Coming your way, at the State House:

From MERI:

On Wednesday, May 7, the Rhode Island Assembly's House Judiciary Committee will hear testimony on several bills addressing marriage equality rights for all Rhode Island couples, regardless of gender or sexual orientation. Supporters of marriage equality, including several members of MERI, are expected to testify.

 

WHAT: Marriage equality legislation, pro and con:

 

Bills under consideration that MERI supports include:

 

• Compassion for All Families Act – Sponsored by Rep. John McCauley of Providence, H. 7711 would give domestic partners the spousal benefits of family medical leave, nursing home visitation and funeral planning.

• Equal Divorce Act – Sponsored by Rep. Gordon Fox of Providence, H. 7939 would allow same-sex couples who married outside of Rhode Island to divorce in Rhode Island.

• Equal Marriage Act – Sponsored by Rep. Arthur Handy of Cranston, H. 7839 would allow all Rhode Island couples the equal freedom to marry.

 

Bills that MERI opposes include:

 

• Divorce legislation – Sponsored by Rep. Al Gemma of Warwick, H. 7081 would codify into law the Rhode Island does not recognize marriages between same-sex couples. Although the legislation would permit same-sex couples to divorce in RI, the bill would likely close the Massachusetts border to Rhode Island same-sex couples who wish to marry there and doesn't' address jurisdiction for same-sex couples married in Canada or overseas.

• A constitutional amendment – Sponsored by Rep. John Brien of Woonsocket, H. 8017 would define marriage as between a man and a woman and would nullify any recognition of marriages, civil unions or domestic partnerships for same-sex couples.

From FairVoteRI:

Youth Voter Pre-registration, H 7106, is out of committee and scheduled for a vote on the House floor this Wednesday. This is a big step towards turning early registration for 16 and 17 year olds into law. The push to get young Rhode Islanders excited about democracy is moving forward— please come to the State House on Wednesday afternoon at 4 PM, and, in the meantime, contact your state representative and ask them to support this common-sense, non-partisan reform.

From the RI Patient Advocacy Coalition:

On Thursday, May 8, 2008, at 4:00pm, the Senate will vote on S2693 in the Senate chamber at the State House. This bill would allow the Department of Health to license a non-profit organization to serve as a Compassion Center, to grow and distribute medical marijuana for registered patients. THIS WILL BE THIS BILL'S FIRST FLOOR VOTE.

Local peace activist Mark Stahl is apparently experiencing a little pushback for some critical remarks he made about the Brown pie-tossers. He relayed these comments to me via e-mail this past week, and I thought it was important to include his gist in the related story by Ariel Werner:

“I totally reject this action as an absurd and unwelcome attack on freedom of speech. I wonder how we would react if a speaker at one of our peace events was peppered by a pie. If we don’t support the principles of free speech and civil discourse, then we might as well shut down our organizations.”

Stahl believes that stunts such as those performed by the pie-tossers are “particularly counter-productive when the increasing inroads against civil liberties in this country make it all the more important for us to take a principled stand in support of freedom of speech.”

The pie-tossers view the situation differently:

From Brown students to conservative columnist Michelle Malkin (who deemed the pie-throwers “enviro-nitwits”), commentators have portrayed the incident as the latest example of liberal intolerance at Brown. But Little says that she and the Colonel aimed to provoke that very notion. 

“What we were trying to draw attention to is the subtle hegemony of free speech on a campus where certain speakers — mainstream and right-wing speakers — get brought to campus and other voices aren’t heard or are silenced."

I'm with Stahl in this one. Where does one draw the line, for instance, between throwing pies and rocks, or otherwise interfering with what people have to say in a public forum? Anyway, Mark copied me on a followup e-mail he sent, and publishing it here seems in keeping with the spirit of the related discussion:

Dear friends,

A question has been asked as to why I sent a copy of my statement about the pie-throwing incident to the Providence Phoenix. I guess the answer is simple enough, I was hoping they would publish it! In the immortal words of Cicero, Cum tacent, probant! ("When they are silent, they approve.")

This incident has been widely covered by the national media, and the clip on YouTube has been viewed over 76,000 times.  I intended my comments to be a public response to a very public incident. This is what democracy is all about, people being free to express their opinions without fear of retribution.

I appreciate the lively debate on this issue, as I know Molly does. One thing I would like to comment on is the idea that this was a "non-violent" action. Having viewed the clip on YouTube I do not regard it as non-violent. The protesters knew the missiles were harmless custard, but Mr. Friedman did not.

He instantly recoiled from the assault, with an instinctive reaction of fear. He could have easily lost his balance and slipped on the custard that was splattered on the floor, and injured or broken his leg. People have been seriously injured during what were intended as pranks or harmless actions.

Perhaps more important, this incident represented an assault on his dignity. Some may believe that he deserved it, as is their right. But in my opinion as a pacifist, assaults on human dignity are never justified, and never contribute to the creation of a more just and peaceful society. 

Mark Stahl
Providence, RI

Ariel Werner, familiar to readers of the Daily Dose, makes her Phoenix debut this week with a short report on debt-related incarceration in Rhode Island:

Every day, an average of 18 people are incarcerated at the Adult Correctional Institutions (ACI) due to their inability to pay court fines, according to a new report issued by the Rhode Island Family Life Center (FLC), a Providence-based nonprofit that provides reentry planning for and policy advocacy on behalf of ex-offenders. 

Prior to the 19th century, debtor’s prisons — facilities for the incarceration of those unable to pay debts — were common in both the United Kingdom and United States. The UK abolished imprison-ment for debt with the Debtors Act of 1869, and the US eliminated the practice of imprisoning debtors at the federal level in 1833. Though many states followed suit, it remains possible for state govern-ments to incarcerate for debts relating to fraud, child-support, and alimony, fines levied as part of a sentence, restitution, and court costs. 

The US Supreme Court, in Bearden v. Georgia (1983), Tate v. Short (1971), and Payne v. Mississippi (1984), has ruled that individuals cannot be summarily jailed for debts when unable to pay and mandates the consideration of alternative measures before incarceration for debt.

Yet the FLC report, “Court Debt and Related Incarceration in Rhode Island from 2005 through 2007,” explains how our criminal justice system has propagated the practice of incarcerating debtors and the effect of this practice on the state’s already overcrowded prison.

Meanwhile, as the NYT reported yesterday, the US has a remarkably high rate of incarceration, even compared with more populous and authoritarian China:

The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But it has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners.

Indeed, the United States leads the world in producing prisoners, a reflection of a relatively recent and now entirely distinctive American approach to crime and punishment. Americans are locked up for crimes — from writing bad checks to using drugs — that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries. And in particular they are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations.

Criminologists and legal scholars in other industrialized nations say they are mystified and appalled by the number and length of American prison sentences.

The United States has, for instance, 2.3 million criminals behind bars, more than any other nation, according to data maintained by the International Center for Prison Studies at King’s College London.

China, which is four times more populous than the United States, is a distant second, with 1.6 million people in prison. (That number excludes hundreds of thousands of people held in administrative detention, most of them in China’s extrajudicial system of re-education through labor, which often singles out political activists who have not committed crimes.)

At a time when a local merchant remains in the news for demanding to see the Social Security card of two Spanish-speaking patrons, the RI chapter of the ACLU has gotten the DMV to end its practice of demanding an SS card whenever someone renews their driver's license:

In settlement of a suit filed last month by the Rhode Island ACLU against the Division of Motor Vehicles, the DMV has agreed to halt implementation of a policy requiring all people renewing their driver’s licenses to present their Social Security card. The lawsuit, filed in R.I. Superior Court by ACLU volunteer attorney James Kelleher, had argued that the DMV had no statutory authority to implement the policy and that it violated the due process rights of licensees.

      

Under a consent judgment filed in the case today, the DMV has agreed:

      

• To “immediately cease and desist … mandating the production of an official social security card to individuals seeking to renew their licenses or state identification cards”;

 

• To allow people whose renewal applications were denied between August 1, 2007 and March 13, 2008 solely for failing to provide a social security card to be renewed without penalty so long as they fulfill all other legal requirements;

 

• To immediately institute rule-making proceedings to amend its regulations and repeal the rule that was the subject of the lawsuit, thus formally eliminating the social security card requirement for people applying for and renewing their driver’s licenses or identification cards; and

 

• To pay $250 in court costs.

 

The consent judgment notes that the DMV retains the right to “collect Social Security numbers from individuals seeking license or identification renewal in the event the numbers are not already on record” with the DMV.

 

 The suit had been brought on behalf of Providence resident Wendy Becker, who was unable to get her driver’s license renewed because she did not have her Social Security card. Although the DMV initially claimed that the policy was adopted in order to comply with federal law, the lawsuit noted there was no basis for that claim.

 

ACLU volunteer attorney Kelleher said today: “The goal of this litigation was to gently remind those in power that their authority is limited by law. While pleased that this particular goal has been achieved, it is unfortunate that this unlawful social security card rule has left an unintended residue as evidenced by the disgraceful scene that unfolded earlier this week at a local business. Perhaps this victory will offer some caution to those who would overstep the boundaries of law and decency.”

Kim has the details on an upcoming conference on this subject:

While other states in the country are passing Constitutional Amendments to ban same sex marriages, civil unions and even as far as contracts between same sex couples - New England has turned into a bastion of equality and rights.  From Massachusetts’s landmark decision in Goodridge to Connecticut currently taking up the case if there is a legal difference between civil unions and marriage - why has New England (with the notable exception of Rhode Island) been such a unique place for LGBT equality?

Come learn more at Roger Williams School of Law, in what is bound to be a provocative discussion involving a fantastic panel and keynote:

What: The Culture of Same Sex Marriage Symposium

Where: Roger Williams School of Law (Bristol, RI)

When: Friday, March 28 from Noon - 4:45PM.

Panel 1: The Same-Sex Marriage Debate in the State of Rhode Island

Panel 2: Civil Unions v. Marriage in New England

Cost: Free! Includes lunch and wine and cheese reception following the panels.  However - if you are an attorney and would like to receive the 5 CLE credits available, the cost for that is $25.

Click HERE to register and to read more about the Keynote Address [David Wilson - original plaintiff in Goodridge and Board Member of both HRC and Mass Equality] and each of the panelists!

On February 8, N4N reported on how the Planned Parenthood of Rhode Island Action Network had launched a suprisingly sharp attack on progressive Representative David Segal, who has been a strong supporter of women's rights.

The organization has since backtracked, as this statement makes clear:

A statement from Miriam Inocencio, CEO, and Barbara Dickinson, Board Chair, of Planned Parenthood of Rhode Island:

 

Planned Parenthood is the nation’s leading women’s health care provider, educator, and advocate. For more than 90 years, we’ve done more than any other organization in the United States to improve women’s health and safety, prevent unintended pregnancies, and advance the right and ability of individuals and families to make informed and responsible choices.

 

Our Community Affairs Department is the advocacy arm of PPRI. Our purpose is to vigorously protect and promote individual reproductive rights and the freedom of choice for all. Our main goal is to pass public policy initiatives that will keep reproductive healthcare safe, legal and accessible. One of our top policy initiatives is to enact buffer zone legislation to ensure safe access to our center by our patients, staff and volunteers. The enactment of a buffer zone will help prevent violence, intimidation and harassment directed at our patients and staff.

 

Laws protecting abortion providers and patients from violence and intimidation are critical to preserving a woman’s right to choose. Buffer Zone legislation will create a safety zone surrounding entrances and driveways to reproductive health care facilities. Protesters are not allowed in this area. The zone allows people to enter and leave reproductive health care facilities free from harassment, intimidation, and harm. The buffer zone enables women to exercise their right to personal liberty, privacy and access to medical services while simultaneously balancing the First Amendment rights of individuals to express their views near reproductive health care facilities. This is not an abortion issue; this is about law, order, public health and safety, individual liberties and civil behavior.

 

We called on PPRI’s State Representative, David Segal, to sponsor and support this legislation for many reasons. Representative Segal has been a proven friend of the pro-choice movement and the clinic sits in his district. The email alert we sent to our members was intended as an opportunity for Rep. Segal, a Planned Parenthood Votes! Rhode Island endorsed candidate, to hear from his constituents on this very important issue before he made a final decision on the legislation. The alert was not meant to disparage Rep. Segal’s performance as a legislator.

 

Rep. Segal is pro-choice and an advocate of women’s rights.  PPRI depends on his unwavering dedication to protecting women’s health and safety. Please ask him to support this legislation.

From MERI:

In celebration of National Freedom to Marry Week, Marriage Equality RI (MERI) is holding a press conference to kick off our 2008 legislative efforts to secure equal rights for same-sex Rhode Island couples. MERI will be introducing a platform of basic rights protections, and introducing individuals who are or will be impacted by this legislation.

 

What: Press Conference where MERI will be introducing our 2008 legislative platform, and calling on the legislature to help protect and support all Rhode Island families.

 

When: Wednesday, February 13, 3:30 PM

 

Where: Rhode Island State House, Bell Room (Located on the far side of the Rotunda on the first floor)

 

Who: Jenn Steinfeld, Director, Marriage Equality Rhode Island; Susan and Stacey Heroux; Annette Berarducci, a funeral director in Johnston; Steven Brown, Executive Director of the Rhode Island ACLU; Representative David Segal.

 

Why: Currently, Rhode Island same-sex couples are excluded from marriage within our state borders. This exclusion carries with it insecurity and fear, and many worry about their ability to care for and protect their families in times of illness, infirmity, and death. 

 

In celebration of the 11th annual National Freedom to Marry Week, MERI will be unveiling our 2008 legislative platform. This platform includes the Compassion for All Families Act, an effort to provide families in crisis with some basic protections in these uncertain times. We continue to call on our legislature to ensure that all Rhode Island families have the same opportunities to realize their hopes and dreams, and to provide all committed couples with the same freedom to marry.

UPDATE: More from Segal.

Linking to this post, the representative has cross-posted at RI's Future and Dose a longer response to PPRIAN.

---

It's no surprise that the Planned Parenthood of Rhode Island Action Network would applaud Representative Art Handy and Senator Josh Miller for backing legislation to implement a "buffer safety zone" around reproductive health clinics. What is unusual is how the group is harshing out on Representative David Segal, a liberal champion, for not immediately signing onto the measure.

Unfortunately, Planned Parenthood is incredibly disappointed that our very own State Representative, David Segal, is not listening to his constituents and refuses to support this essential legislation. 

 

Instead, Representative Segal has decided to play politics with women’s reproductive health.

 

As an elected official who has pledged to support the enactment and enforcement of laws that help prevent violence, intimidation and harassment directed at reproductive health providers, their patients and their families, Representative Segal’s hesitation to lend his support to this bill is contradictory and harmful to women’s reproductive rights.

 

Now is the time to tell and encourage David Segal to listen to you.

 

Tell David Segal how the graphic, distorted anti-choice images make YOU feel.

Tell David Segal how the thought of a woman being too intimated or harassed to visit her own health clinic makes YOU feel.  ...

These kinds of buffer zones are controversial, not uncommonly dividing liberals, because of how they pose a conflict between free speech and reproductive rights. Ana Cabrera wrote about this subject in the Phoenix about eight years ago, but the story doesn't seem to be online is here. Although later proved a dubious source, a certain lawmaker made an interesting point:

State Senator John Celona, (D-North Providence), a pro-life advocate, also thinks the Massachusetts bill is unconstitutional. He believes passage of the bill would lead to similar bills, which would restrict a host of other First Amendment rights. "What would stop anyone from setting up buffer zones around any other building, such as the State House?" he asks. "We could have a hot bill here in the General Assembly, and would that mean everyone has to stand back 25 feet?"

Celona wonders how such a measure would have fared during the height of the state banking crisis. "Just think back to what that was like around here, with people marching up here in droves," he says. "Can you imagine what would have ensued if those people were told to stand back from this building?"

Anyway, the criticism of Segal is over the top, particularly considering his general support for the rights of women and other groups subject to discrimination, and the rep himself is taken aback. As he writes to me, via e-mail:

As a donor to PPRI, somebody who's met with them regularly, and who's sponsored bills increasing access to family planning, I'd say that this demonstrates bad faith on the part of PPRI's staffer. To call conferring with the ACLU and other people who are typically PPRI allies 'playing politics' is obscene.

 

Also, I think indicating that the bill has changed (35 feet to 100) and that the ACLU and other allies have refused to sponsor are salient.

 

But the key point is still this -- I haven't 'refused' to do it. All I said is I was gonna talk to the ACLU and other allies who are against the bill, and confer with PPRI on monday. 

 

Frankly, this is crazy.

In what even Steve Brown might call a man-bites-dog story, the RI chapter of the ACLU, which has been known to criticize Attorney General Patrick Lynch, is coming to the AG's aid in a matter related to the state's blockbuster lead paint case.

Supporting the public’s right to know, the Rhode Island ACLU has today filed a brief urging the R.I. Supreme Court to reverse the imposition of $15,000 in fines against Attorney General Patrick Lynch for public comments he made during the “lead paint public nuisance” case. The brief argues that the fines violated not only Lynch’s First Amendment right to free speech, but also the public’s right to hear the “views of attorneys concerning pending litigation in which the attorneys are involved.”

     

Lynch was twice fined by a Superior Court judge for allegedly violating the Rules of Professional Court and a “gag rule” the judge had issued against him in the controversial, high-profile case. The comments leading to Lynch being found in contempt of court and fined included a statement decrying what he called the lead paint’s “despicable” tactics in attempting to delay resolution of the case and for referring to the lead-paint makers as “those who would spin and twist the facts.” The 33-page ACLU brief, filed by volunteer attorney Amy R. Tabor, argues that the fines and “gag order” were imposed in clear violation of Lynch’s free speech rights and should be overturned.

 

Regarding the judge’s “gag order,” the ACLU brief argues that the First Amendment “protects the right to express and hear opinions at a meaningful time, place and manner. This includes the right to communicate about  … social and political lawsuits while those lawsuits are taking place. The Trial Court’s broad ban on ‘making any subjective characterizations of the defendants’ violates these rights.”

The wide support expressed for Barack Obama's presidential campaign -- and from some unusual sources -- is a measure of racial progress in this country. And while some raise the prospect that bigotry could doom Obama's candidacy, it's possible too, that near-100 percent voting participation by blacks and an energized younger generation could more than make up for people who weren't likely to vote for this Democrat in the first place.

Anyway, in considering the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I was reminded of something that Cliff Montiero of the NAACP told me during the aftermath of the shooting death of Providence police officer Cornel Young Jr.

[The arrival of flashy Los Angeles lawyer Johnnie Cochran, to represent Young's mother] wasn't appreciated by Mayor Vincent A. "Buddy" Cianci Jr., who says Cochran and the $20 million claim came as Providence was beginning to "heal" from the pain of the tragedy. "If anything, he'll inflame things," Cianci says. "We're not going to let him divide this community."

The fact, however, is that Providence -- like virtually every city in America -- was divided long before Cochran came to town. Although Rhode Island's capital has become a symbol of urban rejuvenation, which is celebrated subliminally in NBC's Friday-night soap Providence, long-standing concerns about racial inequities and police-community relations were ignored until Young's death galvanized a storm of grassroots activism. As Clifford Montiero, president of the Providence chapter of the NAACP, put it: "There was polarization before the shooting, but it was quiet polarization. Now we have loud polarization."

As with last year's Papitto controversy at Roger Williams University School of Law, the issue of race is almost always present in America, although it is acknowledged and discussed far less frequently. So it's not surprising that much of what civil rights veteran Julian Bond told me eight years ago remains true:

Q: As a veteran of the civil rights movement of the '60s, how do you see the outlook for progress?

A: As Yogi Berra said, it's déjà vu all over again. Many Americans think that the Civil Rights Acts of '64 and '65 solved whatever racial problems the country had, and that there is no necessity for any vigilant action against racial discrimination. Secondly, I think people are suffering from race fatigue. They've heard about racial problems so often and for so long that they are tired of it and they want it to go away. There are probably more reasons. Finally, there are so many competing concerns for the public's attention that weren't as prominent in the 1960s -- environmental concerns for one. A combination of these and other concerns make it difficult to focus attention on what I believe is the most pressing American problem. ...

Q: How can individuals and communities do a better job of coming to terms with this?

A: We all have to take some ownership of this problem and say, I'm implicated in this, because all of us are implicated in it. There are no innocent bystanders here. Each of us, in his or her own way, has to find a way to work toward the amelioration of these problems.

Matt has a good rundown on today's MLK events here.

UPDATE: Here it is.

....

A day before the holiday to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the ProJo's Mark Arsenault brings his considerable narrative skills to bear with a sweeping takeout today on the challenges and accomplishments of gays and lesbians in Rhode Island. Along the way, he uncovers some fascinating history and talks up related topics with Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas Tobin.

Curiously, although the ProJo -- according to what I read in print this morning -- plans to support Arsenault's package with an online multi-media presentation, I just spent about three minutes searching and couldn't find his main story on the ProJo's Web site. Whether by accident or design, a lot more attention, not surprisingly, is devoted to the Patriots' game this afternoon.

At any rate, Arsenault's work on this subject is a public service, and it continues the Journal's forays into in-depth reporting.

And if you want an example of how the stigma that some associate with homosexuality can still have lethal consequences, consider this case from a few years ago, when a vice bust in Johnston was followed by a media frenzy and the suicide of one of the men who was arrested.

AG Patrick Lynch has some thoughts on the ACLU's recent criticism of him on the telcom immunity issue. Here's what the AG communicated to N4N:

The ACLU statement is flat-out wrong in several key respects. First, the activities that the ACLU is calling "illegal" have not been determined to be illegal by any court. Therefore, this term is an opinion as opposed to a fact. Second, the ACLU's assertions about the legislation preempting state investigations of violations of customers' privacy rights is wrong. The legislation will not automatically dismiss the litigation against the carriers. Instead, the US Attorney General and the courts will evaluate whether the carriers responded, in good faith, to government requests for assistance. Third, the legislation will not, as the ACLU wrongly claims, immunize government officials. Any cases or claims against the government, which is responsible for these programs, will continue. Furthermore, Congress can continue its oversight of the officials running the programs.

In my role as the Attorney General, my highest priority is to ensure the safety and well-being of Rhode Island citizens. So when I decided to support the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance amendments, I had the welfare of our citizens first and foremost in my mind.

 

In my years as a prosecutor in the Narcotics and Organized Crime Unit, during which time I participated in court-authorized wiretap investigations, and now as the Attorney General, I know from personal experience that the assistance provided by the carriers is absolutely essential to our law enforcement agencies. From kidnapping cases to drug investigations, we have always counted on the carriers' help to do our jobs and protect the people of Rhode Island.

 

Now, when we all face the ongoing threat of terrorism, the carriers are providing critical assistance to our intelligence and law enforcement agencies in their fight to keep us all secure. If American companies face massive litigation every time they try to help our intelligence agencies, however, they will stop cooperating -- and public safety will suffer.

 

What if we were conducting a court-authorized wiretap investigation, right now, and somebody's life was at stake? What if a carrier chose not to assist out of fear of being sued and, consequently, we were not able to prevent a tragedy from occurring? Will Steve Brown and the ACLU visit the family with me when I try to explain what happened? I doubt it.

 

For these reasons, 21 of my fellow Attorneys General signed the same letter, endorsing the legislation. We all understand that it makes no sense to punish private companies for trying to help us all fight terrorism.

Following my post yesterday about Anthony Lewis's new book, Kim Ahern tells me that the former NY Times columnist is slated to visit Roger Williams University's School of Law on March 19.

From the Providence chapter:

The Rhode Island ACLU today sharply criticized state Attorney General Patrick Lynch for urging Congress to pass a law giving telephone companies retroactive immunity for having illegally shared telephone records with the National Security Agency as part of the government’s “war on terror.” The Congressional bill, if passed, would also pre-empt any state investigations of violations of customer’s privacy rights by the companies. This would kill a pending consumer complaint that the local ACLU filed in May 2006 with the Division of Public Utilities and Carriers against Verizon and AT&T.

 

 In 2006, news reports described how AT&T and Verizon allegedly provided the NSA, without either customer consent or court order, the personal calling details of millions of residential phone customers. The RI ACLU’s complaint noted that the customer information provided to the NSA could “be easily matched with other databases to obtain the name and residence of each caller. This would enable the government to track virtually every phone call made by Rhode Island residential customers, including the identity of the people they called and the length of each conversation.” The complaint called the companies’ release of the data a “systematic and flagrant violation” of customers’ privacy rights and, citing state laws that the release of the information may have violated, requested the DPUC to investigate the matter.

 

That complaint has been stayed to await the results of court action in a California case examining many of the same issues, including phone company claims that “national security” bars investigation of the allegations of illegal activities on their part. The Congressional bill, which has been the subject of heated controversy, would shortcut judicial consideration of these claims. It would do so by requiring courts to dismiss these cases if the U.S. Attorney General merely certifies to a court, in secret, that either the phone company did not participate in surveillance activities or that it did so in reliance on a Presidential assertion that the activity was legal. The bill also bars any state investigations into the legality under state law of any warrantless spying facilitated by the phone companies. The AG’s support for the legislation came in a letter, signed by 20 other Attorneys General, that was sent to Congressional leaders last month but obtained by the ACLU today.

      

RI ACLU executive director Steven Brown said today: “It is unfortunate that our state Attorney General, who is entrusted with protecting the consumers of Rhode Island, has instead decided that the interests of the telecommunications industry are more important than the privacy rights of our residents. We are hopeful that Congress will reject this legislation, which is simply the Bush Administration’s latest effort to cover up their violations of the rights of Americans in the name of fighting terrorism.” A copy of the AG letter and the ACLU’s analysis of the bill’s immunity provisions is available online at www.riaclu.org.

Freedom for the Thought That We Hate, the new book by venerable former New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis, got the front-page treatment yesterday in the Times Book Review, and it raises some points related to my previous post. Here's some of what Jeffrey Rosen had to say about the book:

All of Lewis’s proposals reflect his faith that the judiciary is well equipped to balance the value of free speech against other values (like privacy and national security) in a thoughtful and independent way. But is he too optimistic? There is a competing, decidedly less heroic account of First Amendment history, which holds that judges have always tended to reflect the public’s prejudices about unpopular speakers, and that most advances for free speech have been initiated not by judges, as Lewis argues, but by political activism. It was abolitionists, in the 1830s, who first argued that Southern states shouldn’t be able to ban antislavery tracts because of the remote possibility they might provoke an insurrection; the Supreme Court took another 130 years to enshrine the underlying principle into law. Similarly, the court began to protect political dissidents like Communists and Ku Klux Klan members in the late 1960s, not in the 1920s and 1950s — that is, only when they were no longer perceived as a serious threat by national majorities.

Lewis’s faith in judges also presumes that free speech controversies will take the same form in the future as they have in the past — namely, as legal battles between an overreaching government and the institutional press, with the judiciary as a neutral arbiter. But is this really likely? The rise of new technologies suggests that the free speech battles of the future may instead pit telecom corporations against private speakers, leaving judges on the sidelines. Consider Verizon’s recent decision to block abortion rights text messages by Naral Pro-Choice America from its mobile networks. (Under pressure, Verizon rescinded the decision but stood by its position that it can decide which messages to transmit.) As several scholars have argued, the solution to this problem of corporate censorship — open-access rules of “net neutrality” that would require telecom operators to make their services available to all speakers on equal terms — is in the hands of Congress and the Federal Communications Commission rather than the courts. No matter how heroic our judges, they’re not well positioned to make regulatory policy.

Moreover, as the traditional news media continue to be challenged by the Internet, the privacy and libel battles of the future won’t be the lopsided affairs Lewis describes — for example, Life magazine and its corporate power versus invasion-of-privacy victims who had no other outlets in which they could set the record straight. Instead, now that everyone with a modem is a potential journalist, we may see more cases in which individual bloggers or small publications attack one another over what are essentially differences of factual nuance. In Britain, which does not require libel plaintiffs to show deliberate falsehood, the lively journal LM (formerly Living Marxism) was bankrupted and forced to close in 2000 after being successfully sued by Independent Television News, which objected to an article charging it had sensationalized its coverage of a Bosnian detention camp. In the age of the blogosphere, inaccurate or intrusive attacks may be better shrugged off as the equivalent of snarky dinner-party gossip than treated as the occasion for lawsuits. But as more material is posted without editors, public discourse is likely to become more brutal and invasive at the same time that it becomes less amenable to judicial oversight.

In the 21st century, the heroic First Amendment tradition may seem like a noble vision from a distant era, in which heroes and villains were easier to identify. But that doesn’t diminish the inspiring achievements of First Amendment heroism. Conservative as well as liberal judges now agree that even speech we hate must be protected, and that is one of the glories of the American constitutional tradition. Anthony Lewis is right to celebrate it.

Thanks to a recommendation from Matt, I recently read The Last Liberal: Justice William J. Brennan Jr. and the Decisions that Transformed America. It's a fascinating account of the former Supreme Court justice, who, although little known by most Americans, played a huge role in advocating for free speech and civil liberties.

These obviously remain vital topics, and thanks to Kim for sending along word of a timely discussion this week at Roger Williams University Law School:

The US Supreme Court is ruling on wiretapping, detention, executive power, the 2nd Amendment and much more.  And now with a conservative majority.  But what does it mean? Hear from two national experts:

----------------------

Should the U.S. Supreme Court be Conservative?

Join us for a Liberal and Conservative perspective of the Supreme Court's Shift to the Right.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Lunch beginning at 12:00, event from 12:30PM - 1:30PM

At Roger Williams University School of Law (Room 262) in Bristol, RI

 

From the Left: Nan Aron, president and founder of Alliance for Justice, a national association of public interest and civil rights organizations, serving as the country's voice for a fair and independent judiciary. Her notable accomplishments include helping to defeat Robert Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court in 1987 and supporting the nomination of Roger Gregory, the first African-American judge in the Fourth Circuit, in 2001.

 

From the Right: Ronald Cass, president of Cass & Associates, and chairman of the Center for the Rule of Law, an independent, non-profit center of international scholars analyzing rule of law issues. He served Presidents Reagan and Bush as Vice-Chairman and Commissioner of the U. S. International Trade Commission. He is Dean Emeritus of Boston University School of Law, and serves on the Roger Williams Law Board of Directors.

 

Presented by: American Constitution Society, the Federalist Society, Women's Law Society, Multicultural Law Students Association, and Association of Public Interest Law.

Steve Brown, executive director of the RI chapter of the ACLU, stopped by the set of WPRI-WNAC-TV's Newsmakers this morning to discuss GPS monitoring of students in Middletown and illegal immigration.

I asked Brown about the case of Mynor Montufar, the illegal immigrant from Guatemala who was arrested after being identified on the front of the ProJo as the father of Rhode Island's New Year's baby, and his own level of responsiblity for the situation. Brown responded by saying that Montufar wanted to be there for the birth of the baby, and that for ICE to prioritize his arrrest and detention was mean-spirited and contrary to the Bush administration's touting of its "family values."

Brown also said that the current focus on illegal immigration in America should be viewed in the context of the hostility long faced by immigrants in the US.

The show will be broadcast Sunday, at 5:30 am on Channel 12 and at 10 am on Fox 64.

More Brave New World stuff. The RI chapter of the ACLU has some reasonable concerns about plans in Middletown to place electronic identifiers on school kids' backpacks:

Claiming that the program raises “enormous privacy and safety concerns,” the RI ACLU has called on Middletown school officials to halt a planned pilot program in which elementary school children will be tagged with electronic chips to monitor their whereabouts. The program, using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology, will track the movements of Aquidneck Elementary School students who take school district buses by placing RFID chips on the children’s backpacks.

           

The only rationale offered for this significant intrusion is to allow school officials to know whether students boarded the right bus. But in a letter to school officials, the ACLU said it hoped that “this is a goal that school district procedures already address without the need to tag and track students like cattle. The use of RFID labels on the children is a solution in search of a problem.”

     

The letter added that this incursion on students’ privacy “could also have the effect of actually making the children less, rather than more, safe. That is because any information stored on an RFID chip that identifies a particular child, whether it be by name, address or school ID number, can potentially be read from a distance by inexpensive readers that can be easily purchased on the Internet. If school officials can find schoolchildren, others might also be able to find them and target them for improper purposes.” The letter notes that RFID technology was originally developed to track products and cattle, and that many independent researchers who specialize in RFID technology have raised privacy and security concerns about using this technology for tagging humans.

 

 The ACLU also protested that requiring students to wear RFID labels “treats them as objects, not children,” like the cattle, sheep and shipment pallets in warehouses for which the technology was designed. Further, “encouraging the placement of RFIDs on young children, even in this limited and questionable context, can only have the unintended effect of acclimating them to being monitored by the government in other contexts and wherever they go, as if it were perfectly normal and appropriate. It is not, nor is it a notion that a school district should be encouraging, however unintentionally.”

 

The ACLU argued that the school district had failed to give sufficient weight to these concerns in adopting the policy with little debate. When a similar, but even less intrusive, program was introduced a few years ago in a California school system – requiring students to wear RFID badges while they were actually in school – an outcry from parents led to its quick abandonment. The ACLU concluded its letter to the school officials by urging them “to respect the privacy and civil liberties of Middletown’s elementary school students and reconsider this decision before the program is implemented on these children.”

Bishop Thomas J. Tobin of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence says he can't explain why a majority of local Catholics favor abortion rights, although he hopes that they keep the church in mind when they go into the voting booth.

Tobin made the statement in response to a question from guest panelist Jennifer Lawless during a taping this morning of WPRI/WNAC-TV's Newsmakers. The program will be broadcast on Sunday, at 5:30 am on Channel 12 and at 10 am on Fox 64.

In response to my question about church officials who suggest that parishioners who back abortion, same-sex marriage and the like should be denied communion, he says this is consistent with the beliefs of the church. Some may recall how this became an issue in 2004, when the bishop of Colorado Springs a Vatican offical said John F. Kerry Catholic politicans who support abortion should be denied communion because of his support for abortion rights. I wrote at the time about how the interesection of politics and Catholicism was more mellow locally.

Tobin called for a lowering of the rhetoric as Rhode Island continues to face a $450 million budget deficit. He says that faith-based organizations have a role to play, but that the poor and weak should not bear the brunt of budget cuts.

The bishop was the subject of a lengthy recent series in the ProJo by G. Wayne Miller. While the series attracted praise, some, including Phoenix contributor Mary Ann Sorrentino, remain critical of the church's ongoing handling of the response to pedophilic priests. 

In other news, Lawless, who ran a lively campaign against US Representative Jim Langevin in 2006, seemingly giving him a bit of a scare, told me off-camera that she doesn't plan to run again for office in the near future.

First, there was Google Maps and Google Earth. Now, there's Google's Street View (in Boston, anyway). Like I a lot of people, I find Google indispensable, but how long will it be before this company is in our bathtubs?

The Boston Globe reports today:

Google Inc.'s controversial Street View feature, which offers 360-degree, street-level images of urban life so clear that passersby often can be identified, is set to make its Boston debut this morning.

Starting at around 10 a.m., Internet users who click on the "Street View" box on Google Maps (maps.google.com), will be able to peek at images from streets in Boston and surrounding communities. The views were stiched together from images taken by Google employees over the past year from cars and vans equipped with cameras.

The feature, which already captures street scenes in 15 cities across the country, has become popular among people planning vacations, searching for shops or restaurants, or checking out landmarks such as Wrigley Field in Chicago or the Empire State Building in New York. But it drew howls of protests from privacy advocates when it was launched last May in San Francisco, where people complained about everything from photos of recognizable men entering adult bookstores to an image of a cat in a window.

"We take privacy concerns seriously," said Stephen Chau, product manager for Google Maps. "All these images are taken on public streets. It's exactly what you could see walking down the street."

But while Google has developed technology that can obscure faces and license plate numbers in Street View images, the Mountain View, Calif., company has said it will blur faces and plate numbers only in countries where it is required to do so, not in the United States.

Street View's rollout in Boston is part of a larger debut of the feature today in eight more cities, including Providence, Dallas, Fort Worth, Indianapolis, Detroit, Minneapolis, and St. Paul. Google officials yesterday said they could not specify which Boston or suburban streets would be visible. The service covers only certain streets and neighborhoods in the cites where it's now available, although in some locations, such as San Francisco, the majority of streets have been photographed. Google plans eventually to extend Street View to cities and towns of all sizes worldwide.

Google is also introducing a "mashup" service today that will enable Internet users to import Street View panoramas from particular streets or neighborhoods to their own websites or blogs. The service is intended to make it easier for people to use Street View to recommend sights, locate coffee shops, or design cyber-walking tours.

While those might be legitimate uses of Street View, the feature also has the potential to be used for more questionable pursuits, such as compiling digital dossiers on individuals, critics warned.

"As Google gets closer and closer to its stated goal of indexing all the world's information, more and more issues arise," said John G. Palfrey Jr., executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School. "In the privacy realm, Google is asking people for a lot of trust. The ball is really in Google's court to prove they're not going to violate people's privacy."

Moments ago, from a caller to the Dan Yorke Show on WPR0 AM, responding to a bus advertisement in which some religious leaders back gay marriage (and I might be off by a word or two on the phrasing):

"That we're even using the word 'gay' shows that we're buying into their agenda."

This caller, apparently unaware that Governor Carcieri, Speaker Murphy, and Senate President Montalbano are all heterosexual pro-lifers, also asserted, "The homosexual mafia up there is running things."

While it's interesting to hear Michael Townsend's thoughts about loving and leaving Providence Place, I think Greg Smith buried the lead yesterday. Of arguably more importance is this information, which came near the end of the piece:

The artists are now grappling with a legal challenge from General Growth Properties, the Chicago company that owns Providence Place as well as 223 other malls and shopping centers.

“We’re about to learn a really, really brutal lesson” about trespassing, Townsend said last night.

General Growth Properties has made a formal written demand for all of the still and video images that the artists made while they were in or near the mall, as well as the maps and drawings that they produced. And the mall company has demanded that the artists sign a confidentiality agreement that, according to Townsend, would prohibit them from talking about their mall experience.

General Growth Properties contends that it has the worldwide intellectual-property rights to the images and that it wants to head off copycats who might try to invade its real estate, among other arguments, according to Townsend.

Townsend said he has offered to give the company all of the photos and videos that he produced but that the company maintains that all of the artists must surrender whatever they have. If its demands are not met, he said, the company has threatened to sue the artists.

For the moment, he added, the issues are being negotiated.

As private property, malls (or more accurately, those that own them) have a lot of leeway in dictating what can take place within their confines. General Growth's demands nonetheless seem unfortunate and very extreme. The company could use a bit of Townsend's levity.

For your consideration:

-- A Taste of Sustainability, a fundraiser for the nonprofit advocacy group Groundwork Providence, takes place from 6-8 tonight at Roger Williams Park Casino in Providence. David Cicilline is the honorary chair, and Gordon Fox will receive an award. Tickets are $75.

-- The Rhode Island chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union holds its annual dinner tonight, at the Providence Biltmore.

Guest speaker will be attorney Robert Meeropol, the younger son of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and executive director of the Rosenberg Fund for Children. The RFC is a public foundation that provides for the educational and emotional needs of targeted activist youth and of children in the U.S. whose parents have been harassed, injured, jailed, lost jobs or died in the course of their progressive activities. His speech, "McCarthy-Era Lessons for Bush’s America," will discuss his parents' case and the many dangerous parallels between 1953 and the Bush administration's post- 9/11 America. The speech will begin around 8:30 PM.

 

-- Operation Clean Government tonight holds its 14th annual meeting, 7 pm, at the Shriners Imperial Room in Pawtuxet Village, Cranston. The guest speaker is WPRO's Dan Yorke, and Governor Carcieri is also slated to make remarks.