FLE

Hunter Who Started Cedar Fire Avoids Prison

Sergio Martinez, a 35-year-old West Covina, Calif., man, was sentenced to five years of probation and six months of community confinement in a halfway house. He also was ordered to perform 980 hours of community service and must pay $150 per month for five years. Martinez told reporters in March 2005 that he made a bad judgment call and did not spark the fire intentionally. He said he was so scared of dying that he lit a signal fire. Santa Ana winds soon sent that fire racing over 422 square miles, nearly a 10th of the county's acreage, killing 14 people, destroying more than 2,200 homes and causing more than $800 million in damage....and all Kit Laney tried to do was open a gate and let his mother cows get back to their stranded baby calves...no homes destroyed, no 14 deaths...and he spends 5 months in a Federal prison...thank you US Forest Service and US Attorney David Iglesias.

Outfitter pleads guilty for not having proper permits

A longtime Townsend outfitter pleaded guilty in federal court in Great Falls this week for taking hunters onto the Lewis and Clark National Forest without having the proper permits. Lamonte Schnur, an outfitter for almost 35 years and owner of Monte’s Guiding and Mountain Outfitting, faces up to six months in prison and a $5,000 fine for each of the five misdemeanor counts on which he will be sentenced on Jan. 11. The counts specifically state that he conducted service or work activity that is not authorized by federal law, according to information from U.S. Attorney Bill Mercer’s office. So the Forest Service set up a sting operation, in which two law enforcement officers from another region paid Schnur $5,600 for a guided hunt between Oct. 31 and Nov. 3, 2004. The men were briefed on the Forest Service boundaries, and carried Global Positioning Systems to get exact readings of where they were hunting....

Extension of Patriot Act Faces Threat of Filibuster

A tentative deal to extend the government's antiterrorism powers under the law known as the USA Patriot Act appeared in some jeopardy Thursday, as Senate Democrats threatened to mount a filibuster in an effort to block the legislation. "This is worth the fight," Senator Russell D. Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat who serves on the Judiciary Committee, said in an interview. "I've cleared my schedule right up to Thanksgiving," Mr. Feingold said, adding that he was making plans to read aloud from the Bill of Rights as part of a filibuster if necessary. The political maneuvering came even before negotiators for the House and Senate had agreed on a final deal to extend the government's counterterrorism powers under the act. In a letter Thursday, a bipartisan group of six senators said the tentative deal had caused them "deep concern" because it did not go far enough in "making reasonable changes to the original law to protect innocent people from unnecessary and intrusive government surveillance." Reflecting the political breadth of concerns about the law, the letter was signed by three Republicans - Senators Larry E. Craig, John E. Sununu and Lisa Murkowksi - and three Democrats - Senators Richard J. Durbin and Ken Salazar and Mr. Feingold....

Sen. Specter Puts Brakes on Patriot Act Extension

Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) joined Friday with a bipartisan group of critics to reject a proposed agreement to extend the Patriot Act, dealing the White House an embarrassing setback and dashing its hopes that Congress would vote on the sweeping antiterrorism law before adjourning for Thanksgiving. Speaking at a news conference called by senators who have threatened to filibuster the House-backed legislation unless it provides greater privacy protections, Specter said he disagreed with House negotiators over the expiration dates for two of the law's 16 provisions. "My view is that the Patriot Act needs further analysis and some revision from what is in the proposed conference report at the present time," Specter said. The statute expires Dec. 31, and pressure is building on Congress to act. Specter said that he wanted four-year expiration dates for a provision that gives the FBI broad leeway to seize personal and business information — the so-called library provision — and a second provision that allows the FBI to wiretap any phone a suspect uses. The current version has seven-year expiration dates. Jim Dempsey, executive director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a group that supports renewing the Patriot Act but with greater protections for privacy rights and civil liberties, said the administration and House leadership "misread the sentiment in the Congress." "I think that there is widespread concern about some of the unrestricted powers in the Patriot Act, and it's bipartisan," he said....

Why Reward Failure?

Congress is now poised to renew the PATRIOT Act, which will dramatically expand the powers of the FBI. Have our lawmakers found the right “balance” between liberty and security? Had the FBI’s record of performance been outstanding, reasonable people could debate whether it is necessary to confer more power on this already powerful police agency. Alas, the FBI’s record cannot even be regarded as satisfactory. In May, after the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit, FBI documents came to light that showed that the bureau dispatched its “terrorism” units to investigate anti-war protesters who were gearing up for the 2004 Democratic National Convention. The protesters claimed those subsequent “interviews” were an attempt to intimidate them. In June, the inspector general was finally permitted to release his findings regarding the FBI’s inability to detect and disrupt the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The inspector’s ultimate conclusion -- that the attacks represented a “significant failure” by the FBI -- surprised no one. But this report contained some awful details that had gone previously unreported. In July, Inspector General Glenn Fine reported that the FBI had failed to translate more than 8,000 hours of audio wiretap recording related to counterterrorism investigations. If there is evidence of an impending attack in those recordings, no one can act on it. But it gets worse. When one FBI translator, Sibol Edmonds, stepped forward to report incompetence and possible corruption in the bureau’s translation division, she was discharged. In September, the inspector general reported that the FBI often violated its own rules for handling confidential informants. Last month, a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit revealed that the bureau is presently investigating hundreds of potential violations relating to its use of secret surveillance operations. Hundreds? Had this lawsuit not been filed, it is highly unlikely that the FBI would have ever brought these problems to the attention of Congress or the press....

Armed standoff on Rio Grande

U.S. Border Patrol agents were backed down this week by armed men, dressed in what appeared to be Mexican military uniforms and carrying military weapons, who seized a captured dump truck filled with marijuana from the U.S. agents and dragged it across the border into Mexico with a bulldozer. The border incident occurred Thursday evening when Border Patrol agents attempted to pull over a dump truck on Interstate 10 in Hudspeth County, Texas. The driver fled from the agents, exiting the freeway and driving toward the Rio Grande which runs within 2 miles of the interstate in this portion of West Texas. The driver abandoned the truck after it became stuck in the river bed, escaping into Mexico. Agents called for reinforcement from the Texas state troopers and Hudspeth County sheriff and began unloading the haul – estimated to have been nearly 3 tons – when everything changed. Officers "started to retrieve the bundles when the armed subjects appeared," said Agent Ramiro Cordero, Border Patrol spokesman. According to Hudspeth County Chief Deputy Mike Doyal, the dump truck driver returned with armed men, some of whom drove "official looking vehicles with overhead lights." Some of those armed, Doyal told the El Paso Times, appeared to be Mexican soldiers in uniform with military weapons....

Senate Reaches "Compromise" on Habeas Corpus that Could Still Strip Guantanamo Detainees of any Trial

Facing intense criticism from human rights, legal and civil liberties groups, the Senate voted on Tuesday to restore some of the rights of detainees held at Guantanamo Bay. Under the deal - worked out by Republican Lindsey Graham and Democrat Carl Levin - detainees convicted by military tribunals can have their cases reviewed by federal courts. Graham sponsored the original amendment hastily passed by the Senate last Thursday that stripped detainees of their right to Habeas Corpus which is their right to challenge their detention in federal courts. This amendment overturned a June 2004 Supreme Court ruling that had affirmed detainees right to Habeus Corpus. The compromise, reached with Levin, still reverses the Supreme Court ruling but allows any detainee sentenced to death or at least 10 years in prison by a military tribunal, to automatically appeal the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. In addition, the deal restores federal court jurisdiction over pending cases and provides for a court review of whether standards and procedures of the tribunals are consistent with the Constitution....