ACLU Live-blogging Hearing on Walker's anti-collective bargaining bill

The ACLU is live-tweeting the hearing on Walker's anti-collective bargaining bill.

LRB atty said Sen. Fitzgerald insistsed the bill be published last Friday.

Obama's Assualt - A Sister Secrecy Moment

Update: Greenwald on Obama's latest effort to conceal evidence of Bush era crimes. Dittoheads beware, Greeenwald links to John Aravosis (Obama's logic was "a bit Bushian") Steve Hynd ("Obama Trades Our Principles For Cheneyism") TPM ("Obama falls back on Bushisms") Dan Froomkin ("Obama Joins the Cover-Up"). And as Greenwald points out, "Obama now has new cheer-leaders: Bill Kristol, Michael Goldfarb and Max Boot," and come MyDD commenters below.

This is a trust-breaking moment, President Obama, and you really blew it.

It's not a mistake. It's an assault against this democracy.

That would be President Obama's decision to to block release of detainee photos of torture out of a concern that the photos would “further inflame anti-American opinion.”

What is this, a Sister Secrecy moment? Are you trying to prove to America that you're really not an open government, transparency-loving, honest, straight-shooting democrat?

Obama's argument is:

We cannot practice democracy at home by ensuring that the American people have access to IMAGES of facts already known, because we're afraid that sympathizers of torture victims will seek revenge.

If Obama is worried about the troops, get them the hell of out of these two wars in Asia already. Release the photos and then condemn them in the strongest possible terms, singling out the Neocon idiots on whose watch these obscenities happened and who ordered torture to begin with, instead of refusing to investigate and prosecute these war criminals.

From the Times:

The A.C.L.U. sharply criticized the president’s decision. In a statement, its executive director, Anthony D. Romero said:

'The Obama administration’s adoption of the stonewalling tactics and opaque policies of the Bush administration flies in the face of the president’s stated desire to restore the rule of law, to revive our moral standing in the world and to lead a transparent government. This decision is particularly disturbing given the Justice Department’s failure to initiate a criminal investigation of torture crimes under the Bush administration.

'It is true that these photos would be disturbing; the day we are no longer disturbed by such repugnant acts would be a sad one. In America, every fact and document gets known – whether now or years from now. And when these photos do see the light of day, the outrage will focus not only on the commission of torture by the Bush administration but on the Obama administration’s complicity in covering them up. Any outrage related to these photos should be due not to their release but to the very crimes depicted in them. Only by looking squarely in the mirror, acknowledging the crimes of the past and achieving accountability can we move forward and ensure that these atrocities are not repeated.'

Already, the Democratic equivalents of dittoheads are lining up behind the leader. Pathetic.

Sanity

Update: CIA WATERBOARDED KHALID SHEIKH MOHAMMED 183 TIMES IN ONE MONTH (via Huffington Post)

Two extraordinary pieces in the Sunday Times on rightwing depravity and rightwing stupidity:

April 19, 2009
Editorial
The Torturers’ Manifesto
To read the four newly released memos on prisoner interrogation written by George W. Bush’s Justice Department is to take a journey into depravity.

Their language is the precise bureaucratese favored by dungeon masters throughout history. They detail how to fashion a collar for slamming a prisoner against a wall, exactly how many days he can be kept without sleep (11), and what, specifically, he should be told before being locked in a box with an insect — all to stop just short of having a jury decide that these acts violate the laws against torture and abusive treatment of prisoners.

In one of the more nauseating passages, Jay Bybee, then an assistant attorney general and now a federal judge, wrote admiringly about a contraption for waterboarding that would lurch a prisoner upright if he stopped breathing while water was poured over his face. He praised the Central Intelligence Agency for having doctors ready to perform an emergency tracheotomy if necessary.

These memos are not an honest attempt to set the legal limits on interrogations, which was the authors’ statutory obligation.

They were written to provide legal immunity for acts that are clearly illegal, immoral and a violation of this country’s most basic values.

It sounds like the plot of a mob film, except the lawyers asking how much their clients can get away with are from the C.I.A. and the lawyers coaching them on how to commit the abuses are from the Justice Department. And it all played out with the blessing of the defense secretary, the attorney general, the intelligence director and,
most likely, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

The Americans Civil Liberties Union deserves credit for suing for the memos’ release. And President Obama deserves credit for overruling his own C.I.A. director and ordering that the memos be made public. It is hard to think of another case in which documents stamped “Top Secret” were released with hardly any deletions. ...

From Frank Rich:

WHAT would happen if you crossed that creepy 1960s horror classic 'The Village of the Damned' with the Broadway staple 'A Chorus Line'? You don’t need to use your imagination. It’s there waiting for you on YouTube under the title 'Gathering Storm': a 60-second ad presenting homosexuality as a national threat second only to terrorism. ...

Far from terrifying anyone, 'Gathering Storm' has become, unsurprisingly, an Internet camp classic. On YouTube the original video must compete with countless homemade parodies it has inspired since first turning up some 10 days ago. None may top Stephen Colbert’s on Thursday night, in which lightning from 'the homo storm' strikes an Arkansas teacher, turning him gay. A 'New Jersey pastor' whose church has been 'turned into an Abercrombie & Fitch' declares that he likes gay people, 'but only as hilarious best friends in TV and movies.' ...

What gives the ad its symbolic significance is not just that it’s idiotic but that its release was the only loud protest anywhere in America to the news that same-sex marriage had been legalized in Iowa and Vermont. If it advances any message, it’s mainly that homophobic activism is ever more depopulated and isolated as well as brain-dead. ...

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Colbert Coalition's Anti-Gay Marriage Ad
colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor NASA Name Contest

ACLU Marks 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Not exactly something you'll find on American network television:

ACLU Marks 60th Anniversary Of Landmark Human Rights Document
New Administration Should Recommit To Principles Laid Out In The Universal Declaration Of Human Rights, Says Group

WASHINGTON - December 10 - On the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the American Civil Liberties Union is calling on the incoming Obama administration to recommit to the rights and principles laid out in the document and use it as a guidepost for setting policy at home and abroad.

The UDHR was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 10, 1948 to codify the basic human rights of all people, and is widely considered to be the founding document of the modern human rights movement. "The passage of the UDHR brought worldwide awareness of the basic rights and protections all people should enjoy," said Jamil Dakwar, Director of the ACLU Human Rights Program. "Sadly, eight years of disastrous policy by the Bush administration have put the very rights embodied by the UDHR in jeopardy. It is time to fix the damage that has been done and restore our nation's commitment to upholding and protecting human rights."

Following the horrors of World War II, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, devoted itself exclusively to drafting the UDHR. The document, which was influenced by the U.S. Bill of Rights, contains 30 articles that detail specific rights that belong to all human beings everywhere, including civil and political rights as well as economic, social and cultural rights.

"Despite the prominent role the United States played in drafting the UDHR, we have failed to live up to our commitment to human rights at home and abroad," said Dakwar. "President-elect Obama and Congress can reestablish America as a leader on human rights at home and abroad by making policies that reaffirm our dedication to the principles laid out in the UDHR."
...

A full list of events is available online at: www.udhr60.org/udhr_events.html

More information about the UDHR, including a new publication by the ACLU, "Human Rights Begin at Home: Celebrating the 60th Anniversary of the UDHR," and a petition urging Congress and President-elect Obama to recommit the U.S. to the principles of the UDHR, is available online at: www.udhr60.org

Fla Court Rules Gays Get Equal Protection, Adoption Ban Unconstitutional

Has Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Cindy S. Lederman been getting too much sun or is she seeing the light?

Judge Lederman ruled on a legal case challenging a Florida law that bans lesbians and gays from adopting, finding the statute unconstitutional.

The case raises the big question Republicans are pondering as they decide which way forward for their battered Party: Embracing ignorance and authoritarianism or some manner of qualified libertarianism.

[Pictured above-right is Martin Gill with the two brothers he hopes to adopt in Florida.] From the ACLU:

Judge Lederman "struck down a Florida law that bars lesbians and gay men from adopting. The court granted adoptions to a gay man, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, who has been raising two foster children since 2004," reads a ACLU press release.

"The court ruled that the ban violated the equal protection guarantees of the state constitution because it singles out for different treatment gay people and the children they raise for no rational reason. The court also found that the ban denies children the right to permanency provided by federal and state law under the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997."

In 2005, the US Supreme Court refused to hear a challenge to the Florida law. So, the US Supreme Court that ruled an equal protection violation in Bush v. Gore did not get to rule on a violation in this case.

The case will likely end up in the Florida Supreme Court where four of the seven members were appointed by the late Democratic Gov. Lawton Chiles.

We'll get there.

Times are changing, ultimately, such discriminatory laws as Florida's adoption law and the many anti-gay marriage statutes and state constitutional amendments will go the way of laws banning inter-"racial" marriage that were struck down in Loving v. Virginia, (1967) on equal protection grounds by the the US Supreme Court.

Change is gonna come, and likely the GOP will be left behind.

See - Trial Court Decision and Order (11/25/2008) RE: [Frank Martin Gill] John Doe and James Doe for the language of the decision by Judge Lederman.

- via mal contends

ACLU Puts Out Voter Guide

In the face of the attempted voter obstruction by the Wisconsin Republican Party, the ACLU of Wisconsin has put out a voting rights guide. The GOP's long, despicable record of voter suppression is on full display in Wisconsin, a state McCain must win to have a chance at garnering 270 electoral votes.

Reproduced below without ACLU authorization is the ACLU voting guide.

Don't take a chance, bring all official IDs and correspondence at your current address. The GOP does not want you to vote, defy them!

KNOW YOUR RIGHTS: VOTING IN WISCONSIN

You May Vote in Wisconsin If:
. You will be at least 18 years old by Election Day.
. You are a U.S. Citizen (by birth or naturalization).
. You will be a Wisconsin resident for at least 10 days by Election Day. (If you’ve been a Wisconsin resident less than 10 days, you can vote - but only for President, not for other candidates.)
. You have registered to vote - or you register to vote on Election Day. (If you registered in the past at a different address, you must re-register at your current address.)

What If I Have to Register?
. If you have a current, valid, Wisconsin driver’s license, bring it so you can write your license number on the voter registration card.
. If you don’t have a current, valid, Wisconsin driver’s license, you still CAN register and vote by writing the last 4 digits of your social security number or Wisconsin state ID card on the registration card, or by checking the box that says you don’t have any of these documents.
. Prove where you live. If you’re registering on Election Day, if you registered by mail, if you registered after October 15, 2008, or if you registered in a registration drive, bring a document with your name & current address, like a driver’s license, state ID, college ID, recent utility bill (electric, phone, cable, etc.), property tax bill, lease, bank statement, government document, or pay check,
OR go to the polls with a voter who knows where you live and who has proof of their own residency. (You cannot use things like credit card bills, collection notices, magazine subscriptions, or personal mail to register.)

You May Vote EVEN IF:
. You don’t have a driver’s license or “photo ID.”
. You are an Ex-Felon (as long as you are “off paper” - not on probation, parole or extended supervison because of a Felony conviction.) If you’ve only been convicted of a misdemeanor, you CAN vote – even while serving a misdemeanor sentence.
. You don’t speak English (as long as you are a U.S. citizen).
. You need assistance due to disability or language barriers (anyone besides your employer or union can help you cast a ballot).
. You are a Student living away from your parents (you can choose to vote where you live to go to school OR where you resided before going to school. You may not vote twice.) What if I Need Time Off Work to Vote?
. Under Wisconsin law, your employer must give you 3 hours off to vote on Election Day.
. You must ask for the time off BEFORE Election Day.
. Your employer can choose which 3 hours you can take off.
. Your employer does not have to pay you for time off, but can’t penalize you for taking time to exercise your right to vote.
American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin Foundation
207 E Buffalo St.,
Milwaukee WI 53202

The Terrorist Next Door

Thank you Goldy, for The terrorist next door?.

The nation’s terrorist watch list has hit one million names, according to an ACLU tally based on the government’s own reported numbers. ... That’s one million names, but many times that the number of people this pointlessly excessive list routinely sweeps up in our nation’s Bushian paranoia. I happen to know one of the thousands of Robert Johnsons on the list, and he has indeed been taken aside by airport security for extra interrogation and inspection. (Though it could have just been his graying hippy ponytail that sparked their suspicion.)

This Supreme Court Might Let FISA Stand

The ACLU, joined by numerous co-plaintiffs, has filed a challenge to the FISA law.

Thh ACLU brief asserts that the FISA is unconstitutional, allowing "the executive branch sweeping and virtually unregulated authority to monitor the international communications - and in some cases the purely domestic communications - of law-abiding U.S. citizens and residents. The amended law (the "challenged law") eviscerates the "[c]lear legal standards and effective oversight and controls" that the Senate Church Committee concluded in 1978 were necessary to ensure that government surveillance did "not itself undermine the democratic system it [was] intended to protect." [Amnesty International USA et al v. John McConnell (U.S. Director of National Intelligence) et al, complaint for a Declaratatory and Injunctive Relief]

The Bush-Cheney acceleration of warrantless surveillance and presidential claims of executive power to spy on American citizens under the umbrella of national security and the inherent power of the presidency has modern U.S. precedent—the Nixon administration.

But 1972 saw a unanimous Supreme Court shoot down Nixon’s attempt to legalize his monarchical claims of his presidency through warrantless wiretapping in UNITED STATES v. UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT, 407 U.S. 297 (1972).

Justice Lewis Powell, writing for a unanimous Court, denounced the Nixon administration’s warrantless wiretapping program not just on Fourth Amendment grounds, but as a betrayal of the sovereign rights of citizens in a democracy to criticize their own government.

History abundantly documents the tendency of Government - however benevolent and benign its motives - to view with suspicion those who most fervently dispute its policies. Fourth Amendment protections become the more necessary when the targets of official surveillance may be those suspected of unorthodoxy in their political beliefs. The danger to political dissent is acute where the Government attempts to act under so vague a concept as the power to protect ‘domestic security.’ Given the difficulty of defining the domestic security interest, the danger of abuse in acting to protect that interest becomes apparent. ... The price of lawful public dissent must not be a dread of subjection to an unchecked surveillance power. Nor must the fear of unauthorized official eavesdropping deter vigorous citizen dissent and discussion of Government action in private conversation. For private dissent, no less than open public discourse, is essential to our free society.
- Justice Lewis Powell (UNITED STATES v. UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT, 407 U.S. 297 (1972))

One wonders if today's Supreme Court will vote to protect Fourth Amendment freedoms as did its predecessor. We live in different, worse, times than we did during Nixon.

- Part of the above copy has been previously published. -

ACLU Announces Legal Challenge to Follow President’s Signature

ACLU Announces Legal Challenge To Follow President’s Signature

That's good, we'll see.

ACLU Press Release:

WASHINGTON – Today, in a blatant assault upon civil liberties and the right to privacy, the Senate passed an unconstitutional domestic spying bill that violates the Fourth Amendment and eliminates any meaningful role for judicial oversight of government surveillance. The FISA Amendments Act of 2008 was approved by a vote of 69 to 28 and is expected to be signed into law by President Bush shortly. This bill essentially legalizes the president’s unlawful warrantless wiretapping program revealed in December 2005 by the New York Times.

“Once again, Congress blinked and succumbed to the president’s fear-mongering. With today’s vote, the government has been given a green light to expand its power to spy on Americans and run roughshod over the Constitution,” said Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “This legislation will give the government unfettered and unchecked access to innocent Americans’ international communications without a warrant. This is not only unconstitutional, but absolutely un-American.”

The FISA Amendments Act nearly eviscerates oversight of government surveillance by allowing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to review only general procedures for spying rather than individual warrants. The FISC will not be told any specifics about who will actually be wiretapped, thereby undercutting any meaningful role for the court and violating the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable search and seizure.

The bill further trivializes court review by authorizing the government to continue a surveillance program even after the government’s general spying procedures are found insufficient or unconstitutional by the FISC. The government has the authority to wiretap through the entire appeals process, and then keep and use whatever information was gathered in the meantime. A provision touted as a major “concession” by proponents of the bill calls for investigations by the inspectors general of four agencies overseeing spying activities. But members of Congress who do not sit on the Judiciary or Intelligence committees will not be guaranteed access to the agencies’ reports.

The bill essentially grants absolute retroactive immunity to telecommunication companies that facilitated the president’s warrantless wiretapping program over the last seven years by ensuring the dismissal of court cases pending against those companies. The test for the companies’ right to immunity is not whether the government certifications they acted on were actually legal – only whether they were issued. Because it is public knowledge that certifications were issued, all of the pending cases will be summarily dismissed. This means Americans may never learn the truth about what the companies and the government did with our private communications.

“With one vote, Congress has strengthened the executive branch, weakened the judiciary and rendered itself irrelevant,” said Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. “This bill – soon to be law – is a constitutional nightmare. Americans should know that if this legislation is enacted and upheld, what they say on international phone calls or emails is no longer private. The government can listen in without having a specific reason to do so. Our rights as Americans have been curtailed and our privacy can no longer be assumed.”

In advance of the president’s signature, the ACLU announced its plan to challenge the new law in court.

“This fight is not over. We intend to challenge this bill as soon as President Bush signs it into law,” said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project. “The bill allows the warrantless and dragnet surveillance of Americans’ international telephone and email communications. It plainly violates the Fourth Amendment.”

For more information, go to: http://www.aclu.org/fisa/

Madisonians Rayburn and Rothschild Break Major Story on Secret US Gov Program

Update: FBI Response to The Progressive Article Alleging the FBI Authorizes InfraGard Members to “Shoot to Kill” [- this is what is called a long non-denial denial -]

Lee Rayburn, one of the most engaging radio hosts in America - The Mic, 92.1 FM (Madison, Wisconsin) - talked to an acquaintance some months back who told him that a U.S. government agency was involved in deputizing businesses' principals in a secret program to be activated in the event of a national emergency.

Rayburn has an ear for a good story; and the source seemed credible, so he mentioned the bare facts on his morning radio show broadcast out of Madison.

Rayburn said he wondered about the facts and treated the matter with due skepticism; but he was disturbed by one aspect: The civilian shoot-to-kill with immunity element of the program. Smells like ... fascism.

Turns out Rayburn is on to something. The program is called InfraGard.

Rayburn also mentioned the story to Matt Rothschild, editor of Madison's The Progressive Magazine.

After a lengthy investigation and rigorous fact checking, Rothschild authored a piece entitled: The FBI Deputizes Business, the March cover story.

Writes Rothschild:

Today, more than 23,000 representatives of private industry are working quietly with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. The members of this rapidly growing group, called InfraGard, receive secret warnings of terrorist threats before the public does—and, at least on one occasion, before elected officials. In return, they provide information to the government, which alarms the ACLU. But there may be more to it than that. One business executive, who showed me his InfraGard card, told me they have permission to “shoot to kill” in the event of martial law. InfraGard is “a child of the FBI,” says Michael Hershman, the chairman of the advisory board of the InfraGard National Members Alliance and CEO of the Fairfax Group, an international consulting firm.

During a period in American history unsurpassed in secrecy, political vindictiveness, corruption and erosion of civil liberties, I recommend giving Rothschild's piece a good read.

The U.S. Torture Squads: Inhuman and Illegal

A Salon exclusive by Mark Benjamin chronicles the plight of an innocent Yemeni man tortured and brutalized for 19 months.

This is why Republicans block bills in Congress outlawing torture, bills which would make U.S. law on torture clearly in accordance with the U.S. Army Field Manual and international law. Because Republicans under Bush do torture and need protection from the investigations of the civilized world.

Writes Benjamin:

The CIA held Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah in several different cells when he was incarcerated its network of secret prisons known as "black sites." But the small cells were all pretty similar, maybe 7 feet wide and 10 feet long. He was sometimes naked, and sometimes handcuffed for weeks at a time. In one cell his ankle was chained to a bolt in the floor. There was a small toilet. In another cell there was just a bucket. Video cameras recorded his every move. The lights always stayed on -- there was no day or night. A speaker blasted him with continuous white noise, or rap music, 24 hours a day.

The guards wore black masks and black clothes. They would not utter a word as they extracted Bashmilah from his cell for interrogation -- one of his few interactions with other human beings during his entire 19 months of imprisonment. Nobody told him where he was, or if he would ever be freed.

It was enough to drive anyone crazy. Bashmilah finally tried to slash his wrists with a small piece of metal, smearing the words "I am innocent" in blood on the walls of his cell. But the CIA patched him up.

So Bashmilah stopped eating. But after his weight dropped to 90 pounds, he was dragged into an interrogation room, where they rammed a tube down his nose and into his stomach. Liquid was pumped in. The CIA would not let him die. ...

"This really shows the human impact of this program and that lives are ruined by the CIA rendition program," said Margaret Satterthwaite, an attorney for Bashmilah and a professor at the New York University School of Law. "It is about psychological torture and the experience of being disappeared."

###

Racist Jim Broussard Is a Criminal

Have a gander at this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nONjlZ8YMkA&mode=related&search=

Since when did become okay to steal property and brandish a military knife and threaten people? I guess it's okay in Reno if the victims are Mexican.

I e-mailed the following to the Reno Police Dept, can't say if it were received:

Why are you not investigating this man, Jim Broussard, for trespassing, destruction of private property, theft of property, brandishing a weapon, a military knife (assault), among other causes for criminal action by your department?

I await your reply and will be monitoring your action in this matter.

I have Cc ed La Raza, the National Action Network, among other parties.

###

Mendez v. Westminster and the Racist Jim Broussard

Update:

Here's video of the racist:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nONjlZ8YMkA&mode=related&search=

Update II: ACLU defends flag display at tavern.

Update III: A reader at Kos suggests that the bar owner certainly has a case against Broussard for trespassing, destruction of private property, brandishing a weapon (assault), among other causes for civil and criminal action.

Madison, Wisconsin - After helping winterize my family’s home this weekend, my father gave me some stamps commemorating the 60th anniversary of the desegregation case, Mendez v. Westminster School District (California) (1947).

I had never heard of that case, but it turns out Mendez is the Mexican-American and Latino legal precedent to Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the landmark decision still despised by racists the nation-over for its obliteration of the bigoted “separate but equal" doctrine established in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).

After reading up on Mendez, it made me think of the millions of heroes whose names we will never know who have advanced the cause for social justice in this country.

Thurgood Marshall, who argued Brown before the U.S. Supreme Court seven years after Mendez helped write an amicus brief filed by the NAACP in the Mendez case, along with briefs filed by the ACLU, the American Jewish Congress, and the Japanese American Citizens League.

Who knows all the forces that won the Mendez victory, but the fact that World War II saw legions of Hispanic Medal of Honor recipients may have helped.

The fight against discrimination and hate has countless allies and many enemies, seen and unseen.

Racist Fascist Jim Broussard

So, it came as no great surprise to me yesterday when a veterans’ e-mail newsletter that I receive boasted that an American believed he possessed the right to invade the private property of a Reno, Nevada tavern owned by a Mexican-American and cut down a Mexican flag flying above an American flag (pictured above).

According to WorldNetDaily.com: “After hearing a Reno bar was flying a Mexican flag above a U.S. flag, an angered U.S. Army veteran took matters into his own hands, drove to the site and cut down the banners in front of a stunned group of Hispanic patrons.”

The bigot in question identified himself as one “Jim Broussard,” according to WorldNetDaily.com, and he is one of the allies of discrimination and hate.

WorldNetDaily.com quotes Broussard:

"I'm Jim Broussard, and I took this flag down in honor of my country with … a knife from the United States Army. … I'm a veteran; I'm not going to see this done to my country. If they want to fight us, then they need to be men, and they need to come and fight us. But I want somebody to fight me for this flag. They're not going to get it back. … I was immediately infuriated and felt a duty to do something about it. I feel there's a lot of this turning-our-heads-on-things in concern with the Hispanic community and the things they do. They seem impervious to our laws in a lot of situations."

I’ve had my dealings with the likes of racists like Jim Broussard before and they share several traits: Ignorance, hate, cowardice, and a sociopathic sense of entitlement to inflict their authoritarian, sick vision of: White America rules!

My ethnic heritage is Irish-Mexican. The Mexican part comes from my father who hails from Aurora, Illinois. And I have been both the recipient of oral history and eyewitness experience in seeing how Mexican-Americans handle the likes of the bigoted Jim Broussard.

Put it this way, it’s direct and confrontational. And Jim Broussard and his pathetic moment of racist pride would not win the day were he to attempt to pull this crap in a Mexican bar in Aurora. The SOB would have an even worse time in an Irish bar.

In May last year, I was privileged to attend a ceremony in Aurora honoring a relative who was a pioneering Hispanic police officer and listen to his daughter who ridiculed the racists (after all we are all “spics,” as the bigots say) for the fools that all racists are.

I would have loved to see Broussard there.

There is a report that the Hispanic community in Reno is considering legal and political action against Broussard.

That’s a good idea.

Brother Jesse and Brother Al, I think we may just need you really soon over in Reno.
###

U.S. Needs Erwin Griswold, and Not Paul Clement

Erwin Griswold, U.S. Solicitor General (1967–73)
Dean of Harvard Law School (1946-67)

By Michael Leon
Madison, Wisconsin— Recalling his successful arguing of the landmark Fourth Amendment case in 1972 against the Nixon administration as Nixon literally sought the legal destruction of American Constitutional government through the Supreme Court’s imprimatur, the great civil rights attorney, Arthur Kinoy (1920-2003), writes:

The government’s team had arrived. I immediately looked for their most prominent member, the one wearing the traditional long morning coat that government lawyers invariably wear when arguing before the High Court. … I expected to see Erwin Griswold, the Solicitor General and a former dean of Harvard Law School (pictured above-right). … Instead, I saw an unfamiliar man, tall, dark, and scowling, wearing the morning coat. I turned to (William) Gossett and whispered, ‘It’s not Griswold!’ ‘No,’ answered Gossett, ‘it’s Mardian (Robert Mardian, a Nixon hatchet man at the DoJ Internal Security Division, dedicated to the destruction of anti-war and civil rights citizen groups.) … ‘All (Mardian) needs is the jackboots,’ someone later remarked to Kinoy. … Then something even stranger happened. Griswold walked into the courtroom and sat down in the seat reserved for the Solicitor General, as though to make it clear to the Court that he had not withdrawn because of illness or scheduling conflicts, but for some other reason. He sat there quietly throughout the argument, as if he were constantly saying to the Court through his physical presence, ‘I am not arguing this case. Just remember that.’
- Rights on Trial, the Odyssey of a People’s Lawyer [The case, UNITED STATES v. UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT, 407 U.S. 297 (1972), was unanimously decided, 8 - 0, on June 19, 1972 in favor the White Panthers’ citizens group (among other parties) and dealt a devastating blow to Nixon’s attempt to declare the nullification of the Constitutional guarantees of individual liberty at the sole discretion of the President.]

Under the administration of George W. Bush, there exists few modern-day Erwin Griswolds—though Jack L. Goldsmith, former head of the Office of Legal Counsel, and James Comey, former Deputy Attorney General of the United States, are worthy candidates.

We do see the same legal and political assault on the Constitution that the president swore an oath to defend, though this administration shies away from the light of day and democracy more intensely than Nixon ever did.

But today, we have as Solicitor General, Paul Clement, a rightwing Cedarburg, Wisconsin native and former Federalist Society member, who has argued numerous cases in favor of a monarchical conception of the executive branch empowered with the secret authority of warrantless surveillance, legal torture and the alleged right to declare any American citizen an “enemy combatant” endowed with no legal rights under the U.S. Constitution or International law, and with no right of habeas corpus.

Paul Clement, respected scholar and soon to be acting Attorney General, sports a record of protecting the Constitutional liberties of citizens that is nothing short of scandalous for an American.

[- From the New York Times, March 29, 2006 on Hamdan v. Rumsfeld -
Justice Souter interrupted. "Isn't there a pretty good argument that suspension of the writ of habeas corpus is just about the most stupendously significant act that the Congress of the United States can take," he asked, "and therefore we ought to be at least a little slow to accept your argument that it can be done from pure inadvertence?"

When Mr. Clement began to answer, Justice Souter persisted: "You are leaving us with the position of the United States that the Congress may validly suspend it inadvertently. Is that really your position?"
The solicitor general replied, "I think at least if you're talking about the extension of the writ to enemy combatants held outside the territory of the United States —— "

"Now wait a minute!" Justice Souter interrupted, waving a finger. "The writ is the writ. There are not two writs of habeas corpus, for some cases and for other cases. The rights that may be asserted, the rights that may be vindicated, will vary with the circumstances, but jurisdiction over habeas corpus is jurisdiction over habeas corpus."]

Those objecting to Bush’s program of accumulating power in the Executive at the expense of the rights of American citizens are not long for service in the administration into which Clements fits snugly.

But we should not be surprised. Under this administration individual liberty has not had as determined an enemy since the darkest days of the disgraced Nixon administration.

What can we do:

- Demand that the permanent appointment to Attorney General be a person of dedication to the rule of law and liberty, and that the Senate not confirm anyone of Clement's anti-liberty views

- Contact the Center for Constitutional Rights, the ACLU and other civil rights organizations and contribute as you can

- Vote against today’s Republican Party that bears no resemblance whatsoever to the libertarian Goldwater era

Today’s Republican party is an authoritarian-minded group of hypocrites, campaigning on bigotry and division, who like Bush seek power for their own ends, with no respect for public service or the liberty of Americans for whom and only with their consent does government derive its just power.

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