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

Senators Press Holder to Declassify Key Facts about Patriot Act

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Salem-News.com - Nov. 19 (News Report) - We believe that the information we referenced in those paragraphs – specifically about the use of section 215 – is essential to understanding the full scope of the PATRIOT Act, which is about to be debated in Congress. As we said in June, if you have concerns about declassifying the specific language contained in our letter, we ask that you work with us to find language that conveys enough information to allow for an informed public debate on the PATRIOT Act’s reauthorization

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Catholic Church gives D.C. ultimatum on same-sex marriage issue

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Tim Craig, Michelle Boorstein - Nov. 12 (News Report) - The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington said Wednesday that it will be unable to continue the social service programs it runs for the District if the city doesn't change a proposed same-sex marriage law, a threat that could affect tens of thousands of people the church helps with adoption, homelessness and health care.

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Mormon Church Backs Salt Lake City's Gay Rights Law : NPR

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Associated Press - By Associated Press - Nov. 11 (News Report) - The Mormon church for the first time has announced its support of gay rights legislation, an endorsement that helped gain unanimous approval for Salt Lake city laws banning discrimination against gays in housing and employment

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Gay-rights support stops at Cascades

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Times - By Lornet Turnbull - Nov. 05 (News Report) - The lopsided results over expansion of the state's domestic-partnership law, which voters overall were approving, show the challenge supporters of gay rights face in winning over all Washingtonians as they seek full equality.

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Dallas police chief: Dozens of tickets issued for not speaking English

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Dallas Morning News - By Scott Goldstein - Oct. 23 (News Report) - Dallas Police Chief David Kunkle said this afternoon that his officers have written at least 39 citations to people over the past three years for not speaking English

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Interracial couple denied marriage license in La.

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Associated Press - By Mary Foster - Oct. 16 (News) - A white Louisiana justice of the peace said he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple out of concern for any children the couple might have. Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long. "I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way," Bardwell told the Associated Press on Thursday. "I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else."

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La. interracial marriage: Is life tougher for biracial kids?

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Christian Science Monitor - By Patrik Jonsson - Oct. 16 (News Analysis) - Researchers are finding that multiracial kids can sometimes be better socially adjusted than single-race offspring. And with the high-profile success of multiracial progeny such as Tiger Woods, Halle Berry, and President Obama (who at his first press conference as president described himself as a "mutt"), stereotypes about the split world of the "tragic mulatto" have long fallen by the wayside.

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Prayer Effort Seeks 'Right Thinking' From Liberals

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

All Things Considered - By Barbara Bradley Hagerty - Oct. 04 (Special Report) - A Christian conservative group, fearing a liberal drift in the country's leadership, has put 11 prominent politicians and activists on an "Adopt a Liberal" roster. They're asking God to help their targets change their stances on a variety of social issues.

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Battle Looms Over the Patriot Act

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Charlie Savage - Sep. 20 (News Report) - As Congress prepares to consider extending provisions of the USA Patriot Act, civil liberties groups and Democratic lawmakers are gearing up to press for sweeping changes to surveillance laws.

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Appeals court rules against Ashcroft in 9/11 case

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

Associated Press - Sep. 04 (News Report) - A federal appeals court delivered a stinging rebuke Friday to the Bush administration's post-Sept. 11 detention policies, ruling that former Attorney General John Ashcroft can be held liable for people who were wrongfully detained as material witnesses after 9/11. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the government's improper use of material witnesses after Sept. 11 was "repugnant to the Constitution and a painful reminder of some of the most ignominious chapters of our national history

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Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy Dies at 77 After Cancer Battle

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

Washington Post - By Joe Holley - Aug. 26 (News Report) - Edward M. Kennedy, one of the most powerful and influential senators in American history and one of three brothers whose political triumphs and personal tragedies captivated the nation for decades, died late Tuesday at his home in Hyannis Port, Mass., at age 77. He had been battling brain cancer.

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Cap-and-trade & Health Care & Insurance Reform I see these two issues as one and the same thing. The first one is to heal our planet, and the second is to heal our human bodies. Also, both issues have to deal with how the 'healing' is delievered and wh

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Foreign policy, EU news, climate, green technology, health. - Aug. 21 (Investigative Report) - Experts and politicians on whether health care reform will trump climate change.

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Threat Assessment: When Protesters Bring Guns to Health-Care Town Halls

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Associated Press - By Mark Thompson - Aug. 19 (News Analysis) - The fact that protesters at President Obama's political events have begun showing up bearing arms may be disquieting, but it's perfectly legal — and the Secret Service, charged with protecting the President, insists that it is not unduly alarmed by the development. That's because while the Second Amendment guarantees Americans the right to carry guns, federal law also gives the Secret Service the right to keep gun-toting folks away from the President. ... But former Secret Service agent Joseph Petro thinks his former employer may be trying to put the best face on a bad situation. "The Secret Service is very concerned about this," says Petro, who spent 23 years as an agent, including four guarding President Reagan and his family. "It's hard enough to protect the President, and this is not helpful."

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Myanmar: Locked up

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - Aug. 12 (News Analysis) - AFTER many delays, a court in Myanmar at last handed down its verdict on Tuesday August 11th, concluding the trial of the country’s main opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi. The staunchest foe of the ruling junta has been consigned to another 18 months of house arrest, as punishment for a bizarre incident in May when an American eccentric swam to her lakeside villa, forcing her to break the terms of her previous house arrest. The verdict was expected: the government has, in effect, found an excuse to prolong her detention, which was about to expire, until after elections that are planned for some time next year. Her defence, that as a prisoner she was in no position to fend off uninvited visitors, was brushed aside by the court.

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Iranian Official Acknowledges Torture of Protesters

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Robert F. Worth, Nazila Fathi - Aug. 09 (News Report) - A top judiciary official acknowledged Saturday that some detainees arrested after post-election protests had been tortured in Iranian prisons, the first such acknowledgment by a senior Iranian official. Meanwhile, a second day of hearings was held in a mass trial of reformers and election protesters, with more than 100 people accused of trying to topple the government. The accused included a French researcher and employees of the French and British Embassies, prompting angry responses from Britain, France and the European Union. But even as the trial appeared to further the campaign by the hard-line establishment to intimidate and silence the opposition, at the expense of alienating Iranian moderates and the West, the statement on torture by the judiciary official, Iran’s prosecutor general, revealed continued divisions within the government.

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Criminal investigation into CIA treatment of detainees expected

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Greg Miller, Josh Meyer - Aug. 09 (News Report) - U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. is poised to appoint a criminal prosecutor to investigate alleged CIA abuses committed during the interrogation of terrorism suspects, current and former U.S. government officials said. A senior Justice Department official said that Holder envisioned an inquiry that would be narrow in scope, focusing on "whether people went beyond the techniques that were authorized" in Bush administration memos that liberally interpreted anti-torture laws.

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Filipinos Mourn ‘People Power’ President

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Carlos H. Conde - Aug. 02 (News Report) - Filipinos across the country mourned former President Corazon Aquino on Sunday, with thousands lining up outside a Catholic school in the capital for a last glimpse of the woman they credited with ushering in Philippine democracy nearly a quarter of a century ago, ending two decades of dictatorial rule. The same reverence for Mrs. Aquino — who served as president for six years after leading the movement to oust Ferdinand Marcos in 1986 — had been evident across the archipelago since Saturday morning, when it was announced that she had died of colon cancer at 76. Yellow ribbons, Mrs. Aquino’s symbol of defiance against Mr. Marcos’s rule 23 years ago, were everywhere Sunday — on arms, trees, lampposts, car antennas and Web sites. Prayers and Masses for the former president were scheduled across the country.

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Iran’s Khatami Says Protestors’ Trial a Sham; Hearings Continue

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Bloomberg - By Ladane Nasseri - Aug. 02 (News Report) - Iran’s former president Mohammad Ali Khatami, a backer of the opposition movement, denounced as a sham the trial of protestors detained after the country’s disputed re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as the hearings continued for a second day. “What has been named the trial of the defendants involved in recent events is against the constitution, regular laws and citizens’ rights,” Khatami was quoted by his Web site as saying yesterday. “Confessions made under certain circumstances are not valid.”

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U.S. citizens wrongly detained, deported by ICE

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

San Francisco Chronicle - By Tyche Hendricks - Jul. 27 (News Report) - The son of a decorated Vietnam veteran, Hector Veloz is a U.S. citizen, but in 2007 immigration officials mistook him for an illegal immigrant and locked him in an Arizona prison for 13 months

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Chinese hack film festival site

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

BBC News - Jul. 26 (News Report) - Chinese hackers have attacked the website of Australia's biggest film festival over a documentary about Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer. Content on the Melbourne International Film Festival site was briefly replaced with the Chinese flag and anti-Kadeer slogans on Saturday, reports said. In an earlier protest on Friday, Beijing withdrew four Chinese films. Melbourne's The Age newspaper says private security guards have been hired to protect Kadeer and other film-goers.

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Government Hit Squads, Minus the Hits

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Scott Shane - Jul. 19 (News Analysis) - The movies make it look so easy: the sniper’s crosshairs on a terrorist’s forehead; the plastic explosive taped beneath a foreign spy’s car; the lethal potion slipped into a dictator’s morning coffee. So perhaps the biggest surprise about the Central Intelligence Agency’s furor du jour — the secret program, hidden from Congress, to kill the leaders of Al Qaeda — is not that there was such a program, which many Americans assumed. Nor is it that former Vice President Dick Cheney instructed the C.I.A. to keep the program from Congress. Mr. Cheney has never been accused of reckless openness about intelligence programs.

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Interviews Offer Look at Roles of CIA Contractors During Interrogations

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Joby Warrick, Peter Finn - Jul. 19 (News Report) - In April 2002, as the terrorism suspect known as Abu Zubaida lay in a Bangkok hospital bed, top U.S. counterterrorism officials gathered at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., for a series of meetings on an urgent problem: how to get him to talk. Put him in a cell filled with cadavers, was one suggestion, according to a former U.S. official with knowledge of the brainstorming sessions. Surround him with naked women, was another. Jolt him with electric shocks to the teeth, was a third.

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Black Philadelphia police sue over message board, say it's racist - CNN.com

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

CNN - By Jason Kessler - Jul. 17 (News Report) - A group of black Philadelphia police officers filed a federal lawsuit Thursday against their department, alleging an online forum geared toward city police is "infested with racist, white supremacist and anti-African-American content." The suit alleges white officers post on and moderate the privately operated site, Domelights.com, both on and off the job.

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Obama Goes to Bat for Bush Wiretap Program

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

San Francisco Chronicle - By Bob Egelko - Jul. 15 (News Report) - President Obama is adamant about maintaining the secrecy of a wiretapping program authorized by George W. Bush, an administration lawyer told a federal judge in San Francisco on Wednesday.

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Honduras had a new kind of coup

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

Los Angeles Times - By Tracy Wilkinson - Jul. 12 (News Analysis) - On Saturday, June 27, the order came down: Arrest the president. That night, Honduran military officers stopped taking calls from U.S. officials. At sunrise Sunday, army commanders firing warning shots into the air marched through the back door of the president's home, rousted him from bed and took him away, still in his pajamas. It was over in 15 minutes. But the coup that toppled President Manuel Zelaya was a slow boil, over many months, of an increasingly arbitrary and provocative leader, the often-exaggerated fears of a hidebound elite and a military with divided loyalties. That simmering crisis exploded into one of the most serious challenges facing Latin America in a decade. In some ways, it was a throwback to the old Latin America, when coups and men in uniform more often than not decided who ruled. But it was also emblematic of a struggle underway today on the continent, where a crop of leftist leaders with authoritarian tendencies have risen to power through elections, defied the status quo and tested the bounds of democracy.

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