by TChris

First the Mayor of New Paltz was charged with a crime for conducting marriage ceremonies for same sex couples (TalkLeft coverage here). Now a district attorney in Kingston, New York has charged two ministers with criminal offenses for marrying thirteen gay couples "in what is believed to be the first time in the United States that clergy members have been prosecuted for performing same-sex ceremonies." So much for separation of church and state.

Unitarian Universalist ministers Kay Greenleaf and Dawn Sangrey were charged with multiple counts of solemnizing a marriage without a license, the same charges leveled against New Paltz Mayor Jason West, who last month drew the state into the widening national debate over same-sex unions.

Each charge could carry up to two years in jail.

Although District Attorney Donald Williams disclaims any desire "to interfere with anyone's right to express their religious beliefs," a less Demagogic mind might think that forcing a minister to preach through the barred windows of a jail cell constitutes a serious infringement of that minister's right to freely exercise her religion.

In a 72 page petition filed with the FTC, the DEA, FBI and Justice Department are teaming up to get the FTC to pass new wiretap rules that will allow for interception of internet communciations (WSJ, subscription only):

WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department is proposing that regulators adopt sweeping new wiretap rules for broadband Internet communications services. The proposal was triggered in part by the rapid rise of Internet telephony, which the Federal Bureau of Investigation fears could be used to avoid wiretaps on conventional phones. But the proposal goes beyond Internet telephony, asking the Federal Communications Commission to consider rules making all broadband Internet services more compatible with wiretaps. And the proposal seeks rules requiring that new applications and services on the Internet be wiretap-ready before they are introduced to the market.

We wrote about the VOIP (Voice Over Interent Protocol) issue last month here. We noted some obstacles here.

This case was big news in Denver when it happened in 1994. A Jewish couple and a non-Jewish couple were neighbors and didn't get along. The Jewish couple, the Aronson's, thought that their neighbors, the Quigley's, were trying to run them out of town because they were Jewish. The Aronson's took their beef to the Anti-Defamation League:

At a 1994 news conference, the ADL accused the Quigleys of perpetrating the worst anti- Semitic incident in the area since the slaying of Jewish talk-show host Alan Berg 10 years earlier. They were accused of launching "Operation Aronson," an effort to run their Jewish neighbors, Mitchell and Candace Aronson, out of town. Criminal and civil complaints filed by the Aronsons against the Quigleys, however, were eventually dropped by prosecutors or dismissed, and the Quigleys countersued the ADL, which had championed the Aronsons.

The Quigleys claimed that the Aronsons, upon the advice of the ADL, began tape-recording the Quigleys' cordless telephone calls and making notes of other clashes....[they] said the ADL "orchestrated a monstrous invasion of their privacy and a destruction of their good name."

The ADL and Aronson's had received legal advice that it was legal to tape cordless telephone calls. Their lawyers and the Deputy District Attorney with whom they conferred had been unaware that the statute had recently been changed to require a court wiretap order for cordless phone calls. There was a lot of embarassment all around, as the DA in Colorado dropped the criminal intimidation charges against the Quigleys. The lawyers were sued and settled. The ADL did not settle, and the case went to trial in 2000. The Quigley's were represented by one of Denver's finest civil litigators, Jay Horowitz. They won. The case has been on appeal since, and last week the Supreme Court refused to accept the case for review. The ADL has just paid up:

Thursday's payout of $12,169,557.61 represents the largest defamation verdict in the history of Colorado and the largest Federal Wiretap Act verdict in the history of the United States, Horowitz said.

A 2000 New York Times article has more details of the case and allegations. You can read all the ugly details in this 10th court opinion (html) upholding the judgment against the ADL.

Noah at Defense Tech reports that while Total Information Awareness may be dea, DARPA has even bigger plans in store for the destruction of our privacy rights--a blimp that is three times bigger than the Goodyear blimp that can watch an entire city.

Update: More on DARPA and planned privacy intrusions.

California's Supreme Court put the kabosh on gay marriages today--but it will revisit the issue in May or June. In San Francisco, more than 4,000 same sex couples were married during the past month. In Oregon, 1,800 couples have requested licenses since March 3. The practice is spreading around the country. Yet, religious leaders say they have been marrying same-sex couples for some time:

In New York, a group of religious leaders said they would challenge the state's interpretation of the law on same-sex marriages in the coming weeks. Jewish Rabbis and Christian ministers told a news briefing that some of them had officiated at religious marriage ceremonies for same-sex couples for 23 years but were barred by law from issuing civil marriage licenses.

Rodi Alvarado's fate is now in Ashcroft's hands. We wrote about it today over at American Street.

NathanNewman analogizes the case of a boy wanting to marry his grandmother to the plight of gay couples who are denied the right to wed:

Why not? If his point is that there are many benefits that family members might be able to assure by marrying each other-- such as shared medical benefits and such-- that's exactly why gay couples want to become family members to one another.

....The basic point is that family arrangements ARE complicated and our present laws are probably too focused on nuclear family relationships. If the gay marriage debate forces us to discuss the need for extending marriage-like benefits to a range of other family relationships, that is no doubt all to the good.

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by TChris

According to John Ashcroft's Justice Department, medical patients "no longer possess a reasonable expectation that their histories will remain completely confidential." That's news to patients, who consider their medical records private. It may also be news to President Bush, who promised in April 2001 to protect "the right of every American to have confidence that his or her personal medical records will remain private."

The Justice Department wants access to the medical records of women who have received abortions to further its defense of a federal law banning a procedure known as intact dilation and extraction, termed "partial birth abortion" by anti-abortion activists. Challengers of the federal ban contend that it impairs the ability of doctors to protect a woman's life or health. The Justice Department apparently hopes that the records will prove that the banned abortions are never medically necessary and that the procedure is risky.

The Justice Department did not limit its subpoenas to records involving the recently banned procedure, but also sought records of certain other second and third trimester abortions, and the names of doctors who perform any kind of abortion.

The co-chair of the Congressional Privacy Caucus, Rep. Edward J. Markey, wonders "How many hundreds of women, or thousands, will have the frightening experience of their medical records being handed over to the Justice Department as part of a fishing expedition?" Rep. Nita M. Lowey shares Markey's criticism of the Justice Department's disregard of privacy interests:

"This administration claims to have taken great pride in adopting regulations aimed at ensuring the sanctity and privacy of medical records. But in an attempt to defend the so-called partial-birth abortion ban, it seems to have lost sight of its promises."

Fortunately, the judge hearing the challenge to the ban has quashed the Justice Department's subpoenas.

This just in from Reuters :

The U.S. Justice Department has subpoenaed Planned Parenthood for the confidential medical records of hundreds of women as part of its defense against challenges to a federal law that bans a type of late-term abortion, the family planning organization said on Thursday. Attorney General John Ashcroft said this month the records were needed to find out whether the procedure, called "partial birth abortion" by its critics, was medically necessary.

"We believe that this is a sweeping invasion of medical privacy. Ashcroft has subpoenaed hundreds of confidential medical records and we're taking every step within the law to resist this," said Elizabeth Toledo, a spokeswoman for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Planned Parenthood said subpoenas had been served on Tuesday at six of its locations -- Los Angeles, San Diego, New York, Washington, Kansas City and Pittsburgh. ABC News reported that the subpoenas demand hundreds of women's medical records

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233 Haitians have been caught by the Coast Guard trying to flee to the U.S. since December 30 and returned, despite the turmoil going on there.

Bill Strassberger, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, said Haitians living in the United States illegally would continue to be deported and those picked up at sea would continue to be sent back, unless they presented a well-founded fear of persecution. Advocates for immigrants said they feared that the government was abdicating its responsibilities to Haitian refugees. President Bush said Wednesday that American officials would "turn back any refugee that attempts to reach our shore" from Haiti.

This policy is unfair and inhumane.

...advocacy groups and several members of Congress argue that the government is denying refugees fair access to the American asylum process. They said the government should not send Haitians home when it has deemed the country dangerous enough to evacuate non-essential personnel and deploy marines to guard the American Embassy.

"To send people back into the kind of killing field that Haiti has descended to is a violation of all that refugee status and humanitarianism calls for," Senator Bob Graham, Democrat of Florida, said in a telephone interview.

Eleanor Acer, asylum director for Human Rights First, said, "It sends a very clear message that the U.S. is not willing to step up and accept its legal and moral obligation to accept refugees, particularly when the refugees at issue are at our own doorstep."

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We've never heard Howard Stern's radio show and don't think we'd enjoy listening to it but we think it's absurd and a giant step down the slippery slope of censorship for Clear Channel to have yanked it. Howard spoke about it on the air today. We urge all his fans to protest.

Rosie O'Donnell married her partner Kelli Carpenter in San Francisco today:

"I want to thank the city of San Francisco for this amazing stance the mayor has taken for all the people here, not just us but all the thousands and thousands of loving, law-abiding couples," the former talk show host, holding a large bouquet, said after she and Kelli Carpenter emerged from their brief ceremony inside Mayor Gavin Newsom's office.

The newlyweds walked hand in hand down the grand marble staircase in the rotunda to thunderous applause from hundreds of spectators who came to witness the city's first celebrity same-sex wedding.

TalkLeft reader Bryan W. of Seattle writes in:

I am appalled and outraged by the latest attempts by one group of people to impose their ideals and extremely delicate sense of values on others. The primary burn is the proposed amendment to the constitution to ban two people’s pursuit of happiness. Not being homosexual, I don’t have any personal stake in this but the fact that people would attempt to modify the Constitution because an act offends their sensitive moralities makes me think, “What’s next?”. Make no mistake; if it were politically palatable, the same persons backing the proposed amendment would just as soon put forward a constitutional amendment to ban homosexuality.

We as liberals need to stand up against this. And I don’t mean stand up and say, “Well I’m not sure if gay marriage should be legal… but I am in favor of civil unions!” This position is simple and transparent pandering. Stand up, say it’s wrong to impede a person’s pursuit of happiness simply because it offends someone else and stick to your position.