By Matt Coles, Director, ACLU Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender & AIDS Project. Originally posted at the ACLU Blog of Rights.
Diane Schroer’s case against the Library of Congress went to trial on Tuesday in U.S. District Court in D.C. The basics of the case are pretty well known. As David, Schroer spent 25 years in the Army, and retired as a decorated full Colonel in the Special Forces. Her specialty at the end was counter-terrorism.
HRW and the ACLU recently released a rather informative report on the practice of corporal punishment of children in US public schools. Among other things, the report found that blacks were more likely to get paddled by a large ratio and that the offences for getting punished are relatively minor ones such as "such as chewing gum, talking back to a teacher, or violating the dress code."
I had a pregnant girl get paddled once for being tardy. She was five months pregnant. She was 16. The principal paddled her ... she was showing and it was known that she was pregnant. She was part of a group that was tardy to class. And she yelled something along the lines of "you shouldn't paddle me, I’m pregnant."
It is safe to assume the current Democrats and incoming Democrats will not do much to undo Bush's damage to the constitution without some serious poking and prodding. Hopefully the Ron Paul Republicans, our friends on this issue, will help them along a bit.
But I think we need to do everything we can to strategize and keep people informed about abuses to our civil liberties and about attempts to roll back the damage done to them during the last 8 years.
To help this effort along I started a Civil Liberties Google Group. Our brief agenda and link is below. Please join.
By Jennifer Turner, Human Rights Researcher, ACLU Human Rights Program. Jennifer is in Guantánamo for the pre-trial hearings of Mohammed Jawad, Omar Khadr and Ali Hamza al-Bahlul.
Friday morning, a determined and defiant Ali Hamza Ahmed Sulayman al-Bahlul (PDF) appeared before the military commission. Escorted by military police holding each of his wrists, al-Bahlul wore a tan prison uniform and flip-flops. He wasn’t carrying his "boycott" sign, which he created back in January 2006 and has held during subsequent hearings. We soon realized that this was the reason for a half-hour delay in the hearing’s start time.
By Jennifer Turner, Human Rights Researcher, ACLU Human Rights Program. Jennifer is in Guantánamo for the pre-trial hearings of Mohammed Jawad, Omar Khadr and Ali Hamza al-Bahlul.
Thursday’s hearing in Afghan national Mohammed Jawad’s case brought stunning testimony on serious abuse he suffered at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan as a teenager, as well as military psychologists’ role in crafting abusive interrogation methods for use on Jawad and other prisoners at Guantánamo Bay.
By Jennifer Turner, Human Rights Researcher, ACLU Human Rights Program. Jennifer is in Guantánamo for the pre-trial hearings of Mohammed Jawad, Omar Khadr and Ali Hamza al-Bahlul.
St. Paul, Minnesota -- August 12, 2008 -- Impeach for Peace (IfP), along with others looking to demonstrate at the Republican National Convention (RNC), filed a lawsuit Friday with the help of the ACLU of Minnesota in Ramsey County District Court demanding our right to free speech. Plaintiffs include: Jodin Morey and Mikael Rudolph of Impeach for Peace, Colleen and Ross Rowley, and Ron Deharporte.
This morning Ben Wizner, staff attorney for the ACLU's National Security Project, who's been in Guantánamo for Salim Hamdan's historic trial under the unconstitutional military commission system, podcasted his observations on Hamdan's sentence. On Wednesday, the jury convicted Hamdan of material support for terrorism, and yesterday, after the prosecution requested a 30-years-to-life sentence, the jury delivered a sentence of 66 months, including time served, to Hamdan. That means Hamdan's sentence will technically be over in less than five months.
By Ben Wizner, Staff Attorney for the ACLU's National Security Project. Ben is in Guantánamo for the trial of Salim Ahmed Hamdan.
There’s been little time for blogging, but then there’s been less need — Hamdan is front-page news worldwide today, and you can read excellent accounts of Wednesday’s remarkable proceedings here, here, and here.
Last month, under pressure from the A.C.L.U. lawsuit, the city released a list of expenses related to the convention showing that the police were preparing for large demonstrations and mass arrests and that the department had spent $2.1 million on protection equipment for its officers, $1.4 million for barricades and $850,000 for supplies related to the arrest and processing of suspects.
In disclosing the cost breakdown, city officials denied rumors that had circulated for weeks that they had contemplated buying exotic nonlethal weapons that fired an immobilizing goo, or that used radiation or sonic waves to incapacitate people or vehicles.
The gunman was tackled by church-goers and taken into custody by police. He was charged later with first-degree murder, but police declined to give a motive for the shooting and the Tennessean newspaper said his motive remained unknown.
The gunman apparently concealed a 12-gauge shotgun until he entered the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church and then fired several shots before being subdued, police said.
By Ben Wizner, Staff Attorney for the ACLU's National Security Project. Ben is in Guantánamo this week for the trial of Salim Ahmed Hamdan.
On Friday, Hamdan's lawyers wrapped up their defense with dramatic written testimony from alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the essence of which was that Hamdan — as the evidence had already demonstrated — was a menial figure in the Al Qaeda universe. The day before, all trial observers without top-level security clearances had been excluded from the courtroom for the testimony of two defense witnesses, so it is conceivable (though highly unlikely — these were defense witnesses, after all) that a verdict could be returned on the basis of evidence that the world will never see.
Of this, I believe. I believe in honesty and empathy. I trust in reports that reveal in 2002, the Department of Justice assured the Central Intelligence Agency interrogators who violated anti-torture laws they would be safe from prosecution. Emissaries only need a sincere "faith they caused no "prolonged mental harm." I believe that neither branch of government cares for what I hold dear.
Humane Society of the United States, Best Friends Animal Society and the ASPCA are set to cash in on court ordered forfeitures.
The latest scheme in creative funding for humane societies -- which are private corporations controlled and directed by their own boards of directors -- not open to public scrutiny -- will take funds from the public sector and put it into the pockets of non-governmental agencies with no specifics on how it is to be used.
Once again, that's public funds. Private sector. No strings attached.
Okay, I heard his whatever-he-is Rick Davis on the Today Show claim that McCain has ALWAYS fought for the equal rights of everyone. Later that day, in a press avail, McCain repeated that lie. He claims that he has always fought for the equal rights of others, and EVEN claimed that he fought for the recognition of Dr. King's holiday in AZ. He claims he's fought for equal opportunity for education, that's a lie. He claims he's PROUD of his rather dismal record on civil rights . . . well that's probably true. I'm sick of him getting away with his lies, so in this diary, I try to refute some of them (there are so many I may have missed one or two) using his actual (rather dismal) record.
By Ben Wizner, Staff Attorney for the ACLU's National Security Project. Ben is in Guantánamo this week for the trial of Salim Ahmed Hamdan.
On Wednesday, we discovered that the government may actually be more intent on covering up its own criminality than in establishing Hamdan's. Or perhaps the prosecution simply recognizes that an acquittal is virtually inconceivable in any military commission trial. Whatever the reason, the government demonstrated that it would rather lose the testimony of a key witness than allow Guantánamo's secret interrogation regime to be exposed to public or judicial scrutiny.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Okay, I heard his whatever-he-is Rick Davis on the Today Show claim that McCain has ALWAYS fought for the equal rights of everyone. Later that day, in a press avail, McCain repeated that lie. He claims that he has always fought for the equal rights of others, and EVEN claimed that he fought for the recognition of Dr. King's holiday in AZ. He claims he's fought for equal opportunity for education, that's a lie. He claims he's PROUD of his rather dismal record on civil rights . . . well that's probably true. I'm sick of him getting away with his lies, so in this diary, I try to refute some of them (there are so many I may have missed one or two) using his actual (rather dismal) record.
