Human rights groups are calling for an investigation into the death of 81 year old minister Rev. Joseph Dantica, who died in federal custody while seeking asylum.

The Baptist minister fled Haiti to escape from danger and explained that he needed protection when he arrived at Miami International Airport on October 29, 2004. Instead of finding refuge, 81-year-old Dantica was put in an immigration jail by Department of Homeland Security officers. On November 3, 2004, the reverend died while in custody.

.....Eleanor Acer, Director of Human Rights First’s Asylum Program said, “The decision to detain this 81-year-old man was simply inhumane and his treatment should be investigated immediately.” Acer added, “The Department of Homeland Security – just like the INS before it – is totally mishandling the detention of asylum seekers. They have failed to make necessary reforms – and keep jailing ministers and other victims of persecution, instead of making fair decisions about the need for detention in each individual case.”

Homeland Security said the Reverend had a "pre-existing and fatal medical condition" and that the cause of death was pancreatitis. Dantico had traveled to Miami with his son Maxo after Rev. Dantico's church was burned down. When they arrived in Miami, officials separated them and refused to allow Dantico to keep his medicine. They wouldn't allow family members to visit him. Immigration officials may waive detention on humanitarian grounds. Why didn't they do so here?

The ACLU joined with groups across the political divide today to take out a full page ad in the Washington Times asking the Senate Conferees on the Intelligence Reform Bill to kill the provision for a National ID Card .

The ad urges the committee to remove provisions from the final intelligence reform package that would create a national ID card. A national ID card, the open letter says, would create an unprecedented invasion of the privacy rights guaranteed by the Constitution and would allow the government to constantly monitor everyone with a driver’s license or identification card.

A national ID card would do little to stop terrorist attacks and would cost billions of dollars to develop and implement. Similar attempts to create a national ID were rejected by every Congress and Administration that has considered it since President Ronald Reagan.

In addition, the creation of a national ID card system would not prevent the use of faulty documents, such as birth certificates, to obtain government ID. Such a system would not have thwarted the September 11 hijackers, many of whom reportedly had identification documents on them, and were in the country legally.

The letter was signed by the American Civil Liberties Union, American Conservative Union, American Library Association, Gun Owners of America, Republican Liberty Caucus, American Immigration Lawyers Association, Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, Free Congress Foundation, and approximately 40 other organizations.

by TChris

The Pentagon has agreed to instruct military bases to stop sponsoring Boy Scout troops. The action comes as partial settlement of a lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Illinois.

In its suit, filed in April 1999, the ACLU of Illinois contended that because the Scouts excluded people who did not profess a belief in God, government funding of the organization violated the constitutional requirement for separation of church and state. "If our Constitution's promise of religious liberty is to be a reality, the government should not be administering religious oaths or discriminating based on religious beliefs," ACLU attorney Adam Schwartz said.

Still at issue are military expenditures to prepare property for the Boy Scout Jamboree, expenditures to support Boy Scout units on military bases overseas, and expenditures to improve Boy Scout properties, including summer camps. The suit also challenges the Department of Housing and Urban Development's allocation of bloc grants to state and local governments for the benefit of the Boy Scouts.

Boulder high school students get a surprise visit from the feds. What a colossal waste of resources.

[Note to commenters. Please be clever and find words other than those that are in themselves words of violence. There are robots and spiders and censors all around and it does TL no good to be linked to the words without the context.]

What were they thinking?

LOS ANGELES, November 9, 2004 - At 7:50 PM two armored tanks showed up at an anti-war protest in front of the federal building in Westwood. The tanks circled the block twice, the second time parking themselves in the street and directly in front of the area where most of the protesters were gathered. Enraged, some of the people attempted to block the tanks, but police quickly cleared the street. The people continued to protest the presence of the tanks, but about ten minutes the tanks drove off. It is unclear as to why the tanks were deployed to this location. Uploaded here is video from the event.

[Hat tip Daily Kos diary, the video is here.]

A new passenger scanner being employed at London's Heathrow airport uses radiation to see through clothing. Civil liberties groups are angry.

No wonder they are angry,check out this picture of what they can see. [via the Modulator who got it from Yahoo.]

We warned about this back in June, 2003:

Airport Screeners May Get X-Ray Vision

Thinking of going to London or France? Get ready. They may be looking at your underpants.

by TChris

Almost 80 years have passed since Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan litigated the legality of teaching evolution in the Scopes trial, but those who want public schools to substitute religious dogma for science continue to exert their influence. The latest version of the Scopes trial is ongoing in Cobb County, Georgia, where the school board responded to a petition drive by placing "warning stickers" on science textbooks proclaiming that evolution is "a theory, not a fact." Apparently no warning stickers are required for relativity, although those who object to "moral relativism" may be printing up the stickers as you read this post.

Parents sued the school board, arguing that religious beliefs should not influence public education.

Two questions expected to be raised in the trial are:

• Is "intelligent design" a religious idea? A concept espoused by many opponents of evolution, intelligent design holds that the variety of life on Earth results from purposeful design rather than random mutation and that a higher intelligence guides the process.

• If the concept of intelligent design is found to be religious, do Cobb County's book disclaimers violate the separation between church and state?

The trial is expected to conclude this week.

Shopping with credit cards is more likely to land you in a database. Sounds to us like it's time to revert to cash. [link via Kevin Drum}

You think your week was depressing? Try this on for size, "My Hands Are Tied, by Brian Lonegan in Sunday's New York Times Magazine:

I'm an attorney with the Legal Aid Society, the only free legal-service organization in New York City that provides assistance to people who are in ''removal proceedings,'' what used to be called deportation, because of a criminal conviction. There are crimes people should be deported for -- murder, robbery, rape -- but the way the law is written now, people are being deported for shoplifting or for jumping subway turnstiles or for possession of a joint of marijuana. New York's detainees are held in county jails in New Jersey. There are several hundred immigration detainees in these jails at any given moment. And there's only one Legal Aid attorney available. That's me.

Here's what it's like:

These guys all want to tell me their life stories, but I have to cut to the chase with potential clients and figure out what legal remedies they have. Most have none. Detainees call me collect from jails, and I give them advice. My hotline number is now in every jail cell between here and Pennsylvania.

Here's how it got that way:

Boston Police have accepted 'full responsibility' in the death of a Red Sox fan who was killed by a pepper spray projectile used to control the crowd.

Preliminary findings indicate that Victoria Snelgrove, a journalism student at Emerson College, was hit in the eye by a projectile that disperses pepper spray on impact, Boston Police Commissioner Kathleen O'Toole said Thursday. Snelgrove died at 12:50 p.m. at Brigham and Women's Hospital, hours after the overnight melee.

"The Boston Police Department is devastated by this tragedy. This terrible event should never have happened," O'Toole told reporters. "The Boston Police Department accepts full responsibility for the death of Victoria Snelgrove."

Mark Dow in today's Miami Herald examines the plight of the Mariel Cubans, and the Bush Administration's insidious attempt to keep them locked up forever:

They are not suspected terrorists. They are not ''enemy combatants.'' They are not even charged with a crime. But on Oct. 13, in Clark vs. Martinez and Benitez vs. Rozos before the U.S. Supreme Court, the Bush administration defended the executive's authority to imprison them on U.S. soil until they are dead.

Allowed to depart the island in 1980 from the port of Mariel, some 125,000 Cubans came to the United States over a six-month period. Many of them have committed crimes here, and detention typically begins on completion of a criminal sentence for anything from murder to shoplifting -- though one Mariel Cuban was locked up for not being able to afford medical care. Cuba will not take them back, and the United States says that it can detain them for any length of time.

France ought to get rid of their new law banning students from wearing head scarves at school. Instead, it is enforcing it. The first students, two Muslim girls, have been expelled.