Former President Jimmy Carter decries Dubya’s Middle East policy, as well as the numerous human rights violations currently being overlooked and/or perpetrated in the name of anti-terrorism.
Category: Civil Liberties
Shame of the Founders.
“The only thing the FISA court proved was that when wolves are guarding the henhouse, they eat a lot of coq au vin.” The always incisive Dahlia Lithwick rails against secret courts and the overlooked provisions of the Patriot Act.
FISA fights back.
The secret court overseeing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) rebuff Ashcroft’s plea for increased wiretap powers, and declares the FBI has misled the court over 75 times. Never thought I’d be on the side of a secret court, but there you go. It must be getting really ugly over at Justice if somebody’s leaking this bad boy.
Second-Class Citizens, First-Class Surveillance.
Sketching an eerie parallel to Ashcroft’s current war on libraries, Derrick Jackson surveys the FBI’s long and ignoble history concerning Black America.
Ashcroft’s “Hellish Vision.”
Jonathan Turley, Constitutional Law professor at GW and television staple during l’affaire Lewinsky, lashes into John Ashcroft for his recent plan to create extraconstitutional internment camps of “enemy combatants” (re: US citizens) in and around the country. (Via Caught in Between.) Y’know, I do believe John Ashcroft is the scariest man in the country right now.
Cheap Oil is a Right!
All manner of Dept. of Homeland Security Posters (Via Do You Feel Loved?) As Chris noted, some of ’em are kinda shrill, but I’m a sucker for the retro stylings.
The Minister’s Wayward Flock.
How you like them apples? Even conservatives are sick of Ashcroft. And so, it turns out, are many of are his underlings, who are clashing with him on gun checks.
Don’t buy Falafels or Ziplocs…
…cause your shopping habits are being monitored. I wonder what the Feds would think of my alarming intake of Red Bull and Mt. Dew Code Red.
Suspicion Breeds Confidence.
How to Identify a Terrorist, from the Office of Homeland Security. (Via Quiddity.)
Rockefeller’s Drug Insanity.
Bob Herbert takes aim at the Rockefeller drug laws, now almost thirty years old. The ethnic differentials in the enforcement of the drug laws are extraordinary. While there is wide use of illegal drugs across the ethnic spectrum, including among whites, 94 percent of the people doing time for drug offenses in the state of New York are black or Hispanic. Indeed, according to one of the laws’ original sponsors, “New York now sends more African-American and Latino men to prison each year than it graduates from its state colleges and universities.”