NewsTrust - Civil Liberties - Most Recent Stories: News (Independent)

Arkansas 10-Year-Old Won't Pledge Allegiance Until Gays Gain Equality

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

edgesanfrancisco.com - By Kilian Melloy - Nov. 13 (News Report) - A 10-year-old Arkansas boy name Will Phillips has decided that he cannot in good conscience pledge allegiance to the flag as long as the country for which it stands refuses legal equality to its GLBT citizens.

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Straight Guys Tell

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Advocate - By Michael Joseph Gross - Oct. 21 (Special Report) - You’ve heard the threats -- about how gay men in the shower might bring down the U.S. military with a wink, a pinch, or a flick of a wet towel. But where’s the truth in that? What’s it really like to serve alongside gay and lesbian service members?

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Obama Administration Accused Again of Concealing Bush-Era Crimes

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Matt Renner - Oct. 14 (News Report) - the Obama administration has sought to conceal information in several high-profile court cases, in an effort that civil libertarians say amounts to covering up crimes committed by the Bush administration. Last week, in a federal courthouse in New York, Obama's Justice Department attorneys again argued in favor of secrecy.

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Police Use Painful New Weapon on G20 Protesters

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Allison Kilkenny - Sep. 28 (News) - This technology has been deployed in Iraq as an "anti-insurgent weapon" - it could easily be used as a torture tool.

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Back to School: Military Recruiters Increasingly Targeting High School Teens

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Juan Gonzalez - Sep. 04 (News) - Journalist David Goodman writes in the new issue of Mother Jones, quote, "Using data mining, stealth websites, career tests, and sophisticated marketing software, the Pentagon is harvesting and analyzing information on everything from high school students' GPAs and SAT scores to which video games they play. Before an Army recruiter even picks up the phone to call a prospect, the soldier may know more about the kid's habits than do his own parents."

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Obama formalizes Bush policy on digital searches and seizures

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

wsws.org - By Tom Eley - Sep. 01 (News) - The Obama administration disclosed on August 27 that it will carry on Bush administration policies that allowed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to seize and search international travelers' laptop computers, cellular phones, cameras, and other electronic devices, even in the absence of suspicion of criminal activity.

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Glenn Greenwald on CIA Interrogation Probe, Obama and Why the Media Failed on Covering Torture

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Glenn Greewald, Anjali Kamat, Amy Goodman - Aug. 26 (News Analysis) - Attorney General Eric Holder has opened an inquiry into CIA torture. On Monday, Holder appointed veteran federal prosecutor John Durham to look into whether CIA interrogators and contractors should be charged for the torture and abuse of foreign prisoners. Holder says he ordered the probe in response to a Justice Department recommendation to reopen nearly a dozen prisoner abuse cases that the Bush administration had closed. Holder says he was further influenced by the 2004 CIA report on the prisoners’ torture and abuse, which he released on Monday.

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Why Are Cops Tasering Grandmothers, Pregnant Women and Kids?

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Scott Thill - Aug. 17 (Special Report) - Thanks to the taser's wildfire deployment, classification as non-lethal weaponry and pop-cultural appeal in films, television, comics and even cartoons, cops have nearly lost their minds using it on everyone from children, the elderly, and pregnant mothers to the mentally unstable and physically disabled.

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Youssef Megahed Speaks Out from Prison

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Aug. 14 (News Report) - Florida student Youssef Megahed was arrested by federal immigration agents in April just three days after a jury acquitted him on federal explosives charges. He now faces deportation on the same charges. But this time, he won’t be tried by a jury of his peers, but by an immigration judge.

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Obama’s Military Is Spying on U.S. Peace Groups

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthDig - By Amy Goodman - Jul. 28 (News Report) - Anti-war activists in Olympia, Wash., have exposed Army spying and infiltration of their groups, as well as intelligence gathering by the Air Force, the federal Capitol Police and the Coast Guard. The infiltration appears to be in direct violation of the Posse Comitatus Act preventing U.S. military deployment for domestic law enforcement and may strengthen congressional demands for a full-scale investigation of U.S. intelligence activities, like the Church Committee hearings of the 1970s.

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Detainees' Trial Plan Is Unveiled

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

online.wsj.com - By Jonathan Weisman, Evan Perez - Jul. 21 (News Report) - An interim report by a presidential task force reviewing U.S. detention policy laid out for the first time the means by which Justice and Defense department lawyers will determine whether the 229 detainees remaining at Guantanamo get criminal or military trials. The approach could rile civil liberties groups, which prefer all detainees be tried in criminal courts.

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Bush Spying Relied on Faulty Theories

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Consortium News - By Jason Leopold - Jul. 12 (News) - George W. Bush justified his warrantless wiretapping by relying on Justice Department attorney John Yoo’s theories of unlimited presidential wartime powers, and started the spying operation even before Yoo issued a formal opinion, a government investigation discovered.

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Study: Gates can roll back DADT -

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

airforcetimes.com - By William H. Mc - Jul. 06 (News Report) - Defense Secretary Robert Gates could limit enforcement of the military’s prohibition against open homosexual service without waiting for Congress to reverse the ban, as President Obama has called for. That is the conclusion of a legal memo issued Monday by the Palm Center, a think tank in Santa Barbara, Calif., that supports repealing the ban.

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TABC Admits Man Was In Its Custody When Injured

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

cbs11tv.com - Jul. 01 (News Report) - Late Wednesday, State Senator Wendy Davis and State Representative Lon Burnam, both of Fort Worth, issued a joint statement. They say they have talked to TABC officials in Austin and are initiating an investigation to find out what happened that night.

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Fight Brews Between Civil Liberties Groups and Obama

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Independent - By Spencer Ackerman - Jul. 01 (News Analysis) - It was a blind quote hitting the civil-libertarian solar plexus. Bad enough that, as ProPublica’s Dafna Linzner and The Washington Post’s Peter Finn reported late on Friday afternoon, the Obama administration was readying an executive order for a system for preventive detention in terrorism cases.

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Cambodia's Fearless Heroine

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Daily Beast - By Gail Sheehy - Jun. 28 (Special Report) - The Prime Minister calls her a “hustler” and a “gangster,” but Mo Sochua is a savior of women sold into sex slavery—and willing to go to prison if that’s what it takes to help them. The smile of Mo Sochua is gentle. It’s the sweet Cambodian smile, as deceptive as her birth country. The Cambodia of the headlines is a great success story: “Democracy Sprung from Bones of the Killing Fields,” or “Five Top Khmer Rouge Leaders on Trial.” But scratch the surface, says Sochua, the most outspoken human rights activist in the Parliament, and you will see Cambodia “fast regressing to a soft dictatorship.”

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Voice of Iran

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Link TV - By Erin Cokin - Jun. 26 (News Analysis) - A propaganda war is underway. Following the extraordinary presidential election, Iran's state-controlled media are aggressively promoting their own version of news events. It is a very different story from the one that is being told in the Western media.

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Will Officials Take the Fifth Unless the Daily Show Is Muzzled?

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

FAIR - By Jim Naureckas - Jun. 19 (News Analysis) - Do they still teach the First Amendment in law school?

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Ohio teen recovers from attempted lynching

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

thegrio.com - Jun. 16 (News Report) - Robert Cantu said four people put a noose around his neck and dragged him from the sidewalk to an adjacent parking lot. "These guys were in the back of a truck with a noose and they jumped out and said, 'Get the black kids' and they all ran and then they said, 'Get the spic.' So they jumped on me, pulled me down and put the noose on me," said Robert, who is a Latino.

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Iran votes in record-breaking numbers

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

GlobalPost - By Cameron Abadi - Jun. 12 (Special Report) - ord-breaking numbers of Iranians going to the polls Friday, this year’s presidential election has already earned a chapter in the story of the Islamic Republic. What remains to be seen is in which direction the voters will have steered the plot.

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Roll up ... the Iranian election is about to begin

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

GlobalPost - By Cameron Abadi - Jun. 10 (News Report) - Iranians imagined that this year’s presidential campaign would be hard fought, but no one quite expected what it has become: a spark for uncontrolled street revelry; a platform for hostile name-calling between ill-tempered candidates; and an opportunity to hold a referendum on the achievements of the 1979 revolution.

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Judge orders halt to mining protests

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Charleston Gazette - By Ken Ward Jr. - Jun. 03 (News Report) - Circuit Judge Robert Burnside issued the injunction after two days in Beckley, in response to a civil lawsuit filed by several Massey subsidiaries whose operations have been shut down several times by the protesters. Burnside narrowed the scope of his ruling, compared to an earlier temporary restraining order. But the judge still extended the injunction to unnamed protesters who act in concert with or in association with previous protesters named in the injunction. "We have very serious issues we are looking at for appeal," said Roger Forman, lawyer for the protesters.

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Dr. George Tiller (1941-2009): Murdered Abortion Provider Remembered for Lifelong Dedication to Women's Reproductive Health

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Dr. George Tiller, Ellie Smeal,Bonnie Scott Jones,Dr. Susan Robinson,Dr. Shelley Sella,Laura Shaneyfelt,AMY GOODMAN - Jun. 01 (Special Report) - The suspect, fifty-one-year-old Scott Roeder, has a history of involvement in anti-abortion activism and was once arrested and jailed on explosives charges. He has ties to the right-wing separatist group known as the Freemen. We look at the life of Dr. Tiller with five women who worked alongside him to uphold reproductive rights: two women doctors who fly into Wichita every month to work alongside him performing abortions; two of the attorneys who defended him through years of legal harassment, one in Wichita and one in New York; and Ellie Smeal of the Feminist Majority Foundation, who knew him for twenty years.

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Indonesia: Jailed For Complaining

Sun, 31 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Global Voices - By Carolina Rumuat - May. 31 (News Report) - The case of Prita Mulyasari, a mother of two, is currently the hot topic among Indonesian bloggers. She wrote an online complaint letter [id] against a private hospital in Tangerang, one of Jakarta's suburban areas, and now she is being charged for violating chapter 27 verse 3 of the Information and Electronic Transaction Law (UU ITE) [id]. Prita shared her experience of being maltreated by the hospital on a mailing-list. The hospital took legal action against her. That online complaint may result into six years jail term and maximum fine of 1 billion Rupiah (nearly US$ 98,000).

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"We All Live in the Coal Fields": West Virginians Step Up Protests as EPA OKs New Mountaintop Removal

Fri, 29 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Jeff Biggers, Juan Gonzalez, Amy Goodman - May. 29 (News Analysis) - The protests came just a week after the Obama administration gave the green light for forty-two more mountaintop removal permits, dealing a victory for the coal industry. The Environmental Protection Agency’s decision shocked many activists in Appalachia, who have been campaigning to end the practice of mountaintop removal that’s already destroyed over 450 mountains in West Virginia, Virginia and Kentucky.

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