One Utah

Yesterday, the Fourth Circuit appellate court, in a 5-4 ruling (PDF), affirmed that the President has the power to arrest U.S. citizens and legal residents inside the U.S., and imprison them indefinitely in a military prison, without charging them with any crime, based solely on his assertion that the imprisoned individual is an “enemy combatant.”
The [...]

As predicted last February, the U.S. government terrorist watch list has passed the one million mark.

Barry Steinhardt point out the absurdity on HuffPo:

There cannot possibly be one million terrorists poised to attack us. If there were our cities would be ablaze. The president - if not this president, then the next one — needs to [...]

And there is nothing we can do about it, at least in the short run. A sad time for America.

Glenn Greenwald:
The votes in the Senate on various amendments to the FISA “compromise” bill and to the underlying bill itself were originally scheduled for today, but have been postponed until tomorrow (Wednesday, July 9) to [...]

Barack Obama promised “change,” and he has delivered on that promise. We wanted Obama to change Washington, and instead he’s inexplicably changing his policy positions to accommodate the Bush administration and the far right. The most immediate problem: a proposal to make unconstitutional changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
Senator [...]

According to the latest CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey, only 35 percent of Americans believe a terrorist attack somewhere in the United States is likely over the next several weeks. While this level of fear is still way out of proportion with the actual risk, it’s the lowest in a CNN poll since the 9/11 [...]

Only 15 senators voted to block the FISA bill: Biden (D-DE) - Boxer (D-CA) - Brown (D-OH) - Cantwell (D-WA) - Dodd (D-CT) - Durbin (D-IL) - Feingold (D-WI) - Harkin (D-IA) - Kerry (D-MA) - Lautenberg (D-NJ) - Leahy (D-VT) - Menendez (D-NJ) - Sanders (I-VT) - Schumer (D-NY) - Wyden (D-OR). Senators Clinton, [...]

Thanks Leo for the tip. Personally, I see no place for pure libertarianism on this planet. Its light began to fade when the transcontinental railroad opened.
Nevertheless, this article speaks to the danger of the current Republican response to the SCOTUS case. Bad decision they say…as would have Hitler.
From the Future of Freedom [...]

This morning, 105 Democrats voted for the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, including our own Rep. Jim Matheson (D-UT) (R-UT). This legislation is unconstitutional and a total capitulation to White House claims of unlimited executive power. It also stymies future efforts to investigate the full extent of the Bush administration’s illegal surveillance activities. [...]

The Military Commissions Act of 2006 purported to suspend the right of habeas corpus, among other things.
Today the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that if Congress wishes to suspend habeas, it must do so only as the Constitution allows — when the country faces rebellion or invasion.
Writing for the majority in the 5-4 decision, Justice [...]

Via Radar:
According to a senior government official who served with high-level security clearances in five administrations, “There exists a database of Americans, who, often for the slightest and most trivial reason, are considered unfriendly, and who, in a time of panic, might be incarcerated. The database can identify and locate perceived ‘enemies of the state’ [...]

I’ve sent an e-mail to the man pictured to the right. He is a noted gun advocate/writer.
Hi Alan,
I just saw you on C-Span giving a talk on April 8th 2008.
You said, “Guns save hundreds of thousands of lives a year.”
You said this after describing a situation in which a women killed her intruder.
I think [...]

Via Talking Points Memo and other sources, today we got to read the infamous torture memo that sought to justify the horrifying abuses of detainees at the hands of the U.S. government at Guanatanamo, Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib and CIA secret “black site” prisons. It was written on March 14, 2003 by John Yoo, then [...]