CIVIL LIBERTIES News:

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• "We got the wrong guys."
• "'I guess you can call it torture'."
• "A school for Jihad."
• "'Due process is legal mumbo-jumbo'."
• "'You are the king of this prison'."
• +"Archive of investigation documents."

"I am appalled by Senator John McCain's reaffirmation of support for the use of warrantless wiretapping on American citizens. Senator McCain has once again chosen to align himself with President George Bush, whose reprehensible spying program on Americans is a grave threat to our Constitutions guarantees of privacy and limited executive power. It is clear that Senator McCain, President Bush, and their Republican allies in Congress will continue to use scare tactics and fear mongering to claim that a president can simply chose to ignore America's laws... Senator McCain opposes a bipartisan House compromise bill that preserves appropriate court review of all surveillance of US citizens and gives judges the discretion to review all the necessary documents related to telecom lawsuits without offering blanket immunity."

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"[N]either the Administration nor the telecoms need apologize for actions that most people, except for the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union] and the trial lawyers, understand were Constitutional and appropriate in the wake of the attacks on September 11, 2001. [...]"

"We do not know what lies ahead in our nation’s fight against radical Islamic extremists, but John McCain will do everything he can to protect Americans from such threats, including asking the telecoms for appropriate assistance to collect intelligence against foreign threats to the United States as authorized by Article II of the Constitution."

WATCH - Noteworthy - Terrorism - Politics - War Crimes - US - Freedom - Iraq - Intelligence - Military - Families - Sports - McCain - 2008 Election - "Mr. President, the war isn’t about you — or golf: Olbermann: [Republican President] Bush's claim he gave up game to honor dead GIs is ludicrous." ... "President Bush has resorted anew to the sleaziest fear-mongering and mass manipulation of an administration and public life dedicated to realizing the lowest of our expectations. And he has now applied these poisons to the 2008 presidential election, on behalf of the party at whose center he and [Republican Candidate] John McCain lurk." ... "Mr. Bush has predicted that the election of a Democratic president could "eventually lead to another attack on the United States." This ludicrous, infuriating, holier-than-thou and most importantly bone-headedly wrong statement came during a May 13 interview with Politico.com and online users of Yahoo." ... "The question was phrased as follows: "If we were to pull out of Iraq next year, what's the worst that could happen, what's the doomsday scenario?"" ... "The president replied: "Doomsday scenario of course is that extremists throughout the Middle East would be emboldened, which would eventually lead to another attack on the United States. The biggest issue we face is, it's bigger than Iraq, it's this ideological struggle against cold-blooded killers who will kill people to achieve their political objectives."" ... "Mr. Bush, at long last, has it not dawned on you that the America you have now created, includes "cold-blooded killers who will kill people to achieve their political objectives?" They are those in — or formerly in — your employ, who may yet be charged some day with war crimes." ... "Through your haze of self-congratulation and self-pity, do you still have no earthly clue that this nation has laid waste to Iraq to achieve your political objectives? "This ideological struggle," Mr. Bush, is taking place within this country." ... "It is a struggle between Americans who cherish freedom, ours and everybody else's, and Americans like you, sir, to whom freedom is just a brand name, just like "Patriot Act" is a brand name or "Protect America" is a brand name." ... "But wait, there's more: You also said "Iraq is the place where al-Qaida and other extremists have made their stand and they will be defeated." They made no "stand" in Iraq, sir, you allowed them to assemble there!" ... "As certainly as if that were the plan, the borders were left wide open by your government's farcical post-invasion strategy of "they'll greet us as liberators." And as certainly as if that were the plan, the inspiration for another generation of terrorists in another country was provided by your government's farcical post-invasion strategy of letting the societal infra-structure of Iraq dissolve, to be replaced by an American viceroy, enforced by merciless mercenaries who shoot unarmed Iraqis and then evade prosecution in any country by hiding behind your skirts, sir." ... "Terrorism inside Iraq is your creation, Mr. Bush!" ... "Then came Mr. Bush's final blow to our nation's solar plexus, his last reopening of our common wounds, his last remark that makes the rest of us question not merely his leadership or his judgment but his very suitably to remain in office." ... ""Mr. President," he was asked, "you haven't been golfing in recent years. Is that related to Iraq?"" ... ""Yes," began perhaps the most startling reply of this nightmarish blight on our lives as Americans on our history. "It really is. I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the Commander in Chief playing golf. I feel I owe it to the families to be as — to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal."" ... "Golf, sir? Golf sends the wrong signal to the grieving families of our men and women butchered in Iraq? Do you think these families, Mr. Bush, their lives blighted forever, care about you playing golf? Do you think, sir, they care about you?" ... "You, Mr. Bush, let their sons and daughters be killed. Sir, to show your solidarity with them you gave up golf? Sir, to show your solidarity with them you didn't give up your pursuit of this insurance-scam, profiteering, morally and financially bankrupting war." ... "Sir, to show your solidarity with them you didn't even give up talking about Iraq, a subject about which you have incessantly proved without pause or backwards glance, that you may literally be the least informed person in the world?" ... "Sir, to show your solidarity with them, you didn't give up your presidency? In your own words  "solidarity as best as I can" is to stop a game? That is the "best" you can do?" ... "Four thousand Americans give up their lives and your sacrifice was to give up golf!" ... "The great Bushian sacrifice — an Army private loses a leg, a Marine loses half his skull, 4,000 of their brothers and sisters lose their lives — and you lose golf, and they have to pull you off the golf course to get you to just do that?" ... "If it's even true." ... "... CBS News has records of you playing golf as late as [October] Oct. 13 of that year, nearly two months later [two months after Bush claimed that he had given up golf "in solidarity" with the families of American troops.]." (1, 2, 3, 4) -By Keith Olbermann -MSNBC

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John McCain - DCI Group - Burma (Myanmar) - Military - Money - Politics - People - Human Rights - Weather - Disaster - Arizona - US - 2008 Election - "Two McCain Aides With Ties to Burma Junta Resign." ... "ABC News’ Jan Simmonds reports: Two of [2008 Election Republican Presidential Candidate and Arizona Senator] Sen. John McCain' campaign aides resigned this weekend after media reports brought to light their ties to a lobbying group [DCI group] that once represented the military junta of Burma, which the regime calls Myanmar." ... "The aides, Douglas Goodyear, who was tapped as the GOP Convention Coordinator, and Doug Davenport, a regional manager focusing on the mid-Atlantic states, both worked for DCI. The firm was hired in 2002 to represent Burma’s military junta to try to begin a dialogue of political reconciliation with the United States." ... "The Burmese government has been strongly condemned by the State Department for its human rights record and has in recent days aroused an international outcry for its handling of the relief efforts in wake of a cyclone that according Oxfam [charity] could eventually claim 1.5 million lives if food, clean water and medical supplies are not rushed in to the devastated region. Relief agencies and governments that have offered assistance, including the United States, say the regime has frustrated their attempts to help the survivors of the disaster, tying up visa applications for aide workers in bureaucratic red tape and not allowing shipments of food and medical supplies into the country." -ABCNEWS.com

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John McCain - Burma [Myanmar] - Military - Money - Politics - DCI Group - Marketing - Human Rights - Oil - Arizona - US - 2008 Election - Saint Paul - Minn - "McCain's Convention Chair Worked for Burma's Military Junta." ... "John McCain's choice to manage the GOP convention this summer is lobbyist Doug Goodyear, whose firm once represented Burma's repressive regime." ... "After [2008 Election Republican Presidential Candidate] John McCain nailed down the Republican nomination in March, his campaign began wrestling with a sensitive personnel issue: who would manage this summer's GOP convention in St. Paul, Minn. [Minnesota]? The campaign recently tapped Doug Goodyear for the job, a veteran operative and Arizonan who was chosen for his "management experience and expertise," according to McCain press secretary Jill Hazelbaker. But some allies worry that Goodyear's selection could fuel perceptions that McCain—who has portrayed himself as a crusader against special interests—is surrounded by lobbyists. Goodyear is CEO of DCI Group, a consulting firm that earned $3 million last year lobbying for ExxonMobil [oil corporation], General Motors and other clients." ... "Potentially more problematic: the firm was paid $348,000 in 2002 to represent Burma's military junta, which had been strongly condemned by the State Department for its human-rights record and remains in power today. Justice Department lobbying records show DCI pushed to "begin a dialogue of political reconciliation" with the regime. It also led a PR [public relations] campaign to burnish the junta's image, drafting releases praising Burma's efforts to curb the drug trade and denouncing "falsehoods" by the [Republican President] Bush administration that the regime engaged in rape and other abuses. " -By Michael Isikoff -Newsweek

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Israel - Racism - Palestine - Families - Human Rights - Law - People - History - "Arabs say racism on rise as Israel turns 60." ... "Salwa Abu Jaber believes her story shows Israel discriminating against its Arab citizens, 60 years after the state was established as a haven for Jews." ... "The 32-year-old mother of four from northern Israel said her five-year-old daughter has never seen her father, who lives in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Separated from the man for five years, she says she has been forced to divorce him." ... "Thousands of families have been similarly split by a 2003 ban on Palestinians in the West Bank from reuniting with their families inside Israel, imposed citing security reasons after the Palestinian uprising or intifada began in 2000." ... ""In practical terms, Israel forced the divorce on us," Abu Jaber said. "We could not continue to live like this any longer. If this is not racism, then what is it?"" ... "This week, as Israel celebrates the anniversary of its foundation, its supreme court has said it found merit in the position of numerous petitions filed by rights groups against the law that keeps the families apart." ... "But Israeli Arabs -- those Palestinians who remained after hundreds of thousands fled or were expelled from their homes when Israel was created -- say institutionalized racism and illegal killings of Arabs have increased since the intifada started." ... "After 1948, about 120,000 stayed and were granted Israeli citizenship. Now about one in five Israelis is Arab, and many prefer to be called Palestinians like their kin outside Israel." ... "About 1.5 million Arabs reside in Israel with 5.5 million Jews, but 3.8 million Palestinians live in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem." (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) -By Mohammed Assadi with contributions by Samia Nakhoul, Sara Ledwith and Ari Rabinovitch in Jerusalem -Reuters 

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Secret - Government - Intelligence - Terrorism - Politics - Illegal - Surveillance - Investigation - Internet - Archive - Library - Electronic - Civil Liberties - Brewster_Kahle - Censorship - San Francisco - California - Student - Health - Consumer - Telephone - Electronic - Data - National Security Letter - "FBI Targets Internet Archive With Secret 'National Security Letter', Loses." ... "The Internet Archive, a project to create a digital library of the web for posterity, successfully fought a secret government Patriot Act order for records about one of its patrons and won the right to make the order public, civil liberties groups announced Wednesday morning." ... "On November 26, 2007, the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] served a controversial National Security Letter (.pdf) on the Internet Archive's founder Brewster Kahle, asking for records about one of the library's registered users, asking for the user's name, address and activity on the site." ... "The Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Internet Archive's lawyers, fought the NSL [National Security Letter], challenging its constitutionality in a December 14 complaint (.pdf) to a federal court in San Francisco [California]. The FBI agreed on April 21 to withdraw the letter and unseal the court case, making some of the documents available to the public." ... "The Patriot Act greatly expanded the reach of NSLs, which are subpoenas for documents such as billing records and telephone records that the FBI can issue in terrorism investigations without a judge's approval. Nearly all NSLs come with gag orders forbidding the recipient from ever speaking of the subpoena, except to a lawyer." ... "Brewster Kahle called the gag order "horrendous," saying he couldn't talk about the case with his board members, wife or staff, but said that his stand was part of a time-honored tradition of librarians protecting the rights of their patrons." ... ""This is an unqualified success that will help other recipients understand that you can push back on these," Kahle said in a conference call with reporters Wednesday morning." ... "Though FBI guidelines on using NSLs warned of overusing them, two Congressionally ordered audits revealed that the FBI had issued hundreds of illegal requests for student health records, telephone records and credit reports. The reports also found that the FBI had issued hundreds of thousands of NSLs since 2001, but failed to track their use. In a letter to Congress last week, the FBI admitted it can only estimate how many NSLs it has issued." -By Ryan Singel -Wired 

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Chinese - Child - Labor - Human Rights - Politics - "Chinese children sold "like cabbages" into slavery." ... "Thousands of children in southwest China have been sold into slavery like "cabbages", to work as labourers in more prosperous areas such as the booming southern province of Guangdong [China], a newspaper said on Tuesday." ... "China announced a nationwide crackdown on slavery and child labor last year after reports that hundreds of poor farmers, children and mentally disabled were forced to work in kilns and mines in Shanxi province and neighboring Henan." (1, 2) -Contributed to by Nick Macfie and Valerie Lee -Reuters

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Racism - Texas - Prison - History - People - DNA - Human Rights - "DNA frees Texas man imprisoned for 27 years." ... "James Woodard [a black male], 55, spent more time in prison than any other wrongfully convicted inmate in U.S. [United States] history who was subsequently freed by DNA testing, local media reported." ... "He was also the eighteenth person freed in Dallas County [Texas] based on a post-conviction DNA analysis, according to the Innocence Project, a New York-based legal center that specializes in righting grave miscarriages of justice." ... "That is more than any other U.S. county, highlighting problems in the local justice system that include what critics have said is a history of racism and racial profiling." -By Ed Stoddard with contributions by Todd Eastham -Reuters 

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Elizabeth Edwards - Edwards - Biden - Barack Obama - Media - Television - Corporations - Sports - Politics - 2008 Election - Pennsylvania - Freedom - Health - "Bowling 1, Health Care 0." ... "For the last month, news media attention was focused on Pennsylvania and its [2008 Election] Democratic primary. Given the gargantuan effort, what did we learn?" ... "Well, the rancor of the campaign was covered. The amount of money spent was covered. But in Pennsylvania, as in the rest of the country this political season, the information about the candidates’ priorities, policies and principles — information that voters will need to choose the next president — too often did not make the cut. After having spent more than a year on the campaign trail with my husband, [2008 Election Democratic Presidential Candidate] John Edwards, I’m not surprised." ... "Why? Here’s my guess: The vigorous press that was deemed an essential part of democracy at our country’s inception is now consigned to smaller venues, to the Internet and, in the mainstream media, to occasional articles. I am not suggesting that every journalist for a mainstream media outlet is neglecting his or her duties to the public. And I know that serious newspapers and magazines run analytical articles, and public television broadcasts longer, more probing segments." ... "But I am saying that every analysis that is shortened, every corner that is cut, moves us further away from the truth until what is left is the Cliffs Notes of the news, or what I call strobe-light journalism, in which the outlines are accurate enough but we cannot really see the whole picture." ... "Did you, for example, ever know a single fact about [2008 Election Democratic Presidential Candidate] Joe Biden’s health care plan? Anything at all? But let me guess, you know [2008 Election Democratic Presidential Candidate] Barack Obama’s bowling score. We are choosing a president, the next leader of the free world. We are not buying soap, and we are not choosing a court clerk with primarily administrative duties." ... "What’s more, the news media cut candidates like Joe Biden out of the process even before they got started." ... "News is different from other programming on television or other content in print. It is essential to an informed electorate. And an informed electorate is essential to freedom itself. But as long as corporations to which news gathering is not the primary source of income or expertise get to decide what information about the candidates “sells,” we are not functioning as well as we could if we had the engaged, skeptical press we deserve." ... "If voters want a vibrant, vigorous press, apparently we will have to demand it." (1, 2) -By Elizabeth Edwards -NYTimes 

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Military - Religious - Freedom - Politics - Kansas - US - Iraq - "Soldier Sues Army, Saying His Atheism Led to Threats." ... "When Specialist Jeremy Hall held a meeting last July for atheists and freethinkers at Camp Speicher in Iraq, he was excited, he said, to see an officer attending." ... "But minutes into the talk, the officer, [Major] Maj. Freddy J. Welborn, began to berate Specialist Hall and another soldier about atheism, Specialist Hall wrote in a sworn statement. “People like you are not holding up the Constitution and are going against what the founding fathers, who were Christians, wanted for America!” Major Welborn said, according to the statement." ... "Major Welborn told the soldiers he might bar them from re-enlistment and bring charges against them, according to the statement." ... "Last month, Specialist Hall and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, an advocacy group, filed suit in federal court in Kansas, alleging that Specialist Hall’s right to be free from state endorsement of religion under the First Amendment had been violated and that he had faced retaliation for his views. In November, he was sent home early from Iraq because of threats from fellow soldiers." ... "Specialist Hall’s lawsuit is the latest incident to raise questions about the military’s religion guidelines. In 2005, the Air Force issued new regulations in response to complaints from cadets at the Air Force Academy that evangelical Christian officers used their positions to proselytize." ... "To Specialist Hall and other critics of the military, the guidelines have done little to change a culture they say tilts heavily toward evangelical Christianity. Controversies have continued to flare, largely over tactics used by evangelicals to promote their faith. Perhaps the most high-profile incident involved seven officers, including four generals, who appeared, in uniform and in violation of military regulations, in a 2006 fund-raising video for the Christian Embassy, an evangelical Bible study group." (1, 2) -By Neela Banerjee -NYTimes 

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Don Young - Abramoff - Bob Schaffer - Money - Politics - Mariana Islands - Chinese - Garment - Factory - Industry - Labor - Women - Abortion - Human Rights - Investigations - Government - Immigration - Law- History - US - Colorado - Alaska - "Records expose Young-Abramoff ties: MARIANA ISLANDS." ... "[Alaska Republican Represenative] Rep. Don Young has said he never allowed convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff to be an influential force over him in Congress." ... "But now a trove of old billing records from two of Abramoff's firms show that his team of lobbyists had more than 120 contacts with Young's personal and committee staffs over 25 months, including at least 10 with Young himself." ... "The available records cover a single Abramoff client, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. [United States] territory in the Pacific that Young oversaw when he chaired the House Resources Committee from 1995 to 2001." ... "The records show that one of the looming concerns of Abramoff and his fellow lobbyists at the time was a bill introduced by Young's fellow Alaskan, [Republican Senator] Sen. Frank Murkowski, to reform labor and immigration practices feeding the island's notorious Chinese-owned