By Noam Biale, Advocacy Coordinator for the ACLU Technology and Liberty Program

It’s not a good day to be Tim Pawlenty.  

The Republican governor of Minnesota distinguished himself earlier this month by becoming the only governor in the country to veto an anti-Real ID bill. Eighteen other states had already rejected this Bush administration boondoggle, which would turn state driver’s licenses into national identity cards. By a bipartisan majority, the Minnesota legislature passed a provision to its transportation budget that would have allowed the Governor to delay implementation of Real ID until funding could be secured from the federal government, and the law’s multiple privacy and security problems could be fixed.  

By Jag Davies, Policy Researcher, ACLU Drug Law Reform Project

What do you get when you combine the use of heavily armed paramilitary units for routine police work with a lack of prosecutorial and judicial oversight?

By ACLU Staff Attorney Amrit Singh

This morning I attended the military commission hearings of Omar Khadr, a Canadian detainee who has been held in U.S. custody for over five years, most of that time in Guantánamo Bay. Like Mohammed Jawad, another detainee held at this prison, Khadr has also grown up at Guantánamo Bay. He was captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan when he was 15 years old. The U.S. government has alleged that he conspired with and provided material support to al-Qaeda and that he killed a U.S. soldier by throwing a grenade at him.

By ACLU Staff Attorney Amrit Singh. Amrit is at Guantánamo Bay this week overseeing the military commissions as a human rights observer.

Guantánamo Bay is an eerie place. With its blue skies and even bluer waters it could be mistaken for paradise. But beneath this natural beauty lurks an ugly truth — for more than seven years now, Guantánamo has been the place where the United States government has hidden its prisoners from world view with the express purpose of denying them the most basic elements of due process.

By Brian Stull, Staff Attorney, ACLU Capital Punishment Project. Brian helped represent Levon "Bo" Jones, an innocent man who was released from prison on May 2, 2008, after unjustly and erroneously spending 14 years on North Carolina's death row.

I've always known Bo Jones was innocent. But I had seen too much injustice in the last eight years working as a criminal defense lawyer to trust that his innocence alone  would set him free.

By Larry Frankel, State Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office

The anti-Real ID movement just took a big step forward, with the Arizona Senate’s 21-7 vote to bar implementation of Real ID in Arizona. The bill (H.B. 2677) still has to go back to the Arizona House for another vote and then on to Governor Janet Napolitano for her signature. But as of this writing, Arizona is poised to join the growing number of states who have recognized that Real ID is an expensive and unworkable invasion of our privacy.

By Noam Biale, Advocacy Coordinator for the ACLU Technology and Liberty Program

The struggle to fortify privacy rights in America is often like the proverbial frog trying to escape from a well: two steps forward then one step back – or maybe it’s V.I. Lenin’s slightly more Sisyphean formulation: one step forward, two steps back. Case in point for the last few weeks: genetic privacy.

By Ben Wizner, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project. Ben arrived in Guantánamo Bay Sunday evening to attend this week's military commission hearings involving Salim Ahmed Hamdan.

Tuesday's military commission hearing began with additional testimony and evidence regarding the defense's contention that the commission system is marred by improper political influence. The defense, citing former chief prosecutor Morris Davis's testimony, maintained that Salim Ahmed Hamdan could "not be prosecuted in a system where politicians hold the final say on who will be charged and what the outcome will be." The prosecution — while insisting that it was "not the government's position that Colonel Davis is an untruthful person" (call that the watch-your-back double negative) — suggested that Davis was pursuing a personal agenda and that the commission system was fair and independent.

By Ben Wizner, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project. Ben arrived in Guantánamo Bay Sunday evening to attend this week's military commission hearings involving Salim Ahmed Hamdan, which are slated to conclude today.

It’s become almost cliché to observe that each time a detainee is brought before a military commission at Guantánamo, it’s the commission system itself that is truly on trial. On Monday, however, that talking point achieved a more concrete reality with the extraordinary spectacle of the commissions’ former chief prosecutor appearing as star witness — for the defense.

By Christopher Hill, state strategies coordinator with the ACLU Capital Punishment Project.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, which produced the groundbreaking Kerner Commission Report. Wanting to understand why uprisings happened in places like Newark and Detroit, President Lyndon Johnson gave the commission a set of questions: "What happened? Why did it happen? What can be done to prevent it from happening again and again?" The most quoted line from the report is that the United States is "moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal."  

By Gouri Bhat, senior staff attorney with the ACLU National Prison Project.

Earlier this week U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) invited a group of reporters on a media tour of the new and improved T. Don Hutto Family Detention Center in Taylor, Texas. The Hutto facility houses immigrant children and families detained by the government and was the subject of multiple ACLU lawsuits filed against ICE last year, challenging the harsh, prison-like environment at the facility.

By Deborah J. Vagins, ACLU Policy Counsel for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties

I wish I could tell you that today we were going to have a vote in the U.S. Senate to establish a new and ground-breaking civil rights law. In a perfect world, I could tell you we are protecting new groups of employees, removing unfair limitations on damages for our workers, or creating new employment laws for a new workforce.

By Barry Steinhart, director of the ACLU Technology & Liberty Project.

A lot of Americans have gotten pretty steamed as we’ve learned more and more (though not as much as we should be learning) about how our government is engaging in illegal, mass eavesdropping on our communications.

But we’re not the only ones who have reason to be steamed about the spying centered at the National Security Agency.

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."  

By Mandy Simon, ACLU Washington Legislative Office.

Today’s a big week for National Security Letters, the secret government subpoenas issued to gain access to personal or business records without court approval. There’s a hearing tomorrow in the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and another hearing Wednesday in front of the full Senate Judiciary Committee. Tomorrow’s hearing features not only the ACLU but the DOJ Inspector General himself, Mr. Glenn Fine, and FBI General Counsel Valerie Caproni. The government panelists will go first but we’ll be there, ever watchful, until it’s our turn to step up to the mic.

By Jamil Dakwar, Director of the ACLU's Human Rights Program. Jamil is in Guantánamo Bay this week to observe the Military Commissions hearings of three detainees.

You can listen to a podcast of Jamil talking about this week's military commissions in Guantánamo at www.aclu.org/multimedia/gitmo_dakwar_042008.mp3.

By Jamil Dakwar, Director of the ACLU's Human Rights Program. Jamil is in Guantánamo Bay this week to observe the Military Commissions hearings of three detainees.

Today, another hearing ended in turmoil when a 47-year-old  Sudanese man, Ibrahim al-Qosi, refused representation and declared he would  boycott the military commission, before which he is charged with conspiracy and  providing material support to terrorism. Al-Qosi told the judge, Air Force Col.  Nancy Paul, that he has been waiting for this day for four years, that he does  not recognize the lawfulness of the military commission, and that he "leaves the field for you to play as you wish."

By Jamil Dakwar, Director of the ACLU's Human Rights Program. Jamil is in Guantánamo Bay this week to observe the Military Commissions hearings of three detainees.

While the nation’s eyes were focused on the testimony of General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker before Congress this week, the Guantánamo military commissions quietly resumed on Wednesday with a hearing in the case of Saudi national Ahmed Mohammad al-Darbi, who has been charged with conspiracy and providing  material support to terrorism for allegedly training with Al Qaeda and plotting to attack ships in the Strait of Hormuz.