July 4th is a good day to read the Declaration of Independence aloud and hand out copies of the 4th Amendment:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

This is what the latest FISA battle is about.  Does the US government have the right to search and seize our papers, email, phone calls and persons without probable cause -  AS THEY ARE CURRENTLY DOING - and provide retroactive immunity for the telecommunications and other corporations who have been helping them, without benefit of any legal cause, for the last few years.

Celebrate your independence on the 4th of July.  Read the Declaration of Independence at the bus stop.  Hand out 4th Amendment FISA flyers and copies of the full Bill of Rights then watch the fireworks.

If Congress will not take impeachment action against President Bush, then everyday citizens bear the responsibility of supporting legal action against him.  At the time of this writing at least three different legal actions against the Commander in Chief have been initiated or outlined, though there may be more buried amid the mountains of calls for impeachment.  Of the three, Vincent Bugliosi drew the most attention when he described an ironclad case against Bush for first degree murder.  Two other courageous men have also gotten the ball rolling with different takes on the case, one the dean of the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover and the other the owner of a weekly newspaper in Minneapolis.  Few people here would expect the national media to help further such a cause, but somebody needs to spread awareness of the legitimacy of such cases.  Concerned citizens should take it upon themselves to learn about the thinking behind criminal proceedings against George Bush, and other members of the administration, and use the knowledge to spread awareness of and support for such actions.

Details after the flip.

Crossposted from The Colorado Independent:

A story on NPR's Morning Edition today held an interesting nugget of information on Colorado's possible role in how a President Barack Obama would respond to the growing humanitarian and legal crisis at the controversial U.S. detention camp on Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Just as commentators were noting with amazement how few of this term's Supreme Court rulings were decided by the 5-4 ideological split that seemed to define last term, the Justices issued their decision in the history-making Boumediene case, ruling 5-4 that detainees held at Guantanamo Bay have habeas corpus rights to challenge their detention in U.S. courts. The decision, authored by Justice Anthony Kennedy (who controlled the swing vote in so many of last term's cases), has predictably attracted both high praise and condemnation for according noncitizens detained on foreign soil rights under our Constitution.

The ruling carries historical importance not just because of its clearly articulated test for extending constitutional rights beyond our borders, but for the court's emphasis on the importance of preserving the Constitution's separation of powers framework even during wartime. This is the court's fourth rebuke to the Bush Administration for their treatment of detainees in the war on terror, however it results not from overzealous judicial activism by the Judiciary, as some critics would claim, but rather as a result of unconstitutional overreaching in the name of national security by the Executive.

Hi, how are you? I hope good. I think about you. I hope you’re still with me.

So check it out, here’s the latest: turns out I’ve been found guilty of Tampering and Memorialization with debris from a plane wreck on the western part of Santa Cruz Island, when the debris I tampered with and built into a sculpture was on the eastern end. The National Park Service and the United States of America have accused me of something I did not do. I didn't tamper with plane wreck debris from the western end of the island.

The United States of America has attempted to use my Daily Kos diaires against me in this federal proceeding. They're probably reading this, too, so below are two motions I mailed off this week.

Story: http://www.dailykos.com/...
Pictures: http://www.dailykos.com/...

Please please please please please please please.  This diary is not intended as a forum for discussing what the Supreme Court, or society in general, should do on any particular question of gun control.  My interest is solely in what the Court did do in its decision today -- because it's highly counterintuitive and I haven't seen it discussed elsewhere.

Justice Scalia today authored the majority opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller, in which a 5-4 majority of the Court confirmed the right to keep and bear arms (RKBA) as an individual right.

As many of us argued before the decision, whether the RKBA was individual or collective was not the most important issue at hand.  The significant question was, if it is an individual right, how and when and to what extent it could be restricted.

Today, among other things, Scalia wrote that the DC law requiring trigger locks was unconstitutional.  What you may not have heard is that this was based on a relative technicality -- a fixable technicality, after which trigger locks would seem to be OK.

Here's Antonin Scalia, asshole supreme and total Bush/GOP partisan: "At least 30 of those prisoners hitherto released from Guantanamo have returned to the battlefield." This was a statement in his dissent in Boumediene v. Bush, the case that decided that Guantanamo detainees have some constitutional rights.

And here is a retort: False, you lying sack of shit and pathetically unqualified Supreme Court hack!

Only a partisan hack like Scalia would play the fear card by announcing, as he did, that the majority's decision "will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed," and only a partisan hack would cite, as Scalia did, testimony that originated with a party in the case before him, i.e., the administration's false claims, as an authoritative source.

I once had an extensive conversation with someone who insisted that rape is a more terrible offense than murder, and I am confident enough that this is a widely-made assertion and not my own straw man. In light of the recent Supreme Court decision that has determined the unconstitutionality of the death penalty in cases of child rape, which in turn is certainly the most perverse and destructive form of sexual assault, I find it appropriate to explore just how correct the five assenting Justices are in their decision. This is not my condemnation of the death penalty as a practice, which is in my mind completely separate from the ruling and constitutes a wholly different conversation. Suffice it for me to say there is no defensible rationale for that practice outside the realm of guttural assertion.

This is a necessarily sensitive topic. I welcome all points of view in response, but I ask that you read well below the fold before making your decision and reply, and that you respect the candor of the argument over considerations of social grace. This is not and cannot be a happy topic.

Surprise surprise surprise...the administration that will sink below any expectation politicized hiring "many qualified candidates" because of "perceived liberal bias".

As a daily commuter of L.A.’s sprawling freeways—in particular, the horrendous 101-405 interchange—I am no stranger to, or proponent of, our inefficient, myopic, absurdly aggravating system of mass transit. Given an affordable, prompt and convenient alternative—as Munich’s interlocking lattice of S and U-bahns, busses, and trams—I would gladly renounce my car. Developing this infrastructure in even one American metropolis, much less the number required to dent our disproportionate energy consumption or greenhouse gas emissions, would require an intense and sustained application of organized political power. It is precisely the sort program progressives should embrace, because no neat, cheap, or painless solutions exist to the long historical trends that spawned these positively reinforcing crises.

For the life of me, I couldn't think of one reason to vote for John McCain. Unfortunately, Obama has given me what I think may end up being the most powerful reason to support a McCain Presidency. That is the Defense of the Constitution and the Separation of Powers.

I'm going to layout my thoughts on the matter and I want to mention that I'm in part playing Devil's advocate, but I'm also on the Fence as to whether or not to support Obama because of this issue. I care very much about the Constitution and find myself reading Glen Greenwald's blog near religiously.

As we head into the fall election, the fate of the Supreme Court is an issue that should be on most liberals' minds.  As has been discussed here, the next president will be absolutely crucial in determining the Court's direction, first and foremost because they will likely soon replace John Paul Stevens, who, at 88 years of age (recently citing his memories of Prohibition-era Chicago in a judicial opinion), is the second-oldest Justice in the Court's history (behind only Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., who was just short of 91 when he retired).

Beyond him, however, I decided to look at the composition of the Court as a whole; beyond Justice Stevens, what does the next four or eight years hold for President Obama or President McCain, and, more broadly, what do the next 30 years hold for the United States?

As a preface, I'll say that past Stevens, the next President's first term prospects are a bit slim; a full eight years is a better prospect, but, in a greater sense for liberals, there's a depressing lack of opportunity to really influence the Supreme Court's composition, in all likelihood, within an eight-year Obama presidency.

The manipulation of language is always a tricky thing. It's usually done with vagueness & imprecise words that are intended to make things "better." But when you start creating a world where people are obscure in saying what they mean, it makes it that much easier for people to not mean what they say, or deal & talk about the underlying problems the vague words are meant to mask. Whether the motivations or intentions are good ones is a matter of perspective, but what about when it's done in the name of fairness?

In yesterday's Kansas City Star, they recount the story of Tory Bowen. She alleges that four years ago when she was a University of Nebraska student, she was raped by Pamir Safi. The really interesting part of this story is Ms. Bowen's contention that her 1st Amendment rights have been violated by the trial judge that supervised two trials, one ending in a hung jury & the other a mistrial. The problem? Lancaster County District Judge Jeffre Cheuvront would not allow the use of the word "Rape" at a trial about whether a rape occurred, because it might be prejudicial to the defendant.

Behold incompetence defending itself (the 4th Principle of Incompetence in action) (emphasis added):

i guess i can begin my book on the Art of Institutional Racism.
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Leonard Peltier is a Five-Time Nobel Nominee

American Indian activist Leonard Peltier has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for the fifth consecutive year.  The fact that Peltier has earned the distinction of a Nobel nomination every year since 2004 is especially remarkable - Peltier has been an inmate in the United States federal prison system since 1976.

One week ago, the California Supreme Court released its landmark decision In Re Marriage Cases, ruling 4-3 that 2000's proposition 22 as well as the current California marriage statute were unconstitutional (Section 308.5 and Section 300 of the California Family Code, respectively).

There has been some excellent analysis of the decision by Professor Arthur Leonard as well as other academics. At the Los Angeles Times website there's an interesting "Dust up" going on between Jon Davidson of Lambda Legal and Alliance Defense Fund's Glen Lavy.

Although I salute the Court for its serious (172 pages) and generally well-written decision, I believe that as one of the few bloggers who have actually read the entire decision I have a duty to publicize and explain what I see are the problematic aspects of the decision.

America’s racist rulers want to silence the powerful voice of
Mumia Abu-Jamal. The U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals decision
on 27 March upholding the frame-up conviction of black political
prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal for the 1981 killing of Police Officer
Daniel Faulkner is an outrage! It proves, once again, that there is no
justice in the capitalist courts! It is a slap in the face to all
opponents of racist injustice. The court’s ruling means that Mumia
faces either execution or the living death of life in prison. We must
not let this happen! Mumia must be freed now!

It was awesome. It was awesome! I mighta made a good lawyer. In cross-examination the prosecution was over-ruled ten times (or more, I stopped counting at some point). And rangers equivocated. I don't blame those guys. We're all in this together, right?

If you don't know the story, the two links below, the first tells the story, the second has pictures.

Story: http://www.dailykos.com/...
Pictures: http://www.dailykos.com/...

They did tear it down.