Northwest Airlines has admitted participating in a clandestine goverment program and providing data on more than 10 million passengers.

Northwest Airlines provided information on millions of passengers for a secret U.S. government air-security project soon after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, raising more concerns among some privacy advocates about the airlines' use of confidential customer data.

Journalist, author and blogger David Neiwert (Orcinus) writes over at the new group blog American Street that the Florida Bar has sold its mailing list of member's names to a neo-nazi hate group, the National Alliance.

The letter with an eight-page brochure was sent to Florida criminal defense lawyers by the National Alliance, an offshoot of the American Nazi Party, which law enforcement and watchdog groups characterize as a violent, neo-Nazi organization.

The mailing contains anti-Semitic cartoons and an article titled “Building a New White World,” along with a letter calling on attorneys to join their organization. "We need legal talent to augment our technical, musical and writing talent," stated the letter, signed by Tampa unit coordinator Todd Weingart. "That’s why we’re writing to you today."

Attorneys who received the letter last week were doubly shocked to learn that the Bar sold the organization its mailing list and prepared labels for the group for a fee.

Naturally, lawyers are upset. But, it's clear that the Bar can't refuse to sell its list to any group based on ideology. As one esteemed Florida lawyer said in an e-mail earlier today,

The Bar should not take a position that stills the voice of anyone in the absence of the "clear and present danger" which has been adequately defined by the Supreme Court. In the balance, there is a greater threat to us all in pre-publication censorship than in the swill spread by hate mongers.

If the list is publicly available, then there should not be any discrimination practised, even if restraint of our emotions is painful.

We agree.

Here we go....the federal government is overhauling the way it drug tests employees. It is moving from urine tests to saliva, hair testing and sweat tests. Major corporations are expected to follow suit. Here's what's planned:

Saliva testing, done using a swab that looks much like a toothbrush but with a pad instead of bristles, is best at detecting drug use within the past one or two days.

Hair testing, in which a sample about the thickness of a shoelace is clipped at the root from the back of the head, allows detection of many drugs used as far back as 3 months.

Sweat testing, in which workers are fitted with a patch that is worn for two weeks, is used to screen people who have returned to work after drug treatment.

For more on why you should oppose invasive drug testing in the workplace, go here.

In an online chat Monday with the Washington Post, Jay Stanley of the ACLU explains why CAPPS II, the Government plan to track airline passengers, is unwise and unfair:

We oppose the so-called CAPPS II program for several reasons. It will be a tremendous invasion of our privacy. It will put the government in the unprecedented position of rating every American who flies on whether they are "trusted" or not. And it will not make us safer.

....Experience has shown that trying to catch wrongdoers by investigating everyone is a poor way to stop them. The US should focus on improving its intelligence on the ground, and improving physical security. Most of the additional security that we've gained since 9/11 is probably due to improved security at the gate, to locking cockpit doors, to air marshals, and to the fact that in the next hijacking, no one on the plane is going to sit back and wait to land in Cuba. The marginal improvement in security brought by this vast, unwieldy, intrusive system will not be worth it.

Here's a name to remember: Acxiom

The ACLU is is siding with Rush Limbaugh:

The American Civil Liberties Union took sides with Rush Limbaugh on Monday by complaining that Florida investigators violated the conservative radio host's rights when they seized his medical records. The odd coupling of the civil liberties group and the broadcaster beloved for bashing came in a criminal probe of Limbaugh's admitted use of prescription painkillers, in which authorities in Palm Beach County used a search warrant to seize files from his doctors.

In a friend-of-the-court petition to Florida's Fourth District Court of Appeal, the ACLU said investigators violated Limbaugh's constitutional right to privacy when they took the records in a raid rather than notifying Limbaugh and using a subpoena, which would have given Limbaugh the right to object before the seizure.

The ACLU and Rush are right on this one. Here is the ACLU's press release.

Dave Neiwart of Orcinus has an excellent analysis of reaction on the right to Bush's immigration reform plan :

The uproar over George W. Bush's proposal for immigration reform has revealed a significant rift within the American right -- namely, between its corporatist element, whose primary interest lies in exploiting the low wages that immigrants provide, and its ideological element, which sees immigrants as part of a brown tide on the verge of permanently swamping the majority white culture.

The Bush plan comes down squarely on the side of the corporatists -- unsurprisingly, since those interests throughout his administration have held sway in nearly every aspect of governance. That in turn has spurred the intense anger of the ideological right, who are hotly denouncing Bush's "betrayal of America."

Update: Janice Fine, a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute, tells us the three serious flaws of Bush's plan:

The wait is up to 9 hours for Americans to get fingerprinted at Brazilian airports. A stronger policy goes into effect Monday.

Brazil denies it is retaliating for the U.S. policy, but Judge Julier da Silva's order to begin fingerprinting contained tough rhetoric, calling the U.S. program "absolutely brutal, threatening to human rights, violating human dignity, xenophobic and worthy of the worst horrors committed by the Nazis."

Victory for the ACLU in the case of the Colorado student whose computer was seized by the cops because of a newsletter critical of a prominent professor. The Colorado federal judge hearing the case, U.S. Chief Judge Lewis Babcock huffed and puffed and then granted the ACLU a temporary restraining order and more:

Denver U.S. District Judge Lewis Babcock said the right to publish satire is protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Greeley authorities also volunteered Friday to return Mink's computer today. Police seized it from his home in December.

The ACLU was granted its temporary restraining order in the case of the UNC student whose internet site ticked off a UNC professor, and the student's (and his mother's) computer will be returned tomorrow.

More background here.

The ACLU has filed a lawsuit against a prominent professor on behalf of a student at the University of Northern Colorado. The suit alleges that the prof sent the cops to seize his computer and shut down his online newsletter because of the student's dissenting political views.

A Weld County man is suing Greeley police for seizing the computer on which he publishes an online newsletter called The Howling Pig, which takes satirical barbs at a vocal university professor.

Thomas Mink, of Ault, a 24-year-old English major at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, said police have warned that he likely will be charged with criminal libel because The Howling Pig makes fun of Junius "Jay" Peake, a Monfort Distinguished Professor at UNC and a specialist in financial markets.

Rocky Mountain Progressive Network is following the case and says it's all the more worrisome because of the conservatives' hunt for liberal Colorado professors and their clandestine effort to enact an Academic Bill of Rights for Conservatives and impose a quota to make for more conservative professors in the states' colleges and universities.

The Rocky Mountain Progressive Network, a non-profit, provides a " 'fair and balanced' response to the radical right-wing interests that dominate our region's politics and media." We have been in communication with them for several months and like them a lot. They have just taken an ad on TalkLeft--so, please, visit them often so they see a lot of response to the ad. In addition to to the satisfaction you will receive from reading their assaults on conservatives and exposure of inequities, a lot of hits on their website from here may cause them to extend the time they advertise on TalkLeft, which is money for us. A win-win all around.

Outrageous. A state appeals court has told a gay man he must stay in the closet.

A state appeals court says a gay father must
keep his homosexuality in the closet when his son is around.

[link via e-mail from Pontificator.]

[comments now closed.]

As we wrote here, the principal has resigned. Now it's time for the lawsuits to proceed over the ill-advised high school drug raids. Law Prof Glenn Reynolds (aka Instapundit) writes over at his MSNBC blog:

.... the law enforcement authorities who conducted the raid shouldn't escape responsibility for their misconduct as a result. Raiding schools with drawn guns is the sort of thing that should be limited to terrorist emergencies and hostage situations. It's not the proper way to look for a few bags of pot.

The question is whether other principals -- and law enforcement officials -- will take the lesson. I'm not sure they will, which is why I'd like to see the lawsuits go forward, and see the law enforcement officials who conducted the raid lose their jobs, too. Responsibility demands consequences.

Here is some of the negative reaction to Bush's immigration reform plan:

"George Bush's plan leaves foreign workers as fodder for our fields and factories without giving them a path to legalization and a fair shot at the American dream. He's had an election year conversion to immigration reform, but it's too little and three years too late." - Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., a presidential candidate.

"The proposal ... is woefully inadequate and falls far short of being the serious, reform our country needs to fix our broken immigration system. The White House says this proposal is compassionate, but as the fine print makes clear, that claim is false for millions of immigrants." Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass.

"President Bush's plan would move millions of people into a second-class status with no real promise of citizenship." - Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., a presidential candidate.

[comments now closed]