Go here, type in your address, and get a map of the registered sex offenders in your neighborhood. While it is good to know that I am within a stone’s throw of a couple of perverts, I have misgivings about the sex offender registry in general. Mostly this: any chance there could be mistakes made? Remember, the people who compile … Read More
Serial Killer In North Carolina?
Via Blue NC, this news report: CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) – Law enforcement officers in North Carolina and South Carolina will investigate the possibility that three women who were killed in the past nine years were victims of a serial killer. Union County North Carolina Sheriff Eddie Cathey said at a news conference Thursday that officers are investigating all possibilities, including … Read More
Roberts Court And Religious Freedom
SCOTUS addressed its first religious freedom case today under Roberts’ stewardship. The vote was unanimous (with Alito not participating since oral arguments took place before he was sworn in). It was actually a no-brainer in my view, and the Bush Administration rightfully lost. A small Brazilian-based religious sect in New Mexico uses hallucinogenic tea as part of a four-hour ritual … Read More
The First Court Ruling On NSA Wiretapping
A small item, perhaps, but the first of many likely court rulings to come (PDF format). The ACLU and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, among others, sought expedited discovery of DOJ/NSA documents relating to the domestic surveillance program. They sought several items under the Freedom of Information Act, including documents relating to: (1) an audit of NSA domestic surveillance activities; … Read More
George Will On NSA Wiretapping
I like it when he’s right: The next time a president asks Congress to pass something akin to what Congress passed on Sept. 14, 2001 — the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) — the resulting legislation might be longer than Proust’s "Remembrance of Things Past." Congress, remembering what is happening today, might stipulate all the statutes and constitutional … Read More
GOP Blocks Investigation Of Spying Program
Rep. John Conyers has a blog post up at Daily Kos, explaining what happened, and providing a little "inside baseball".
ANOTHER NSA Program?!?
UPI reports that former NSA employee Russell Tice, one of the whistleblowers of the NSA surveillance program, is now saying that there is another "more wide-ranging program" beyond the one that’s been so much in the news: A former NSA employee said Tuesday there is another ongoing top-secret surveillance program that might have violated millions of Americans’ Constitutional rights. Russell … Read More
No, Scalia — You’re The Idiot!
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said that I’m an idiot. People who believe the Constitution would break if it didn’t change with society are "idiots," U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says. In a speech Monday sponsored by the conservative Federalist Society, Scalia defended his long-held belief in sticking to the plain text of the Constitution "as it was originally … Read More
The Wiretapping Leak Does NOT Help al Qaeda
Larry Johnson, a former CIA officer and former instructor for the U.S. State Department’s Anti-Terrorism Training Program explains why: FACT 1: [NY Times reporter James] Risen did not reveal how the domestic electronic surveillance was being conducted. He may know specifically what they are doing, but he did not and has not disclosed the methodology used. What was disclosed is … Read More
FISA Court Flashback
Gotta love the commenters at Free Republic. Via Glenn Greenwald, a hilarious 2000 Free Republic article on the dire threat to American civil liberties posed by Bill Clinton’s use of "a secret court" that has "authorized all but one of over 7,500 requests to spy in the name of National Security." The court in question is, of course, the FISA … Read More
Waas’s New Scoop
Pretty big news: Beyond what was stated in the court paper, say people with firsthand knowledge of the matter, Libby also indicated what he will offer as a broad defense during his upcoming criminal trial: that Vice President Cheney and other senior Bush administration officials had earlier encouraged and authorized him to share classified information with journalists to build public … Read More
On The L.A. Terrorist Plot
The headlines this morning were all about how Bush was going to defend the NSA wiretap program by giving examples of how it thwarted terrorist plots. Sadly, Bush isn’t doing that. Instead, he’s giving some details about a 2002 al Qaeda plot to fly an airplane into a Los Angeles skyscraper, but he’s giving credit to international cooperation. The president … Read More
What Are We Talking About?
With national discussion still on fever-pitch about the legality of the NSA wiretapping, one thing to keep in mind is that nobody really knows exactly what the so-called "terrorist surveillance program" actually entails. Kevin Drum looks at two developments: (1) The Bush Administration finally briefed a House subcommittee Wednesday on the NSA’s domestic spying program, causing Democrat Bud Cramer (a … Read More
Guess Who Said It?
Here’s the quote: The Founders well understood the difficult tradeoff between safety and freedom. “Safety from external danger … The Founders warned us about the risk, and equipped us with a Constitution designed to deal with it… Many think it not only inevitable but entirely proper that liberty give way to security in times of national crisis-—that, at the extremes … Read More
Small But Important Development In The NSA Wiretapping Issue
The New York Times is reporting that Representative Heather A. Wilson, a House Republican whose subcommittee oversees the National Security Agency, broke ranks with the White House on Tuesday and called for a full Congressional inquiry into the Bush administration’s domestic eavesdropping program. The "defection" (if you can call it that) of a single Republican on this issue is not … Read More