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Papers Detail Complaints of Links to Treasury List A sheaf of documents that a federal court forced the Treasury Department to release indicate there have been repeated complaints from American consumers who have been falsely linked to terrorism or drug trafficking during routine credit checks, the organization that sought the documents in a lawsuit said Tuesday. The more than 100 pages of documents released Monday to the organization, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights in San Francisco, include a variety of complaints about the list maintained by the Office of Foreign Asset Control in the Treasury Department, said Philip Hwang, a lawyer for the group. The documents include e-mail messages from a Navy veteran who had been unable to use the Internet service PayPal, and an 18-year-old who wrote to say that he was not a Libyan minister who was apparently on the list. A client of a Maryland Toyota dealer reported being checked by a salesperson for tattoos because of a Treasury list match. A Treasury Department official was baffled by the last claim, saying information on the list did not include physical characteristics. The released documents include e-mail messages and letters from consumers who have been denied cars or home loans or faced difficulties with other financial transactions because their names allegedly appear on the list. Financial institutions are supposed to check clients’ names against the list, which is known officially as the Specially Designated Nationals List....
Feds Avoid Showdown by Giving Montana Real ID Waiver It Didn't Ask For The simmering conflict between the feds and states over new federal identification rules took an odd turn this week, with the feds seemingly now willing to accept all but outright rebels as part of their secure driver's license alliance. First, California wrote the Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday to say it hasn't yet decided if they will comply with new federal identification rules, despite the fact they applied for and got an extension on complying until 2010. DHS has said for months that states had to agree to comply in the future to get that extension. If they don't get the extension, that state's citizens could not get into federal buildings or escape pat-downs at the airport, unless they had a passport. But within minutes of THREAT LEVEL showing a copy of the California letter to DHS, the government said California's ambivalence was just fine. Then Friday, DHS handed out a waiver to Montana, which didn't ask for one. In January, Montana's outspoken Democratic governor Brian Schweitzer called such extensions a "Faustian bargain" in a letter to other governors that urged collective rebellion. Montana, along with civil liberties and small government groups, consider Real ID to be a de facto national identity card....
In New York, a Turf War in the Battle Against Terrorism Not long after Sept. 11, 2001, as New York City began to build a counterterrorism effort to rival those of most nations, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly decided to put an end to the department's reliance on the FBI for classified data coming in from Washington. Kelly, who was working to protect the city against another attack, wanted his own access to the stream of threat reporting concerning New York. The solution was to install a classified-information vault, like the FBI's, at the headquarters of the New York City Police Department. Kelly made the request in the spring of 2002 and waited six years for an answer. After questions from The Washington Post for this story, the FBI said it has decided to approve the vault, a specially designed, guarded room known as a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility. No other police department in the United States has responded to the threats of terrorism in quite the same way as the NYPD -- or clashed as sharply with the nation's primary counterterrorism agency, the FBI. A thousand NYPD officers are assigned full time to operations drawing on the traditional missions of the CIA and the FBI. The department's liaison officers have been deployed from Nairobi to Singapore, while its networks of domestic informants stretch across the five boroughs of New York City. In the past seven years, Kelly and his deputies have formed close working relationships with key intelligence agencies and the Department of Homeland Security. The NYPD has so many native foreign-language speakers that it lends translators to the Pentagon. But the FBI, protective of turf and disdainful of local initiative, froze Kelly's department out of two New York-related terrorism investigations, officials say. When more than 100 top police detectives joined the FBI's joint terrorism task force, they were initially not permitted to read the bureau's case files....Is the FBI's biggest concern protecting Joe citizen? Or is the FBI's biggest concern protecting it's own authority and jurisdiction? Now you know.
Second Amendment Supporters Optimistic After Oral Arguments If gun ownership is limited to "state militias," why does the Constitution say "the right of the people," Chief Justice John Roberts asked on Tuesday. Second Amendment supporters were heartened by Tuesday's oral arguments in District of Columbia v Heller. The case involves a D.C. resident, Dick Anthony Heller, who is challenging the city's 32-year-old ban on individuals possessing handguns. Most court observers say it looks like the Supreme Court is leaning toward a ruling that will affirm gun ownership as an individual right -- an interpretation that would topple the District of Columbia's ban on individuals possessing handguns. Justice Anthony Kennedy, often described as the court's "swing vote," said on Tuesday that in his view, "There's a general right to bear arms quite without reference to the militia either way." "We were impressed with the depth of questions asked by all of the justices, and we have no doubt that the court has a clear understanding of Second Amendment history, and that 'the people' are all citizens," said Second Amendment Foundation founder Alan Gottlieb....
Tyranny of a 'reasonable' gun ban Yet when it's all said and done, the court's ruling is likely to hinge on a much more philosophical point: the "reasonable person" standard. In constitutional law, a reasonable person is a judge or legislator who, as a legal fiction, pretends to see through the eyes of another and, in view of the facts of a particular situation, endeavors to remove every unnecessary human trait and unworkable idea, as a balancing test. Make no mistake: The reasonable person standard is on a collision course with the rights protected by the Second Amendment. Remarkably, the Bush administration has signaled its support for this standard being applied in this case. It filed an amicus brief stating that: "To the contrary, the Second Amendment, properly construed, allows for reasonable regulation of firearms, must be interpreted in light of context and history, and is subject to important exceptions...." The chilling inference – that aggressive gun bans such as the District of Columbia's are constitutional as long as they are "reasonable" – was cheered by gun-control groups because it signifies the easiest way for gun restrictions to pass constitutional muster. Relying on the reasonable person standard, the high court could simultaneously uphold the individual's theoretical right to bear arms under the Second Amendment and sustain Washington's draconian gun ban. "In contrast to other provisions in the Bill of Rights, which can only be violated by 'compelling state interests,' the Second Amendment would be relegated to an inferior position at the lowest rung of the constitutional ladder, should the Justice Department prevail," explains Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America....
Friction After Patrols in Phoenix Immigrant Area Scores of sheriff’s deputies, assisted by civilian volunteers and shadowed by observers from immigration advocacy groups, conducted saturation patrols this weekend in neighborhoods where illegal immigrants live, work and worship. The authorities said that the initial sweep, which began about sundown on Friday, led to the arrests of nine people who could not prove United States citizenship and four other people on unrelated charges like outstanding warrants. Deputies initially stopped motorists on traffic violations and then asked them for identification. The observers tried to ensure that people snared in the operation were treated properly by law enforcement personnel under the direction of the county’s hard-edged sheriff, Joe Arpaio. “The guy is completely attacking an entire class of people based on their color,” said Adolfo Maldonado, an engineer who said he has trailed sheriff’s deputies on patrol. “He’s racial profiling.” Sheriff Arpaio dismissed the criticisms. “We’re not going on the street corner, grabbing 15 people because they look like they came from Mexico,” the sheriff said. “We don’t do that. We only develop the illegal immigration situation when we come across people violating the law.” The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office began the patrols on Friday in response to small-business owners who complained that day laborers loiter in the East Phoenix neighborhood, harass customers and leave litter, including beer cans. Law enforcement officials set up a command center and booking facilities in a parking lot outside a Goodwill store at a strip mall....
Tension high in border villages of Columbus and Palomas Residents on both sides of the border are nervous after a month of border shootings, disappearances and at least two confirmed murders allegedly sparked by drug-traffickers' turf wars in the Mexican town of Palomas. On Thursday, after reporting his two police officers had disappeared, Palomas Chief of Police Emilio Perez fled to Columbus requesting political asylum. Perez's flight came just days after Columbus Mayor Eddie Espinoza, in the chair for a root canal, witnessed armed robbers take over Palomas dentist Felipe Salazar's office. Rick Moody, agent in charge of the Deming U.S. Border Patrol Station, told the Sun-News on Thursday the Mexican government was in the process of responding with its own forces — a promise made to U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman weeks ago. Repeated messages left with both Espinoza and Moody on Friday were not returned. Mexican federal officers and state officers from Chihuahua have been moved into the area in recent weeks, but it was unclear if the Mexican military would be called in, said Alan Oliver, a spokesman for Gov. Bill Richardson. He said the violence in Palomas was evidence of the need for a continued National Guard presence on the border....
Agency Appeals Ruling on Employees’ ID The Homeland Security Department is appealing a judge’s ruling against its plan to force employers to fire workers whose names do not match their Social Security numbers, and is promising to try to make the policy a law. A federal judge in San Francisco blocked the “no-match rule” in October, saying it would probably impose hardships on businesses and their workers. Employers would incur new costs, and innocent workers unable to correct mistakes in their records in time would lose their jobs, wrote the judge, Charles Breyer of Federal District Court. In a document issued late Friday, the department addressed several of the judge’s concerns, saying among other things that the rule did not create new legal obligations for businesses. “It simply outlines clear steps an employer may take in response to receiving a letter from the Social Security Administration indicating that an employee’s name does not match the Social Security number on file,” the department said....
200 surveillance cameras at Van Dyke houses fail to stop rape suspect Once again a rapist was caught on videotape, and once again cops failed to see him, police sources said Thursday. A 19-year-old woman was raped at knifepoint inside the Van Dyke houses in Brooklyn early Thursday - a housing complex with more than 200 cameras supposedly monitored around the clock by the NYPD. Sources told the Daily News that at least one video camera recorded the rapist grabbing the young woman and pulling her into an elevator. Police officials believe the attacker is the same man who raped a 30-year-old woman March 6 in the housing complex. What horrified residents was that in both cases, the rapist, if not the violent attack, was caught on video. The suspect who raped the woman March 6 was on camera for nearly 30 minutes, sources said. Roughly 224 cameras feed live video to 30 small TV monitors. Police released a video image of the suspect - and offered a $12,000 reward for his capture. The video monitors are staffed mostly by cops who are on medical leave or face disciplinary action and cannot carry a weapon. The officers, in the so-called viper units, call other cops to respond to criminal activity....