NewsTrust - Civil Liberties - Most Recent Stories: Opinion

What the Gay Boycott of the DNC Can Do

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Emma Ruby-Sachs - Nov. 10 (Opinion) - There is a gay boycott of the Democratic Party afoot, and it has the potential to turn into something that leads to real change in American politics. I'm not selling hope here, but I can't help but feel it when I see the momentum gathering behind AMERICAblog's "Don't Ask, Don't Give" campaign.

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Second Circuit Affirms Dismissal of Arar

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Harper's - By Scott Horton - Nov. 03 (Editorial) - The majority, Calabresi charges, “engaged in extraordinary judicial activism.” Its activism was aimed at extricating political actors from a precarious predicament and keeping the door firmly shut on what may well be the darkest chapter in the entire history of the Justice Department.

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Why Nobel Laureate President Obama's Speech to the Gays Matters

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Leah McElrath Renna - Oct. 11 (Opinion) - At first, I thought there was nothing new in President Obama's speech about lesbian and gay civil rights, but then I thought again. Like many...

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Marching Backwards: The Spectacle of Fear

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By John Cory - Oct. 03 (Opinion) - Glenn Beck is not original, nor was Joe McCarthy. The "red scare" of McCarthyism was merely the recycled red scare of the 1920's, when Attorney General Mitchell Palmer and his right-hand assistant, J. Edgar Hoover, conducted warrantless raids on union halls and labor organizations deemed socialists or communists for their suspected anti-American, anti-corporate beliefs.

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Beating Up Thurgood Marshall

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Sam Ferguson - Sep. 14 (Opinion) - Based on the tenor of the argument yesterday at the Supreme Court in Citizens United v. FEC, the Supreme Court is poised to overrule the 1990 decision in Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce. If they do, corporations will be allowed to use general treasury funds to run advertisements and campaign on behalf of federal candidates. Corporate cash will flood our elections and special interests will be enshrined in the Constitution. But the blow will not just be to the proponents of campaign finance reform. It will be a stinging uppercut to the legacy of Justice Thurgood Marshall.

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Coming Soon to a Democracy Near You ...

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Michael Winship - Sep. 05 (Opinion) - In the world of money and politics, "Hillary: The Movie" may turn out to be the sleeper hit of the year, a boffo blockbuster. Depending on the outcome of a special Supreme Court hearing on September 9, this little piece of propaganda could unleash a new torrent of cash flooding into campaigns from big business, unions and other special interests. "Hillary: The Movie" may turn out to be "Frankenstein: The Monster."

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Rep. John Conyers: Why David Broder Is Wrong

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

Huffington Post - By John Conyers - Sep. 04 (Comment) - The decision whether to investigate possible crimes connected to our interrogation programs is simply not a political one.

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Treatment of prisoner dents Obama promise to end such practices

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Seattle Times - By Leonard Pitts Jr. - Aug. 31 (Opinion) - No, this does not match the worst abuses of the Bush era, but it is close enough that it must surely disillusion and dismay those who thought a corner was turned on Jan. 20. It must leave them hoping that faith was not misplaced. Sometimes a dented promise is worse than no promise at all.

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7 Ways We Can Fight Back Against the Rising Fascist Threat

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Sara Robinson - Aug. 15 (Editorial) - It only takes a small handful of thugs to terrorize people into giving up their civil rights, abandoning democracy and doing what they're told, just so they can keep their jobs, windows and families intact.

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John Walker Lindh's Parents Discuss Their Son's Story, from Joining the US-Backed Taliban Army to Surviving a Northern Alliance Massacre, to His Abuse at the Hands of US Forces

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzalez, Frank Lindh, Marilyn Walker - Jul. 31 (Interview) - We turn now to a Democracy Now! exclusive. For the first time in over seven years, the parents of John Walker Lindh have agreed to sit down together for an extended interview to discuss their son, who is known by many as the American Taliban.

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What the CIA hid from Congress

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

Los Angeles Times - By Jane Harman - Jul. 26 (Opinion) - Were members of congressional intelligence committees told everything about the Bush administration's surveillance programs? Not even close, reveals Jane Harman, the former top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

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First steps taken to implement preventive detention, military commissions

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

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Jul. 21 (Opinion) - From this interim report, it's more apparent than ever that the central excuse made by Obama defenders to justify preventive detention and military commissions -- there are dangerous Terrorists who cannot be released but also cannot be tried because Bush obtained the evidence against them via torture -- is an absolute myth. That's clear for multiple reasons:

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President Obama's Politics of Dignity

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

Huffington Post - By Robert Fuller - Jul. 19 (Opinion) - America is broken. Even if we pull through the current economic crisis, recovery won't last absent an overhaul of our primary institutions. • One out of ten Americans is now unemployed and the recovery is expected to be jobless. • Fifty million Americans have no health insurance; two million, no home. • Two million Americans are in jail. • Our public schools have fallen behind those of most developed nations. • Higher education is priced out of reach of the middle class. • Our infrastructure is in an advanced state of disrepair. • We rank first in greenhouse gas emissions. • Immigration, once our pride, is now our shame. • We're living on credit and leaving the debt to our children.

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The Importance of Free Speech Online in Iran, China, Kenya

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

PBS - By Mark Glaser, Kim Spencer, Scott Rosenberg, Cyrus Farivar, Danny O'Brien, - Jul. 10 (Interview) - In a crisis, governments will often curtail freedom of the press, censoring or shutting broadcasts and newspapers. But blocking websites, slowing the Internet or cutting off SMS messaging can be harder to do. Stopping the flow of information online can be a difficult task, as the Iranian government has learned over the past few weeks, as protesters have posted images to Flickr, video to YouTube, and running commentaries on blogs and Twitter. While the Iranian government would prefer to operate under a cloud, the Interent has proven to be a key distribution medium for spreading news to the rest of the world. This month's 5Across video roundtable focused on free speech online in various countries, from Iran to China to Kenya -- and even a mention of the U.S. government's attempts at curtailing speech online over the years. The discussion gave context to Iranian Internet use, its demographics and the way people there get information via satellite TV from Persian-language foreign news sources such as BBC Persian and Voice of America. Plus, we talked about how China uses psychology in making its millions of Internet users believe they are all being monitored.

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Two Standards of Detention

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Associated Press - By Amy Goodman - Jul. 08 (Opinion) - Nonviolent activists like Stepanian, and Muslims like Hashmi, secretly and dubiously charged, are held in draconian conditions, while Roeder trumpets from jail the extreme anti-abortion movement’s decades-long campaign of intimidation, vandalism, arson and murder.

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The Patriot's Guide to Legalization

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

Mother Jones - By Kevin Drum - Jul. 06 (Opinion) - Maybe the war against pot is about to get a lot uglier. After all, in the 1920s, Prohibition gave us Al Capone and the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, and that was over plain old whiskey and rum. Are we about to start paying the same price for marijuana?

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Editorial - Age Discrimination - NYTimes.com

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

New York Times - Jul. 06 (Editorial) - The Supreme Court rewrote the rules for litigating age-discrimination cases in favor of employers. It falls to Congress to undo the damage.

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Letters - The Firefighters’ Test - Flawed or Fair? - NYTimes.com

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - Jul. 02 (Opinion) - First, you argue that the test for firefighter promotions in New Haven was flawed, and possibly illegal, because different groups achieved widely different results on the test. But the standard for determining the validity of such a test should not be that every group pass it at roughly proportional rates, as you prefer, but that its questions are germane to the positions it was designed for.

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Why Does Our Government Still Spy On, Arrest and Persecute Dissidents?

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Emily Spence - Jun. 30 (Opinion) - there's a certain inescapable irony and disingenuous quality presented by the Western government heads who are harshly critical of the Iran crackdown on dissenting citizens while they, themselves, condone similar ironfisted policies in their own lands.

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An Uncertain Fate for Voting Rights

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

American Prospect - By Heather K. Gerken - Jun. 24 (Opinion) - Yesterday the Supreme Court wrote a cliffhanger of an opinion on the constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), one of the most powerful weapons in the civil-rights arsenal. In the Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One (NAMUDNO) v. Holder opinion, the Court raised serious questions about Section 5's future, but it didn't pull the trigger. The question is how this story will end.

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Firing Back on Right-Wing Domestic Terrorism

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Sara Robinson - Jun. 18 (Opinion) - It's been a wild couple of weeks for those of us in the wingnutology business. Our services have been in tremendous demand as the mainstream media tries to sort out the meaning of what Scott Roeder and James von Brunn did.

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Teachers File Racial Discrimination Suit Against School "Turnaround" Plan

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Bruce A. Dixon - Jun. 17 (Opinion) - Turning schools into test-prep centers doesn't improve the quality of education. Neither does repeating the corporate propaganda about our schools being 'dropout factories,' as Arne Duncan does. What works are resources, stability, parent and community involvement and smaller class sizes. Schools in wealthier neighborhoods have all these things.

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Freedom on a small island with a big heart

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

Boston Globe - By Sabin Willett - Jun. 16 (Opinion) - ONE AFTERNOON last week, four men from central Asia walked into a shop in Bermuda to buy pants. Refugees from Chinese communism, these Uighur men were swept up by US forces in 2001. They were sent to Guantanamo. But they were not terrorists and not our enemies. The military soon realized its mistake and quietly tried to resettle them abroad. The efforts failed: No one wanted to brook the Chinese for the sake of a few dissidents whom the United States would not accept itself.

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Letter from Tehran: The day after

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Anonymous - Jun. 15 (Opinion) - It is a remarkable turn of events. But one thing is for certain, the many millions who showed up to vote, a great many for the first time ever, were not fooled. Their vote counted because it made the situation black and white. If they had not voted, then Dr. A would have won anyways. Now they know.

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Any Chance of a Democracy Agenda in Egypt?

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

Foreign Policy Watch - By Matt Eckel - Jun. 03 (Opinion) - The U.S. relationship with Egypt is one of those elements of American foreign policy that, like the War on Drugs or the Cuba embargo, many people acknowledge is flawed, but has become such an entrenched part of our international posture that it's really difficult to change.

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