January 31, 2008
One year ago today, Boston was sent into a panic by some cartoon characters. Boston municipal and state officials were fooled by
light-up displays that local artists Sean Stevens and Peter Berdovsky made of the
mooninites Ignignokt and Ur -- characters from the Cartoon Network show Aqua Teen Hunger Force -- as part of a guerilla marketing campaign for the Aqua Teen movie.
Last February, Harvey Silverglate
called Boston's response "massive self-delusion and displaced anger," and more recently
linked the arrest of MIT student Star Simpson (who was arrested for wearing light-up clothes at Logan Airport) to Boston's Aqua Teen problem. Today, merry pranksters have erected their homages to Stevens and Berdovsky around the city -- including a
choice rendition of George-Bush-cum-mooninite, among others. Let's hope cooler heads prevail this year in the Mayor's office.
January 31, 2008
This past weekend, my research assistant James Tierney and I published an op-ed in the Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly about the dubious arrest and prosecution of local attorney Simon Glik under the state "wiretapping" statute. The op-ed (and the news article that David Frank of the Lawyers Weekly wrote to accompany our piece) lays out the facts in some detail, but here's a summary:
While walking down Tremont Street, Boston, last October, Glik stopped when he saw police officers arresting a teenaged boy in what he later found out to be a drug arrest. Glik says that at the time he thought the cops were being overly harsh, so he pulled out his cellphone camera and, from a distance of about ten feet, began recording video (and audio) of the arrest. Holding the cellphone at arms length, and at eye level, Glik slowly walked back and forth recording the incident until the cops noticed him and determined that Glik was recording audio. At that point, they arrested him and sought a complaint for wiretapping, disorderly conduct, and aiding the escape of a prisoner from an officer.
Why "wiretapping"? As we explain in the op-ed, the Massachusetts statute criminalizing unauthorized electronic eavesdropping and establishing procedures for lawful government wiretaps, 272 M.G.L. § 99, is vaguely worded and covers the secretive audio recording of oral communications -- in other words, speech. In 2001, Massachusetts' Supreme Judicial Court issued an opinion in Commonwealth v. Hyde upholding the wiretap conviction of a motorist who surreptitiously recorded his interaction with a cop during a traffic stop.
But § 99 and Hyde both explicitly name secrecy as one element of the wiretapping crime. As we note in the op-ed, “[e]ven the Hyde majority explained that recording an interaction with the police would not have violated the law had ‘the defendant … held the tape recorder in plain sight.’ That Glik did nothing wrong, from either a legal or ethical standpoint, seems clear to us.”
Glik appeared in Boston Municipal Court on Tuesday morning for a motions hearing. His attorney, June Jensen of Wayland, Massachusetts, argued a motion to dismiss all three charges. (The Commonwealth agreed to drop the charge for aiding the escape of a prisoner, since the term prisoner facially did not apply to the fact pattern.) Relying on Massachusetts case law and statutory text, she argued that § 99 required not just an element of secrecy but also that the recording actually have captured intelligible speech or voices. Furthermore, she argued that according to case law, 272 M.G.L. § 53, which proscribes disorderly conduct, is not triggered when there is a legitimate purpose behind the act that caused the disturbance. “When the purpose of the conduct is to record an arrest,” Jensen argued, “the conduct is legitimate.”
In turn, the Commonwealth put up embarrassingly weak, convoluted, and non-responsive rebuttals to Jensen’s arguments. With regard to the wiretapping charge, even though Glik held the cellphone out at arm’s length and at eye level, the cops had their backs to Glik, so the recording was “secret” until they turned around and saw the camera, according to the prosecutor. Similarly, the Commonwealth argued that it didn’t matter that the police report did not contain any information to demonstrate that any speech was recorded – nor indeed that any recording had been made at all – since it was sufficient that Glik told the cops that he was recording audio. The judge posed a hypothetical: had the judge himself stopped on the street to record the arrest, and had he been holding up a cellphone that had no camera or technical ability to record anything, but had told the cops that he was recording audio – the only fact relied upon by the Commonwealth in its complaint against Glik – would the Judge be liable for wiretapping under the Commonwealth’s theory? Well, the prosecutor said, yes.
As for the disorderly conduct charge, which requires that “the defendant either intended or recklessly created … a risk of public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm,” Alegata v. Commonwealth, 353 Mass. 287, 304 (1967), the Commonwealth argued that there was probable cause to issue a complaint for disorderly conduct because Glik had annoyed the cops. Police are not the public, of course, so the Commonwealth then argued that because the videotaping had occurred on a busy city street at rush hour, it was reasonable that Glik would have created a public annoyance.
The judge took the motion under advisement, saying he would decide on the motion in a week’s time, and setting the next hearing date for March 12. If one wishes to know why Massachusetts and Boston find themselves in such woeful financial straits these days, it’s useful to begin by examining how our police officers, prosecutors, and, therefore, judges as well, spend their time. Nonetheless, the civil liberties aspects of this case are considerably more disturbing that the specter of such a senseless waste of the public treasury.
We will be following the case in the Phoenix and on this blog, so keep an eye out for a report once the judge decides on the motion to dismiss.
(With thanks to James Tierney for his report of the hearing.)
January 31, 2008
By Jan Wolfe
University Presidents have
developed a strange knack for lauding the First Amendment even as they dispense
with it. That’s why it’s so encouraging to see Gene Nichol, President of The
College of William & Mary, match his anti-censorship rhetoric with action.
According to The Daily
Press of Newport News, Virginia, Nichol has permitted students to bring to
campus the Sex Workers' Art Show, a sort-of X-rated Vagina Monologues in which
strippers, prostitutes, and porn stars apparently rave about how much they love
their jobs (much to the dismay of campus feminists of the anti-pornography
school, I’m sure).
In a statement, Nichol said the First Amendment and
"defining traditions of openness that sustain universities" required
he permit the show be held at the college. "My views and the views of
others in the community about the worth or offensiveness of the program can
provide no basis for censoring it," he said.
That’s refreshing to hear. And even more refreshing to see being put into
practice.
January 30, 2008
By Wendy Kaminer
Last year, high school senior Heidi Zamecnik sued her school for prohibiting her from wearing a t-shirt expressing her preference for heterosexuality. “BE HAPPY, NOT GAY,” her shirt read. According to the complaint in her case (filed by the Alliance Defense Fund,) the Dean of Students pulled her out of the lunchroom, complained that the message on her shirt was offensive, and prohibited her from wearing it in school. A female guidance counselor blacked out the words “NOT GAY,” and Heidi returned to classes wearing a t-shirt that read “BE HAPPY.”
But it’s hard to be happy when your fundamental rights are violated. The suppression of Heidi’s pro-heterosexuality message must have been particularly galling since it followed an official Day of Silence, devoted to expressing pro-gay sentiments and support for gay and lesbian students. Heidi whose opposition to the “homosexual lifestyle” is based on her religious beliefs, was offended by the messages conveyed by other students (and the school) on the Day of Silence, but, according to her complaint, “understood that students have a right to share their viewpoints on this and other issues.”
You might expect a federal court to agree with this simple proposition, but the court in Heidi’s case ruled instead that she had no such right to share her views. Her school had a “legitimate interest in protecting gay students . .. from being harmed, both physically and psychologically,” the Court held. The school also had a “legitimate pedagogical interest” in promoting “tolerance and respect for differences among students,” although apparently this interest did not require it to tolerate or respect Heidi’s different views. Indeed, by suppressing Heidi’s speech, the school made clear that it was interested in promoting only one homogenous point of view, not many different ones.
The illogic that justifies censorship in the name of tolerance is familiar enough: it’s the underlying illogic of PC. Equally familiar is the patronizing assertion that gay and lesbian students are apt to be psychologically harmed by the mere sight of t-shirts with messages like “BE HAPPY, NOT GAY.” I hope that at least some students have the confidence and self-respect to be offended by assumptions about their psychological fragility and unfitness for the rough and tumble of a free society.
Heidi Zamecnik has graduated, but her claims are being pursued by Alexander Nuxoll, a sophomore at her former school. The Alliance Defense Fund recently won an expedited appeal to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, based on Alexander’s desire to wear a t-shirt proclaiming his views on homosexuality in time for the Day of Silence in April 2008. Meanwhile, a similar case is still pending in the 9th Circuit: In 2006, in a depressingly familiar example of liberal anti-libertarianism, the 9th circuit held that students may be barred from wearing t-shirts with anti-gay messages in schools that encourage students to wear shirts with pro-gay messages. (The Supreme Court vacated that decision on procedural grounds, so there is still no definitive ruling on the merits.)
Expect to see more cases like this. Nationwide, schools are participating in the Day of Silence to support gay and lesbian students, and the Alliance Defense Fund is countering with a Day of Truth to promote Christian opposition to “the homosexual agenda in schools.” Additional test cases are bound to arise, given the penchant of school administrators to censor viewpoints they find offensive. ADF seems eager to bring one of these cases before the Supreme Court, and I hope it succeeds. The Court is no friend to student speech rights, but given its current composition, I bet that a majority would sympathize with students seeking the right to air their religious beliefs about sexual orientation – a right that any self-respecting civil libertarian should defend.
January 25, 2008
A new battle has
commenced in the war over suppression of free speech and due process at
Brandeis, the institution named
(ironically and inappropriately, it would seem) after the late Supreme Court
Justice and champion of individual liberty.
As my
colleague Wendy Kaminer wrote in this space on Wednesday,
the school opened an investigation into Professor Donald Hindley, a 40-year
veteran of the Politics Department, last October after two students complained
about comments he made in class. No one can say for sure what Hindley is
accused of saying, however, because to this day the university’s provost has
not told him, or his attorney Andrew Good (a partner in the law firm of Good
& Cormier, with which I’m associated in an “of counsel” capacity), in
writing, despite numerous requests, the specific words he was accused of having
uttered – a maneuver right out of Kafka’s The
Trial.
The offended students anonymously
told the student newspaper that their complaint centered on Hindley’s use of
the word “wetback” in class. Hindley recalls, and other students in the class
have confirmed, that he commented that when impoverished Mexicans come across
the U.S. border into what used to be Mexico, they get called, pejoratively, “wetbacks”
(espaldas mojadas in Spanish),
referring to their crossing the Rio Grande River. Hindley went on to say that
when he went to Los Angeles
many years ago, there was absolutely nothing pejorative in the term. Only more
recently did it pick up a negative connotation.
In other words, a professor of
Latin American studies, teaching a course on the subject of the politics of Mexico,
gave the class an explanation of the origins of what is now considered a
pejorative term for Mexican immigrants, and it was deemed offensive by two
uninformed students.
What is worse, however, is Brandeis
refusal to grant this long-time professor any semblance of due process. After a
three-week investigation (that Hindley had not been informed of at the time), Provost
Marty Krauss told Hindley that he had been found guilty of violating the
campus’s harassment clause. A monitor would be placed in his classroom, he was
told, and he would need to attend racial sensitivity training sessions. Hindley
has never been granted an opportunity to appeal this summarily-inflicted punishment,
and pleas from other students to testify favorably toward the professor were
ignored. Two separate opinions from the Faculty Committee for Rights and
Responsibilities that sharply criticized Krauss’ handling of the complaints
were likewise ignored by her.
When the battle heated up, with the
intervention not only of legal counsel, but also of The Foundation for
Individual Rights in Education (FIRE)
Brandeis’ administrators suddenly closed the case, effectively retreating and
then, bizarrely, declaring victory. (Further disclosure: I’m a co-founder, and
current Chairman of the Board of Directors, of FIRE.)
But it
ain’t over; it’s just heating up. The higher education press has gotten wind of
the absurd case,
and, as Justice Brandeis sagely observed, “sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.” In their bunkers, Brandeis’ administrators likely
cannot stay silent for long, especially since alumni, donors, and perhaps even
members of the Board of Trustees are bound to get wind of the university’s
assault not only on academic freedom and due process, but also on reason
itself.
But for
now, Brandeis administrators persist in refusing to respond to FIRE’s letter
and to news media inquiries. Justice Brandeis must be turning over in his
grave.
January 23, 2008
By Wendy Kaminer
In a 2007 episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David’s troubles started when he expressed outrage at someone else’s use of the word “nigger.” Where did Larry go wrong? In decrying the perjorative use of the word “nigger,” he repeated the word “nigger.” His sin was not referring to it as the “N-word,” I guess.
Who knew Larry David was prescient? Brandeis Professor Donald Hindley’s troubles started last November when he uttered the word “wetback,” in the course of decrying its use to denigrate Mexicans. At least that’s what Hindley recalls saying in class, shortly before he was found guilty of racial harassment -- and he hasn’t been accused of saying anything else. Still he was found guilty of making "statements in class that were inappropriate, racial, and discriminatory." What statements? University officials have refused to say.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has been following this case closely; you can find a comprehensive account of it, and the relevant documents, on the FIRE website.
January 21, 2008
By Wendy Kaminer
Last year, Governor Patrick signed a law mandating expanded no speech and no loitering zones around the entrances to abortion clinics; members of the general public are now prohibited from approaching within 35 feet of clinics unless they're entering or exiting or simply passing by. Last week, the Alliance Defense Fund, (ADF) a conservative advocacy group, challenged this law in federal district court, arguing that it’s vague and vests too much discretion in police officers, encouraging discriminatory enforcement, and that it privatizes a public sidewalk and public forum, banning peaceful anti-abortion protests where they are most likely to matter. The complaint alleges:
"Plaintiffs desire to orally communicate with clinic clients and passersby from a distance in which they can speak in a normal conversational tone and make eye contact. Plaintiffs wish to avoid raising their voices or speaking from long distances. Because in most instances they cannot identify clinic clients until they actually approach the reproductive health care facility, Plaintiffs and other pro-life advocates must station themselves on the public ways near the path of pedestrians and in close proximity to facility entrances and driveways in order to effectively communicate their message. On many occasions, clinic clients and/or their companions willingly receive such oral communications."
Reproductive choice advocates are unlikely to be moved by these concerns, especially here Massachusetts, where, in 1994, an anti-abortion gunman killed two people and wounded five in an attack on two Boston area clinics. Liberals are unlikely to look favorably upon any challenge mounted by ADF, a right wing Christian group, dedicated to “defending the right to hear and speak the Truth through strategy, training, funding, and litigation.” But civil libertarians should support ADF’s challenge to the buffer zone, no matter how much they sympathize with the concerns of abortion rights advocates. (The ACLU of Massachusetts officially opposes the law.)
As I wrote here last May, (bear with me while I repeat myself a bit,) the 35-foot buffer zone doesn’t simply regulate or attempt to regulate harassment of people entering or leaving clinics. It unconstitutionally outlaws political speech, imposing prior restraints on peaceful, even silent protests within 35 feet of clinic entrances and driveways – where the protests might be most effective.
This is an overly simple solution to a complicated problem – the reported difficulties of enforcing the previous law (which established a 6 foot floating bubble zone around people entering and leaving clinics) and the tendency of some protesters to harass individual patients and providers. But the abusive conduct of some protesters does not give the state power to punish all protesters. The prohibition on prior restraint of speech is essentially a presumption of innocence: all speech must be proven guilty, or unprotected by the First Amendment, before it can be restricted.
If drafted with respect for the Constitution, and basic civil liberties, prohibitions on speech are naturally and necessarily difficult to enforce. Obscenity laws, for example, can defy enforcement, to the dismay of some and delight of others. It would be easier to punish obscenity if we simply created a sort of buffer zone around discussions of sex. It’s easy to police harassment of delegates to a political convention when we create buffer zones around entrances to convention halls, corralling protesters into "free speech" zones."
Protests around abortion clinics are “different,” many liberal pro-choice activists argue, because they upset and intimidate clinic workers and, especially, women seeking abortions, who may easily traumatized. Perhaps. But we do not have a right not to be upset, even when seeking medical care. We don’t even have right not to be traumatized. Your right to speak is not contingent on my willingness to hear you, or on my emotional fortitude.
This may seem hard-hearted, but the preservation of liberty requires us to be hard-headed: We don’t have a right to be protected from the emotional turmoil occasioned by speech; we do have a right to inflict it.
January 18, 2008
By Wendy Kaminer
It's foolish to seek logic in appeals to religious faith, especially those made while campaigning, but I can’t help interrogating Fred Thompson’s refrain that our "basic rights come from God and not from any government." What exactly does this imply – that if Christians are denied the right to proselytize, they should pray for the right to be restored instead of petitioning their government? When people are fired or not hired on the basis of race, religion, or sex, should they turn to their spiritual leaders for help instead of their lawyers?
You don’t have to think long or hard about this disparagement of political rights to recognize its senselessness. Even right wing Christian activists who cheer Thompson’s preaching aren’t foolish enough to practice it. When anti-abortion activists are denied the right to protest outside the entrances of abortion clinics, they sue; they turn to the government, not God, for redress.
Still, Thompson’s illogical slogan isn’t meaningless. It’s code for what Huckabee stated more or less explicitly to a crowd of supporters in Michigan -- that the Constitution should be amended to reflect Christian notions of Godliness: “I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God, and that's what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God’s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family.”
Mike Huckabee has stressed his support for constitutional amendments prohibiting abortion and gay marriage, but given his notions of Godly government, there’s no reason to believe that he doesn’t favor granting the state constitutional power to proselytize, (through official school prayer, for example,) or codifying his favorite biblical mandates. Without becoming unduly alarmed, it’s worth noting that a substantial minority shares Huckabee's yen for theocracy. 32% of respondents to a 2006 Pew Forum survey said that the bible should have more influence on U.S. law than the will of the people. (60% of white evangelicals would elevate the bible over the people’s will.) A strong majority of all survey respondents (two-thirds) regarded America as a Christian country.
It’s not all bad news for secularists, considering the slowly increasing visibility and maybe even respectability of non-theism. And the electoral power of the religious right may have peaked (some consider the Terry Schiavo case to have been its Waterloo;) but it is still a lot more more powerful and maybe a little more popular than what is commonly denigrated as the secular left.
According to Pew, while Americans are conflicted about the relationship between religion and government, they tend to be more critical of liberal efforts to divorce religious belief and law than conservative efforts to marry them. 49% of survey respondents agreed that “conservative Christians have gone too far in trying to impose their religious values on the country,” but 69% agreed that “liberals have gone too far in trying to keep religion out of schools and government.”
I suspect this means that while majorities may oppose religious campaigns against stem cell research, or Congressional interference with private end of life decisions, they are more resentful of secular opposition to official expressions of religious belief. With the Supreme Court on their side, they might start by posting copies of the Ten Commandments in courthouses and schools; it's unclear where they'd end.
January 18, 2008
In a case with eerie similarities to the Bush
administration’s destruction the CIA “torture tapes,” the Judge Rotenberg
Educational Center,
a school in Canton, MA, for special needs students, is
reportedly being investigated by state prosecutors over its destruction of
videotape evidence. According to a page-one story in today’s Boston Globe,
the school electroshocked one student 77 times and the other 29 times after a
prank caller posing as a supervisor ordered the treatments, and then erased (by
recording over) video surveillance footage of the bizarre incident.
In her Globe article, reporter Patricia Wen
suggests that the school’s destruction of the videotapes may result in state
criminal charges. What she does not address is the very real possibility that
the school could be indicted federally instead. As libertarian-minded pundits
like Tim Lynch at Cato Institute have pointed out, federal jurisdiction is
increasingly being asserted over what were once considered quintessential state
matters. As I describe in my forthcoming book, tentatively titled Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Have Made
All of Us Potential Targets, what makes this phenomenon possible is that
vague and pliable nature of modern federal criminal statutes. If the Norfolk County
DA’s office is unable to piece
together a criminal charge against the Rotenberg
Center, they can call up their
colleagues at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Boston, who – unfortunately, in my view –
have the tools at their disposable to do the job.
The federal
obstruction of justice statutes have recently become even more vague and
pliable, thanks to provisions included in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which
I’ve written about in my current Boston
Phoenix “Freedom Watch” column
detailing the prosecution of a Connecticut lawyer for destroying the hard drive
of a computer containing child pornography. If that lawyer could be indicted
for obstruction, even though he had no reason to believe that an investigation
against his client was brewing, then surely the Rotenberg Center,
which had already received calls from investigators asking to see the tapes, is
exposed to some danger.
I do not
approve of this creep of federal criminal jurisdiction into state matters, and
I approve even less of the vagueness of these new federal obstruction statutes.
And, in fact, I have considerable sympathy for the work that the Rotenberg
Center does with disturbed children who present very considerable challenges.
However, the fact of the matter is that the folks at the Rotenberg Center who
had anything to do with the destruction of the “shock tapes” should be prepared
for both state and federal investigations.
January 17, 2008
In this week's Boston Phoenix, Harvey Silverglate writes about how a troubling new obstruction-of-justice statute, and a precedent set in a Connecticut kiddie-porn case, could be used to prosecute the CIA if the government brings obstruction charges related to the destruction of the so-called "torture tapes." Above, Silverglate discusses the statute, the case, and the implications with Boston Phoenix executive editor Peter Kadzis.
READ: Torture-Tapes Template: Bush-administration lawyers could be nailed for their role in destroying evidence in the CIA scandal, thanks to a quiet Connecticut child-porn case. By Harvey Silverglate.
January 14, 2008
By Wendy Kaminer
My mother believed firmly in civility: “If you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything,” she plaintively advised; but even she didn’t take this maxim literally. My mother was smarter and more tolerant of dissent than a lot of college administrators today, who seem to regard graciousness as the highest educational value. You’d think they were running charm schools, instead of institutes of higher learning.
As the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) and Volokh report, Bergen Community College officials have drafted a comprehensive, mandatory civility pledge in the form of a “code of responsibility.” You have to read it to believe it:
“In the full knowledge of the commitment that I am freely willing to undertake as a student, I promise to respect each and every member of the college community without regard to race, creed, political ideology, lifestyle orientation, gender or social status sparing no effort to preserve the dignity of those I will come in contact with as a member of the college community. I promise to Bergen Community College that I will follow this code of responsibility.
1. Honesty, integrity and respect for all will guide my personal conduct.
2. I will embrace and celebrate differing perspectives intellectually.
3. I will build an inclusive community enriched by diversity.
4. I am willing to respect and assist those individuals who are less fortunate.
5. I promise my commitment to civic engagement and to serve the needs of the community to the best of my ability.”
This code was not intended to be advisory: students who violated it, presumably by offending any member of the community, would be subject to disciplinary proceedings. "The pledge would not be optional," college spokeswoman Susan Baechtel, has said. "If you don't agree, it is President Ryan's vision that you cannot attend the school."
President Ryan is apparently blind to the fact that in America, and at public colleges like BCC, people enjoy freedom of speech and conscience, which means that they cannot be compelled to respect each other or to refrain from expressing their disrespect. Besides, it’s hard to imagine this code being enforced indiscriminately. Would students be punished for disrespecting the views of neo-Nazis, or even neo-conservatives who mock affirmative action?
If President Ryan actually believes what this code implies -- that students should be taught that all political ideologies, creeds and “lifestyle orientations” are equal, and demand equal respect – then his “vision” of higher education is stupefying. Students are supposed to be taught that all ideas are not equal; they’re supposed to learn how to judge the merits of different and conflicting ideas and how to back up their judgments with reason. Mindless respect for all points of view is not an element of critical thinking.
What has inspired this absurdly overbroad, anti-libertarian code? College officials point to an increase in boorish, threatening, racist behavior -- just the sort of behavior that students should disrespect. And, spokeswoman Baechtel has noted that the code was also a reaction to campus violence, mainly the murders at Virginia Tech. “Virginia Tech is starting to frame our thoughts on this.”
Fear of violence is understandable, of course, but the belief that it might be deterred by a civility code is nonsensical. Does Baechtel imagine that a mentally ill student intent on mass murder would stop to consider the rudeness of his plan or hesitate to break a rule?
Fortunately, BCC faculty members were quick to protest this code; it has generated a little bad publicity, and the administration is equivocating. (By now President Ryan should realize that his plan is unconstitutional as well as controversial.) But the civility movement proceeds, threatening free speech and free thought, not just on campus. Students imbued with excessive deference for civility may be ill-equipped to participate in the uncivil arenas of democracy and social change. There, they’ll need respect for liberty.
January 10, 2008
By Wendy Kaminer
Telecomunications companies that exposed their customers to warrantless surveillance, in what they claim was service to the nation, have discovered the limits to their patriotism: “Telephone companies have cut off FBI wiretaps used to eavesdrop on suspected criminals because of the bureau's repeated failures to pay phone bills on time,” according to the AP. “In at least one case, a wiretap used in a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act investigation " 'was halted due to untimely payment…’ "
In other words, as Daily Kos notes, while the Bush Administration has characterized warrantless wiretaps as crucial to the national security, and excoriated Democrats for resisting their legalization, it hasn’t bothered to pay the cost of maintaining them. Of course, this Administration can credibly plead incompetence, instead of acknowledging that warrantless wiretaps may not be so essential after all. But Senate Democrats should at least re-evaluate the patriotism defense offered by phone companies allegedly guilty of illegal wiretapping in considering their plea for amnesty.
January 09, 2008
By Wendy Kaminer
Identity politics seemed to have worked for Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire, after all, and given the unseemly glee with which so many pundits predicted her demise, given their gratuitous brutality toward her, I confess to feeling pleased and even vindicated by the support she received from women. I'm not a member of the Hillary fan club (I'm uneasy with her centrist, communitarian instincts,) and I recoil from the notion of voting on the basis of sex, race, or any other demographic category. But when the usual blowhards mocked what seemed to me an authentic, entirely appropriate display of emotion and concern for the state of the nation, when Keith Olbermann even criticized Clinton for saying that "some of us are right and some of us are wrong" (what was she supposed to say, "vote for Obama?") I felt an atavistic urge to stand by her; and I can't help being glad that so many women did.
January 08, 2008
NBC reports that a group of abortion protesters disrupted a Barack Obama rally in New Hampshire. Though the police came to usher the protesters out, Obama’s response seems to suggest that he understands the old notion of disagreeing with you but fighting for your right to say it:
“Let me just say this though. Some people got organized to do that [protest]. That’s part of the American tradition we’re proud of. And that’s hard too, standing in the midst of people who disagree with you and letting your voice be heard.” (emphasis added)
As a former president of the Harvard Law Review and then lecturer in constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School, Obama surely has an understanding of what the First Amendment entails. If he gets the nomination, it will be interesting to see his views on civil liberties come out.
Via Reality-Based Community
January 04, 2008
By
Wendy Kaminer
It’s easy to overestimate or over-hype the implications of
the Iowa caucus results, but it does seem clear that Hillary Clinton needs to
re-evaluate her reputed reliance on the “women’s vote.” Reportedly, while
Clinton had the edge with older women (and anecdotal evidence showed that
elderly women found her especially appealing) Obama captured women under 35.
The last results I heard before retiring last night gave Clinton less than a
third of the women‘s vote in Iowa.
Iowa caucus women refused to play
identity politics. Emily’s List, which worked hard for Clinton, is no doubt
disappointed, and some are bound to regard Clinton’s relatively poor showing
among women as a feminist failure. I find it refreshing, although I can only
speculate about its causes, which may not be so lofty: Maybe younger women see
Clinton as a mother, whose grasp they are trying to escape, while elderly women
regard her as a daughter, who can fulfill aspirations that they could never contemplate.
In any case, why should any feminist cheer women
with a bias in favor of female candidates and jeer men with a bias in favor of
males? If the willingness of white voters to support an African-American
candidate is a sign of progress and enlightenment, why is it regressive, or even
a betrayal, for African-Americans to support a white candidate?
Of
course, I know the many explanations that might be offered in response,
involving the historic oppression and continuing discrimination suffered by
black males and all women, and the difference between majority and minority
biases. But shouldn’t we look forward to elections in which no groups practice
identity politics instead of elections in which only some groups do?
