I normally post my political videos here on DailyKos, which are mostly about the election.

This next video is political, but it's also personal. It's a trailer for a film my wife Lauren and I are making about her experience being taken to court for writing about her life and her father.

Many of you are probably familiar with the Net Neutrality issue. For those that aren't, I recommend the excellent SaveTheInternet.com for some background.

We're all excited about the Pennsylvania primary tomorrow, and certainly I'm not one to understate its importance. But tomorrow is also notable in that the Commerce Committee of the US Senate is holding hearings on Net Neutrality.

For those of us in the Netroots, especially, this issue is of critical importance. We know that the entire movement relies on equal access to the internet. But is that equal access protected?

Unreal. While the media worries about flag pins, the march against our freedoms continues.  Lo and behold, on the front page of my local paper today, I found this story:

Annapolis Students Arrested for Sit-In

Yes, that's right.  Three students, fed up with the Iraq War, exercised their First Amendment Rights and staged a 15 minute sit-in in front of the administrative offices at Annapolis High School when Anne Arundel County police moved in and ARRESTED them.

By Mike German, policy counsel with the ACLU Washington Legislative Office.

If the federal government announced it created a new domestic intelligence agency made up of over 800,000 operatives dispersed throughout every American city and town there would be near-universal shock and outrage. Yet this is exactly what the Bush administration is accomplishing with its little-noticed National Strategy for Information Sharing, which establishes State, local and regional "fusion centers" as the primary mechanism for the collection and dissemination of domestic intelligence. According to the Congressional Research Service, fusion center proponents regard the "800,000 plus" law enforcement officers across the country as "the ‘eyes and ears’ of an extended national security community." The Office of the Director of National Intelligence was even more expansive, arguing that state and local government officials should be regarded as "a deep line of information assets."  

Americans often read our founding documents as if they pertained to another place and time, but the ideas and ideals enshrined within are as true today as then, the struggles described as difficult.

Our ideas and our ideals. They are what millions of immigrants gave so much for. They are what we feel when we recite the Pledge of Allegiance, or hear the National Anthem. They are what we remember, all too often too vaguely, when we think of the Declaration of Independence, of our Constitution.

They are what we fight for, those of us who fight, whether by pen or enlistment. Ideas and ideals. Without ideas, without ideals, we’re cynical, we’re pessimists. We’re indifferent, we’re hopeless. And we are wedded to the status quo.

In live-blogging the Petraeus/Crocker Hearings yesterday, I noted my astonishment at General Petraeus' assertion that some detainees in Iraq ask to stay in detention, after they have been cleared for release, so they can complete their religious training.  I wondered aloud what religious training the U.S. is providing for detainees, as I had never heard of this program.

Answers after the jump....

Thanks to Robert Alford, Professor of Law at Pepperdine University School of Law for his summary of remarks given by Chief Judge Kozinski of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals at a symposium held at that law school on Friday.
Opinio Juris is an excellent blog devoted to International Law and Politics. I copied the bulk of Alford's summary in this diary because its content is highly relevant to the dailykos community and it should be shared as widely as possible. C.J. Kozinski's comments are not available in their entirety in print yet, either,  (unless someone else can find them) but I think they are profound considering their weighty source.

I believe the First Amendment (not just the free speech and press clauses, though) is America's priceless contribution to humanity. So, let's flesh out whether the new arrangement Judge Kozinski describes is better than where we've been.
Who wins in the age of "new media?" Are we giving the First Amendment a non-legal life, self- regulating, and more free?

Somewhere a few weeks back I filled in one of those ready made reply e-mails with a long and impassioned plea to keep the National Mall - that open strip from the Capitol Building to the Lincoln Memorial - open and available for demonstrations. I dislike sending in the canned pleas for whatever the subject at hand is so I try to send a well-reasoned plea for sanity instead. They most likely would have sent the same response to a GFY e-mail but I got my two cents in anyway. It's the thoughts that count.

Below the fold I'll post The National Park Service's (NPS) canned feedback e-mail. It just came in today. I live south of Boston and I'd hate to see demonstration pens set up the way Boston did. With this Cheney-Bush administration you never know just what nefarious plan they may devise. So give it a read if you're so inclined. And by all means, attend demonstrations on the Mall if you can. Hell, attend them anywhere and any time you can. If you can't find one then start one. The numbers count as much or more than actual votes. Good street theater gets extra bonus points - sort of like super-delegates except they're only on YouTube.

Demcoracy Now reports on a particularly nasty initiative to hack into bloggers. Here’s the full report:

Military Considers Recruiting & Hiring Bloggers

   In media news, new questions are being raised over the relationship between the Pentagon and bloggers. Wired.com has uncovered a 2006 study written for the U.S. Special Operations Command that suggests the military should clandestinely recruit or hire prominent bloggers. The report stated "Hiring a block of bloggers to verbally attack a specific person or promote a specific message may be worth considering." The report also suggested the Pentagon hack blogs that promote messages that are antithetical to U.S. interests. The report went on to say: "Hacking the site and subtly changing the messages and data—merely a few words or phrases—may be sufficient to begin destroying the blogger’s credibility with the audience."

Separation of church and state? What's that?

[Pachino] Hill, 29, of Davenport was sentenced Wednesday by Scott County Associate Judge Christine Dalton to a counseling program offered by Third Missionary Baptist Church. She also ordered him to attend church there eight consecutive Sundays, to pay a fine and be on probation for one year.
...
Prosecutor Marc Gellerman did not object to the counseling program [suggested by Hill's attorney] but did request that Hill attend church services.

"I would think that listening to Rev. Kirk every Sunday would be very beneficial for Mr. Hill," Gellerman said, adding that Hill reaching out to Kirk "says a lot."

If Hill skips out on one of Rev. Kirk's court-ordered sermon, he'll end up in jail for two years.

It really looks like I picked a great week to tune out the Presidential campaign. Similarly, with no major contests until my birthday (April 22), I must assume that a large number of my fellow Americans are doing the same.

However, I am now fully engaged again. Having reviewed the incriminating footage and seeing a large number of bloviators do what they do best on the MSM tube, I think it is about time to put forth a defense of Reverend Wright. Surprisingly, I have only heard minor hints of this defense in the media itself, where, as usual, most of the commentators merely piled on to the on-going narrative with little critical thought or perspective-shifting involved.

By Mike German, policy counsel with the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. Before joining the ACLU, Mike was a special agent with the FBI for 16 years.

Sometime in 2006 the FBI twice asked the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for an order seeking "tangible things" as part of a counterterrorism case.  The court denied the request, both times, "based on concerns that the investigation was premised on protected First Amendment activity."    

Today is St. Patrick's Day. As the New York Times reported yesterday, the heavy hitters are concerned that the race will continue to drag on, nothing will get resolved, and John McCain will benefit because people would see him as above the fray. We know that there was a high-level meeting recently between Barack Obama and Al Gore. What I'm hoping is that people will come together, meet with Hillary Clinton, and tell her that she has two weeks to get out of the race with dignity.

But there were rumors that Edwards would, in fact, endorse Hillary. But that was simply the opinion of one talking head. As of this writing, there was nothing on Drudge or Raw Story indicating that at all. All of this is conjecture at this point. We need to stay focused, keep doing what we are doing, and let the chips fall where they may. We need to operate under the assumption that there will be a primary fight until the convention, unless Hillary or Obama throws in the towel.

I just had an uncomfortable conversation with my boss.  A conversation I don't think should ever be had at work.  A conversation that I was actually scared to have with her.  I just filed a complaint about receiving religious-themed emails from coworkers.

I was hoping that smintheus's front page post (The FBI: Retroactive blanket immunity in action) would have touched on this aspect of the story, but surprisingly there has been no discussion of the implications of the FBI General Counsel's disagreement with the FISA court about the First Amendment.  The court said that someone can not be investigated merely because they are associates with an existing subject of an investigation, because that would violate the First Amendment right to freedom of association.  The FBI illegally circumvented the court's decision, and in defending that decision, the FBI admitted that violating the right to freedom of association is a common practice. The following is from the AP story:

If Dubya prevails in providing immunity to the Telecoms, he has a plan for them to use the millions they'll save that they had earmarked for legal defense funds.

Is it possible that his sinister suggestion to them will violate the "Establishment Clause" of the First Amendment?

Coming to your neighborhood soon ... below the fold are photos that raise serious concerns of what Dubya has proposed:

More evidence of the collective insanity of the Republican Party -- This Republican state lawmaker wants to make posting anonymous messages on the Internet illegal:

Kentucky Representative Tim Couch filed a bill this week to make anonymous posting online illegal.

The bill would require anyone who contributes to a website to register their real name, address and e-mail address with that site.

Their full name would be used anytime a comment is posted.

If the bill becomes law, the website operator would have to pay if someone was allowed to post anonymously on their site. The fine would be five-hundred dollars for a first offense and one-thousand dollars for each offense after that.

Today I received an accusatory, threatening email from Cox Cable.

Cox's message accuses me of downloading something from a "bittorrent" site or something like that. Then they threaten to suspend my account if I do not remove the "offending material." Although a thorough search of my computer found no evidence of what they mentioned, what this letter does prove is that Cox Cable and the NBC company are engaged in an active, coordinated program of spying on the American public. These two companies appear to have joined AT&T in tracking and gathering information on American citizens.

How widespread is this scheme? I know they are spying on me; are they spying on you, too?