's ability to gather intelligence inside the United States, including recruiting citizens as informants.

Ever since the 1970s, when Army intel agents were caught snooping on antiwar protesters, military intel agencies have operated under tight restrictions inside the United States. But the new provision, approved in closed session last month by the Senate Intelligence Committee, would eliminate one big restriction: that they comply with the Privacy Act, a Watergate-era law that requires government officials seeking information from a resident to disclose who they are and what they want the information for.

The New York Times has a fascinating investigative report on immigrant smugglers from Ecuador:

In collaboration with The New York Times, a reporter from El Tiempo, a newspaper in Cuenca, Ecuador, took the eight-day voyage, covering 1,100 nautical miles from a cove near this scruffy Ecuadorean beach resort to the northern coast of Guatemala. Her journey as a client of smugglers — and sometimes a hostage — provides a rare look inside one small part of the vast pipeline that carries untold numbers of migrants to the United States each year.

Not surprisingly to us, the real portrait of the smugglers differs considerably from that advanced by American law enforcement:

Up close, the typical migrant smuggler is unlike the sophisticated, violent mastermind portrayed by American law enforcement officials. Most never went to high school. They are often unarmed. They are motivated by the same poverty that drives migrants from their homelands. The smugglers run a business built for the poor by the poor, relying on willpower and wooden boats to move thousands of people. They do not always prey on migrants. Their business is based on trust that runs deep in communities that have sent migrants to the United States for decades.

The Ecuadoran route is one of the newer favorites in an industry generating $20 billion a year --second only to drugs:

There will be an organized protest on at 11:00 am on Monday, June 14 across the street from Governor Pataki's New York City office. 633 3rd Ave., between 40th and 41st Streets. Here's why, as contained in a e-mail we received from NNIRR:

On May 25, in a collaboration that has stunned families and advocates, 500 officers from New York’s Division of Parole and the federal immigration office have tag teamed to round up over 100 New York immigrants – most of whom are Black and Latino and many of whom had green cards. Some parole officers called parolees and former parolees, asking them to report for visits that were not routine. When they dutifully showed up, they were shackled by immigration agents and shipped to jails hundreds of miles away. The detainees’ families, immigrant rights and criminal justice organizations are outraged that a New York State agency would use their authority to entrap these immigrants, who had been complying with the terms of their parole. They are gathering to demand that the Division of Parole stop the secretive collaboration with immigration, and that government agencies explain how parolees were targeted for this latest round up.

As a result:

Why is the Department of Homeland Security resisting asylum for mentally challenged teenager Malik Jarno of Guinea, West Africa? Jarno has been in custody in the U.S. for three years. Jarno's lawyer, Chris Nugent of Holland and Knight (a huge law firm that does a large amount of pro bono work) recently went to Guinea and obtained several affidavits.

Four people remembered Jarno's father as the imam and also an opposition leader who had been arrested, tortured and killed in 1998, Nugent said. Several witnesses wrote that, because of his family's political views and because the government would say he shamed the nation's image abroad, Jarno would be imprisoned if he returned to Guinea.

In addition, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees submitted a letter directly related to the Jarno case after meeting with the heads of UNICEF, the World Health Organization and other agencies. They concurred that no protection exists for mentally challenged children in Guinea, Rosaline Idowu, the deputy representative of operations, wrote May 27.

Jarno's hearing date is July 9. More background on Malik is available here.