Free Amy Goodman UPDATE: Goodman released, still faces charges
While everyone (including yours truly) was busy arguing the political and ethical implications of a pregnant 17 year old, the bloody fucking fascists of the St Paul Police Department arrested Amy Goodman while she was covering today’s RNC protests.
Yeah, that Amy Goodman:
Glenn Greenwald reports that Goodman has been charged with “conspiracy to riot”:
I just attended a Press Conference with St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman and Police Chief John M. Harrington and — after they boasted of how “restrained” their police actions were — asked about the journalists and lawyers who had been detained and/or arrested both today and over the weekend. They said they wouldn’t give any information about journalists who had been arrested today, though they said they believed that “one journalist” had been, and that she “was sima participant in the riots, not simply a non-participant.”
Lots more RNC protest footage at The Uptake; news conference footage here; more on Goodman’s arrest from Cliff Schecter (note: FDL is currently down).
h/t pale @ ACR and Sylvia (via Twitter)
Update: lots more links at Sylvia’s place. The Uptake’s RNC protest blog reports that Goodman has been released. Will update once this has been confirmed.
Update 2: Via Mike in comemnts, Democracy Now! press release:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
www.democracynow.orgSeptember 1, 2008
Contact:
Dennis Moynihan
Mike BurkeST. PAUL, MN—Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman was unlawfully arrested in downtown St. Paul, Minnesota at approximately 5 p.m. local time. Police violently manhandled Goodman, yanking her arm, as they arrested her. Video of her arrest can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYjyvkR0bGQ
Goodman was arrested while attempting to free two Democracy Now! producers who were being unlawfuly detained. They are Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar. Kouddous and Salazar were arrested while they carried out their journalistic duties in covering street demonstrations at the Republican National Convention. Goodman’s crime appears to have been defending her colleagues and the freedom of the press.
Ramsey County Sherrif Bob Fletcher told Democracy Now! that Kouddous and Salazar were being arrested on suspicion of rioting. They are currently being held at the Ramsey County jail in St. Paul.
Democracy Now! is calling on all journalists and concerned citizens to call the office of Mayor Chris Coleman and the Ramsey County Jail and demand the immediate release of Goodman, Kouddous and Salazar. These calls can be directed to: Chris Rider from Mayor Coleman’s office at 651-266-8535 and the Ramsey County Jail at 651-266-9350 (press extension 0).
Democracy Now! stands by Goodman, Kouddous and Salazar and condemns this action by Twin Cities law enforcement as a clear violation of the freedom of the press and the First Amenmdent rights of these journalists.
During the demonstration in which they were arrested law enforcement officers used pepper spray, rubber bullets, concussion grenades and excessive force. Several dozen others were also arrested during this action.
Amy Goodman is one of the most well-known and well-respected journalists in the United States. She has received journalism’s top honors for her reporting and has a distinguished reputation of bravery and courage. The arrest of Goodman, Kouddous and Salazar is a transparent attempt to intimidate journalists from the nation’s leading independent news outlet.
Democracy Now! is a nationally-syndicated public TV and radio program that airs on over 700 radio and TV stations across the US and the globe.
Update 3: Democracy Now! producer Mike Burke just confirmed via email that Goodman has been released, but still faces charges; Kouddous and Salazar both remain in custody, so please call the office of Mayor Chris Coleman and the Ramsey County Jail and demand the immediate release of Kouddous and Salazar. As previously mentioned, calls can be directed to: Chris Rider from Mayor Coleman’s office at 651-266-8535 and the Ramsey County Jail at 651-266-9350 (press extension 0).
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Every Breath You Take…
…every move you make, the police will be watching you:
The Justice Department has proposed a new domestic spying measure that would make it easier for state and local police to collect intelligence about Americans, share the sensitive data with federal agencies and retain it for at least 10 years.
The proposed changes would revise the federal government’s rules for police intelligence-gathering for the first time since 1993 and would apply to any of the nation’s 18,000 state and local police agencies that receive roughly $1.6 billion each year in federal grants.
It’s Pres. Bush’s parting gift to us:
Taken together, critics in Congress and elsewhere say, the moves are intended to lock in policies for Bush’s successor and to enshrine controversial post-Sept. 11 approaches that some say have fed the greatest expansion of executive authority since the Watergate era.
No need to worry, though, because the Bushies were already doing all of this stuff anyway; this just makes it official:
Supporters say the measures simply codify existing counterterrorism practices and policies that are endorsed by lawmakers and independent experts such as the 9/11 Commission. They say the measures preserve civil liberties and are subject to internal oversight.
See that? The foxes are taking great care to make sure they don’t harm the residents of the hen house. Feel better now?
More via Memeorandum: Libby Spencer, Emptywheel, Daily Kos, John Cole, Booman Tribune.
Hamdan Guilty of ‘Material Support’, Acquitted of More Serious Conspiracy Charges
Hey, it only took seven years, but justice has finally been perverted served:
Salim Hamdan was found guilty of providing material support for terrorism at a Guantanamo military commission today, but acquitted of the more serious charge of conspiracy to commit terrorist attacks and murder American soldiers. So let me get this straight: After seven years and numerous court challenges including two Supreme Court rulings, the Bush administration finally stumbled its way to its first conviction in a military commission for a crime that is routinely handled in federal courts. Is this is the best they can do?
Hamdan was Osama bin Laden’s driver, not Osama bin Laden. He never denied that he was bin Laden’s driver. It would have been an open and shut case of material support for terrorism in federal court. Hamdan could have been securely locked away years ago, but the Bush administration chose to pursue the risky path of an untested military commissions system.
Now, come on. I was under the impression Hamdan was a bloodthirsty terrorist (the worst of the worst!!1one) hell-bent on destroying the pillars of Western civilization. His conviction means the world is now a safer place, right?
The worst aspect of this whole episode is that the Bush administration has completely devalued the concept of a war criminal. War crimes should be reserved for the most serious offenses and war crimes trials are extraordinary. Charles Taylor is a war criminal. Radovan Karazdic is a war criminal. Salim Hamdan is a chauffer. He is clearly guilty of the crime of material support for terrorism. But now he has been elevated to the status of warrior, legitimizing al Qaeda terrorists’ belief that they are waging a holy war against the United States and our allies.
Well. I’m comfortable declaring this little long term experiment in post-9/11 homeland insecurity an unqualified success. Heck of a motherfucking job.
“Accountability…is not, in every case, a virtue”
Mike Allen of The Politico quotes from Ron Suskind’s new book, The Way of the World:
“After the searing experience of being in the Nixon White House, Cheney developed a view that the failure of Watergate was not the break-in, or even the cover-up, but the way the president had, in essence, been over-briefed. There were certain things a president shouldn’t know – things that could be illegal, disruptive to key foreign relationships, or humiliating to the executive.
“They key was a signaling system, where the president made his wishes broadly known to a sufficiently powerful deputy who could take it from there. If an investigation ensued, or a foreign leader cried foul, the president could shrug. This was never something he’d authorized. The whole point of Cheney’s model is to make a president less accountable for his action. Cheney’s view is that accountability – a bedrock feature of representative democracy – is not, in every case, a virtue.”
Just remember, kids: impeachment is off the table.
Update: Suskind on NBC News:
Homeland Insecurity in the US Dividing Refugee Families
Steve Lannen of the Lexington Herald-Leader reports on the unintended consequences of so-called ‘material support’ provisions contained within the Patriot Act:
Losi Grodya works two jobs, has a driver’s license, is working on a community college degree and is readying to take her U.S. citizenship exam.
Despite all she has accomplished since settling in Lexington as a refugee from her native Democratic Republic of Congo nearly six years ago, she feels helpless when she talks on the phone with her daughters. Their home has been a Rwandan refugee camp for the past four years.
”They ask me when they are coming. Why is it taking so long? They tell me since I am in America, I must be able to do something to get them to come, but I’ve tried everything I can,“ Grodya said. ”I just want them to come here so we can all be together again. … But I can’t even do that.“
Her daughters, who as of late January were approved by U.S. officials to join her in Lexington as refugees, have seen their cases caught up in a post-9/11 provision in the Patriot Act that bars people from entering the United States if suspected of aiding a terrorist group.
[...]
After months of delay, Grodya learned last week that her daughters are suspected of providing material support to a terrorist group. But she doesn’t know precisely what they are suspected of doing.
Grodya’s five daughters have shared stories not of complicity, but of kidnapping and rape in a country torn apart by decadelong conflict, she said. She fears they have not told her the worst, but that what they have said ”is now being turned against them.“
Unfortunately, because it wasn’t published in the New York Times or the Washington Post, the story of Losi Grodya–and the broader issue underlying her plight–likely won’t get the attention it deserves. But hopefully a little blogospheric momentum will help broaden its impact. So, please, read the whole thing, blog about it, pass it along to your friends, your colleagues, and your Congresscritters.
4th Circuit Court Rules President Can Indefinitely Detain U.S. Citizens
The New York Times reports the decision of a federal appeals court on the government’s right to arrest and indefinitely detain American citizens:
Torture and Warrantless Surveillance Are the Same Issue
Via Glenn, the Washington Post has a write-up on Jane Mayer’s new book, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on America’s Ideals. Here is what Mayer reveals in that book, which is due out this week:
How to be on the “Far Left”, from the paper of record
According to the New York Times, an American is on the “far left” if they are angry over Obama’s support for the FISA bill. Or, in other words, if an American is vocal about defending their civil liberties, that puts them in the fringes of politics — the outcasts wandering around the hinterlands, forgotten and ignored because of their extreme views.
Nice.
Why don’t we see extreme activities which receive Republican support as being considered “far right”? Why isn’t the anti-immigration group the Minutemen ever considered far right? How come wanting to destroy social security isn’t from the far right? How come wanting to enforce religion by law (for example, by making gay marriage illegal) isn’t on the far right? How come using tax cuts to distribute more wealth to the greedy isn’t coming from the far right? I could go on — and I’m sure you could, too. Suffice to say, in today’s political discourse “far right” is defined as either God Hates Fags or Adolf Hitler; yet the “far left” consists of activists who dare to defend the Constitution.
Insert some witty cliche about the “liberal media” here. When this is the starting point defined by the mainstream, no wonder political discourse in this country is a joke.
FISA and Journalists
Chris Hedges — one of my favorite writers — has an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times about the chilling effect the new FISA law will have on journalists and their sources:
Profiles in Courage
Blue America has come up with a way, going beyond words, to thank the people who opposed compromising the Constitution with the rewritten FISA that became law this week.
Lawbreaking Is Now the Law
The Senate earlier this afternoon passed the so-called “compromise” FISA bill, 69-28. Obama voted yes; Hillary Clinton voted no. Obama and Clinton also voted yes and no, respectively, on the vote to invoke cloture (which ended debate on the legislation and allowed the Senate to vote on the bill itself). Three separate amendments concerning the telecom immunity provision failed. The first, and strongest, amendment, would have stripped immunity from the bill. The second one would have delayed immunity to allow the Supreme Court to determine whether the NSA spy program is constitutional. The third (and weakest) amendment called for the immunity provision to take effect only upon completion of an audit of the NSA program by the Inspector General.
Obama voted for all three amendments (as did Clinton), but Obama’s yes votes were merely for show. They became meaningless the moment he voted for cloture, and then joined Senate Republicans in approving the underlying legislation.
Glenn Greenwald has two massive posts on the shameful proceedings (the second is linked from the first). There really is no need to go elsewhere, because his pieces have all the details, all the authoritative commentary, and all the links to additional information that you might need.
It is minimally comforting to know that my senator, Sen. Frank Lautenberg, voted for all the amendments, and against the final bill. One source of anger and outrage that I am spared from having to feel.
I also want to say here that Glenn deserves all of our thanks and appreciation for his unending, consistent, and truly fierce efforts to keep this issue front and center, not to mention the work he has done to prevent this disastrous legislation from passing. He, and the folks at Firedoglake — in particular, Jane Hamsher and Christy Hardin Smith — have labored tirelessly to inform and advocate on FISA and warrantless surveillance. The fight to hold the betrayers of the Constitution accountable continues; for more on that, you can start here.
21st Century Law Enforcement at its Finest
Because the presumption of innocence is, like, so September 10th, dude:
The Justice Department is considering letting the FBI investigate Americans without any evidence of wrongdoing, relying instead on a terrorist profile that could single out Muslims, Arabs or other racial and ethnic groups.Law enforcement officials say the proposed policy would help them do exactly what Congress demanded after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks: Root out terrorists before they strike.
Yes, we all know just how successful the doctrine of prevention has worked out so far–hey, how is that crusade to forcefully spread democracy across the Middle East going?
Currently, FBI agents need specific reasons — like evidence or allegations that a law probably has been violated — to investigate U.S. citizens and legal residents. The new policy, law enforcement officials told The Associated Press, would let agents open preliminary terrorism investigations after mining public records and intelligence to build a profile of traits that, taken together, were deemed suspicious.Among the factors that could make someone subject of an investigation is travel to regions of the world known for terrorist activity, access to weapons or military training, along with the person’s race or ethnicity.[...]
Critics say the presumption of innocence is lost in the proposal. The FBI will be allowed to begin investigations simply “by assuming that everyone’s a suspect, and then you weed out the innocent,” said Caroline Fredrickson of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Oh, come on. Who needs actual, y’know, specific ‘evidence‘ that illegal activity is occurring, when everybody knows that those swarthy Arabmuslimdarkies (especially the ones who dare to rack up frequent flyer mileage) have pure, undistilled terror flowing through their steely veins 24/7? (What? ‘IRA’ stands for ‘Indo-Republican Army’. Srsly.)
Also see I Need To Calm Down, Threat Level, and, representing the silly side of Blogtopia’s *cough* main street, Tammy “everybody knows” Bruce and Allahpundit, who wonders if we should “[b]e on the lookout for English-speaking caucasians with light-colored eyes“.
Read’ems
If anyone missed the NY Times scoop on the Bush Administration’s failures concerning the hunt for bin Laden and our Pakistan policy, it’s a must read. To summarize, between Bush’s over-reliance on former Pakistani President Musharraf to remove al-Qa’ida from his country’s soil, shifting too many resources to the Iraq war, and squabbling between the CIA Kabul and Islamabad field offices along with the Pentagon, al-Qa’ida has been allowed to shift its bases from Afghanistan to Pakistan and return to its pre-Sept. 11 strength. My favorite part of the article is when it discusses how the CIA team whose objective was to find bin Laden was booted out of the Langley headquarters building to, instead, reside on the lawn at Langley:
Obama: National Security Trumps Accountability for Telecoms
Turns out “Change You Can Believe In” is “Business As Usual You Can Bet On“:
At a presser today, Obama weighed in again on the FISA cave, and suffice it to say that what he said won’t make opponents any less unhappy about Obama’s position than they were already.
Asked specifically why he’s supporting the current FISA bill when he’d promised months ago to support a filibuster of an earlier version of the bill, Obama suggested flat out that “national security” overrides the question of telecom immunity…
Chris Dodd Gives Hope To Constitution Advocates
I’m listening to the audio of Chris Dodd’s speech on the Senate floor last night about why immunity for telecoms is such a terrible idea. This is a take-no-prisoners speech. One of the best things Dodd does is tie together all the other constitutional crimes committed by the Bush administration, and he makes it clear they are not separate issues and should not be treated as if they were:
Feingold and Dodd Say They Will Filibuster If Immunity Stays in FISA Bill
Thank you, Russ Feingold and Chris Dodd, for showing some integrity and guts (emphasis in original):
Hoyer and Pelosi To Their Base: You Should Thank Us for Screwing You
Nancy and Steny are making the rounds, visiting their friends in the media to get the word out on how fabulously clever they were to foil Republican election strategy by giving the right every unchecked power they wanted in a national surveillance bill.