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Police State

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by Nat Parry (Consortium News)

The new [Intelligence Agencies] arrest powers follow similar authority granted to the U.S. Secret Service. In the reauthorization of the Patriot Act in 2005, the Secret Service was granted the same power in identical language.

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Christian Science Monitor

War is rarely kind to civil liberties. From the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 to the suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War to the forced internment of some 120,000 Japanese in the US during World War II, the nation has repeatedly grapple

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washingtonpost.com

University of Texas constitutional law professor Sanford V. Levinson described the bill as the mark of a "banana republic." Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh said that "...it's not clear that most of the members (Congress) understan

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Washington Post

The bill immunizes U.S. officials from prosecution for cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment of detainees who the military and the CIA captured before the end of last year. It gives the president a dominant but not exclusive role in setting the rule

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Washington Post (kudo Bob P.)

A secret US program to monitor millions of international financial transactions for terrorist links violated European law and will have to be changed, the Belgian government said. "SWIFT has, for years, secretly and systematically transferred ma

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Reuters

The federal judge who ordered a halt to the Bush administration's program of domestic wiretapping allowed the surveillance to continue for a week to allow an appeals court to weigh in on an issue expected to end up with the U.S. Supreme Court.

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Rocky Mountain News

When state Sen. Andy McElhany helped pass a tough anti-illegal immigration measure this summer, he never expected his family to get caught up in the red tape. The rules to get a Colorado ID keep changing, practically on a weekly basis.

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delawareonline.com

“They have destroyed my life and put it on the news that my son is a bank robber,” she said. “My family has been tortured, and I can’t get a formal apology from them to say that they screwed up big-time.”

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NY Times

Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who is the panel’s chairman, described as “inexplicable” a provision in the bill that would strip federal court of jurisdiction over detainees not formally charged with war crimes. “If the courts

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AP

Congress is unlikely to approve a bill giving President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program legal status and new restrictions before the November midterm elections, dealing a significant blow to one of the White House's top wartime priorit

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Washington Post

Last-minute changes to legislation authorizing the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program have won the support of three balking Senate Republicans, improving the chances that a bill expanding the Bush administration's surv

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Las Vegas Sun

Federal health officials Thursday recommended regular, routine testing for the AIDS virus for all Americans ages 13 to 64, saying an HIV test should be as commone as a cholesterol check. The US Centers for Disease Control Prevention guidelines

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By ERIC MARGOLIS

We have seen America’s president and vice president, sworn to uphold the Constitution, advocating some of the same interrogation techniques the KGB used at the Lubyanka. So did Stalin.

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Drug Policy Alliance

The Student Teacher Safety Act of 2006 (HR 5295) is a sloppily written bill that would require any school receiving federal funding to adopt policies allowing teachers and school officials to conduct random, warrantless searches of every student, at

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NY Times

A bill backed by President George W. Bush to enable a court review of his domestic spying program won the approval on Wednesday of a U.S. Senate panel under election-year pressure to safeguard civil liberties.

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AP

The White House and 3 powerful GOP senators reached an impasse over a Bush administration plan to allow tough CIA interrogations, underscoring election-season divisions among Republicans on the high profile issue of security.

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Christian Science Monitor OpEd

Suppose the US government is conducting a warrantless surveillance program listening to domestic calls in clear violation of the law. Going to court wouldn't get very far. Why not? The government would simply assert the state secrets privilege,

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AP

Nonlethal weapons such as high-power microwave devices should be used on American citizens in crowd-control situations before being used on the battlefield, the Air Force secretary said. "If we're not willing to use it here against our fello

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Washington Post

House leaders moved yesterday to temper many of the controls that a bill headed toward rapid passage would have imposed on the Bush administration's program for wiretapping terrorism suspects without court approval.

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dailykos.com

Imagine a nation in which hooded, unidentified paramilitary units can storm the houses of citizens with no warning in the dead of night, setting off flash grenades and slaying innocent occupants, all with virtually no repercussions and no oversight.

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