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How dare they rip the Fourth Amendment? Early next week the U.S. Senate will vote on an extension of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, with a few small amendments intended to immunize telecommunications corporations that assisted our government in the warrantless and illegal wiretapping it has grown to love. That such a gutting of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution even made it out of committee is yet another stain on the gutless and seemingly powerless Democratic majority in both houses of Congress. That a majority on both sides of the aisle — not least of them the presumptive nominees for president of both political parties — intend to vote for such a violation of Americans' right to privacy and of the sanctity of their personal communications is a stunning surrender to those who want us to live in fear forever. We are living in a time when the right of habeas corpus — which simply put is your right to be brought before a proper court of law where the government is made to prove that there is good and legal reason to detain you — recently survived by a margin of only one vote at the U.S. Supreme Court. Now these bad actors are prepared to set aside your right to privacy — written into the Constitution as a key part of our Bill of Rights — with hardly a nod in the direction of the true patriots who rebelled against an English king and his army to guarantee those rights....
Report details snooping in celebrity passport files A federal investigation of unauthorized snooping into government passport files has found evidence that such breaches may be far more common than previously disclosed, and the State Department inspector general is calling for an overhaul of the program's management. In a report issued Thursday, the inspector general found "many control weaknesses" in the department's administration program, including what investigators said was a lack of sound policies on training staff, accessing electronic records and disciplining workers who break privacy rules. The investigation was launched in March after it was disclosed that government and contract workers had snooped in the files of three presidential candidates, Sens. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain. To assess the extent of the problem, investigators assembled a sample of 150 famous Americans, including athletes, politicians and entertainers, and examined how many times their files in a government database were viewed over a six-year period. The files of 127 people in the sample were accessed at least once; in total, these files were "hit" 4,418 times. Nine of the files were opened more than 100 times. State Department officials did not identify the celebrities whose files were included in the sample. More than 20,500 federal and contract employees have access to the records database, including State Department staff and officials involved in investigations, security assessments and other analyses, the report says....
No evidence needed under terror profiling plan 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. Currently, FBI agents need reasons -- such as evidence or allegations that a law probably has been violated -- to investigate citizens and legal residents. The new policy, law enforcement officials say, would let agents open terrorism investigations after mining public records and intelligence to build a profile of traits that, taken together, are deemed suspicious. Although President George W. Bush has disavowed targeting suspects based on their race or ethnicity, the new rules would let the FBI consider those factors among traits that could trigger a national security investigation....
Sheriff's drug fund spending revealed Camden County Sheriff Bill Smith stopped paying jail inmates from seized drug assets when state investigators began looking into the controversial practice last July, according to copies of checks he released to avoid a lawsuit last month. But Smith continued to use the federal forfeiture money for other questionable expenditures such as college tuition for favored deputies, a Kingsland boxing club's lease, and a retainer for a private lawyer, the checks show. And he used the federally regulated fund to pay routine expenses after county commissioners cut his operating budget last year. Federal guidelines say the asset money, returned to counties based on drug arrests, is to be used only for law enforcement purposes such as equipment, jails or training. They expressly say the funds are not to be used for the department's general operational costs or in any way that gives the appearance of extravagance, waste or impropriety. But over the years , Smith has used the money to work inmates on private property, establish college scholarships and donate to Camden nonprofits. Questions over his use of the funds led County Commission Chairman Preston Rhodes to refuse to sign an authorization form in September to receive money from the federal government this year. The records show Smith spent about $615,000 from the fund from July 2007 through May. Commissioners repeatedly criticized his use of federal drug money to pay jail inmates to work on private property, including the sheriff's, and not just in Camden County but also at his ex-wife's house in South Carolina....
Repeal the Second Amendment? A Chicago newspaper's call to repeal the Second Amendment is an "unconscionable attack on the entire Bill of Rights and the freedoms it protects," the Second Amendment Foundation says. In an editorial published on Friday, the day after the Supreme Court handed down its 5-4 ruling upholding the individual right to own firearms, The Chicago Tribune called the Second Amendment an "anachronism" that should be repealed. "The amendment was intended to protect the authority of the states to organize militias," The Chicago Tribune said. The newspaper supported its argument by claiming that a 1939 case, U.S. v Miller, established the amendment as a "collective right" that applied only to service in some type of militia. But that's a false argument, the Second Amendment Foundation said. "The Chicago Tribune's editors have demonstrated an appalling short-sightedness," said SAF founder Alan Gottlieb. "If they are so willing to abandon one civil right for an entire class of American citizens, what's next? Perhaps they would strip some citizens of their First Amendment rights to free speech or religion...Once you make it acceptable to destroy one civil right, it does not take a very big leap to embrace limitations on, or the abolition of, another civil right," he added....
Bush fingerprinting plan faces resistance Key members of Congress are siding with the airline industry and moving to block the administration from forcing airlines to take fingerprints of foreign visitors before they fly home. The opposition is setting up a clash over a final Bush administration effort to tighten security and immigration by keeping better track of when visitors leave the country. U.S. and foreign airlines say fingerprinting 33 million visitors a year would devastate them financially, costing $12 billion over 10 years, at a time when soaring fuel prices have helped put some airlines out of business and forced others to cut flights. "U.S. airlines obviously cannot bear the staggering additional costs," the Air Transport Association, which represents major domestic carriers, wrote last week in comments on the proposal. The full House plans to vote this month on a measure barring the Homeland Security Department from requiring airlines to take fingerprints until the department tests a fingerprint system with airlines. The House Appropriations Committee approved the measure last week as part of a bill funding the department for 2009. The department fingerprints visitors as they arrive and tracks their departures using paper forms that are sometimes inaccurate. Others opposing the department's plan include Germany and the United Kingdom, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the Travel Industry Association....