From Students for a Sensible Drug Policy:

The Drug Czar is going on the road to convince schools to take advantage of millions of dollars in federal grant money made available for the express purpose of testing teens' urine. Parents everywhere should be "pissed off" that their hard-earned tax dollars are being flushed down the toilet - literally - on programs that usurp family decision making and do nothing to stop young people from using drugs.

The cities are Orlando, San Diego, Falls Church, VA and Milwaukee, WI.

If you live in or around any of these cities, please get in touch with SSDP as soon as possible to find out how you can counteract the Drug Czar's propaganda machine when it comes to town. Students, parents, and activists had a great time raining on the Drug Czar's parade last year. Let's make sure he and his cronies know that we'll continue to be there providing the truth wherever and whenever they proliferate lies.

Here's their full webpage on student drug testing. Here's a small portion:

by TChris

The First Amendment right to free expression applies in courthouses, even if some might be offended by the message expressed. The Supreme Court in 1971 reversed the conviction of a man who wore a shirt in a courthouse that used a four-letter-word (yes, that one) to express the man’s negative feelings about the draft. The Court noted that the statute didn't address courtroom decorum, but was applicable across the state, rendering his presence in the courthouse irrelevant to the First Amendment inquiry.

A Massachusetts judge is unwilling to extend that precedent to protect the free speech rights of courthouse observers who express a message that is popular among criminal defense lawyers: "Stop Snitching." Expressing displeasure with tattle-tales seems harmless, but the judge viewed the shirts as an attempt to intimidate witnesses, and has banned the shirts from the courthouse.

[Judge Robert] Mulligan's policy, which takes effect immediately, says that anyone wearing "Stop Snitching" clothes will be barred from courthouses, and anyone seen wearing such clothing inside will be ejected.

Raw Story reports that the National Security Agency conducted surveillance on members of a Baltimore peace group. It even has the reports to show it. Kevin Zeese, of Democracy Rising and a candidate for the U.S. Senate in Maryland, writing at Raw Story has more:

According to the documents, the Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore, a Quaker-linked peace group, has been monitored by the NSA working with the Baltimore Intelligence Unit of the Baltimore City Police Department....The documents came as a result of litigation in the August 2003 trial of Marilyn Carlisle and Cindy Farquhar. An NSA security official provided the defendants with a redacted Action Plan and a redacted copy of a Joint Terrorism Task Force email about the activities of the Pledge of Resistance activities.

The NSA should not be conducting surveillance of American protestors. It's time to rein in the agency in. This should be a bi-partisan issue. Will Congress be up to the task?

The outrageous privacy actions of our Government continue to come to light.

The News Tribune reports that the I.R.S. tracked the political party affiliations of taxpayers in 20 states.

As it hunted down tax scofflaws, the Internal Revenue Service collected information on the political party affiliations of taxpayers in 20 states. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., a member of an appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over the IRS, said the practice was an “outrageous violation of the public trust” that could undermine the agency’s credibility.

...Murray said she learned about the problem from the president of the National Treasury Employees Union, Colleen Kelly. The IRS is part of the Treasury Department.

An I.R.S. spokesperson acknowledges that one of its "vendors" did collect the information and that it is illegal. It says it has never used the information and since told the vendor to "screen the information out." (It seems that a vendor is a private collection agency.)

But a Deputy IRS Commissioner defended the practice and said it is lawful.

by Last Night in Little Rock

Medical marijuana was approved in Rhode Island today when the legislature overrode Governor Carcieri's veto, as reported this afternoon on NYTimes.com and the Providence Journal. The bill is here in .pdf format.

Rhode Island becomes the eleventh state to legalize medical marijuana, according to a NORML e-mail:

Rhode Island joins Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington State in protecting sick and dying patients who find relief in medical marijuana.

Only three states have done it through the legislature. The other states have done it by initiative petition.

by Last Night in Little Rock

Ever been to Times Square on New Year's Eve? Three times here, but not since the 90's. It is a party to remember forever: people you never met before will hug you and kiss you, if you don't mind the fact they may be extremely drunk. New Yorkers are still the finest and, yes, friendliest, people in America.

To get in now, however, backpacks are not allowed, and all bags are searched on the perimeter, blocks away. Just posted on NYTimes.com:

While the party carried on in Times Square, late arrivals waited in long lines to pass through security checkpoints where police searched bags. The crowds were still merging on midtown for the celebration an hour before midnight.

by Last Night in Little Rock

Something I missed from three days ago until I found it on PatriotDaily.com. USA Today reported Dec. 28 that TSA screeners use conversation at some airports to identify potential troublemakers: Airport security uses talk as tactic / Conversation can help identify high-risk fliers. If anything, this has a high-risk of abuse of civil liberties.

Conversation during a traffic stop has long been the ploy of choice for police officers to find an excuse to search your car for drugs or weapons.

Note: This now appears to be a bogus story. See below:

In Washington State, school kids are being asked to take patriotism tests that are unrelated to their coursework.

[The test] gauges whether or not the student shows fealty to the power of the state and whether the student believes in the right to overthrow a corrupt government.

Here's one of them, submitted by the mother of a 10th grader. [hat tip to Patriot Daily.]

Update: Commenters are very skeptical of this article and the source, Prison Planet. I've added a question mark to the title.

Update: Patriot Daily agrees the article is bogus and explains. Classy addition by Patriot Daily, which happens to be a very reliable news source.

by TChris

Loyalty oaths were popular in the 1950’s, when conservatives were certain that anyone who disagreed with their political agenda was a communist. Today, conservatives are certain that those who disagree are terrorist-hugging traitors, but at least they’ve quit pressing the useless idea of loyalty oaths.

Except in Pennsylvania.

[Gerald] Massey, a Marine Corps veteran and retired philosophy professor, won a two-year seat on the Stoneboro council in November after a write-in campaign. He balked when borough officials told him to sign the Pennsylvania Loyalty Oath, signed into law in 1951 in an effort to keep communists out of government positions.

"I'm just a little write-in candidate in a small rural town. You might say, 'What does that (oath) matter?'" Massey said. "I think that's actually more important. Democracy starts with these grass-roots undertakings."

The 71-year-old Massey will be allowed to take office without signing an oath that affirms he isn’t “subversive.” A county solicitor confirmed that the outdated law (which likely violates the First Amendment) is no longer effective. Massey will instead take the standard oath to uphold the state and federal constitutions.

The National Security Agency has admitted keeping persistent cookies on visitors to its website. It will discontinue the illegal practice, and says it was a mistake.

Don Weber, an agency spokesman, said in a statement yesterday that the use of the so-called persistent cookies resulted from a recent software upgrade.

Normally, Mr. Weber said, the site uses temporary cookies that are automatically deleted when users close their Web browsers, which is legally permissible. But he said the software in use was shipped with the persistent cookies turned on. "After being tipped to the issue, we immediately disabled the cookies," Mr. Weber said.

Biased. Incoherent. Below the minimum standards of justice.

Those are some of the harsh words federal appeals courts judges are using to describe the decisions of immigration judges in asylum and related cases.

The Times says part of the problem is the increase in immigration cases lodged in federal appeals courts since former Attorney General John Ashcroft issued new guidelines in 2002 that limited immigration courts' abilities to hear appeals.

In the courts in New York and California, nearly 40 percent of federal appeals involved immigration cases.

by TChris

In a decision that spanked Dover school board members who wanted to pretend that intelligent design is based on science, Judge John Jones III made clear his belief that some of the board members lied under oath.

In his opinion, Jones accused some of those who testified during the six-week trial in Harrisburg of lying, singling out former board members Alan Bonsell and William Buckingham, the leading proponents of the policy.

Those comments sparked the interest of a prosecutor, who intends to investigate the possibility that perjury was committed. Perjury can be a difficult charge to prove, but Judge Jones was persuaded that the board members were deliberately untruthful.