by TChris

The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority has adopted "a permanent policy of randomly inspecting passenger bags and packages on subway and commuter trains." The policy takes effect next month. The MBTA is the first transit agency to implement a policy of random searches of bags and briefcases.

The policy was made public only weeks after the MBTA announced a controversial decision to begin requesting identification from T passengers police perceive as acting "suspiciously."

The MBTA says it will have dogs sniff the packages when trained dogs are present (they only have four), but will require passengers to open their containers when a dog isn't available.

Civil libertarians are concerned that no procedures are in place to assure that the searches are truly random.

Pamela Pratt, 46, a hospital supervisor from Randolph, said , "We all know who will be stopped -- black people like me or my brothers."

The MBTA's chief is in the process of finalizing the policy. He says he doesn't want to abridge anyone's rights, "but in this era, we need the highest degree of security." As do our civil liberties.

A fascinating analysis by Manuel Garcia, a Cuban-Puerto Rican American who grew up on the Upper West side of New York, on who are really the true Americans. We recommend reading it in its entirety. Here's some quotes:

I pledge allegiance to the flag
Of the altered states in America
And to the republic-of-dreams for which it stands,
One nation under the gods, the goddesses,
The spirits of the ancestors,
And the great unknowable void,
With liberty to imagine justice
For all.

Are you an American?" I've been asked since I can remember and to this day. I'm never sure, let's just say I'm trying. Being born here is not enough. I know, I was, and still most Americans think I'm a foreigner. I was born in the upper West Side -- Spanish Harlem -- in the time of Machito. I have a black moustache (well, had) and a permanent tan "to die for" -- if your skin is plucked-chicken white and you can afford the "color." I've been taken for every kind of Latino (I'm Cuban-Puerto Rican), for Egyptian, Persian, Turkish, and even black.

When you understand what it means to be a real American, then you can see that most Cubans are real Americans, where most Floridians are not; that most Mexicans are real Americans while most Californians are not; and that many immigrants will never be real Americans, though probably most always were. If this essay makes no sense to you, then you are sober in your delusions, for I am drunk in my insights. Insight knows itself to be particular, whereas delusion imagines itself to be general. This separates Carlos Castañeda from John Ashcroft. If you don't like my icons, then pick your own, just make sure they are real, like Crazy Horse and Noam Chomsky, instead of fakes like George Armstrong Custer and Henry Kissinger. If this rant makes any sense to you, then you are capable of seeing that the America that will survive into the 22nd century, in peace and security, is as remote from the America of George W. Bush as that of Mark Twain was from J. P. Morgan's, or Kurt Vonnegut's is from Richard Nixon's.

Mr. Garcia is as much of an American as we are and you are. Don't you feel shame that he is treated differently? We do.

by TChris

Freedom of speech means freedom to protest -- except in Westwood, Massachusetts, where Joseph Previtera Jr. was arrested for engaging in an act of "street theater." Previtera stood on a milk crate outside a Military Recruiting Center wearing a hood and shawl, with wires dangling from his outstretched hands -- copying a photo released in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. He was hoping to give potential recruits a different perspective on war than they were likely to receive from the recruiter.

The police responded by arresting Previtera for disturbing the peace, making a false bomb threat and possession of a hoax device. But Previtera said nothing about a bomb; in fact, silence was part of his protest, making it difficult to understand how the peace was disturbed by anyone other than the police, who brought in the bomb squad and taped off the area around Previtera before taking him into custody.

The wires constituted the "hoax device," and the "threat," according to the police, was implied, not stated: although the wires weren't attached to anything, a complete idiot may have been able to imagine that they had something to do with a bomb. Previtera isn't a violent man, but the police who arrested him for exercising his right to protest did violence to the First Amendment.

In the largest settlement in its history, the county of Sacramento has agreed to pay $15 million to more than 16,000 people who were illegally strip searched by the county Sheriff's Department at the jail, between 2000 and 2003. The county will have to pay $2 million, and its insurance company will pay the rest:

"This practice was ruled unconstitutional as early as 1984, yet there seemed to be no attempt to conform to the law," said attorney Mark Merin, who filed the suits. "People were stripped naked and dehumanized before arraignment. It was standard procedure."

The lawsuits also resulted in a change of policy:

Under the new policy, only prisoners being booked on charges involving violence, weapons or drugs may be subjected to visual body-cavity searches, and those searches must be conducted out of sight of other inmates and arrestees.

There's a graduated system of payment--here's who will get the most:

by TChris

York, an indispensable member of the Lewis and Clark expedition, has been freed from slavery. This will have no practical impact on the long-dead York, who may in any event have been freed by his owner while he was still alive.

Upon the expedition's arrival at the Pacific Ocean in November 1805, York was given the right to vote on the location of the crew's winter quarters. Arriving back in St. Louis in September 1806, York asked Clark to grant his freedom. Though some historians believed Clark eventually freed York, no documents ever have been recovered describing that act.

It's never too late to correct even a potential injustice, so Missouri Gov. Bob Holden "signed documents delivering York from bondage."

by TChris

Once again, this time in Utah, zero tolerance equals zero thinking:

Because of a zero-tolerance drug policy, a 13-year-old boy has been suspended from school for 45 days for giving a cousin a cold pill - even though it had been prescribed for both children.

Do school administrators seriously believe that denying children access to their prescription medications prevents drug abuse? Zero tolerance policies rarely advance their stated goals, but they make life easier for administrators by relieving them of the burden of using good judgment. It's time to remind public employees that they're getting paid to think, not to enact mindless zero tolerance policies.

by TChris

Concerned about your privacy? You should be. Despite the Bush administration's asserted desire (back in 2002) to protect privacy by appointing a "privacy czar" to oversee each federal agency's "privacy advocate," the administration is more concerned about its own privacy than yours.

First there was the Patriot Act. Government agents can sneak into your home, snoop, and never tell you they were there. (TalkLeft recently reported on the use of the Patriot Act to seek evidence against Brandon Mayfield.) Then there were aborted attempts to implement the Total Information Awareness Project (TalkLeft coverage here) and DARPA's plan to spy on entire cities using blimps (TalkLeft coverage here). And then there's Matrix, the floundering attempt to create a crime-fighting database (TalkLeft coverage here).

Now the GAO tells us that the federal government has more than 120 programs to collect and analyze personal data so they can predict the behavior of individuals. According to Senator Daniel Akaka (D-HI), who asked for the GAO study:

"I am disturbed by the high number of data mining activities in the federal government involving personal information. The federal government collects and uses Americans' personal information and shares it with other agencies to an astonishing degree, raising serious privacy concerns."

Cynthia Webb has a good overview of privacy issues in the federal government. Meanwhile, where's the privacy czar that the administration promised back in 2002? Democrats are still trying to find one.

The California Supreme Court heard oral arguments today in a case in which a 15 year old student was convicted and spent 100 days in juvenile hall for writing a violent poem. Sample phrases:

"For I can be the next kid to bring guns to kill students at school." Another reads: "For I am Dark, Destructive & Dangerous."

What's at stake?

The case weighs free speech rights against the government's responsibility to provide safety in schools after campus shootings nationwide....This is a classic case of a person expressing himself and trying to communicate his feelings through a poem," attorney Michael Kresser told the court, which gave no clear indication whether it would overturn the conviction. Chief Justice Ronald George and other justices wondered aloud whether George T.'s statements were protected speech because they were presented as verses in a poem.

What law was George T. convicted of?

The law in question, usually invoked in domestic violence cases, carries a maximum one-year term for criminal threats that convey an "immediate prospect of execution." The lower courts found that this threat met that definition, a decision the boy's attorney argued was unfounded.

We side with the student. For one thing, where's the immediacy?

Update: Avedon Carol of Sideshow astutely comments on the War on Kids.

by TChris

Amnesty International's 2004 report condemns human rights abuses by terrorists and by governments fighting against terrorism. Irene Khan, Secretary General of Amnesty International, reminds us why we need to guard against affronts to human rights wherever they arise.

"Governments are losing their moral compass, sacrificing the global values of human rights in a blind pursuit of security. This failure of leadership is a dangerous concession to armed groups."

"While governments have been obsessed with the threat of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, they have allowed the real weapons of mass destruction-- injustice and impunity, poverty, discrimination and racism, the uncontrolled trade in small arms, violence against women and abuse of children -- to go unaddressed."

The press release regarding the 2004 report is here. The online version of the report is here.

Maria Suarez has been released from prison after 22 years. At 16, she was sold as a sex slave to a man who abused her for five years.

....his neighbors, a young couple who feared the man known as a witch doctor, clubbed him to death. Suarez, who washed and hid the weapon, was convicted of conspiring in the murder.

The case has made major headlines because the U.S. said she would be deported upon being released. Homeland Security has finally acted --she can stay in the U.S. Ms. Suarez went home yesterday with her 86 year old mother. She is 44.

More here.

by TChris

Cynthia Tucker reminds us that it isn't unpatriotic to criticize President Bush, his administration, or his decisions. Exercising the right of dissent is so vital to the democratic process that the Bill of Rights enshrines it in the First Amendment.

As Americans, we're supposed to have a deep respect for dissent, to value honest and open government, to believe in truth and justice. Those are among the core values that distinguish us from much of the rest of the world, where tyranny has free rein.

Tucker has harsh words for Zell Miller and others who insist that it's unpatriotic to criticize the war, the mistreatment of prisoners, or the President.

But Mr. Miller is not the only American in full retreat from the nation's core values. So are any number of others, officials and average citizens alike, who have denounced the press, war critics and any other institution or individual who dares present a view that does not reflect the fairy tale version of events that Mr. Bush and his minions, until quite recently, peddled to the public.

Dissenting from injustice is not unpatriotic. It's what we're supposed to do. We have free speech so that we can effect democratic change. Minds have already changed, and that trend makes the voices demanding our silence all the more shrill.

Too bad.

by TChris

Muslim head scarves have been in the news recently, as an Oklahoma school district settled a lawsuit attacking a dress code that prohibited Muslim students from wearing a hijab. The Constitution protects students from the government's interference with the free exercise of their religions, while federal legislation provides private employees with more limited protection against religious discrimination. Using that law, a Muslim employee of Walt Disney World sued Disney, alleging that she was fired because she wouldn't remove her head scarf at work.

Aicha Baha says she was fired after her religious faith compelled her to defy Disney's policy prohibiting employees from wearing anything other than their uniforms. The only head coverings Disney allows are Disney hats (and possibly mouse ears). Federal law requires employers to reasonably accommodate an employee's need to practice a religion. Baha says Disney offered to accommodate her religious needs by allowing her to wear the hijab in private, but not when she was in contact with the public.

Baha has good reason to believe that it would be reasonable for Disney to let her practice her religion on more than a part-time basis.